We, the people

This blog is supposed to give you an insight into what’s on my desk – and perhaps it should also tell you something about what’s on my mind (so long as it’s CILIP-related of course – otherwise that really would take me down the vanity publishing route!).

What’s on my mind at the moment is the second phase of CILIP’s evolution.  In the run-up to unification, in 2002, we promised to create a new organisation (not just an LA and IIS retread) and I think we’ve kept that promise.  During the last five years – the first phase of CILIP’s evolution – we’ve reviewed every aspect of CILIP so that, from January 2008, everything that CILIP does will be the result of decisions taken by CILIP and not simply handed on from our predecessor organisations.

Which means the end of this year will see a very significant milestone for CILIP – completion of the five-year journey from infancy to maturity as a genuinely new organisation.

So what comes next?  What does the next five-year journey look like?  Well, I offer you seven trends which might shape CILIP’s future direction of travel:

• Aggregation   Bringing together librarians and information scientists into a single enlarged professional domain was the first step.  Our professional territory is the whole of the information/ mediation business – and that includes knowledge management, records management, and archives.  We need much closer working relationships across the whole of this territory in order to become more visible and more powerful as a cluster of cognate professional activities.

• Customisation   This is about moving away from a “one size fits all” supply-side approach to a more personalised and individually responsive culture of customer service.  It’s also about recognising that different people want to engage with CILIP in different ways – as Members, as pay-as-you-go customers, as online subscribers, and as partners and stakeholders who give their time and energy to work with CILIP.  We’re already moving down this road structurally – CILIP as a membership body, CILIP Enterprises, CILIP on the web, and CILIP in partnership (for example with all the shadowing schools which contribute to the CILIP Carnegie Award) – but we need to continue the journey culturally.

• Concentration  - which means being very clear about what it is we do (and don’t do).  We’re very clear about the four areas of business in which CILIP Enterprises competes for market share – recruitment, training, publishing, events.  We need to be equally clear about the areas of activity we engage in as a professional institute – and the outcomes we’re seeking from those activities.  What are the “products” which colleagues buy into when they make the choice to become Members of CILIP?  Recognition of their expertise as a registered practitioner?  Advocacy of their value and their viewpoint with employers and with government?  Personal and professional development through activism within CILIP?  A sense of belonging and status through membership of an acknowledged community of practice – with CILIP itself and with the various Branches and Groups of CILIP?  Information, awareness and advice – from colleagues, from networking opportunities, from the various CILIP channels of communication?  We need to continue the process of clarifying where we should concentrate our resources.

• Computerisation  - an old-fashioned word but it fits the rhythm of my writing.  I mean taking full advantage of ICT to make CILIP a genuinely e-enabled organisation and community.  We’ve made a start with investment in the website, in the new membership database, and in our ICT infrastructure – but we still have a long way to go in terms of systems development and service delivery.

• Consolidation   sometimes, in the excitement of moving forward with new developments, organisations neglect the basics – and there’s no point in looking great going forward if you leave the back door exposed (sorry – football speak!)  CILIP sometimes needs to do better in terms of basic “hygiene” systems around administration, information and communication, focusing on the basics of effective customer service as well as sound finances and good governance. 

So there’s a list of five trends which will take CILIP further along the road on which we already travelling.  There are also two further (and interrelated) trends, which need to be brought into prominence in our forward thinking: federation and collaboration.

• Federation   We’ve moved some distance down this road already by recognising that we have three distinct types of professional unit within the CILIP family: specialist Groups, regional Branches in England – and CILIP in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.  Devolution makes a difference and the political direction of travel in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast is moving increasingly away from London.  How can we best relate to a more federated UK with a more federated CILIP?

• Collaboration   For me, this is the Big One – and the reason I’ve occasionally referred to the next phase of CILIP’s evolution as moving from CILIP 1.0 to CILIP 2.0.  It’s also why I’ve called this piece of blogthink “We the people”.  A long time ago I read Charles Handy’s Understanding organisations and one thing which stuck in my mind, was (I paraphrase) the distinction between a traditional institution (Doric pillars) and a modern network (spider’s web or DNA diagram).  Well, CILIP is an Institute – but it’s also a network.  We need to retain the good things about being an institution (tradition, authority, respect, probity, etc) because these work to the advantage of everyone in the CILIP community.  But we also need to do more to bring forward the power of our network.  We have all the right ingredients – a community of around 35,000 people who support CILIP with their money or their time or both; a strong tradition of personal and collective activism; a wide range of professional and social frameworks in our Branches and Groups; and investment in new technology including beginning to dip our toe in the deep waters of social media.  In discourse about politics and about the professions there’s an emerging recognition that the “top-down” approach does not always work well.  There’s an excellent article about this – in the context of politics and civic innovation – by Sophia Parker in the October issue of RSA Journal, and last year the think-tank Demos produced an interesting collection of essays (Production values: futures for professionalism) which talked about professionalism outgrowing its traditional legitimacy and needing to move to a model of greater partnership between professionals and the people.  As it is in the macroclimate of politics and the professions, so it is in the microclimate of CILIP.  What do we need to do to move from a “top-down” culture (which fosters the dreaded “us and them” syndrome”) to a culture of collaboration which enables and empowers the whole CILIP community and releases the power of the CILIP network for professional innovation and advancement?

Somewhere in all of this is the road map which will take CILIP into its second phase of evolution: aggregation across a broad landscape of cognate professional activities; customisation to give every member of the CILIP community a sense of personalised service; concentration on our core business and the products which colleagues wish to buy into; computerisation by making best use of ICT to create a genuinely e-enabled organisation; consolidation to make sure we get the basics right, including the basics of effective administration, excellent customer service, sound finance and good governance; federation to recognise the reality of devolution; and collaboration to move from a “top down” institutional culture to a culture which empowers and enables the CILIP community.

But that’s only my view.  What do you think are the trends which should drive the second phase of CILIP’s evolution?  Let me know ……