>>> We are at the top of the hour. Just a reminder to all of you that you can access the audio by telephone. If you encounter any difficulties. And you can minimize or maximize any of those panels at right, if you prefer not to follow along. Closed caption available by the media viewer. One small note, special for today's event, we have provided you with access to a pointer. We will be asking you to use that pointer at different points during today's session. You will see at the top of the slide there is an arrow. That -- if you click on the arrow, and then click on the slide, you will see your name and a pointer. This is the way we will do some quick eyeballing and polling of your experiences. There is the pointers. Great practice. You will note that this is available throughout, but we ask that you please only use it when we ask you to. So, it's great practice. It is great to see you all putting the pointer to work and we will go ahead and clear your pointers at this point. I'm going to go ahead and start the archives for today's session. And do a quick introduction. Again, my log in today is WJ support, and I'm your friend if you have technical difficulties, here is my face. Jennifer Peterson, I'm on the right. I'm thrilled to be joined today with moderator Michael porter, who is also part of the Webjunction team, and I will pass it on over to Michael. >> Mike: Thanks, Jennifer. Hi everyone. Thank you for attending today. We're honored to be here with you and have this chance to learn more about all of the competency goodness that is out there to help you with your job. You know, one thing I wanted to mention before we dive right in, we have a hashtag for today's event. It is #libcomp, and that is not just for the event, if you are ever posting anything on twitter or online, to use that hashtag, it is easier for people to find it. Encourage you to use that hashtag if you are on twitter. Now, as many of you know and are familiar with, Webjunction, we have been working on competencies for the last two, three, four years even pretty heavily heavily, and Betha who is one of our speakers today has done a lot of work with that on past years and I have been working on that this year. One of the nice benefits is working with all of you. We have all together gathered the best collection of resources for libraries and competency use anywhere. We are happy that we have been able to do that with you and for you and as a part of the library community. This webinar today is a continuation of that work. We're very grateful to be here with you. I think you will find the stories that you will hear will be interesting, applicable, and practical. As you are working on competencies, the place to go for that is on Webjunction, Webjunction.org/competencies. If you go there, you will find all kinds of good information. We update that every couple of months. We will update it through the rest of the year. Along the lines of updating that page, of course this archive and connected resources will be there. But we're also going to have another sort of year-end wrap up competency event, summary event for competencies in December. And one of the things we're looking for for that and even beyond December though, but especially for December, are more stories of how people are using competencies. We have dozens, but, you know, they're specific to your library. We're interested in your competency stories. Drop us a line anywhere you want to at Webjunction, we are really interested in hearing from you about your experience with competencies. Whatever that experience might be. We would be really grateful to hear from you more competency stories. We may be able to share some of those in our December event or going forward or maybe just learn more about how competencies are really working and being put to use or not being put to use in your library yet. So, with that, it is now time to jump into our most excellent content. You will hear my voice pop up occasionally. I am the time keeper and question keeper for the event. Most of who you will hear from are the very lovely and talented Sandra Smith and Betha Gutsche, and we're happy to have them with us and have them tell their stories and share their expertise. >> Hello everyone. This is Betha Gutsche. I am the program manager at Webjunction. I have compiled and edited two competency stats, one focused on the competencies for managing system administering and frontline service for public computing. And then a project to expand competencies and looking across the scope of library practice and service. We came up with the competency index for the library field which we published on Webjunction just over a year ago. So, I have been -- Sandra and I got together a while ago and decided we needed to investigate more about how competencies are actually being used. We're going to go through some case studies today and I want to let everyone know a couple of special things about the webinar. For one, it is a 90-minute webinar because we talked about deleting case studies and decided we just didn't want to do that. We want to do all six. It is 90 minutes just to forewarn you, and we are giving you the special privilege of the pointer tool because we want to throughout the presentation find out a little bit about you, starting with how much do you think you know about competencies? So click on that pointer arrow, and then if you think you know a lot, click your arrow on the smiley face, not so much, and this is just fascinating, and I guess that's why a lot of you are here because you don't know so much. For those of you who do know a lot, share your knowledge in the chat or subsequently through our online communities, through our competency section. Isn't it great? I just love -- it is so colorful. >> Sandra: Our pointers are working. We are very excited. This is Sandra, hello from sunny Denver to wherever you are in your library land at your home. I'm happy to be with you all today. >> Betha: Do you think there is a one size fits all competency set for all libraries? Really interested to see. And I'm seeing we have a pretty savvy audience. I will expand on this a little bit in my first section here. Very savvy. Not one person on the yes side. >> Sandra: Congratulations, you all are giving the right answer. >> Betha: The third question, are you using competencies in your library? And I kind of expect to see a mix here. Really glad to see some yeses. But quite a few on the not so much side. Once again, lots of room for exploration. I hope that as Sandra and I go through our case studies we are going to be able to tell you some practical ways to use them. But first we always like to start out at square one coming out with a common definition of what are competencies? Our definition is quite straightforward. Competencies are the skills, knowledge, behaviors necessary for the performance of a job or a specific task. Competencies are across businesses and industries. They're not just confined to the library field. You might see them referred to as KSAs for knowledge skills, and there is some dispute over the A, is that abilities or attitudes? I prefer the attitudes, because that really pulls in all of those behavioral soft skills kind of competencies which I personally believe are very critical to the successful performance of pretty much every job, no matter where you are. Some people prefer to refer to competencies as skill sets because it kind of takes away any potential negative connotation of if you are not competent, the opposite is incompetent, and that is really not what competencies are about. I love this quotation. This is from pat Carterette, training coordinator -- competencies are blueprints for success at work. I often use a building metaphor in talking about competencies. I sometimes think of individual competency statements as like Lego building blocks that you can select the statements that you need and combine them in the VAR AUS -- various ways that apply to specific job position or needs to meet an organization's mission and vision. Competencies are the foundation, this underlying framework or this blueprint which helps to map out success, not only for the organization, but for the individual. So, let's look at what are competencies not. Excuse my bad English. Just as you all so knowingly ascertain, this are not a one size fits all. When I was working on compiling the competency index, I looked across the field and outside of the library field for existing competency sets. There are quite a few. We have a document on Webjunction which collects links to all of those other competency resources and you would find that in the competency section that Michael referred to. When when you look at the different competency sets, you see every single one of them has a different structure depending on their organization's needs. They may have different arrangements of competency. They definitely -- there is definitely not a one size fits all. There are definitely commonalities among the variety of sets. Competencies are definitely not meant to be overwhelming. Some people experience them as overwhelming. In fact, when I was -- I guess I had just published -- we had just published the competency index, and I was looking at blogs, looking for feedback on it, and came across a blog written by someone at that time who was an MRIS student and had seen the recent publication, and her first paragraph, she was just I'm overwhelmed. Am I really supposed to know all of this across the whole spectrum? >> And then she reflected on it and condition clueded that what the index or array of competencies allowed her to do was to see the complexity and scope of what libraries really provide, and allowed her to focus in on targeted competency areas and sets where she, herself, wanted to personally excel. It is not meant to be overwhelming. It is meant to provide the framework to help each person sort of figure out where they are. Competencies are definitely not meant to be a rigid structure. I had the privilege of writing an article for library journal where I went into where competencies can support change, institutional and societal change. This idea where you spend years coming up with what competency set that will be in place years hence is not a -- documents need to be living documents, just as other things that really underwrite the functioning of an organization, especially a library. There needs to be fluidity, competency needs change as society and technology changes also. That is my brief introduction. I am going to turn it over to Sandra. >> Sandra: We will ask you to get your pointers back and pointing again. So, when you hear -- if you look at the slide on the screen, when you hear about competency-based programs, do you either jump for joy or do you want to run and hide? And neither answer is wrong just to let you know that you're fine whatever your answer is. Oh, look, we have more people who are jumping for joy. That's exciting, too, but those of you who want to run and hide, no worries, we will try to help you along with moving your pointer over to the other side in this session today. Let's do one more -- two more here. At your library, are you hearing words in your work and daily life such as accountability, outcomes, and the ever-popular funding? And what about strategic, do any of those words show up -- a HA. That's what I thought. This is what a lot of us are hearing out there in the world. Some of us not so much. But a lot of us we are. So, that's directly related to what we're going to be talking about, how competencies can help you when you are looking at those words and trying to come up with plans for your library. Let's do one more. Pointers at the ready. Okay. Is your library evaluating its effectiveness as a community resource? Are you all out there in your libraries looking at how are you doing? [laughter] [laughter] >> Okay. So most of us are. If you aren't, I don't know how you escaped it. That's okay. You will hear a little bit in the the session about how competencies can be used in those conversations about your library being effective. So, let me move on a little bit here, and I want to ask you all why then are competencies considered building blocks for us? Why are they so important these days? Why has Betha and Webjunction spent so much time putting all of this together as resources? Why did we start doing here at Denver public, ten years ago we did our first competency exercise, shall we call it? Why are competencies kind of a hot topic in library land these days? I want to tell you that primarily it is because we're all talking about results these days as the quote from pat Carterette said that competencies are building blocks for success, well most of us in our work life we're looking, defining success in one part as getting results. Competencies can be a foundational tool as Betha said for us to use to get the results that we want. And I kind of look at these four things on the left, Clairity, consistency, focus, and fast, those are my cliff notes for getting results. In order to get good results, you have to have Clairity around what you are doing, some consistency in how you're doing it, and you have to be able to focus on what you are doing or you get sidetracked into 16 other things. And I also put fast in there. Not because being fast or slow in relativeness to slow is what I am talking about, fast is a way of putting urgency around what we're doing to where we don't start things and then just kind of let them string out to where we never get results or we never get success. So, I consider these kind of the four cliff notes version here for getting results. So, when it comes to getting results, I like to look at two things. I have a shorthand that I use. What I call WIIFM and WIIFML. Competencies are about the macro in your world, in terms of how is your library operating and can competencies help with that from a big picture view, systemwide, community effectiveness that we asked about earlier. And also from the micro view. I took these two pictures out. The one on the left, she represents the what's in it for me? We want and we want our employees to be kind of happy and caring, which is what they look like in this picture, because we want to be happy and caring in our jobs and how we make things better for our customers. And we want to do that as individuals, those of us who work in libraries. On the other hand, I chose the Taj Mahal to represent the what is in it for my library, which is the big picture, and I chose the Taj Mahal because our libraries are very, very important institutions that we love dearly, which is what the Taj Mahal is to the emperor who built it to honor his beloved wife. Competencies add to our abilities for us individually and a what is in it for my and what is in it for my library? Let's focus for a minute on the individuals. Let's go back to the WIIFM. I think, because I work a lot with employee performance, I work a lot with supervisors in how to get people motivated to do their best work, and for me and for most employees that I know, the four questions we want to know as individual employees are what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to do it? And then I want to know how am I doing it? And then I also want to know what else can I do once I've mastered my job and I am cranking along and doing quite well at that? I usually have a point where I think, okay, I'm doing pretty good here. What else can I do? Competencies are baselines that can answer all of those things for us individually. And we're going to talk a little bit about how different libraries have done that as we go through the case studies. From the WIIFML, the what's in it for my library, competencies can help your library take off just like this rocket ship is. It can help your library to show accountability to your stakeholders. Show that you have defined standards of excellence, that you are committed to those standards so that their trust and the money that they have invested to you is justified. And also competencies can help with your creditability with customers and colleagues. They can say to them that we, the library, we know what to do and we know what is needed to be effective as an organization to meet the community needs that are out there. And the third thing that competencies can do for your library and the what's in it for my library, the WIIFML, is competencies can be a building block for a learning organization and for those of you out there, there is lots and lots ever work and interest being done in making libraries a learning organization. If you want to know more about that, you can do some searches on that. Webjunction have had webinars and things about learning organizations and we have been working on that here at Denver public library for quite a bit. But a learning library, learning organization is ones that will show that we value and we create staff members' motivation, concerned about their retention, concerned about their productivity. And being a learning organization, using competencies can help you with that staff asset that you have. And the fourth thing is competencies can be used as showing that staff is an asset. So, we can show that we value the staff and what they're doing. And back with the learning organization, we do want to show that we continue to develop and maintain a high-level of expected skills. That is what the learning organization does. The staff as an asset shows that we also value our staff and we are going to invest in them and we can do that through competencies. If you are wondering how competencies can be a foundation for your library, both the WIIFM and the WIIFML, so that you can use them to show increased results for your library and for the individuals that work there. I'm going to turn it back to Betha. >> Betha: Thank you, Sandra. Let's get your pointers ready. This is your opportunity to use them in a productive way. If you are handed a list of competencies for your position, would you feel empowered to seek targeted training and improve your skills exclamation point or would you feel overwhelmed and resentful? And I am just really -- >> Sandra: How delightful, thank you everyone. >> Betha: I'm really pleased -- >> Sandra: This is exciting. >> Betha: Nobody is on the feel overwhelmed and resentful side. That is just fantastic TAStasticfantastic. Everyone here understands the what is in it for me in the -- in the effectiveness of doing your job well and providing a good service. Sandra and I have come up with six case studies, each one of the studies or stories illustrates a slightly different applications of competencies and how it really supports the organization as well as the individuals. So, our first case study comes to us from pierce county library system in Tacoma, Washington, how competencies can support the transition to a learning organization relates very much to what Sandra just said about competencies really supporting that. Michelle Leininger, who has the enVEEable title of information experience director at Pierce County has been making efforts for the last year or so to help the Pierce County library system transform to a learning environment. I will not go into detail about what that means. We have information on Webjunction about learning organizations, and we actually have an archival webinar that was delivered about a year and a half ago, Sandra participated in that, that is really an excellent overview of what it means to be and become a learning organization. But just a very brief and somewhat crude comparison, the traditional training environment is very structured. It's episodic, so it happens at very particular scheduled times. It tends to be something that is implemented from a high level, either from an H.R. department or a training department. Tends to be an authority, an instructor standing in front, or it can be online. Basically an instructor delivering top-down information or one-way information, and the students participating. That is somewhat of an exaggerated view of training, but I want to make a contrast with the learning environment, which is the essence of the nature of a learning organization. In a learning environment, learning is just embedded throughout the system. It is systemic. It is continuous. The organization -- yes, we should have monkey bars in all of our workplaces -- which is the organization providing tools, not necessarily monkey bars, but providing tools and the means of communication to make it really easy for that embedded learning to happen, for employees to get what they need at the point of need or just in time or to create lots of opportunities for knowledge sharing. I don't mean in any way to indicate that these environments are mutually exclusive. I think they very much work together. There are definite needs for the training environment. And they can be very well integrated. Really brief, super brief history. The whole concept was originated by Peter in the 90s. He looked around at corporations that were failing or succeeding in the midst of that change, and he ascertained those able to adapt to the change, ones who were flexible, mechanisms to be adaptive and productive. He developed a concept of a learning organization in which he understood what was key to those three qualities was being able to recognize all of the people within our organization as a critical asset and to be able to tap the people's commitment and their capacity to learn as all levels. So, very critical key element of a successful learning organization is the alignment between the individual, what they do on the job, how they see what they're doing, that alignment between the teams they're working on and the organization as a whole. The organization needs to be clear about its mission, its vision, and its expectations for where they want to go as an organization. The individual really needs to understand where they fit within the organization, and a primary mechanism for doing that is using competencies. Competencies providing that framework, providing that foundation for alignment. Now, at Pierce County, they have developed competency sets for a whole range of job positions, but they decided from the beginning that they really needed to recognize and understand a set of competencies that applied to all Pierce County library system employees no matter what their job position was and they call these the core skills and qualities. This is where you as an audience would be just thrilled, I think is what you said, to be handed a list of competencies for your position or for your existence in this organization. These are the nine sets and these are just very high level categoryies and core skill qualities within each of the categories. Pierce county has listed more statements of what it means to provide customer focus. They are not just talking P external customers as in patients or public, they are talking about customer relations within the organization. Considering one department to be a customer of another department or whatever relations go on between teams are customer relations. This is really great. They have the framework. People can really look at it. I think what is particularly enlightening about what Pierce County did and how they looked at it, they took each of these categories, and the -- the statements that go around with the -- along with each of these categories, and they took it, expanded it one step further to help each individual really understand what it meant for them on the job. That goes back to Sandra's four questions. Okay. What am I supposed to do? I read the statements, I understand this in the abstract, but really what am I supposed to do? So associated -- and Pierce County has all of the documents online on the internet in addition to providing trainings to discuss what this means. They expand it to this level for each competency set, and we're just taking a really abbreviated quick look at the category for change and learning, which happens to be my favorite competency, if you choose to have a favorite competency set. It expands it to okay, if you want to achieve competency or excellence in change in learning, these are the things that you will do. We will give evidence. If you actively seek opportunities. If you are staying current. If you are open to new ideas and more than is listed here, these are all ways that you are demonstrating your competency at change in learning. And then conversely, what are the kinds of things that you might be doing that show you need some work? Well, if you are just assuming that things are good enough, if you have a tendency to reject new ideas, avoiding available learning opportunities, etc., etc., this is a way for each individual to examine their own behavior, their own attitudes, and reflect on ways that they could change or seek out learning or connections with other -- with their peers to try and turn that around and do more that is in the do category. I think this is a tremendous level of support that Pierce County provides to its employees. It has set out the expectations of the competency set and what it expects everyone, we're talking the parking attendants, as well as the reference librarians, what they expect everyone to achieve to in order to help the organization provide exemplary service. They have moved it from that abstract level down to more specific, where each individual can understand much more clearly how they align with the organization's goals and mission and, therefore, what they need to do. What do I need to do at work? Where am I going with this? This is how the competency structure supports the move to a learning organization. And we're going back to Sandra. >> Sandra: Okay. Let's get your pointers out again everyone. So, with your pointers ready, think about, have you ever said or had said to you "that's not in my job description." is that a familiar phrase either in your head or in your ears from someone else? Okay. I'm seeing that it is not an unfamiliar phrase that has come up in all of our lives at some point. So, the next example that we're going to talk about is going to be a little bit about the WIIFM part. If you remember, I'm going to back up for just a second and remind you that I was talking about WIIFM, what's in it for me? That is what individuals working at libraries, yourself, myself included, want to know when it comes to the work that we do and how we adapt to change. What's in it for me? What's this going to do for me? What am I going to be better at? What am I going to be able to contribute more? How much more am I going to get paid? All of those things have to do with WIIFM. The other thing that we look at is what is in it for my library? Which is what is it going to do for my library's reputation in the community? What is it going to do for my library to gain more customers? What is it going to do for my library to have creditability when it comes to getting money from our funding sources? Competencies address both of those things, and each of those are related to where all of our case studies that we're showing today have elements of both WIIFM and WIIFML. And one thing to know is that sometimes the creation of a competency or a look at how you can use competencies, sometimes that starts from the what's in it for my library? That's the motivating force that moves the conversation forward around competencies. And sometimes it starts at the individual level. What's in it for this particular group of people? How can competencies help this employee? How can competencies help this project team? So, competencies end up starting usually from one or the other, but inevitably the two are interrelated because, of course, your library can't be successful without the individuals, and the individuals need the collectiveness of the library to do their work. So, as we move on to the second case study, I want to mention that this really started from the what's in it for me? And this was from the Douglas county library system here in Colorado. Castle Rock is a southern suburb of Denver. Missy Shock is the training manager there. What happened at one point the Douglas county library administration said we're going to move to roving reference. Is that a concept that any of you all are doing in think about that. And they wanted to move to roving reference, and that meant redesigning their customer service, both in the style that they do it in terms of where the desks are, where the desks aren't, how do people get up and move about? And also who does the roving reference. And that impacted job descriptions both from their librarians, paraprofessionals, all of the way down the chain. That influenced how they would do customer service work on the public floor. Have any of you ever had in your job experience -- I know you can't answer me, but just think about this -- have you ever had a new service proposed to you, a process, something that has either been thrust upon you or that you have Cree aid -- created and you think it is a great idea, it looks great on paper, but how do you make it work on a day-to-day basis? That's what missy was confronted with here. What they had was a new job position because they had a new paraprofessional position that was going to do a lot of the roving reference. Then they also had an undeveloped job description. There hasn't been a job description written when this whole thing started to be implemented. They needed a framework to structure some expectations, because missy was given the task -- we are going to do roving reference for these new staff positions and you train them to do that. And Missy as a trainer went, well, that's nice, but what does it look like? The question that I use daily in my work is always what does it look like when confronted with a problem or a situation? And Missy had the situation where she was being told to come up with a training program to train people in this new roving reference customer service. She really didn't have any foundational pieces to base it on. As a trainer, she didn't have a framework to train, too. What she ended up doing was working with her support managers, her supervisors and her managers, and they had to come up and create competencies as to what this new roving reference service would look like and what the new job descriptions would look like so that people did know what am I supposed to be doing in my job? How am I supposed to be doing it? And am I doing it correctly? And missyMissy needed to set up a training program so people would know the answer to those questions and be successful in their day-to-day work and the library service would be successful in the community. Missy got together with the managers and created what is this job description going to look like and what are the actions and behaviors that we want to see people doing out on the customer service floor? And then Missy was going to create a training session to help people be able to do that successfully. So, they came up with some competencies, and I have listed three of them here that they wanted their reference service staff to be able to do, which was you can see them here, having to do with patron service, reference service, and team building. And so Missy was able to put together a training session that did, indeed, answer the what does it look like question use be the competencies that the managers and the supervisors came up with for what they wanted to see their staff looking like on the public service floor. And so the outcome of that was a very focused, effective training program that Missy, the training manager, was able to put together so that people would come in, get the training, learn how to do the new expectations and feel confident going out on the floor doing the new type of reference service. A couple of things that happened kind of a -- they started to look at their hiring strategy. Thinking, wow, what kinds of behaviors do we want to hire people to be able to do? So, not only were they looking at it for how to help their current staff, they started then using the competencies to look forward to, wow, what kinds of questions should we be asking in our hiring interviews to find out whether these people may be able to do the kind of work that we want them to do? And those included some behavior-based interview questions. So, then that was also the beginning of an accountability process to where they were able to standards to hold individual staff members to. To be able to have some kind of measurement for people's performance and say, yes, you're doing exactly what we need to be done. Or, no, we need to work with you a little bit more because this isn't looking quite the way we want to. And let's figure out how to work on that for you. Those were the things that Missy was able to do with her managers and supervisors using competencies. And just to mention for the future, what they're looking for -- I like TIGGER. Don't you like TIGGER. The other thing they were looking for here is to be able to do some sort of full accountability process. They were starting to be able to say, wow, are our staff meeting what we need it to look like? Or are they not? And so now they're investigating how to put a better accountability process in to be successful both for the individuals and for the library and the customer service and using competencies to expand it because they see the WIIFML, they see what is in it for my library? So that they can aemploy the competencies to the hiring program, training program, performance evaluation program and ultimately the retention program for their staff. Happy and successful staff tend to stay around longer than those who are not. So, this was an example of starting off as a WIIFM, what's in it for me, for the individual library person? How do I operate on the reference floor? And then moving to a what's in it for my library? Betha, do you want to take it from here? >> Betha: I sure do. And get your pointers ready. As I suspected, quite a few, what do you mean by core? Which is the perfect segue to -- well, what do we mean by core? And let's look at the next case study. Michael Porter, wants to know what do we mean by core? This is looking at the connection between competencies and core technology. Karen Burns is an administrator in Iowa and one of the library directors in her area came to her and said I want my staff to be the technology wizards our public thinks we are. Very worthy and ambitious goal. This person was thinking particularly of his library staff, but Karen having a broader perspective and looking across the state of Iowa wanted to do a couple of things. She wanted to create something that would enable library staff at all levels to increase their technology capabilities, but she also recognized that you just -- you need to define well, what are those technology capabilities and let's start by defining some core technology that everybody should get to square one with. I happen to know that Karen is a big fan of not reinventing the wheel. She has made use of and contributed to Webjunction resources over the years. I've noticed that people don't -- are big fans of not reinventing the wheel, but people like to customize or embellish it and that makes sense to adapting to the needs of your situation or your organization. In the interest of not reinventing the wheel, Karen turned to the Webjunction index where we have a whole section where we have defined core technology as a set of skills that all library staff need to have anymore in this day and age. >> I will just insert here, for people's information, even though we have been doing competency work here at Denver for quite awhile, we are moving into the technology part and trying to define core technology competencies for our staff not reinventing the wheel, using your Webjunction index and other things, but even if you do that, you want to customize it, and I must say the past week I have been in four hours of what I call brain draining meetings, if not brain damaging meetings, on trying to decide, Michael, exactly what is the definition of core? So you're not alone out there. >> I hope that the Webjunction index provides a starting point. Karen found it very useful. The six categoryies here are based on the divisions, categories in the core technology section of the index. Karen decided that the best tool to make this a flexible and widely useful resource for staff in Iowa was to create a WIKI. She emphasized to me that this is a work in progress. She has been very generous in sharing the link to that Wiki, look and that and do some exploration on your own. Three basic guidelines. One she wanted to support E-learning in Iowa, partly because Iowa is a largely rural state, rural libraries, and budget constraint make travel for face to face learning opportunities much more difficult, and also that E-learning provides a much better opportunity for just in time little micro bits of learning, instead of waiting for that opportunity that comes around once a year and you have to travel to it. That was guideline number one. She wanted this to be not at all intimidating. Many of those libraries do not have any staff with an LIS degree. A lot of people doing excellent work in libraries without that degree, and not necessarily that background, training, and support. She wanted this to be something that people could come to on their own and really get there by what they were interested in or what they determined they needed. Third guideline, she wanted it to be very self-directed, something that people could pick and choose through categories, competency areas, and not have it dictated to them from a supervisor. I happen to know that she started with the core email section and that is currently the one that is most fleshed out. So, imagine you had arrived on the landing page for the technology competencies and you are going to click that link that says core email and what we get to in the next screen is a screen shot of just the top of this much deeper level in the Wiki that starts to delineate the competencies that relate to a core set of email skills and abilities. This is abbreviated screen shots. It doesn't indicate the full length of competencies covered in core email. Some of the structure of that page which relates to the guidelines that Karen had had. She set it up I think in a very user-friendly way that will be extremely useful, not only to Iowa staff, but I think anybody who finds and follows this W Wiki. First step would be to take a preassessment, preevaluation. She set this up so that the preassessment items are parallel to the competency statements on this key page. It allows a person, one, to discover what they don't know. And that is often a case that they don't know what they don't know. They may think I'm perfectly competent in email, start to go through the preevaluation and realize, that, oh, I'm supposed to know how to upload a photograph and send it as an attachment. Maybe I'm missing that piece. I would check that with something that I needed to pursue and get learning opportunities around. So, it can also act as a reference point. People can go in there and check, okay, where am I in terms of my core email abilities? So, part two of the structure is the competency statements. These are very much taken directly from the Webjunction competency index with some alterations where it applies specifically to Iowa libraries. But very parallel to the way it is set up in the index. And three, I think, this third part of the structure, is just an amazing fete of work on Karen's part. What she has done here is for each competency statement, she has gone out and found learning opportunities. And these can be linked to an article or a document, it can be linked to a brief tutorial, a link to an entire course. Many learning opportunities on many levels to make it easy for the person to launch right into the learning that they need. This is a tremendous resource. I'm sure Karen would encourage everyone who finds this useful to make the best use of it. And the fourth, post assessment piece, which is also -- very much reflects the preassessment that allows the individual to figure out how far they have come and maybe what they still need to learn. Tremendous resource and tool that is being built here. With that wonderful worthy goal that everyone in Iowa is -- public libraries will be tech wizards at their service. I see that -- considers himself a tech wizard. UM -- I'm so happy to see that. So, back to Sandra. >> Sandra: I see we have a bunch of underachievers out here in the audience given their participation and responses. Get your pointers ready again. Let's talk about everyone's favorite performance evaluations and the question is, do you think performance evaluations are done well in your library? And why am I not surprised that the not so much dude is getting his face obliterated by people who are not probably happy with the way performance evaluations are done in your library. I have been working with performance evaluation and performance management for the 12 years I have been in this job. It is one of the things that I do most. I do want to just pass along, if it makes anybody feel better, when I sit in meetings and information from people in the public sector, private sector, the nonprofits, I don't care who it is, nobody loves their performance evaluation process in their company. Nobody even likes it. So, if it is any consolation, don't feel we're being put upon in library land because we don't like our performance evaluation system, because nobody else does out there. There is always processes to improve it and make it better. As of yet, we need a performance management WIZ -- wizard to come up with the master excellent performance system. In the meantime, all of us not so much about ours. Let's talk about performance management and competencies. Don Jenkins, training manager at the Pikes Peak system in Colorado springs, used competencies in a way that was directly related to performance evaluations. Let's talk a little bit about what he did. In this case, why did he focus on competencies? Well, they had a goal at Pikes Peak -- out here in Colorado, we're very green, lots of places are trying to get rid of anything having to do with paper and God forbid styrofoam. They wanted to have paper free performance evaluations. Forget wasting all of those trees, which are all on fire out here in Colorado anyway. They wanted to go to an online system, and they wanted it besides being paper free, they wanted it to be the staff flexibility and efficiency that the software provided, for staff to be able to do this in multiple buildings, not to be tied to their desks and resources that they had to use that were location bound. They had people doing a lot of work from home on flex time, and they wanted staff to be able to access some sort of electronic way to do performance evaluations, even if they were working at home or in other places. Maybe they were doing outreach, and they had an hour to spare between outreach presentations. They could log in and do some sort of performance evaluation if they were a supervisor. They wanted to do that as well. They ended up going out and buying a new software product that they really, really liked. It turns out that it was competency-based design. In order to make the software work and all of the great things that this would do, the software needed to know what are the competencies for each job description? They needed to come up with competencies in order to implement this software and a new way of doing performance evaluations in their system. So, this particular process, it wasn't driven by training, but it was driven by an H.R. process, which really had to do with both the WIIFML and the WIIFM, what's in it for my library? A for efficient way to do performance evaluations. And what is in it for me, and they were looking at how can the performance evaluation process look better for the individuals. Because as you all just agreed, everybody hates their own performance system. How could we maybe take a stab of making it better for the individuals as well. What they did, and what Don led the process in, supervisors and managers designed both a central functions for the job, and by central functions, they were meaning the job description. What does the job do? What are the actions that the job has to have. And then they also wanted to design the competencies and as Betha said earlier, a lot to do with knowledge skills and attitudes, which tend to be how do you do those tasks that you do every day. Don, again, like Missy had done, pulled together people who make those decisions in the libraries, which were the supervisors and managers, saying what do you want each much your job classifications to have for specific tasks that they do and for competencies? Of course, they already had some things because they had been working with basically some tasks for each job. But they had not also fleshed those out to be really relevant in today's ever-changing world and expectations that we have for staff. They needed to flush them out, update them, and also wanted to add the competencies to the tasks so that people would start to understand that not only do you do a task, but there is a certain way that it needs to be done so that you are successful and, therefore, the library is successful. So that is what they did. They pulled together a very extensive software product that has job tasks and job competencies for every position that is in their library, and then their supervisors used those competencies to write the annual performance reviews. The system, because it is one of these new bells and whistle software systems, it comes up and does all sorts of reporting functions, all sorts of way of making it far more faster for people to compile and write these evaluations. Ultimately the benefit of this is provided Clairity for employees in terms of, again, what do I do, how do I do it? How am I doing it? What else can I do? Those four questions -- this new performance management software and the content that they put in it, including the competencies, helped them be able to let employees know where they were and what they needed to do, and that helped supervisors in how do you evaluate people and how do you set expectations? How do you do rewards? How do you give further opportunities for people who are moving along in their career? So, there was a lot of efficiency in managing the performance. As I mentioned, the new software system for performance management also gave them a lot of easy tracking that they could do for -- who has done a performance evaluation? How many are done? How many people are exceeding expectations? How many people are working at the desired capacity? How many people and who are not working at the desired capacity and how can we focus on those employees and bring them up to speed? The other thing for you supervisors out there, it was a way to look at some supervisory skills and performance management, to be able to say how are our supervisors doing in their role of performance management? What kind of training and support do we need to give these folks SO so that they can be more successful? One of my heart to heart things, I work a lot with supervisors and help them know how to be good supervisors instead of bad supervisors, because as you most of you might know, all of the research shows that the number one reason that people leave their jobs is not because of the work that they do, but because of the person that they work for. Keep that in mind. Don was doing that. And he used the competencies to set a framework for being able to build this performance management system. In the future, what they're able to do now is to look at performance trends. How are people performing in their organization? Are they meeting the expectations of the library and of the community? And they're looking at that supervisor reflectiveness. How are our supervisors doing? What help do they need to manage their staff to be successful? Currently their system is not tied directly to pay, but that is something that they're looking at tying it into in the future as well. So, again, this was a system that started off with more of a WIIFML, what's in it for my library? They wanted to impact the library's performance in a big way but that also trickled down for the what's in it for me, the individual? So, Betha -- I guess I get to go for another one, don't I? >> Betha: You do. >> Sandra: Are you ready? I knew I would forget that I had two in a row. Let's go back to the pointers now that you have absorbed everything about performance evaluation, let's switch back and talk about being a learning organization. Do you know what training and learning you should do to be the very best at your job? Do you know what you need to be out there learning? Yes, not so much? Where do you all fall? And this is great. We have a lot of people who, whether you designed it on your own or your library has structured a path for you, you have got some ideas for what you need to be learning, and congratulations to all of you for being aware of that and doing whatever you're doing to move forward. And then we also have folks that maybe are not quite as clear, and you are in very good company. Because that is exactly what Nevet, the training manager at the next case study that we're going to talk about. Nevet Tenne is the coordinator of the Arapahoe library district university, the learning program for the Arapahoe library district here in Denver, Colorado. The competency use that they would have related to creating system-wide training goals. Let's see what Nevet was doing. Their problem that they were trying to come up with a solution for, ended up using competencies, was again back to performance. I'm guessing that all of you out there will agree that performance is a key indicator now of how we're operating as libraries, what we need to do to be successful. And we all know when I was talking about getting results, these days there is ever more of an eyeball on libraries to be successful and impactful on what they do. The result of not having that capacity is often funding cuts, or even elimination of library services all together. At one of our county libraries here, they shut down three of seven libraries. And when they shut them down, they closed them up, sold off everything, and those services are gone. And part of that in some quarters was felt that the library didn't do as good a job as being actively relevant in terms of letting people know what the LIEBlibrary could do for the community and how important they were. We need to have a focus of learning and capability on our staff. How many of your library budget goes to your staff? If you would all think about that for a minute. What percentage of your budget goes to paying, benefiting your staff? 20%, 30, 40, 50%? Not uncommon is it for libraries to have around 70% of their budget, here at Denver public, it is 74% of our budget is devoted to paying and benefiting staff. I would call that the library's biggest asset as well as the library library's biggest cost. How can we support the biggest asset that we have? Think about the company coca-cola. What if they stopped marketing their biggest asset, which is the coke product. What would happen? It would go off people's radar and they would go drink Dr. Pepper instead. About what happens if they don't actively invest in their staff? And what happens if they think, oh, we've got the greatest solution for our staff. It will be called new coke. Do you remember the new coke from 15 or so years ago and how they were sure that that was going to be the best product in the world and replace the old coke? Well, that was a function that was wrong, and because they were looking at their main product in the wrong way. We need to make sure as libraries that we look on our staff as an asset to be invested in. And because of that, that is where we get into talking about learning organizations, which is what Nevet was trying to build in her library so that her staff would be the best, the brightest, the most capable staff for delivering results to the community so that they would not be seen as irrelevant, especially in today's climate. So, Nevet wanted to come up with a framework for redesigning and expanding the system wide training curriculum. She and the library staff wanted to make sure that they were doing the very best possible that they could do in making sure that their library staff was operating at a peak level. They needed Clairity around supervisor expectations of training content. What did the supervisors want their staff to be trained in? What did both staff and supervisors feel were the key behaviors and knowledge and kills that needed to be out there in their staff. And so they also wanted to focus on enhancing the training program effectiveness. So, how can we make training opportunities more available, more relevant, more empowering to staff. What they did, and this is something that was really important. They started by finding some training champions on staff. This was a way that they did not do a top-down approach. They went to more of a grass roots level and said, who out there is all for training and learning? And they gathered those people around to help move this process forward. They talked to them about competencies and learning and results. And then they also did some research about effective library training programs. They had their managers and supervisors define the competencies. And, yes, you're seeing that is the theme that goes through all of the competency work. Certain people in your library have to take the ball in terms of defineing these competencies and figuring out what does it look like because then that is what you build your whole process on, whether your process has to do with -- whether it has to do with performance, accountability, training, all of those things. And also then Nevet made sure that all of the library staff, they came up with competencies and they put those out to staff, all staff throughout the system, and said are these the right ones? Does this look like what you think you need to do in our job? They got all of the feedback and came up with sample competencies, again, using some of the larger topics that pierce county had used. In this case, public safety, reference competencies, library hardware. Here at Denver public, I'm working on a project right now, some categories we're using are technology, customer service, management, information services, safety, organizational knowledge which is near and dear to my heart. And then also programming, because we have a very huge programming emphasis for all of our staff here. They came up with competencies around these larger categoryiescategories, and they came up with what they call a living document that links the existing and desired training to the competencies. Because they had a lot of training classes. And now they linked those training classes to specific competencies to make sure that the right ducks got in the right seats. That is one of my mantras here. They develop new training that match the needs that all of the library stave -- staff came up with. Competencies is a common shared language for staff. All the staff can talk about, well, yes, this is what my competencies are in this particular task or this particular job. It is common for staff, they can go in and add to the living document through Nevet and make suggestions and changes so that it is an ever-changing document as the competencies change based on what our customers need. The hiring process, decisions were driven by the competencies that we saw back with Missy, as she had done back in Douglas county. In the future, Nevet hopes to define competencies for all job families. They really started off with just public service staff. As Betha said, you don't have to take a huge chunk all at once with. You can break it down and start small. Now they're creating new training opportunities based on what they and their staff feel they need to know and be excellent in. Betha, do you want to take it from here? >> Betha: I do. Thank you for all of that. Those two case studies in a row. I have one more response. Question to lead into the final case study, do you think competencies can make a difference for individual staff members? And I really am not at all surprised how many yeses we're getting. And I hope that in our next case study that we can convince the one not so much that they really can make a difference -- >> Sandra: Don't worry, you're not alone. >> Betha: That's the point of this next story, which actually is one that I have presented in two other situations and I will say that it is my favorite. It is all about competencies and how they work for the individual. It comes from liberty lake municipal library in Liberty Lake, Washington, mall rural community on the even edge of Washington State. Population was 5,000 in the 2000 census. It is about Georgette Rogers, the circulation supervisor there. She is in the audience today. I'm thrilled. And I'm on my toes, because Georgette is here to listen to what I have to say about her. The think that is notable -- many things notable about Georgette, but the thing most notable for the point of the case study, she is the first person to receive certification in the library support staff certification program, which from here on I will refer to as the LSSCP. It is a mouthful either way. She is the first one to complete that program, complete her certification, and the people who formulated the program have identified her as a quote, leader in your field. Congratulations all around to Georgette. Not all that surprising that she was the first, because she is that kind of person who loves to learn. This is a quotation that she said to me, and when I was interviewing her about this case study, is that she is a very self-described life-long learner, the kind of person who as a child likes to pick up the encyclopedia and open it up to a page and start reading. That gives you an idea of how -- yes, that's exactly what we love. History about her, she received her AIS library technician degree 15 years ago, library in a middle school for awhile and then went to Liberty Lake about five years ago. For one reason or another, she never felt like it was going to work out for her to pursue a master's degree. When the LSSCP program came along, I think she really latched on to it as the kind of opportunity that made so much sense for her because she was doing all of this learning anyway. Constantly improving her own knowledge skills and attitudes around library service, and this program gave her a structure to actually acknowledge some of that effort in a more formal way. The LSSCP was based on competency sets. When the originators of the program started they started with defining competencies and spent a lot of time and effort coming up with a range of competency sets that they felt was important for library support staff to meet. In the program, if you are going for certification, you are required to complete the first three categories, foundation of library service, communication, teamwork technology. Those are considered to be applicable to all library support staff positions. And then to get certification, you need to choose three of the seven elective categories, and I will ask -- throw the question out there and pop your answers into chat. Which of the three categories do you think that Georgette chose in order to get her certification? So, the three categories allow a person within this program to really look at an area where they're more focused and allows the program to be a little less overwhelming. You don't have to do all of them. I don't see anybody popping answers into chat. I will tell you. She took all of them. Oh, great. Good idea to use the pointer. Georgette did all of them. It took her about two years overall. She didn't go through in a linear fashion. She hopped around from one to the next. Whatever seemed to fit her current circumstance. She did say that she saved the supervision and management category for the very last because she was dreading the accounting, but she made it through that, survived accounting, and is now much more knowledgeable. Didn't allow herself to get bogged down in any one particular set. The upshot was that she completed and she was the first, but let's take a little closer look at what exactly did the certification do for Georgette. And this is very much a what's in it for me story? We are talking about the individual, how competencies help the individual. How does this competency-based certification really help Georgette to provide service in her library? Well, first obvious, it improved her own skills and knowledge. She was improving anyway, but it gave her a structure to really be able to identify where she needed to improve, like the accounting bit. It also -- it definitely impressed her manager. Her manager could look at the competency structure and all of the sets and all of the specific statements in which Georgette had now completed achievement and really understand the breadth of where the knowledge, skills, and abilities were now. She understood more specifically about what the certification mean, other than Georgette coming and saying I took the course and completed it. It is the underlying structure that identifies the achievement in it in a very compelling way. The manager was so impressed, it reached the city council, the city council aware of the caliber of library staff in the community. That starts to move from the WIIFM to the WIIFML, what's in it for my library? It initiated this thinking in her supervisor of, you know, I wonder what our other staff, how they could benefit from some of the training based on these competencies. She started to have other staff look at the competency sets and think about where they could get more training or how they could structure them in a way that would really benefit not just the individuals, but the whole library. And then the LSSCP allows people to get -- to get credit or wave certain requirements if they can validate and exhibit some of their work and life skills. More significantly, she got leadership credits for the role she had been playing in the Washington association ofOf Library Employees, and Georgette had documented the leadership role in her organization of conferences and presentations and was able to get that experience and knowledge through this program. So, all around it was this competency structure that informs the whole LLSC program, and that connection that really helped Georgia -- Georgette improve her own situation and her library's ability to provide -- congratulations Georgette. This is a wonderful example of competencies really boosting individuals. This really is the last question. We want to know after sitting through what is it, 80 minutes, where are you now? I can't wait to get started. I love that. I'm not -- I'm not going to judge anybody if you are still thinking about it, because I think there are a lot of people still on the road. Thank you, Michael Porter. A lot of people on the road of figuring out how competencies make sense to themselves or their organization or their library and I really hope that that presentation helped somewhat to get there. And in the remaining time I encourage you to pop any questions that you have into the chat. I am right now going to turn it back to Sandra who will run through some of the key take-aways from this presentation. >> Sandra: Since we're -- I would rather take questions. I will just leave this slide up so that you all can read it. Given from the very beginning that a lot of people said they were just kind of getting started on competencies, I do want to mention, I think the first one is probably the biggest tip that you could take away with you if you are just getting started, and that is to find and cultivate champions for competencies, and early adopters. Find people who want to talk the competency talk and who you can help them understand what it can do for the WIIFM for your library and what it can do for the WIIFML for your library, and find maybe a project that you can get started on to where using competencies might make a difference. And the other one then is start small and build. You do not have to do a huge, big program like a couple of these were. Start with something small. Ten years ago we started with trying to develop competencies around virtual reference. All of of the sudden we had librarians who wanted to do reference over the internet. What did they need to know that was different from what they needed to do face-to-face or on the phone with people? Start small and build. What questions do you all have. I will turn it back over to Michael. >> Mike: Sure, yeah, I have been watching questions. Thank you, you have done a great job. There haven't been tons of them, I think because it has been a great story telling exercise here. One thing that I noticed, there were several people who didn't go with the crowd in their answers, and I think that is always great. This is about being honest and communicating and learning together and seeing perspectives. You guys did a fabulous job, the group included. A couple of questions, the first one -- two really good ones. Do we know what software Pikes Peak uses for their performance reviews? Do we know the answer to that? >> >> Sandra: We do, hold on just a second. I will get that. >> Mike: We can put that on the archives to this event. While Sandra is looking for that, let's do that. Let's just know that we can find the answer there. Also the other question that came up was if the library doesn't use competencies in place to use, what can people do on an individual level. I think Andrea asked that question. >> Betha: I think that is a great question. I will take a stab at that. I think that is a wonderful question. You don't have to wait for your organization to provide a competency structure. You can create one for yourself. I would -- it depends what your position is. The library support staff, LLSCP has a web side that lists the competencies, the Webjunction competency set and see where you fit or go to the document on Webjunction that links to a number of other competency sets and see if you find something. There is a link to young adult librarianship, there is a whole range. There is the SLA, information -- the whole range of competency set and I think it is important to find out which one you fit with. Within that framework start to identify what are your goals, what do you want to achieve? And pull together -- I'm a fan of the mix and match approach to building your own competency structure. Pull statements from different categories into something that is your own personal competency set. When you are doing that, I encourage people to not forget about the behavioral competencies or what we call in the index, personal competencies. I think people especially when they are talking about technology, they think well, I need to learn how to con figure a hard drive or learn how to install and upgrade software. They forget about what is your position in the library in relation to other teens, other people, the public. How are your teamwork skills, communication skills, do you need improvement in understanding how to work with other people or how to lead teams? I encourage everyone to take those into consideration, those personal skills. Sandra, are you back and do you have answers? >> Sandra: Yes, I am. I'm back with an answer. UM I'm posting it. Review snap is the software for performance management. It is not very expensive, I understand. It is a stand-alone product. Depending on your circumstances, that might work for you if you don't have to go through a larger resource info system like some of us do. Thank you, Betha, the behavioral things that I'm hearing from a lot of people are the most challenging things for people to tackle with competencies. But they are the most important in some ways because they can really move your staff forward in being able to accomplish other things that are more task or technical skills. For instance, next week, I'm teaching crucial conversations to 20 of our staff. It is all about how to communicate more effectively and that is a competency that we have established here at Denver Public Library. Keep those behavioral attitudal teamwork communication ones in the forefront as well because if you don't have them, the other ones don't have a chance to succeed. >> Mike: A question about unions, libraries that are unionized and using competencies -- Jennifer, didn't that come up in our April webinar about this? >> Jennifer: Yeah, and I believe that the Pierce County library is union -- >> We're not here in Colorado for these case studies, but I beef that Pierce is. >> >> They're a good example. Jennifer, did you know of others? >> Jennifer: It was interesting. It came up. I think it would be worth a discussion thread about how folks have been successfully using them. The key again is the partnership and the communication, but that the success was bringing the union review process, that the unions were involved in identifying the competencies. So, again, it is all about communication. >> Given our time. I think this is a good place to go to just a couple of more points we want to cover. I want to touch one more time, we have another event in December about competencies. That is a wrap up for some of the big work we have been doing. Good review. Thank all of you both presenters, thank you very much, and attendees as well. We want to hear your stories. Please email me. I would be interested in hearing the stories. And also remember that competency web site on Webjunction. It really is the best resource for competency work in libraries that exists. So, it is Webjunction.org/competencies. >> Jennifer: We have -- you know competencies on Webjunction are at the friendly URL and we will keep you posted on when that competency event is scheduled in December. But we are looking for your stories as you either are beginning or in the midst of competencies, if you have additional questions about those, you can find that information on Webjunction. I mentioned that you will see a survey as you leave and your feedback is really helpful, both to the presenters and to our ongoing decisions about the kind of webinars we will present to you. Please take the time to do that. We will send you a follow-up email as soon as the full archive is posted. And please take a look at some of the other archives. I will be sure and add any other webinars that are related to competencies. There have been many of them. Again, thank you all for joining us. And thank you to Betha and Sandra for all of the work that you have put into this and for your presentations today. >> Mike: Thank you so much everyone.