Managing for Value and Performance: Processes in Developing Library Plans and Best Value. Proceedings of a Seminar Held at Loughborough University 7‐8 March 2000

Citation

Revill, D. (2002), "Managing for Value and Performance: Processes in Developing Library Plans and Best Value. Proceedings of a Seminar Held at Loughborough University 7‐8 March 2000", New Library World, Vol. 103 No. 11/12, pp. 489-490. https://doi.org/10.1108/nlw.2002.103.11_12.489.3

There are seven papers from this seminar. Peter Beauchamp, Chief Library Adviser in the UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport, discusses library plans from the governmental point of view. Libraries now appear to have a higher profile, perhaps primarily because of their role in the information and communications technology network. Central government requires local authorities to review their functions “having regard to a combination of economy, efficiency and effectiveness” (p. 5). They are required to “make comparisons on the basis of outcomes rather than outputs” (p. 6). The difficulties, definitions and operationalisation of these issues are not explored.

Local government services are expected to achieve “efficiency gains” of 2 percent per annum. A cynic (realist?) might suggest that this is simply a way of avoiding funding increases to cope with inflation (which, itself, is about 2 per cent per annum).

The second paper is by David Wrigley on “Business process analysis for value and performance” outlining some 20 plus techniques from brainstorming to cause and effect analysis. “Quality function deployment” asks “What do customers really want or desire from our products and services?” (p. 9). This is the $64,000 question. The distinctions between “wants” and “needs” are not explored (Line, 1974). It also asks “What are the priorities in their wants and desires?” How one sums priorities and whether one then satisfies all first priorities before moving on to second priorities are matters avoided.

Some of the dilemmas involved are recognised by Graham Combe and Hilary Ely in their very considered and practical paper on “… best value and library plans” in Surrey: from ‘It can be difficult to assess the impact of what your are doing … when the environment … is constantly changing” (p. 21) through “There can be very real tension between preserving the status quo, which many people want, and developing services in new ways …” (p. 22) to “The extent to which we are expected to provide a general, ‘broadcast’, or strategic service, can conflict with the extent to which we are focusing on specific local issues …” (p.22) and “The Annual Library Plan is strictly sectoral” (p. 26) and tends to assume a stereotypical local government management structure neither of which is good “best value thinking” (p. 25).

David Lightfoot of Lancashire County Library also takes a critical look at “A broad view of strategy and planning for best value”. He points out that “Service department contributions … become watered down in the desire to keep plans relevant, brief and focused” and that the “effort required to prepare … plans and the incorporation of snippets of these into corporate performance indicators and action plans can have a de‐motivating effect on staff” (p. 34). Typically the detail of what one wants to do gets generalised out of existence as it moves up the reporting hierarchy. And the devil is always in the detail!

Lesley Ray’s “Best value – planning in a dynamic environment” on the Greenwich experience consists solely of his Powerpoint slides.

Carol Barnes, from Redcar and Cleveland, describes “best value” in the context of the “management of change” as a new unitary authority is created. This is a most informative paper as it gets down to the specific questions dealt with by “Service Improvement Panels”. There is one Freudian slip among the relatively few typos in this publication – “The methodology for the comparison fails into four stages” (p. 47)!

Margaret Kinnel Evans concludes with a paper describing research intended to produce a toolkit for “Self assessment for value and performance” while also commenting critically on annual library plans.

Presumably there were other papers circulated during the seminar and as a result of discussion. These might have helped to clarify the details and have offered practical examples of plans, reports and so on and hence helped make sense of the more generalised presentations. It seems that the major problem is one of reconciling, and making a coherent message from, the various strategy statements and measurements now required. These start with a local authority’s own strategic plan, within which the library service creates its own annual plan incorporating “best value” derived from “the four Cs” (challenge, compare, consult, compete), assessed by agreed performance indicators all related to, and consistent with, the new public library standards.

This is enough to cope with, yet I am mildly surprised that “opportunity cost” has not been added to the list. One tip seems to be to mention the buzzwords as frequently as possible in your papers. You do not survive, or thrive, unless you join the game, become skilled at it and, ideally, get ahead of the field. These papers, despite, in my opinion, a lack of sufficient exploration of the subtleties (a consequence of restricted length?), should help.