According to Seth Godin in his book, Survival is not Enough; Zooming, Evolution, and the Future of Your Company, one clearly gets the picture, survival is not enough. But what do zooming; evolution and the future of companies have to do with the survival of libraries and librarianship? Knowledge sharing, penguins, and adventure, believe it or not!
I'll start with knowledge sharing. Godin uses an excellent example of knowledge sharing by telling the story of Paul Orafela, the gentleman that started "a little copy" shop that eventually evolved into Kinko’s. As Godin explains, Orafela accomplished this zooming feat with several strategies. The first, was realizing that the people who worked for him could do a better job than he could running a business, so he set up a co-ownership structured franchise which provides more flexibility than a franchise. Then, Orafela would go from store to store and make note of what people were doing well. At the same time he was visiting each Kinko's store to see what others were doing well, he would also share the successful practices and procedures that he had discovered with employees during these visits to other stores. In essence, Orafela was capitalizing on one of Godin's firmly held beliefs: ideas that spread, win. He was able to capture the collective "best practices" of those doing the work and share that knowledge so that everyone succeeded.
On to evolution! Evolution is generated by ideas, Godin professes in writings. He asserts, “our work now belongs to our ideas" (p.42). Continuing with his theme, ideas that spread win, Godin explains the idea cycle like this: the more ideas we have, the more creative we can be, the more creative we are, the higher the stakes for establishing ourselves as cutting-edge, which ultimately leads to growth. This growth, Godin avows, can lead to a type of evolution that becomes melded into our being, into our daily lives, into our memes. Memes and mDNA are a few of the words that Godin uses throughout the book, except that Godin uses the terms in regard to organizational facets. Memes, he says, are ideas or concepts that set in motion a transference that results in construct. mDNA, Godin states, is the sum of all the memes and assets in an organization. And here is where the penguins come in. Penguins evolve, says Godin, but they don't plan to evolve, don't have meetings about evolving, and undoubtedly don't debate evolving. Rather, "it is built into their daily lives." They simply evolve, it is in their memes. As librarians, do we embrace creativity and explore ideas? Or, do we spend our time in numerous meetings debating what the most effective route to the future might be?
Moving onto zooming! One of the most important perspectives about change that Godin describes in his book is one that we incessantly hear the chatter about, technological evolution. Godin points out that many organizations are still functioning using the old and familiar model of change. You may remember this model; and/or, you may be currently supporting this model in your organization. The model that entails creating a sense of urgency, coalescences a rosy picture of the future, adaptation of a work flow to accommodate the change; and, ultimately cajole workers into accepting the change. Zooming, Godin declares, requires that we toss this model out that we step outside of our current comfort zone and stretch our limits in ways we may not normally be comfortable "stretching" so that we can create new models and processes that embrace technology and change. Ultimately, I think zooming requires being adventuresome!
So what do knowledge sharing, evolution, zooming and a sprinkling of adventure have to do with librarianship? Do you embrace an atmosphere of knowledge sharing that is empowering for your fellow librarians? Do you have the courage to share your ideas and color outside the box? Do you embrace new technologies? Are you an adventurous librarian? Are you the librarian in your library that has the ability to create change while remaining focused with intention so that you can make a difference? Do you recognize and support the ability of others in your library to create this type of focused effort that results in triumph?
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