I’m struck today by Seth Godin’s blog last week about leadership as a marketing strategy.
What works is leading. Leading a (relatively) small group of people. Taking them somewhere they’d like to go. Connecting them to one another…Go down the list of online success stories. The big winners are organizations that give tribes of people a platform to connect. Go down the list of fashion businesses or business to business organizations. Same thing. Charities, too. Churches, certainly…People want to connect. They want you to do the connecting.
Is your library positioned to lead your community in this desire to connect? Is this something we can do better than other community-based organizations?
Librarians sometimes lament our lack of resources and our lack of ability to be on the leading edge of the information industry. That’s fine. If we turn the information industry upside down and think about it from an intimate, local perspective, does that make it easier to imagine us leading this charge? And what would that do to our brand?
[...] 3 11 2008 The following “Lead: It’s the New Fast-Follow” post [http://blog.webjunctionworks.org/index.php/2008/11/02/lead-its-the-new-fast-follow/] by Chrystie on Online Collaboration is [...]
I love this Chrystie.
This isn’t a library thing but I think it fits: We’re trying to get the local food co-op to get better bike parking. They have lots of excuses (some good) for not stepping up. I think I’ll push this leadership angle as an example of _why_ the reasons to do it go beyond just finding the money for “alternative transportation infrastructure.”
Instead, the choice they make to do it can stand as an example of their leadership on sustainability issues. Such a stand helps connect them to all those folks who believe in that angle (whether they actually bike to the store or not).