Coordinating strategic planning efforts

In The New Planning for Results, Sandra Nelson outlines a results driven process to enable libraries to respond quickly to changing environments. During this process, she mentions identifying the future and imagining possibilities like we just did. She then suggests deciding which needs are actually within reach. She takes it a step further and says that once a committee decides it is well suited to meet these needs, they would also want to think about whether other organizations are meeting the needs in question.

I’m sure that GPLS is already considering what other organizations are doing since Cal works for SOLINET. But, since the large notebook I was given only had information about GPLS and what GPLS is doing, I personally did not know if other organizations may be addressing some of the same needs or how aware members of the strategic planning team were of other library organizations.

We had endless ideas about what libraries should have but not an endless budget to fulfill those needs. For example, we mentioned the need to market to politicians among others. One of SELA’s primary purposes is to provide a unifying force strong enough to influence legislation and to attract funding. Marketing to politicians could be a need SELA could meet or GPLS could coordinate their efforts to work with SELA. Perhaps we should not only look at the future of libraries and what GPLS can do but broaden the focus to see what others are doing too.