Have you ever wondered how you can embrace values in your library that make everyone a leader in every role, as well as create ‘mindshare’ with stakeholders and decision-makers about the importance of your library?

On today’s show you will get practical ways to do just that as we talk with Diane Foster, City Manager in Park City, Utah. She manages, directs, and coordinates municipal services with a background from the private sector, primarily in the high-tech and ski industries. 

During her tenure, Park City developed a high-tech Library with a $10 million budget that involved everyone and utilized the skills, ability, knowledge, and energy of a town of 8,000 residents to create a 21st Century Library that now serves over 175,000 visitors per year.

Transcript

This podcast is brought to you by the School of Library and Information Management from Emporia State University, where library leaders are created with program sites in Kansas, Utah, Oregon. Colorado, and South Dakota. And, by the Park City Library making film, and podcasting possible, with green screen, and sound recording resources.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Have you ever wondered how you can embrace values in your library that make everyone a leader in every role, as well as create mindshare with stakeholders and decision-makers about the importance of your library? On today’s show, you will get practical ways to do just that, as we talk with Diane Foster, City Manager in Park City, Utah. She manages, directs, and coordinates municipal services with a background from the private sector, primarily in the high tech and ski industries. During her tenure, Park City developed a high tech library with a ten million dollar budget that involved everyone, and utilized the skills, ability, knowledge, and energy of a town of 8000 residents to create a 21st-century library that now serves over 175,000 visitors per year.

Today we are here with Diane Foster, City Manager of Park City and my boss. I’m so glad you’re here today, Diane.

Diane Foster: Hi, Adriane.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

We had a guest on the show last time who said, All librarians should get someone outside of their industry to be a support for them. And, I’ve always felt like you were a great support for me and for the library here in Park City. So, thank you.

Diane Foster:

Thank you.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #1: And, today we want to talk a little bit about Leadership in Every Role, so I’m excited. One of the reasons when I came to Park City—that I wanted to be here, is this is a very inclusive city, and that means leaders in every role. So, let’s hear a little about you and the ways in which you’ve seen the library evolve in Park City.  01:46

Diane Foster:

Well, let’s start from the last one, how the library has evolved. There’s a physical manifestation of evolution at the library and it’s a good representation of youth—start at the outside and then you get to the inside. From the outside, a major ten million dollar renovation, that may not be available to every community but, that idea of, Hey what does your library look like, and is it inviting?

We had a front door where people had to climb a set of stairs, and it wasn’t really clear which door they were supposed to come in—being able to clearly identify an entrance, and be a more welcoming building, and then just all of the changes that have happened inside. The biggest change is a 21st-century library where you can come in and do anything from being in a sound booth, that we’re sitting in right now—that you can actually buy on Amazon.com, or 3D printing, or computers where you can do movie editing. We’ve had people submit to Sundance from here.

Also, just looking at the breadth of services, our Spanish speaking material has increased significantly, as well as looking at staffing and saying, How do we appropriately staff a building that’s bigger? And also, explosive growth in the community and visitation.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #2: Absolutely explosive, and we’re so fortunate the community wanted to invest in its library. So that said, when someone walks into the library they don’t know that the person at the front desk isn’t the library in its entirety at that moment. We talk a lot as a city about Leadership in Every Role. Can you tell me why that’s important?  03:30

Diane Foster:

Sure. Leadership in Every Role—there is a leadership component to everyone’s job. It does not matter what your job is or where it sits in the hierarchy. Your example is a good one. The person who walks in the door and sees the person sitting at the front desk, they don’t ask themselves, Is that person full-time, part-time? Are they in high school, or did they used to be a lawyer?

What they do is they look at that person as the library. When the library is associated with the city they also look at that person as that person is the city. Just like police officers get asked questions that have nothing to do with their job. Librarians have the same thing happen. Every person understanding that she, or he, represents the entire city, and the entire library is really important.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #3: It is important. So, how does Park City make that possible throughout the organization? 04:42

Diane Foster:

Well, first and foremost you’ve got to let people know that not only do they have a leadership role, but you expect them to use that leadership role. What we mean by leadership is investing in, and advancing other people. I think we all had the idea that, Well, I’ll be a leader as soon as I’m a boss of other people. Well, number one, I think the term boss is kind of outdated as is the concept, right? Your boss or the person to whom you report is your coach. That’s the most important role that a supervisor can have.

The other pieces—there are lots of leaders and lots of people around our organization who we consider powerful people. You could identify them in any organization. And, a lot of them don’t have anyone reporting to them. So, the way we get people to help them understand that is we do a leadership program. We’re putting every person in our city through it whether they’re full-time, part-time, seasonal. It’s really important that everyone understands his or her role as a leader and how they can develop that.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #4: That’s fantastic. So, what does Park City do to make everyone a leader? 05:56

Diane Foster:

Well, first and foremost we communicate that. We also talk a lot about why it’s important to invest in our people. Training is one of the most important things we can do. One of the examples I use is, we’ve got roughly a $62,000,000 operating budget as a city of 8000 full-time residents. Of course, we’ve got 3,000,000 visitors a year. So, we’re a little bit of an oddball. With that $62,000,000 budget, approximately 80 percent is spent on people.

When you think about it, if you’re a factory—if eighty percent of your expenses are machinery expenses, you’re going to be sure to take care of them. You’re going to update them. If they have problems, you’re going to fix them really quickly. We take that approach with our people. We don’t actually view it as fixing them, but if they have a problem we want to make sure that we’re in there with them, and helping them early on.

Investing in our people is the most important thing we can do because it’s that equivalent—they are that eighty percent of what we’re spending our operating budget on, so we better be investing and growing them.

The reality is, we’ve taken people through our leadership program that are six months away from retirement. Because it doesn’t matter if you’ve been here for six weeks, or six months, or you are two weeks away from retirement, we’re going to invest in you as a person. Because even after you leave the city you’re going to be a positive influence on it, and you’re also going to help us to recruit.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #5: So, tell me a little bit about the leadership program in Park City.  07:26

Diane Foster:

The leadership program that we do is based initially on the Federal Executive Institute, which is a seven-month program. A lot of us participate in the city. We’ve put about eighty people through a program at the University of Virginia, and their Center for High Performance.

That program is focused on local government. There are lots of great leadership programs around the country. They all generally have similar theories behind them. Basically, it’s a lot of the best organizational development work that’s been done over the past fifty to seventy-five years. That includes everything from first, understanding who you are as a leader.

A lot of places, including here, use Myers Briggs. There are lots of tests that you can take that tell you what your preferences are. And, that’s important to take everyone through so they understand who they are. It can also help you at work. It can help you with your relationships outside of work, including family. We start with that. Then we take people through everything from having them—a lot of folks are familiar with Stephen Covey’s four quadrants.

That’s helping you identify what’s important versus what’s urgent. Not everything that’s urgent is important. A lot of things, especially strategic planning, and strategic thinking are things that are very important, but they don’t have an urgency. Sometimes we leave those behind, and that includes getting good development training for ourselves. So, we go through materials like that and a lot of other material that is consistent with what we believe is our organization and our leadership philosophy.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #6: So, investing in people is huge.  09:07

Diane Foster:

Investing in people is huge. And also, communicating and getting everyone clear. One of the things I’ve been really impressed with about the library is we have a philosophy at the city—we’ve turned what is in academic literature, high-performance organization. We’ve renamed that, and rebranded that as Gold Medal Performance. 

The reason we’ve done that is, number one, we’re an Olympic City so it ties to that. More importantly though, it’s a concept that people can connect with. You could ask a group of people what’s high performance and they might not all agree on what it is. If you ask people what Gold Medal Performance is, most people will have an immediate answer even if they haven’t really thought about the topic before. 

So, we’re working as an organization on being a Gold Medal Performance organization. And that, from a definition perspective—what we’ve developed as the definition is, it’s one where every person uses all of her, or his skills, abilities, knowledge, and energy to create the best possible outcome. Now the reason that’s important is we do lots of different things around the city. We do streets. We have a police force. We have a water company, and of course we have a library. 

What I’ve been impressed with, and to give back to what I was mentioning about what is particularly good about the library here is, they’ve taken that organizational philosophy and they’ve made it their own.

So, Adriane’s formed a library leadership team and that leadership team goes through, number one—they go through the same citywide training. Then they develop it on their own. They talk about, What does it look like to be a Gold Medal Performance Library?Really making that, Where are we going as an organization, our vision and values? And making them their own.

We also have a value statement that we redid a couple of years ago.Because if not everybody knows your values—probably time to redo them. We had a team of frontline staff who came up with an acronym, IREACH—standing for integrity, respect, engagement, accountability, communication, and humor. If I’m in a room of employees—I was just in a room last week where I asked, Hey what do these mean? As a group, they were able to come up with all of them.

As I learned recently from a Brené Brown interview that I heard on NPR—she talked about it. It’s important to talk about your values. You really need to talk about the behaviors that underlie your values. So, when Adriane’s done with her team here at the library, they talk about, What does integrity look like at a library? What is appropriate humor? It’s important to talk about what it looks like, and what it does not look like.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #7: And, we enjoy that. Every morning at the library we do a startup meeting and we gather round in a circle. Every single person talks. We talk about what’s important that day, what programs we’re having, what to remember if we’re having a computer glitch. And, everybody can share something.  11:56

Diane Foster:

That’s awesome. And, I love that you’ve taken what is in the private sector, one of their tools—stand-up meetings. You get together every morning, talk about what’s important. People have the opportunity to say, Hey, I need to catch up with you later. You don’t necessarily have a long discussion about it. But you get to say, This is what I need today. This is what I’m going to contribute today. And, it’s a fabulous concept.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #8: Absolutely. And I see you out in all of the departments in the city talking to people about these values, and concepts, and behaviors that translate into this Leadership in Every Role, and it’s so impressive. So, if there’s a library out, or a leader out there looking to kickstart this kind of initiative, do you have any suggestions for how they might get started, Leaders in Every Role?  12:37

Diane Foster:

Sure, if you’re looking at bringing some of these concepts—figure out first what’s important to you. Take a look at your values. Is one of those values really important to you? Then start talking about it. Also, because we’re talking about libraries, there are some great books out there. You have to try a couple on and see what fits you. 

Our whole management team at the city—we all read David Marquet’s book, Turn the Ship Around! That rang true for us because we are an organization where a supervisor’s job is not to micromanage. Sure, when someone’s new, we’ve got to tell people stuff in more detail. However, people are smart. For me, the most important question that a supervisor can ask when someone comes up with a problem or an issue is, What do you think? That person coming to you is always going to have an answer, or they’re at least going to have some ideas. So, giving them the opportunity to share their good thoughts, number one—it’s a great development tool. Number two, it’ll give you a little bit of time to process through some of—and understand a little bit more about what’s going on, because they’re undoubtedly going to tell you more about a situation if they talk to you about what they’ve thought about possible solutions

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #9: And, help in decision-making where the information is at. They know that role better than I will, as a leader, better than you will as a leader—so they can share that out.  14:17

Diane Foster:

That’s a great point, Adriane. Right in his book, Turn the Ship Around!, David Marquet talks about—decisions need to be made where the information is. Number one, people make decisions every day and they make lots of them. Helping people to understand, number one, that you trust them to make decisions. Also, that you’re there to support them if they’re ever in doubt. Right? So, then it’s not that you go to your supervisor to talk about something. It’s not because you’re not capable. It’s because you want a sounding board. 

The idea that we’re making decisions where the information is. I can’t make decisions about the library. I don’t know and understand the library, and I never will like Adriane. There are lots of things about her organization that she has said, Okay, this decision happens with this supervisor because this person really knows what’s going on in this part of the library.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #10: And they are so knowledgeable. I don’t know everything about every department within my own agency. I love giving that voice to people and trusting them with decisions. One thing I’ve always admired about you, Diane, you’ve got our back.  15:23

Diane Foster:

Right. That is a piece, though, right? If you trust people, you have to trust that they’re also going to make mistakes. When the only mistake that we ever have is when we don’t learn from it—mistakes happen all the time. Having people know that that’s OK, and we’re going to talk about what happened, and how to fix it—that is the biggest gift. Because people don’t come to work saying, I want to make mistakes, however, it will happen.

That’s actually the biggest compliment I ever got from somebody—was in the billing department. He said, I know you got my back. I was completely surprised because I do. I don’t work with them every day, yet if someone comes in to complain about the building department I don’t assume that I’ve got the whole story, right? So, having somebody’s back when a customer is yelling at you about something that’s happened that they’re unhappy about, is not assuming that you have the whole story.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Right, and getting more, and giving people a voice.

Diane Foster:

Definitely.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #11: And, when we talk about giving people a voice, I also like that our city is highly inclusive with our citizens. It’s our departments, the people who make our city run, we listen to them. They have a voice. They have decision-making capability. But, when people come to city council, or come to you they’re also heard. I think we have such a great opportunity to talk to a city manager today and hear from your perspective. 

How can a library talk to stakeholders, citizen’s councils—what are some insights you can provide that give us some talking points, or ways we can present ourselves?  16:39

Diane Foster:

Sure, if you’re part of a city or university, if you’re not top of mind for the council or for the city manager, that’s generally a good thing because it means you’re not the problem child. Right? I mean a lot of times in roles like a city manager, or like the provost at a university, or an administrator at a university, those folks do a lot of firefighting, and also they’re doing a lot of new initiatives. 

It’s interesting to me that libraries are such a huge part of our community, but they don’t have a lot of brain space with me, or with the council. Here’s the thing—the council, the mayor, myself, we all really appreciate and truly love the library. And, Adriane, you bring up a great question. How do you get mindshare, is essentially what you’re talking about. So, if you’re not a problem, however, you do want to inform and you want to be there. Also at budget time, if you don’t exist in someone’s brain it’s going to be a little bit harder.

So, one of the things that you’ve done, that I’ve really appreciated, is when you do an annual update for city council. It’s good to do that sometimes with your board. Maybe one of the things that we can add to that is doing that with your staff. So, you’re doing a staff update every year. Instead of just talking to the library board about what their interests are—having staff come in and talk about what are the big things happening that are new. What are we working on, and where are we going? Right? And, make sure we get in front of council.

I’ve had the same discussion with some of your teammates around the city. At the city we operate in teams. So Adriane’s got teammates who are at the rec center, at the ice rink, and at the golf course. It’s a similar challenge for all of them. Because these are places that have huge public support—they actually have great city council support, it’s just not necessarily top of mind unless something bad happens, and then you’re immediately top of mind. 

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #12: Right, you don’t always want to be there.   19:30

Diane Foster:

Right, that’s not the way you want to get to top of mind. I think getting really clear on what’s the value you bring to your constituents, who are the library patrons, and the whole community? Number two, what matters to that decision-making body, whether it be a budget committee, or your city council, or your university board? What really matters to them? And, if you don’t know, ask them. Right?

People love to be asked, Hey, what do you care about? What do you think is important in the library right now? The fact that you have enrolled, and have put on your board, city council members is terrific—because, for example, you’re exploring fine-free, going fine-free. 

I so appreciated that you invited me to that presentation that the Salt Lake City Library Manager did—and you had city council members there, so we’re already converted. I walked in the room thinking fine-free is crazy. No one’s going to return books anymore. I left there understanding that number one, that is not good enforcement, it actually doesn’t work. And number two, it’s keeping some of the people who we most want to use the library away from it. I’ve just realized my pronunciation of library is terrible. [laughter]

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

I think it’s fabulous, it’s great.

Diane Foster:

Did I actually call it libary? [laughter]

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

We all do that once in a while.

Diane Foster:

So, that focus on getting really super clear—how do you matter, to whom do you matter,  and, making sure you share that message.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #13: That’s fantastic. And, we’re fortunate that you’ll show up. Council members will show up when we have an opportunity to hear more about libraries. You’re there, and council’s there, and our liaison sits in a board meeting, as well, from the council.  21:03

Diane Foster:

You are particularly good, Adriane, at giving advance notice. Right? And, it’s not that my job is so important, it’s just that my job involves a lot of meetings, so my schedule gets crammed. You always let me know about stuff a month out, and that’s awesome because if it’s on the calendar, it’s not going to get crushed by something else.

Adriane Herrick Juarez: 

Question #14: Right, we can all think about people’s busy schedules in running a city. Across the United States, librarians are going to be up against many competing sources of pressure for our community officials. So, that can help. One thing that I really like about our city council—when they come into office new, they go to every department in the city for an overview, and a tour of what’s going on.  21:33

Diane Foster:

Oh, yeah, we made that up.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

You made that up, it’s amazing.

Diane Foster:

No, a lot of times people run, especially in cities where they’re running against government—we saw this a lot with the Tea Party movement. And that still exists in a lot of places. People. Either they will fear, or they will have an impression about an organization, even if they don’t know anything about it. They’re going to have an impression, right? We get impressions about libraries that are built from one we’re just little kids. Which is awesome, and also might be wrong. Right?

I did a Day in the Life with you. The library team invited me in—it was for about half a day. They designed a complete tour of the library. I didn’t even know we had free language resources. I didn’t know you could read the Economist for free. All of those things were new to me. Seeing the digital lab, seeing the green screen, seeing the sound room, making it real for them. So out of that, saying to City Council—they’ve got to go see every department. What it does is, it gives them an understanding. So, when someone comes to them and says either they’ve got a problem or they want something to happen, they have that knowledge base that otherwise they would never have.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #15: Certainly. So, we cannot be afraid to invite our officials in. They’re going to be in the grocery store line and people will say to them, Hey, what’s this thing going on at the library? They want to know.  23:21

Diane Foster:

And rarely will people say no. And if they say no once, go ahead and invite him again.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #16: Sure. Sure. I’ve been so impressed with how open the city is to each other.  23:39

Diane Foster:

What’s real is that most people are going to be open, particularly when it’s on the topic of the library. We don’t necessarily have connections to police or to water in the way that we all have connection to a library. There are very few people who you will meet who don’t have some formative experience. I remember when I was in grad school, I was in the UK and it was a copyright library. I was employed at the time, and I could go and read these reports that would cost me $5000 to go buy, and I could be in this amazing library. Or, the time where I was walking through a library and they had an exhibit of the first writings ever done, it was Chinese writing on bone.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Incredible.

Diane Foster:

And, in the same exhibit, they had Darwin’s actual logs when he was on the Beagle and they were in his own handwriting.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Priceless.

Diane Foster:

Libraries. They surprise, they delight. They always fulfill needs. And, that surprise and delight is just something I haven’t thought of for a while.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #17: Well, thanks for sharing that because I hope we all have those kinds of experiences when we walk through the doors of libraries across our communities, in our entire nation. I think libraries work very hard to make that happen. Since our remodel—we had an amazing remodel three and a half years ago, the library has become a hub where people walk through the door and create community. So, it’s been a really exciting experience.  25:00

Diane Foster:

I think the opportunity for relaunch exists even if we can’t afford a 10 million dollar renovation. If you look and say, What could I do with the sewing club in town and a bunch of new upholstery? Do I have a birthday party for my library and re-invite people? I have been so impressed and surprised with how much this library changes every year. Even still. Even still.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #18: Even still we’re evolving. Hopefully, we always will. And, thank you for the inclusion and this Leadership in Every Role model, because when someone walks through the door of the library they bring a unique experience that we can all learn from and share.  25:52

Diane Foster:

Very much so. A couple more books? Because we are talking to librarians.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

I do want to talk about books.

Diane Foster:

Brené Brown, I’m sure you’ve all heard of her. Go see her TED Talks if you want an introduction. Her latest book is Dare to Lead. I’ve just started it. I heard an interview on it, and it is already fabulous. One of the things I like about this book is she uses all of her prior material and her prior learning. She talks in this book how she’s developed on the theory that maybe she presented in the prior book. Another great one, as I mentioned, is David Marquet’s Turn the Ship Around! You want to wrap your brain around Leadership in Every Role, that is absolutely the book to read.

It’s a good discussion book as well. It’s an easy read. It’s a fun read. It’s a fast read, and it’s one that people like to talk about. Everyone can connect to it. Number three is one of my favorite authors, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Why have I really just forgotten his name? …Lencioni, Patrick Lencioni. He wrote The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which is a seminal book. The book that he wrote about the ideal team player is the go-to book. We recently had one of your teammates. He used it in his department, in the rec department to hire a staff member. They only used questions out of that book and they hired somebody different than they normally would have. And, it was fantastic.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

I heard it was a success, and we’re so glad that we get these things out of books in our library.

Diane Foster:

And the other piece is, for people like me—I don’t read as much as I used to, especially when I was a kid, and getting a book that is actionable. Those three: Lencioni; Brené Brown; and Marquet, those are three authors that anybody can get their teeth into, and really some strong leadership lessons about Leadership in Every Role.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

That’s great. And, we are looking forward to staff development day here at the library coming up in the next month. And, Diane comes and visits us every year.

Diane Foster:

And importantly, you include people who are part-time in that.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Right.

Diane Foster:

They’re as much a part of the library as all of your full-time staff. And, I love that you made that happen.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #19: We grow together, and we love to hear from everybody in the organization. Is there anything else, as we start to wrap up, that you want to talk about in terms of Leadership in Every Role, or anything else you’re thinking about in terms of the library, as a city manager?  28:25

Diane Foster:

I’m just so glad that you asked me the question about what I interpreted as, How do you get mindspace? I think that’s such an important question for organizations that are always fighting. You’re fighting for dollars and unfortunately, you are competing with other needs. Making sure that you have that brain space, not because it’s important for people in other decision-making roles to have that information, but also when it comes to budget time so they know you exist right.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Libraries across the nation are looking at budgets all the time and working towards relevancy and understanding of why libraries are so important.

Diane Foster:

Very much so.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

So, it’s a great thing to talk about. Thank you.

Diane Foster:

Thank you.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #20: In closing, what do libraries mean to you personally?  29:26

Diane Foster:

You know, libraries when I think about it, there’s a lot going on in the world right now that makes people feel unsafe. Sometimes it’s unsettled, but libraries are like a giant warm hug. Right? They’re always inviting. It’s a safe space. It’s a welcoming space. I think at the end of the day the people who are there really make that happen. So thank you.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Thank you. We’ve been talking with Diane Foster, Park City Manager, my boss and part of my important support network. Thank you so much for being here today Diane. Your insights are fantastic.

Diane Foster:

Adriane, thank you for doing this leadership podcast.

You’ve been listening to Library Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Adriane Herrick Juarez. Our producer is Nate Vineyard. More episodes can be found at libraryleadershippodcast.com, where you can now subscribe to have new shows delivered right into your email inbox. You can also find the show on Apple iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening. We’ll see you next time.