INN331 Asst 1 Robert Dennys

Queensland University of Technology

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Robert Dennys
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INN331 Asst 1 Robert Dennys INN331 Management Issues For Information Professionals Assignment 1 - Conversation with an Industry Professional Due 30/03/12 By Robert Dennys - S# 8559538 1. Introduction This report reviews my conversation with an archivist-manager at a cultural institution, the NFSA, and relates some of the management issues he describes to their discussion in the management literature. Topics discussed included:

Planning for the Greying Workforce Organisation of Appropriate Staffing Leadership Through Relationships And Communication Control Over a Geographically Dispersed Organisation

Most of his approaches to management issues were supported by statements within management literature: e.g., the value of strong relationships between managers and staff. On other matters he apparently diverged from academic guidance, e.g., the importance of psychometric testing for choosing suitable personality types when hiring. I found Mr Appleton's perspective persuasive in each case, regardless. 2. A Conversation with an Archivist-Manager My conversation was with Peter Appleton from Australia's National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA). He is a manager within their Collection Stewardship branch, responsible for storing and securing 'carriers' as he calls their collection items. He came to archiving from museum work, as both a consultant and within various institutions. His responsibilities have included projects to develop new museum and archive operations. He has been in management at the NFSA for three years, including secondment to a senior acting-manager role. Our conversation ranged over many of his operational and managerial concerns. Note I will freely paraphrase his words throughout. I will group some of our topics of discussion within the major dimensions of management. Note however there are cross-linking relationships e.g., between staffing and planning.

INN331 Asst 1 Robert Dennys 2.A. Planning for the Greying Workforce Mr Appleton agreed that the general problem of an aging workforce is a serious issue within cultural institutions, where staff can become entrenched. He said that NFSA staff at one stage had an average tenure period of 11 years less however than the National Library of Australia, where that statistic was 16 years. Comparing that with most younger workers today, who expect to stay mobile and remain in one job no more than three or four years, you see the need to work to retain employees when you have them. Mr Appleton mentioned the value of having staff with long corporate memories, who can for example remember where seemingly misplaced items will be located. He described a particular case of senior staff member with irreplaceable engineering experience from improvising repairs to the NFSA's legacy collection of equipment e.g., wax cylinder players. He is approaching retirement however, and in anticipation of that he has been assigned an apprentice to shadow him. They hope this will allow the engineer's skills to be transferred and retained. Contrarily, Mr Appleton described the problem of having staff who persist in their roles beyond their productive life. Given many changes to the NFSA's technology and structure, some long-term staff who have not adapted to changes become marginalised as they persist in activities which no longer contribute so much to the organisation. More worryingly, such individuals may be effectively institutionalised - frightened or inadequate when facing the prospect of moving on from their accustomed environment into an uncertain wider world. Although he mentioned the option of transferring such staff to a more suitable branch or role, Mr Appleton was concerned that such staff be encouraged to seek options outside the NFSA either retirement, or work outside the public service. He stressed that retirement from the public service did not exclude one from working elsewhere. 2.B. Organisation of Appropriate Staffing I asked Mr Appleton to comment on the validity of stereotypes of personality types among Library Archive and Museum professionals (LAM). That is, the expectation that they will be better at their job if, by personality type, they are technique-oriented - even introverted - rather than people-oriented. He was concerned to refute this, with a couple concessions. He asserted that at institutions he has observed, the need for effective teamwork requires staff who are emotionally engaged. He also declared that hiring for the NFSA, and the Federal public service in general, is committed to hiring for diversity. He believes that it is important not to duplicate the personalities and skills of existing staff when choosing a new hire, since that risks inflexible and conformist viewpoints across an organisation. Mr Appleton conceded that many of the LIS graduates he has seen do conform to a stereotype of the technician-introvert. He also maintained the requirement that staff in archive operations must not have a casual approach. They do need to 'get' the principles behind archiving, and be able to behave 3

INN331 Asst 1 Robert Dennys conscientiously when handling collection items. He described the potentially serious consequences to the archive's reputation if they were unable to present misplaced or damaged items to patrons or auditors. When I suggested this requirement might be met by psychometric vetting of recruits, he countered that any personality type is capable of adjusting their behaviour given self-awareness and a clear understanding of the archivist's perspective. I asked Mr Appleton about qualifications required to work at the NFSA. He claimed there are jobs in every field within a large institution like the NFSA, but conceded that a curator role would require specific history or media education. He also pointed out that many hands-on skills required are learned on the job, such as film-winding. He said that what they want in a new hire is potential, and a qualification is only an indicator of potential. 2.C. Leadership Through Relationships and Communication In response to questions about what makes a good manager, many of Mr Appleton's comments centred on leadership through authentic relationships and effective communication. He said that new managers can sometimes be preoccupied with their greater status and resources, and neglect the people they are relying on. He recommended that a manager dedicate time to getting to know their team members and their concerns. He described how a leader maintains relationships of equality with staff. Managers should accept that common expectations and standards apply to themselves, not just their staff. For example, a manager should be consistent, not letting their mood dictate how much effort they put into responding to an issue raised with them. For another example, he referred to his judgement on whether a supervisor is the right person to provide an employee with a reference. If they would consider not backing the person and rather sabotage the new job offer to retain the employee in their own organisation, it is sign that they are not just a bad referee but a bad manager. A good manager can be trusted to treat their employee as an end, not just a means. Mr Appleton described similar concerns to support employees' opportunities to reach their goals within the current organisation. He said that one of his greatest satisfactions was in giving good news to staff. For example, that they had been offered a grant to study and develop their career. He also makes a point of drawing out and encouraging ambitions even among staff who say they are content to stay in their current role. Along with that joy, Mr Appleton stressed that a necessary evil of management work was giving bad news e.g., that they were passed over for a promotion. That always risks alienating or demotivating the employee concerned. However even here Mr Appleton returned to a positive approach. He said it was important to communicate bad news using constructive feedback. That is, respecting them enough to explain reasons for the decision and how the employee had opportunities to develop themselves, and take responsibility to achieve their desires. He described the 4

INN331 Asst 1 Robert Dennys importance of responding positively to failures in general: let employees know that it is OK to make a mistake once, and that it is important to be open with your manager about them. Accept that mistakes will happen, and turn them into opportunities for the employee to learn. Mr Appleton returned several times to the importance of communicating with insight: not simply talking persuasively at people but listening to and accepting the perspective of the individual. For example, although Mr Appleton declared himself to be a direct speaker who got to the point immediately, he respected that others naturally talk around an issue and build towards their point. Similarly, some people can take direction immediately while others may need a weekend to reflect and process it, particularly where a decision is required. He qualified that by saying that it remained important to set boundaries, such as time limits within which employees had to respond. Mr Appleton offered a definition of management which summarises managers' distinct role: you are a manager when you are responsible for not just yourself and your tasks but for the careers of others and operations that impact on the objectives of the organisation (my paraphrase.) 2.D. Control over a Geographically Dispersed Organisation Mr Appleton said the NFSA operates eight sites, including five industrial-site storage facilities under his branch's direct purview. The NFSA also liaises with the staff of deposit-and-retrieval operations at each state library. He conceded that this did result in challenges to maintaining consistent procedures across all sites. At least one site was dominated by a group with distinct personalities as he discreetly put it. That impacted on their maintenance of standardised logging of acquisitions. While he thought the ideal solution would be to bring together staff, trainers and managers for a week or so to establish effective operations, ever-present financial constraints prevented flying personnel across the country for such measures. He pointed up that shorter one-day training sessions can be initially effective, but staff often revert to their old habits once they return to their regular environment. Viable options for remote management consultation which they do use are regular video-conferencing and use of an intranet forum. Mr Appleton said there is no easy answer to controlling staff behaviour since the most effective approach is, as above, to build relationships with staff. Making yourself approachable as a manager made it more likely they would come to you for guidance in how to apply training they had received but were uncertain how to implement. In a related development, establishing relationships with management is currently being attempted with the newly appointed CEO of the NFSA. Mr Appleton described how dispersed managers were presently in extended consultations with the CEO via the intranet forums, aiming to establish where they all stood.

INN331 Asst 1 Robert Dennys 3. Reported Approaches Versus the Management Literature 3.A. Planning for the Greying Workforce Hallam (2007) brought together research from several sectors that paints a picture of aging workforce demographics, with younger people not coming into industries in sufficient numbers to balance the erosion of established employee capacity, either through their exiting into retirement, or their staying on and declining in their capacity for learning and adjusting to the changing workplace. I found particularly striking the description from Re:source (2003, p.4) of staff who resent retraining initiatives. That dovetailed with Mr Appleton's description of marginalised senior employees who do not adjust well to change. The specific response to this challenge which Mr Appleton described, of assigning an apprentice to shadow a knowledgeable senior engineer, is one of many suggested in the literature and one potentially appropriate in anticipation of the risks of losing critical knowledge (DeLong 2004; Blankenship et al 2008). I did note as Mr Appleton spoke that a potentially more effective solution would be to transfer recordings to a future-proof format and abandon legacy formats the sort of rethinking advocated by Landon (2001): If [an employee] is the only one left who knows how to fix some ancient piece of equipment, it may make more sense to replace that equipment than to replace [his] arcane know how. However, such radicalism may be less appropriate for a historical archive than for a utility like the power and water operations covered by Landon. Mr Appleton described redeploying or retiring recidivists, but that does not address the associated issue of ensuring capable younger staff from a shrinking pool of applicants choose to seek out and persist with the NFSA. The NFSA may have strategies to address this but I did not probe this sufficiently in my chat with Mr Appleton so I do not know enough to judge the appropriateness of their response. Note however he did mention in another context the NFSA's use of a casual/temporary employment register, which is open to under-qualified young people, from which they find some recruits get a taste for the work and go on to pursue further work and study. Measures offered in the literature include providing options of non-standard work-hours (IAEA 2004, p33), so the register may well be part of their response to this issue.

INN331 Asst 1 Robert Dennys 3.B. Organisation of Appropriate Staffing Williamson et al (2008) claim that successful archivists have a statistically significant tendency to be technique-oriented rather than people-oriented as a measurable personality trait. I expected Mr Appleton's industry experience to confirm this, even if with reservations. Instead the balance was reversed in his judgement. Anyone can work in archiving as long as they can learn conscientious behaviour, which just happens to come more easily to some technically-focussed personalities. I was tempted to discount this as rhetoric toeing a Public-Service policy line on Equal Opportunity Employment. However, his argument about hiring for diversity of viewpoints convinced me it was a genuine effective management policy. 3.C. Leadership Through Relationships And Communication There is plenty of precedent for Mr Appleton's approach to management as leadership through relationships. Starting with Mary Patrick Follett in the 1920s, management has been defined as the art of getting things done through people (see Follett et al., 1973). Peter Drucker. In his book Management Challenges for the 21st Century (2007), writes at length on relationship responsibility. He says : for man, and man alone, cannot be worked. There is always a two-way relationship between two men rather than a relationship between man and a resource. (Drucker 2007, p 301) [My apologies for his masculine pronoun usage.] More philosophically: as I noted above, Mr Appleton's test of good manager as someone you can trust to be ethical could be interpreted as an example of Kant's categorical imperative: that we should treat every person as an end and never as a means. Other writers have applied this principle to employee-manager relations (Borowksi 1998). The qualities of personal relationships seem difficult to reduce to academic psychology or philosophy although that does not stop the management profession from trying. I find I am far more enlightened by more literary or folkloric presentations of such concerns, such as Maurice's Management Maxims (Line, 2005). Several of that compilation of one-liner wisdoms were ones Mr Appleton seemed to concur with from our conversation: If you do not tell your staff what you think they will waste their time guessing. The privilege of making mistakes should not be confined to the boss. Never write people off either make full use of them or sack them (if they are not fired with enthusiasm, they should be fired with enthusiasm). Feelings are facts, ignored at your peril. People need mental space in which to breathe. 7

INN331 Asst 1 Robert Dennys A threat is an opportunity seen by a pessimist. / An opportunity is a threat seen by an optimist. Those at the top of the tree should remember that they depend on the roots. Good high fliers teach their chicks to fly. 3.D. Control Over a Geographically Dispersed Organisation When Mr Appleton described the risk that one-day training events could prove ineffective once staff return to their home site, I noted that this was supported by several writers cited in Schein (1990): [They used] the concept of "cultural island" to indicate that the training setting was in some fundamental way different from the trainees" "back home" setting. We knew from the leadership training studies of the 1940s and 1950s that foremen who changed significantly during training would revert to their former attitudes once they were back at work in a different setting. Schein went on to cite an alternative explanation in terms of the group norms, which offers more hope that there were ways to intervene effectively. Smith et al (2003) offers a perspective on the NFSA's use of both Intranet forums and video conferencing for consultation with a dispersed team. Where video conferencing is synchronous, intranet forums are an asynchronous communications channel. Access through an asynchronous channel is a practical necessity when communicating between eastern and western states with time zones up to 3 hours apart. Both the above are socially-oriented, compared to information-oriented channels such as email or intranet knowledge-bases e.g., for Quality Documents or Standard Operating Procedures. Given Mr Appleton's focus on authentic relationships with staff, his use of socially-oriented channels is quite appropriate. I would hope that the NFSA also uses a resource such as an intranet repository for SOPs. However I did not probe this point with Mr Appleton enough to know if they do.

INN331 Asst 1 Robert Dennys 4. Reflections On Personal Lessons From This Project I choose to seek out a manager at the NFSA as a networking contact because I had ambitions of employment there. The NFSA is a potential source of media to satisfy my personal interest in obscure films; and a career as an Archivist seemed to suit my personality, based on my reading of Williamson (2008). Mr Appleton refuted the expectation that staff access the collection for personal viewing even work viewing is largely restricted to public outreach curators. His declaration that teamwork and emotional engagement are requirements for most professionals and institutional organisations also put paid to my fantasy of escaping into a quiet 'Archivist Underground' where I wouldn't have to stretch beyond my introverted personal style. Mr Appleton's account of rusted-on senior staff having to be shown to the exit was somewhat surprising to me I had thought that the most recent decade of federal Liberal government, hostile to culture and the public service, would have pushed for rounds of cutbacks that squeezed out unproductive staff from such institutions. More universally, such conflict highlights the ultimate vanity of my dream of a perfect workplace as an undemanding home away from home. Even a plausibly cosy institution will eventually demand ongoing engagement and change from its employees. My conversation with Mr Appleton did succeed in changing the way I view management in general. My expectations of management have been somewhere between well-meaning and ineffective bureaucrat, and the manager from hell stereotypes in Scott Adams' Dilbert cartoons and the like (Borowksi 1998). I came away from listening to Mr Appleton with the impression of a thoughtful and humane leader. I was quite encouraged by his authentic approach to performance management, and his positive attitude to potentially distressing demands of management, such as having to disappoint people. It encouraged me that not only could I hope to find an organisation with such a culture, I would be proud to contribute to it. 5. Conclusions I went in to the conversation with Mr Appleton uncertain what counted as a management issue, let alone what questions to ask to elicit relevant experiences and judgements from him. I am still unclear about what counts as strong evidence from the literature for a particular approach. I did come out encouraged that Mr Appleton's pragmatism and humanity are well supported in at least some of the management literature. Together they succeeded in improving my expectations of managers as a class, and thus my motivation to learn what I can to support their efforts.

INN331 Asst 1 Robert Dennys 5. References Blankenship, L., & Brueck, T. (2008). Planning for knowledge retention now saves valuable organizational resources later. American Water Works Association Journal, 100(8), 57-61,10. Borowksi, P, (1998). Manager-Employee Relationships: Guided by Kants Categorical imperative or by Dilberts Business Principle, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 17, pp.1623-1632. DOI: 10.1023/A:1006071503101 DeLong, D. W. (2004). Lost knowledge: Confronting the threat of an aging workforce. New York: Oxford University Press. Follett, M. P., Fox, E. M., & Urwick, L. (1973). Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett. London: Pitman Publishing. Hallam, Gillian C. (2007). Library workforce planning in Australia: A focus on learning, strengthening and moving the profession forward. Singapore Journal of Library and Information Management, 36, pp. 17-40. IAEA (2004 ). The nuclear power industry's aging workforce: Transfer of knowledge to the next generation, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (Austria), IAEA-TECDOC Landon, J. (2001). Capturing knowledge before it walks out of the door a case study of a knowledge management response to attrition. Presented at the Tennessee Quality Conference, February 2627. Line, Maurice B. (2005) Maurice's management maxims. Interlending & Document Supply; 33(2), p108. DOI:10.1108/02641610510607452 Re:source (2003) Towards a strategy for workforce development: A research and discussion report prepared for Re:source. Retrieved as Internet Archive copy stored Feb 14, 2006, from http://www.mla.gov.uk/resources/assets//I/id423rep_doc_6787.doc Schein, Edgar H. (1990). Organizational Culture. The American psychologist , 45 (2), p. 109 Smith PG And Blanck EL (2002). From experience: leading dispersed teams. The Journal of Product Innovation Management 19(4), 294304. Williamson, J.M., Pemberton, A.E. & Lounsbury, J.W. (2008). Personality traits of individuals in different specialties of librarianship. Journal of Documentation, 64(2), pp. 273-286. DOI 10.1108/00220410810858056

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