Richard Dougherty and Alan Davenport are both experienced
organizational consultants. They have partnered on numerous occasions.

"We simply enjoy working together" is what they say.

Richard Dougherty brings 40 years of library work to these issues. And more importantly, he brings ten plus years of focusing on the “how” of long-range planning. He began to incorporate his ideas about planning into his work as a faculty member at the University of Michigan. He also drew on his experience as a director of libraries at several institutions, as an editor and publisher of professional journals, and as president of ALA.

Alan Davenport has been an independent organization development consultant since 1983. In the early 80s, he was part of the group that ‘invented’ the large group organizational change methodology Dick and Alan now use. It incorporates the energy that arises from an organization doing ‘visioning’ and real time action planning, resulting in significant system wide change. Alan has consulted with corporation such as ProQuest, Ford Motor Company, Boeing, and Microsoft. His experience with libraries began in 1990 and since then he has worked with numerous libraries and library consortia.

Our work is to facilitate the staff of libraries to develop, and implement, significant long-range plans that take their library to a better alignment with customers, technology and who they are. (This is quite different from outside experts identifying what a library needs to do.)

Our process is designed to involve the entire staff, or a major element of that staff, in identifying the realities the library faces over the next several years, and what they would like to become in light of those realities.

This aspiration state, which is quite different from ‘pie-in-the-sky’ thinking, is based on current interpretations of future realities. And most importantly, it is infused with the energy of possibilities, not constraints, of that future.

Working with the expertise of the participating staff, aided by customer voices, we create a picture of the future in which the library will be operating. Then the challenge becomes one of identifying ‘how we want to be’ in that future, who we will be serving and how. This is done in a way that it begins to unleash the potential of the library.

This process is guaranteed to produce plans that will significantly improve service to your patrons while un- leashing staff’s creativity to organize, modify, and direct resources of the library to provide greater services.

The process we use is based on sound organization theory which is tailored to meet the special needs of the client. The role of the client library cannot be under-estimated. While the general framework of this process is provided by the consultants, the ‘tailoring’ done by the library director and a task force of staff members (design team) is critical to the success of this process.

In terms of creating a strategic plan, a vision for a library, or specific action plans, the above process is very different from the “top-down” traditional planning methods intended to accomplish the same task. A vision created by a director or leadership team has a very small rate of success in being communicated to the entire staff. The approach we use is focused on getting buy-in on the part of all staff to the “aspirational” vision for the library, and unleashes their creativity in how to make significant progress in the first steps toward that vision. Our methods produce planned organizational change quickly once implementation begins.

You can expect a commitment that begins with the pre-event planning activities and extends through the beginning of the critical implementation activities.

The process we advocate will produce a relatively clear ‘vision’ for the library, and steps needed to move from where the library is today toward that ‘vision.’ Clients will also become more informed about what their customers really want and need.

The secondary benefit is that all participating staff will begin, almost unconsciously, to make small, daily decisions, choose actions, relate to patrons, in ways that are consistent with moving the library toward its vision.

Participants in this process typically develop a belief that things will move forward to enhance the library, and a willingness to be part of this effort (in spite of their current job demands).

The greatest danger to all planning efforts is the failure to implement. This failure may stem from lack of effort, lack of commitment, absence of leadership support, too many efforts, and absence of an infrastructure to support change.

A significant aspect of our process is attention to implementation. Both during the planning for the ‘strategic planning event’ and the work with the library’s leadership, attention to implementation is paramount. The intent is to create an infrastructure to support change, regardless of the direction of that change. A significant obstacle is often created when there is a lack of staff participation. People who do not participate in visioning and action planning are less likely to be committed to a plan of action than those who are
directly involved in the planning process.

For these reasons we do not consider our work done until we have worked with the client to layout an implementation strategy that not only identifies the pitfalls that a library is likely to encounter but also maximizes the opportunities to succeed. In fact, conditions often change so rapidly that organizations revisit their plans in 6 to 12 months to assess progress and consider whether a mid-course correction is warranted. Speed and flexibility are indeed virtues when planning involved.