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Posts Tagged ‘creativity’

Overcoming challenges in the library workplace involves a mixture of creativity and fun, Suzanne Merritt suggests in her new full-day Infopeople “Building Leadership Skills: Stimulating Creativity” workshop sessions being offered in libraries throughout California from April 10-24, 2009.

“I think the important thing that people will come away with is a boost in their own confidence, in their creative abilities, and that they can apply that in any area of leadership,” she predicted in a conversation earlier this week. “I feel it is important for anyone in a leadership role not only to have a boost in their own creative confidence, but to pass that along and encourage to those they lead to believe in their creative abilities as well. Together they can solve any problem that comes along.”

Merritt is no stranger to the topic of how creativity helps improve the workplace and produce results. Through the work she does through her own company, Ideas With Merritt, she provides participants with tools and skills which translate inspiration into workplace innovation on a daily basis. These skills are divided into three interrelated elements: collecting experiences, connecting those experiences to the workplace, and creating growth by generating, judging, and refining ideas.

“Every human being is creative,” she notes. “Our creative contributions matter. As leaders, part of our job is to bring out our own creative potential and bring that out in the people that work with us. When we do that, people have fun…When people have fun, they are creative. Everything’s so serious right now; it’s a great time to revitalize your own creative energy.”

Material presented during the Infopeople workshop is designed to help library leaders and others—including library business managers, public information officers, systems staff, facilities managers, and volunteers—find creative solutions for handling the increasing workload they face, attracting new audiences and funding sources, and restructuring existing services.

She will introduce participants to her own model, the C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y. model, in which each letter in the term “stands for something specific that people can look for in the world around them to look for sources of inspiration.”

“I don’t want to be listed as one of those ‘these are dire times’ speakers. This is about possibility and positive energy, and having some fun while you do your work,” she concluded.

The workshop is the latest offering in Infopeople’s multi-stage Eureka! Leadership Program with its “Building Leadership Skills” series, and it will remain available as a contract workshop through Infopeople for those who are not able to attend the currently scheduled sessions. Registration ($75 per person) for all remaining “Building Leadership Skills” sessions is continuing on the Infopeople website. Instructors include Stacey Aldrich and Marie Radford.

Sessions of “Building Leadership Skills: Stimulating Creativity” are currently scheduled for Arden-Dimick Library in Sacramento (4/10/2009); San Diego County Library Headquarters (4/13/2009); Buena Park Library District (4/16/2009); Fresno–Woodward Park (4/20/2009); San Jose Martin Luther King, Jr. Library (4/22/2009); and San Francisco Public Library—Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room (4/24/2009).

If we are looking for permission to be creative, have fun, and tell stories, we don’t need to look much beyond Daniel Pink and his popular nonfiction book A Whole New Mind. And if we want to spend a little time face to face with him, we won’t need to look much farther than San Jose this weekend when he appears as one of the presenters in the Infopeople “Master Speaker” series.
Pink will be onsite at the California Library Association 2008 Conference and Exhibition signing copies of the book and talking about the idea of developing a whole new mind as well as how the book itself was developed.
Although the author himself, in a conversation this afternoon, described the 2005 release as “a book about business…and economics,” many of us have appreciated how far he goes in describing what he sees as the new essential skills—moving from left-brain to right-brain thinking—which lead us toward success in many of our endeavors: engaging our senses through design and story; developing a sense of invention and big-picture thinking while incorporating empathy into everything we do; incorporating humor and laughter into our work; and recognizing the importance of meaning in our day-to-day activities.
As he guides us through the process of changing the way we work and think, he enthusiastically acknowledges what this can and will mean for those who work in libraries: “Libraries in general have to do some rethinking about what their role is. At one point, they were repositories for information. That monopoly has been broken. They have to do things that are more high concept and more high touch” and ask questions including, “how do you serve your patrons in ways that delight them and surprise them?
“It requires a different set of skills,” he continued, and “in some ways, this can return libraries to their first principles: they’ve always been great civic organizations…They’re situated to democratize society…to become places where they (library users) can talk about their ideas.”
Pink, in his work and in his upcoming presentation, challenges us to push ourselves beyond the limit which we set and inhabit, and he infuses his work with plenty of examples to lead us toward that goal. Those unfamiliar with the book will find excerpts online, and those of us lucky enough to be in San Jose this weekend will find him on stage in what promises to be an engaging opportunity to hear him speak and respond to questions from his audience.
Pink’s CLA/Infopeople presentation is scheduled for Saturday, November 15, 2008 from 2:15-3:30 p.m. in the San Jose Conference Center, Ballroom A. He will be available in the Infopeople section of the Exhibitors’ Area (Booths 410, 411, and 511) that afternoon from 1 – 2 pm to sign copies of his book.