Category Archives: Library

Wisdom Wednesday – Rock Stars, Rock Steadies, and Rock Bottoms

I was recently out for supper with a bunch of friends including one high level manager who oversees a Canada-wide IT team for a large corporation. It was interesting to compare notes about our workplaces. He said he is all about high performers and strongly believes in performance management, expecting high results but also rewarding […]

Wisdom Wednesday – Overt vs. Covert

This isn’t really advice I was given by someone but more of a personal observation I’ve made after seeing it repeatedly over the years.  Whenever there is something decided, especially when its some sort of major decision, there’s usually an overt reason people give for the decision but also a covert reason they may or […]

Throwback Thursday – #tbt – HR Unit (January 2012)

Yesterday’s post got me a bit nostalgic for the HR Unit I was part of for the first few years of my career at RPL – what a great team!

Wisdom Wednesday – Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch

I first heard this advice years ago when I was still in the role of Organization Development Specialist at Regina Public Library. In hindsight, I don’t think I appreciated what an amazing job that was to have right at the start of my library career. Our Director (still the same guy all these years later) […]

Wisdom Wednesday – Hiring Is A Million Dollar Decision

A long time ago, a colleague gave me a way to think of hiring that totally changed how I view the process of selecting a candidate. Before, I was just thinking “Who can best do this job?” but he pointed out that you’re not just hiring the person for the immediate job but potentially for […]

Saturday Snap – Boundaries? What Boundaries?

In my Wisdom Wednesday series, I’ll eventually do a post about the difference I see between what I call “black & white” thinkers and “grey area” thinkers.  (Myers-Briggs has 16 classifications.  True Colors has 4.  Hamology basically only has 2!) One big aspect of this difference is that are those who think there are hard […]

Wisdom Wednesday – Every Bad Manager Thinks They’re A Good Manager

We didn’t see eye to eye on everything but I was very fortunate to have the first manager in libraries that I did as he was very experienced and knowledgeable (obviously people have to start somewhere but it can be a lot tougher if your manager is someone who’s newly hired or has only been […]

Wisdom Wednesday – “What If You’re Both Right?”

This was a lesson I learned from my first manager at RPL (who also happened to be the Manager of HR so had tons of great insights into managing people, dealing with conflict and so on.) The context was that I was in a very unique role as Organizational Development Specialist, responsible for all staff […]

Wisdom Wednesday – Actions, Not Words

I’ve been thinking about actions vs. words a lot lately. One of the things that really brought home this important distinction was when I had to leave the Regent Place branch of Regina Public Library after eight years as Branch Head following a re-org of supervisors and managers. It was a pretty emotional time and […]

Throwback Thursday – Happy Work-iversary To Me! (September 2008)

Friday is my 15th work anniversary of starting at RPL which is hard to believe!  (Uhm, time flies when you’re having fun?!?) I was trying to write a long post talking about the various roles I’ve held at RPL, some of the highs and lows, and more.  But it was just getting longer and longer […]