Working smarter: An applied model for “better thinking" in dynamic information organizations

Dynamic and even turbulent environmental conditions, driven by rapid technological change, aggravating financial uncertainty, and escalating community expectations, fuel widespread recognition that libraries must reinvent organizational processes, procedures, and services. Typically, however, workplace systems, structures, designs, practices, and cultures continue to be based on earlier industrial models. In contrast, today’s fast-paced, rapidly changing workplace environment requires dynamic and flexible responsiveness with a focus on learning and innovation. To achieve these workplace ideals, we must change how we think and what we think about, as we ready ourselves for new roles in the academic enterprise. In this paper, we present an applied model for cultivating ‘better thinking’ for ‘working smarter’ within dynamically changing information organizations. Based in systems thinking, it reflects ‘lessons learned’ from action research projects conducted in Sweden and the United States since 2002. For the past fifteen months, since September 2003, we have embedded this model for deep organizational learning (Senge et al. 2004) at the university library at California Polytechnic State University (“Cal Poly”) in San Luis Obispo (SLO). Both projects leverage thinking (ST) tools, enhanced by information literacy (IL) and knowledge management (KM) principles and practices, to advance ‘better thinking’ for ‘working smarter’. In this paper, we primarily focus on the systems thinking dimensions of these workplace innovations. We conclude with discussion of interactive assessment results which corroborate the usefulness of systems thinking to frame real world inquiries, inform information exchange, and guide purposeful dialogue in the workplace. Within this context, information literacy and knowledge management shape and sustain purposeful enabling relationships.

[1]  Birgitta Bergvall-Kåreborn,et al.  An Appreciative Critique and Refinement of Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology , 2006 .

[2]  J. Eadie.  In Dialogue , 2001 .

[3]  Mary M. Somerville,et al.  If You Build It with Them, They Will Come , 2005 .

[4]  Allen Bundy.  Australian and New Zealand Information Literacy Framework , 2004 .

[5]  P. Senge,et al.  Presence : Human Purpose and the Field of the Future , 2005 .

[6]  G. Vickers.  The Art of Judgment: A Study of Policy Making , 1995 .

[7]  Michael Jackson,et al.  Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Managers , 2003 .

[8]  Birgitta Bergvall-Kåreborn,et al.  Basic Principles of SSM Modeling: An Examination of CATWOE from a Soft Perspective , 2004 .

[9]  Peter Checkland,et al.  The case for “holon” , 1988 .

[10]  E. Guba,et al.  Fourth Generation Evaluation , 1989 .

[11]  Peter Checkland,et al.  Systems Thinking, Systems Practice: Includes a 30-Year Retrospective , 1999 .

[12]  Anita Mirijamdotter,et al.  Systems thinking in the workplace: Implications for organizational leadership , 2004 .

[13]  J. Scholes,et al.  Techniques in soft systems practice. IV, Conceptual model building revisited , 1990 .

[14]  Marita Holst.  Knowledge work across boundaries : inquiring into the processes of creating a shared context , 2004 .

[15]  Mary M. Somerville,et al.  Constructivist workplace learning: An idealized design project , 2004 .

[16]  Frank Vuotto.  Information competence as a value‐added product: applying the business model to academe , 2004 .

[17]  I. Nonaka,et al.  The Concept of “Ba”: Building a Foundation for Knowledge Creation , 1998 .

[18]  Mary M. Somerville.  Knowledge integration work across boundaries: Inquiry into shared context for information exchange and knowledge creation , 2004 .

[19]  P. B. Checkland,et al.  Techniques in soft systems practice. III, Monitoring and control in conceptual models and in evaluation studies , 1990 .

[20]  Birgitta Bergvall-Kåreborn,et al.  Expanding the framework for monitor and control in Soft Systems Methodology , 1996 .

[21]  Mats-Olov Olsson,et al.  Systems Approaches and Their Application: Examples from Sweden , 2006 .

[22]  Anita Mirijamdotter,et al.  Building on what we know: staff development in the digital age , 2005, Electron. Libr..

[23]  Sir Geoffrey Vickers.  Human Systems Are Different , 1984 .

[24]  Anita Mirijamdotter.  A multi-modal systems extension to soft systems methodology , 1998 .