Lessons

Apologies for the silence. The long weekend, budget due date, SOPA, and then twitter #hlth all pulled me away from this space.

And what did I learn during my week off? Always overestimate the size of your audience, both physical (make sure to get a room with enough seats) and virtual (get your sound bites ready to share). Ok, so those were Thursday's lessons. Other lessons from Thursday included the value of going home and having dinner with my family, followed by a jammie dance party, and reading Pooh before bed. I'd suggested having a special edition 'Thirsty Thursday' pub event after the Town Hall, but when it came down to it, I didn't want to rehash the day's news. There will plenty of that in weeks and months to come as we get more information.

And what were Friday's lessons? I have some seriously amazing colleagues who are re-optimistic (realistic/optimistic) about the future of the Harvard Library. Do we all think we'll have jobs here at the end of the day? Who knows! But we have jobs here now, and right now, I at least need to focus on two things:

How do I best support myself and my family through these changes?
How do I best support my employer and my colleagues?

For my family, I need to take care of myself so that I don't unnecessarily bring home stress from work. So that I can enjoy our time together, and be refreshed.

My employer, in addition to making sure the bills at home get paid right now, well, I believe that my job is to do this best I can to support the goal of creating the library as envisioned. A place whose organizational design principles include:

Accountability
Strategic Collaboration
Innovation
Enabling Architecture
University and School Needs
Equal or Better Service to Users
Efficient and Effective Shared Services
Nimble
Supporting Human Resources Objectives
Evolving Over Time

I can get behind this. And while the next six months will be challenging, and like everyone else in shared and support services I question whether there will be a seat for me at the table, I know for certain the following 18 months (or so) will also be challenging as those remaining rebuild. And whether I am part of the restructuring or not won't matter for me on a day to day basis for the next few months. Sure, I'll be working on my resume like everyone else, searching job sites. But at work, my job is now to help shepherd my staff and colleagues through this change. My job is to do my best every day to make sure we have the space to grieve and let go of what we knew, and the strength to move forward toward what we will create.

By mid-February we can expect to get more information on the design of the organization. As with all stages of this three year process, I am certain what we are shown will begat more questions. But I am confident of my purpose, and it hasn't changed as a result of last week.




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