Summer Goals
May 2019
Dear Colleagues,
Congratulations on another successful academic year! The impact of the Libraries is evident across campus, and I thank each of you for your dedication. I am also encouraged by the number of you who participated in the listening sessions I’ve been holding. I have heard and appreciate your hopes to have articulated values, priorities, and a vision we can share and embrace collectively.
With your initial feedback in mind, the Executive Team has been having a series of conversations this spring guided by the Office of Strategic Consulting (OSC). We’ve shared individually and as a group, our thoughts on the status of the Libraries, ideas about the future, and discussed our shared values. We have also talked about our expectations of each other within the Executive Team and how we will work together as we move forward. As we refine our work, we’re also identifying ways to engage our organization in a robust discussion on mission, values, and vision.
Our current strategic plan is intended to guide us through 2020, so it is time to begin to imagine our direction into the future. While we are currently still developing a timeline for broader conversations, I want to provide you with an outline of our summer goals:
May – The Executive Team will provide a report on our current strategic priorities, achievements, goals, and the status of ongoing initiatives. This report will include supporting documents or URLs for work underway by units and committees. The Operational Leadership Team (OLT) will also discuss how we might engage the whole organization in conversations about our shared values, vision, and strategic directions.
June – During the Library Coordinating Council (LCC) meeting in June, that group will discuss ideas for overall engagement with our campus Libraries beyond the General Library System (GLS). We will look for the best ways to initiate conversations about values, vision, and strategic direction across the Libraries.
July and August – We will hold activities to engage staff in conversations about our future. Discussions will examine our mission, vision, values and begin to identify priorities. These sessions will include dialog around our master plan and consolidation efforts, identify information gaps around these projects and examine how this work will be incorporated into our future plans. We will work together to draft strategic directions, goals, and priorities. We will highlight the positive impact investment in the libraries has had on our campus community and show how our work aligns with the Chancellor’s strategic initiatives.
My goal this summer is to develop draft documents which will renew our mission, clarify our vision and values, and identify our strategic path forward. Throughout the process, we will share our progress on the Strategic Planning and Goals Priorities webpage (which will be updated soon). In the fall, we’ll engage the University Library Committee (ULC) and our campus community in this work to incorporate their feedback and ideas.
I encourage each of you to participate in these conversations this summer. Whether it’s sharing input with your supervisor or during a discussion session, we want to hear your voice. I encourage you to use the new anonymous feedback form, which can be found on our staff site, to send thoughts you don’t want to share in group sessions directly to me (please note this is different than the Climate Feedback form, which is mentioned below in our EDC updates section). I’m also creating a Vice Provost blog page to provide more frequent updates. The Executive Team will then be able to use this space (the monthly newsletter) to provide broader unit updates.
Thank you again for all of your work this past year and enjoy the summer!
On Wisconsin,
Lisa