Validating library strategies by assuming the user perspective

Strategies determine the long-term direction of organizations and institutions and they are historically formulated by top management. In an increasingly interconnected world, more and more stakeholders are expecting to contribute to both the development and the implementation of strategies. Strategies must therefore be understandable by all stakeholders and clear to implement. The first step is to determine what objectives are to be achieved and individual strategies are developed in this context, then, how these goals can be achieved. Thus, strategies define paths to the goal. But what exactly is a “goal”? A lot of problems arise because goals’ and ‘objectives’ are not clearly defined and can mean many different things to different stakeholders. As a consequence, the word "goal" is not effective but can be more precisely differentiated into "Results", "Uses" and "Benefits". There is a method developed in New Zealand for validating your strategy, i.e. to see what needs to be done; (is it logical?);, to make the strategy more successful; (is there compelling Evidence that the strategy will definitely produce the desired outcomes) and to looks at the costs compared to the benefits (is it ‘worth it’). It is done by adding or integrating the user’s perspective to the planning and validating process. The first step in validating a library project, program or strategy is to define it rigorously using the following general sequence: There are (Library) Projects which will produce Results which customers will Use to create Benefits. This logical sequence is called PRUB. PRUB describes the processes in the relationship between the library and the users. To validate each library project, program or strategy it must be described as a Sub-Strategy which contains all the linked Projects, Results and Uses which are both necessary and sufficient to generate the desired Benefits. The Projects and Results are within the control of library management whereas the Uses and Benefits are on the user side. This shows that strategy development should start with value to customers (i.e. Benefits), so all strategies can be user-orientated at last. The paper will show the new method using a practical example from the library environment. Strategies in Libraries The word “strategy” originates from military context and meant the art of leadership of armed forces during the war (Raps, 2009, 9). Today the word strategy is used in very different setting and often relating to economics or finance, although it emerged only in the sixties as a field of study and practice in business administration. (Kiechel, 2010, xii). In these days strategy was defined by “the determination of the basic long-term goals of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals.” (Chandler, 1962, 13). In the eighties Porter introduced the aspects of competition and of learning organization in his definition of strategy and another twenty years later Henry Mintzberg differentiated the term into five different definitions: plan, pattern, position, ploy, perspective.(Mintzberg, 1998, 9) In the last years the aspects of competition and sustainability seem to become more important. So it’s hard to decide for one single definition, especially in the light of fact that libraries are not private enterprises but public sector organizations or authorities, whose (financial) framework is very different from those of corporations. On the other hand all those definitions have some common characteristics that are valid in general for different kinds of organizations. Strategies are