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| ISSN 1499-1209 | © Stanford Solutions |
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Home > Vol.
2, No. 2 > Open Articles |
Mar/Apr 2002 | |
Peter Drucker's at it Again!
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| Figure 1: Three Ships: Leader, Partner and Member |
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Graphic reprinted with permission of SLA
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The February 2002 issue of Information Outlook (remember, that journal I keep encouraging you to steal from your Information Professional?) includes an interview with management guru extraordinaire, Peter Drucker.
Why is a guy of this caliber, a BUSINESS guy, bothering with librarians and libraries? Read on.
As usual, Drucker comes right out and hits us right between the eyes with his on target observations:
[Public libraries] contain data. The customer decides what is information… [T]he general library is just a store, although librarians can -- and do -- make a difference.
Immediately, Drucker recognizes that there are differences between libraries. This is essential to understanding that your company's library or information center is not the same animal as the local library in your neighborhood. The customer base is totally different.
If you compare, I don't think you'll find 10 copies of the latest Danielle Steel book on display at your company's library, while you just may be able to get that annual report for the competition's company from a large public library. You will certainly be able to retrieve competitive intelligence from your company's library. If not, your library is not aligned with the company's business goals.
But, that is another topic.
Drucker points to where the knowledge in libraries lives - in the librarians:
In a special library, the librarians have the knowledge that enables them to convert the data in the library into information for the clients. I am always amazed how much topical knowledge special librarians have about the international trade that is the business of their customers.
Librarians in a special library know what their customers need and often they know it much better than their customers in the organization do. They can -- and do -- anticipate the customer's information needs. They can -- and do -- reach out to the customer and point him or her in the right information direction. They can -- and do know what new data is in their customer's field or sphere of interest.
That's a lot to know and to pay attention to. But, that's what librarians do. If you don't know what your customer wants and expects, you are a liability, a cost center, expendable.
When asked what librarians should be paying attention to, Drucker turns to business basics. One of the most critical business trends that Drucker points out is something near and dear to knowledge management (KM), the need for organizations to have information about the outside world.
Yes, we are talking about competitive intelligence. Drucker is adamant on this point:
Companies may know a good deal about their customers. They know nothing, as a rule, about their non-customers -- the people who should be our customers but buy from someone else. Why do they do that? And yet it is the non-customer where important changes always start first.
He goes on to say that the same is true of technology; that technological advances happen outside the organizations that are impacted the most.
Another business trend that Drucker tells librarians to watch and learn about has to do with recognizing the difference between managing employees and managing people. Again, an issue KM wrestles with constantly. Drucker states that there is a split happening, as managing employees deals more with regulations and rules, avoiding trouble, while managing people focuses in on developing individuals and their strengths.
Drucker loves nothing about libraries:
They are places. I love librarians, and have been doing so since I was a young trainee, not yet 18, on my first job.
Drucker had a terribly boring job, and there was a library across the street, where a librarian opened his eyes to the world of reading. Reading ties in to Drucker's assertion that people be generally educated, and reading all the time. As for finding information on the web, Drucker has nothing good to say about it. He sticks to his guns, telling us that the web does not have a librarian who can say to us:
This is what you are looking for, and this is where you'll find it.
| Figure 2: Librarians Convert the Chaotic Universe |
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Drucker claims,
The code and the librarian convert the chaotic and unlimited universe of data into information and no web will ever be able to do this, if only because there is no way to classify the universe. You first have to codify it.
There you are, taxonomy vendors. The gauntlet has been thrown down, by none other than Peter Drucker!
This is perhaps the most telling statement in the interview:
To let you in on a secret, when I had a new client in a field of which I knew nothing…
…I would first go to the librarian in the company's special library and say, 'I know absolutely nothing about this field. What do I need to read and know that will enable me to understand what the client is talking about?'
Not once have I been let down.
If Peter Drucker can admit that he does not know something, then anyone should be able to. But, that is not the case. One of the leading causes of people NOT approaching a reference librarian to ask a question is precisely this: they do not want to appear to be stupid. A sort of vicious cycle, since just by being in a library, you are most likely looking for an answer.
Peter Drucker will be the keynote speaker at the Special Libraries Association Annual Meeting, June 10, 2002, in Los Angeles.
"The Icon Speaks: An Interview with Peter Drucker", Information Outlook. Vol. 6, No. 2, February 2002. Special Libraries Association. Full article available for a limited time at www.sla.org/content/Events/conference/2002annual/whatsnew/druckfeb.cfm
Information Outlook is available to members of Special Libraries Association. See www.sla.org for further information.
Knowledge Practice Ezine, Vol. 2, No. 5, April 1, 2002 (publication of AOK: Association of Knowledge Work)
To be put on the mailing list for this magazine and receive other benefits, sign up for membership at www.kwork.org/join.html.
Read more about Pauline Harris.
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