Indiana University   Chemistry Building 003,    800 E. Kirkwood    Bloomington, IN 47405-7102
Phone: (812)  855-9452                 Fax: (812)  855-6611               Email: libchem@indiana.edu

Management Guidelines 

"The absence of a decision is in itself a decision."

1. The general philosophy of management and supervision that we strive for is participation by all staff in the management process. This means that everyone should have an opportunity to provide input to a major decision before the decision is made. More importantly, if the suggestion is rejected, the staff member has the right to know why it was rejected. However, from that point, it is assumed that the employee and supervisor/department head have an understanding of what is expected in terms of job performance. The primary variable which affects productivity at that point is the mutual understanding of what is to be done.

2. Improvement of library service is directly dependent on the people who work for you.

3. The best managers make more mistakes than the poorest managers, but they don't repeat those mistakes. It is unacceptable to attempt to conceal a problem that occurs. You must protect your boss by letting him or her know what things have gone wrong.

4. People solve problems. Policies, procedures, documents, systems, and manuals only set guidelines. When they are wrong, you don't apply them. In our situation, the over-ruling of a policy or procedure in any case should not be done without prior approval of one of the professional librarians if at all possible.

5. The "boss" or supervisor has the responsibility to help you do your job. Managers facilitate as well as control.

6. Communicating a new idea initially in a memorandum is usually not the best way to put forth a new idea. Time is needed for new ideas to take hold. It is important in most cases that written communication be a confirmation of something already said.

7. Staff should do more than just report problems. They should also indicate possible solutions. The boss/supervisor then has the responsibility to let the staff know which alternative solutions are acceptable and to choose one of those.

8. In no case should the management chain of command be bypassed.

9. It takes a great deal of discipline to spend your time on things which are not trivial. You must be willing to allow people to make decisions where your opinion is not critical.

10. What people should expect of a supervisor:

• Let us agree that we both understand what you expect of me.
• Leave me alone and let me do it.
• Help me if I ask for help.
• Tell me how I am doing as I go along.
• Reward me according to my performance.

11. What supervisors should do or expect:

• I am responsible for seeing to it that the organization gets its money's worth from the people working for it.
• I am responsible for seeing that people working under me get their just dues.
• My primary responsibility is to see that the job is getting done.
• The higher up in management you are, the less freedom you have.
• Whether people are nice or not is irrelevant if the job is not getting done.
• Performance evaluation is done continually throughout the year. I owe it to the employee to avoid any surprises on the formal written evaluations. Performance evaluations should be forward-looking rather than backward-looking.
• I must formulate statements that conceptualize what the people who work for me are to do. These definitions are to be used:
  • Goals - the broad guidelines for work to be accomplished in line with the IU Libraries priorities.
  • Objectives - More specific guidelines; the strategies to achieve the goals.
  • Policies - A subset of objectives relating to day-to-day tasks or activities.
    1. Goals should be specific, although they may be difficult to meet.
    2. Goals should not be revised downward to reflect what is actually happening.
    3. Goals must be quantifiable (how many, what, when).
    4. Goals should be reliable in the sense that the criteria are valid.
    5. Achievements that lead to our meeting the goals must be measurable.

12. Library and information service objectives must relate to the real business of the department or population served. The goals and objectives should be established in terms of their impact on the performance of operating groups. It is necessary to understand the organization's long-range and short-range goals and objectives in order to set meaningful and significant library goals. To be successful, we must concentrate on projects run by individuals in a position to affect library funding and library support. New projects are most in need of information.

13. Communication is very important. Work hard at developing informal communication channels. Talk to people, informally or through formal appointments, to find out what they are doing and to suggest support the library may be able to provide. Part of our job is to educate the users as to what the library can do for them.

With thanks to Herb White's personnel management pronouncements
5 March 1996

URL:http://www.indiana.edu/~libchem/manage.html
Last Updated 07/19/00        
Comments: libchem@indiana.edu
Copyright 1997, The Trustees of Indiana University