Running a Value Proposition Exercise in Your Library
Good afternoon and welcome to Running a Value
Proposition Exercise in Your Library “How-To” Lessons from the ARL Liaison
Institute. My name is Judy Ruttenberg and I’m with
the Association of Research Libraries. It is my great pleasure to introduce today’s
presenter, MJ D’Elia, head of Learning and Curriculum Support at the University of Guelph
McLaughlin Library. We have muted all participants today to reduce
background noise. We do encourage your participation through
the chat window box in the lower left-hand corner of your screen. This session will be recorded, captioned, and
made available on the Association of Research Library’s website in approximately one week
along with the presentation slides. Yesterday, you should have received a facilitators
tools kit to accompany this webinar. That tool kit will also be made available
along with the recording. We thank you for joining us today and look
forward to a terrific session. Over to you MJ. Thank you, Judy. So, welcome to Running a Value Proposition
Exercise in Your Library.
I first should begin with a quick thank you
to Rita Vine at the University of Toronto for improving whatever title I had before
this. She improved it and I’m
excited today to share it with you. We will just move ahead here as some of you
are getting your audio sorted out it looks like. For today’s session, I’ve broken it down
into smaller segments with each segment divided by this purple slide. And at the purple slide is a good chance that
we can pause if questions have come in—and I encourage you to ask questions if you have
them. Just type them in the chat box and then Judy
can highlight them and ask them. So, we’ll have sort of these pauses at the
purple slides where we can have a, have a conversation and clarify anything that’s
come up so that we don’t have to wait for…wait ‘til the end.
So, once again, I am MJ. I’m at the University of Guelph. You’ve got my email address there and a
caricature. And if you want to tweet, there’s my Twitter
address. And, as you heard from the intro, I work in the
library. I’m in our, essentially, our learning common,
but I also, teach for our college of business within the university and I teach entrepreneurship. So the stuff we are going to talk about today
comes from some of my work with the students who are studying entrepreneurship,
the students who are trying to invent new business ideas, and that sort of thing. So, what I like about being able to bring
it back to the library is I think there are some great transferrable principles, while
admittedly a slightly different discipline, as in business.
I think we have a lot to learn so I am hoping
that you see that today and hear that. And, as I said, I encourage questions as
we go. What are you getting yourself into? Well here’s the basic agenda. I want to provide you with a bit of context
and overview, which would include a quick mention of the ARL Liaison Institute and sort
of what we did there, as well as where this value proposition conversation
come from. And then once we’ve got that foundation,
jump into the actual stages of designing a value proposition. And, because this is a little bit more practical,
this is the “how-to” portion, we want to wrap up with some things to think about
if you want to have this conversation at your library with your staff.
You know, what sort of considerations do you
need on the front end as you prepare? What works? What doesn’t? And I’m sure some of that will also come out
in the questions we have that you guys pose today. And, in the end, if there are any overarching
questions, happy to, to deal with that as well. So, that’s where we’re headed. Really, I have two basic objectives. One is to introduce you to the basic elements
of a value proposition design exercise. Kind of what is it? How do you do it? And really why would you do it? And the second objective, as I hinted there
on the agenda slide, is just to offer tips for how you could do this—How you could
start this conversation with your staff or with various groups. So, I thought I would start… We’re going to work color-coded here. So, here’s a yellow, kind of an ugly yellow,
slide but I wonder if, just go give a sense of who you guys are and who’s on the other
end of the phone that I can’t see.
In one sentence, if you wouldn’t mind, type
in the chat box, why did you choose to attend the webinar? What works, or what jumped out to you? And, yeah. Go ahead. I see some answers coming in. I’ll just give you a second. We’ll see if we can crash the
chat box. How about that? Yeah. Tips and tricks… ways to present stuff….interested
in the concept…intrigued by the title—that’s good…I want to learn to pitch my ideas… prepare
for future assessments… anticipate potentially using this in their retreat—nice one Erin…like
to try it again with more information.
Good. I’m glad people have already tried some of
this stuff. Excellent. So, alright. I didn’t see anyone say I joined to heckle
MJ so I’m excited about that as well. So let’s jump in. I want to give you a bit of context here. And some of you will be, I’m sure, familiar
with the ARL Liaison Institute from last June. I should say at the outset, I was not on the
original organizing committee and was more brought in as a consultant to help with the
kinds of activities that would help the conversation. So, just a quick refresher… That institute was a combination of
librarians from Cornell, Columbia, and Toronto, at Cornell. There were about 45 to 50 of us. A lot were liaisons. Some were AULs, that sort of thing.
And, my understanding, again, not being on
the primary planning committee, at least initially, was, we’re starting to think about liaison
work and the future of liaison work. And when they asked me to help them with the
session, I would like to…when they asked me to help it was like, “well, what do you
want? What do you want to do?” and we chose the value proposition activity,
which we’re going to talk about today, in an attempt to help people to think like users,
or like, imagine themselves in the shoes of people who use the library. And, it was sort of…a way to flip it on
its head, instead of always thinking about it from our angle, what about the users. And the other part of the value proposition
exercise, which we’ll unpack today is that it’s about articulating the value that we
think we bring. And I should point out here the last bullet
point on the slide. It’s not meant to be facetious at all. We bring lots of value.
It’s that we often only talk about it on
our terms. And so the value proposition is an attempt
to say, “Okay, we think we’re bringing this value. Let’s find out if that’s accurate.” So, we chose that activity and I’ll explain
roughly how it worked and we can get into the mechanics towards the end of the webinar
today. But, we spent about five or six
hours doing a value proposition, a set of conversations, around the value proposition.
And it was spread over two days. So, we started the afternoon of day one, and
then we had several things to reflect on on the morning of the second day. And sort of all in, maybe 6 hours. And lots of conversation, lots of activity. So, we structured the conversation this way
just so you can get it in your mind that we had ten groups. So, we took the 45 people that were there
and divided them into groups of four or five, so we have ten groups. And we assigned each of those groups different
customer segments. And we’ll talk about segmentation in a second. So, you know, we had groups looking at what
is a liaison’s work looks like when we’re serving faculty when we’re working with
international grad students when we’re working with an administrator.
And started to try and unpack what liaison
work looks like about these segments. Now, the irony of today’s session is we’re
doing a webinar on an activity that is typically very hands-on. So, at the institute, for instance, these
small groups had a bunch of markers and sticky notes and lots of flip chart papers and they’re
together in their conversations, and, writing a lot of stuff down…debating and
discussing and here we are in a webinar with sort of a one-way conversation. So, I’m going to talk a lot about how this
works. So you can imagine that kind of scenario where
you’re in a room, you’ve got a bunch of groups and, you know they’re typing their
ideas, or they’re writing their ideas in marker on sticky notes, debating, and that
sort of thing.
So, why don’t I pause just for a second
to see if there are any questions? just about the institute—if I can clarify
that for anyone if there’s anything related to that, that would help you for today. >>Judy Ruttenberg: No, looks like you’re
good to continue >>MJ: We’re good to go. Thanks, Judy. Alright, so hopefully most of you received
your tool kit. I’ve tried to mark on the purple slides,
the approximate spot in the tool kit where the content comes from. So, for this overview, it’s just
that second page where I want to talk a little bit about it and give you a sense of where
the concept of the value proposition came from, at least not way back in the history
of the value proposition, which is where this activity comes from so you get a sense of
the source material and also so that you think, don’t think, I invented this.
I want to acknowledge where it came from and
encourage you to look up the sources too. But before I jump in, I should acknowledge
that there are business terms ahead and I say that, you know, kind of jokingly but the
reality is, business conversations can be challenging in libraries, for various reasons. So if you’re uncomfortable with management
jargon and even just the philosophy of business to make money, and so, I would just say a
healthy suspicion is totally fine—we shouldn’t stop critically thinking at all—but that
we shouldn’t also let the terminology be a barrier in the conversation—that this
the technique can indeed be insightful and helpful and I’m hoping it’s not a barrier for most,
but it’s helpful as long as you plan to run a session that may get a bit of pushback
on, you know, for instance, the use of customers. And I think your challenge as the facilitator,
and even today is just to say customers are that stand-in word, that catch-all word that’s
either, if you prefer user, patron, stakeholder, or constituent—it doesn’t matter. It’s the people that use and need the services
we offer.
And similarly with the idea of value, in a
business context, very, you know, value often just means can we make money. And in libraries, that’s much more problematic
that way. And so, we can think of value a little more
as, you know, are we delivering what people need. And I threw that last one in just as a joke. There’s no synergy in today’s presentation,
I promise. So my journey to the value proposition exercise
started with this book, known as Business Model Generation. And, this book hit the scene and then became
a best seller around the world I think what was interesting about this book
was, it was an attempt to say spending all of your time planning your business and writing
huge financial plans is almost a waste of time at the outset. What you want to do is figure out how your
business works. And, it’s sort of seductive in the sense
of, this book focuses on a single tool, which I’ve got here, known as the Business Model
Canvas. And really, the premise of the Business Model
Canvas is that you can describe your entire operation on one page with 9 building blocks.
And it’s beyond the scope of
this webinar to talk about each of these building blocks. I just want to point out that the value proposition
is right in the middle. So, your whole business pivots on the idea
that you can provide value. In other words, provide something that your
customers want. And, if the right side, if you look at this
canvas, on the right side, you see everything that’s customer-facing—you know, your
customer segment, you’re reaching them. And on the left side, is infrastructure based—all
the things we have to do as organizations to deliver the value proposition.
Now what’s interesting about this book is
there’s not a lot on how to write a good value proposition. And I think they must have realized that because
their sequel was the book, more recently in the last couple of years, published, I think,
2014, Value Proposition Design. And this is the book where the activity
comes from. And so, it’s very similar, I would say,
what’s perhaps different, and useful about this book is it’s full of techniques and
strategies and ways to have these conversations. I’ll cover the basics today in terms of
what we did at the liaison institute but this book is very helpful, you know, twenty-three
dollars, kind of, not expensive and it’s just got a great way and also tips for facilitating
the conversation too. So, it might be worth looking it up if you’re
keen on this conversation to get your copy.
So, again, a quick pause for questions. There’s been a few questions about getting
the tool kit. Hopefully, you guys can get that, get someone
to send that to you if you haven’t seen it yet, or search your email again. Are there any questions at this point? … around things we’ve covered so far. I know we are still intro, at the intro stage. >>Judy: There was one comment that given that
our universities are… may use this kind of business language that
it’s good to be familiar with it.
>>MJ: Uh-huh. Definitely. Good to be familiar with it. You know, you can be comfortable or not comfortable
with the language but it’s helpful to at least be aware of it. And I see a question there around, “How
does this relate to a book…the book “Start with Why”. It’s very related. That’s a great book to read.
This is more the techniques of how to have
this conversation and hopefully getting to the why. And I think you’re going to see that in
the next section here. OK, so let’s jump ahead. First basic definition. What is the value proposition? What are we trying to do? There are lots of definitions, some more complex. I just like this one.
It’s simple. The combination of products and services that
create value for a particular customer segment. But, I should point out here, the first point
I want to make, anyway, that the second part of the definition is that the value’s
actually in the eye of the beholder. It’s in the eye of the customer segment. We may say a lot of things we do are really
valuable but if that value isn’t at least recognized by the customer segment, then we
have some challenges.
And when you’re doing value proposition
design, one of the ways you understand the customer is by using what they call the Customer
Profile Map. And I promise we’ll unpack this in a second
but I just wanted to show it to you. And the goal is to think of your customer
and think of that sort of three broad buckets of what they’re facing—you know, the jobs
that they need to do, what they’re trying to accomplish, and then the frustrations they
encounter. And so as we think through this, that’s,
that’s a way to understand the segment. And again, we’ll talk more in a second. Back to the definition here…the other part
is that it’s a combination of things we offer. So, and very tangible things. Products and services that they see value
in. And when you’re doing this exercise there’s
a similar map called the Value Map for us to think about our response.
So, what the customers need is the first
part—understanding who they are. And then the second part, what do we offer
and how do we help them achieve what they want to achieve? You’ve got a circle map and a square map—kind
of straightforward, hopefully. And the whole activity is based on
these two maps. And these two maps together form the value
proposition canvas. And so this is really what we did at the liaison
institute and what we’ll unpack over the next little bit here.
And, as we dig deeper into each of these sorts
of segments in each map, we hopefully arrive at new insights and we hopefully see opportunity. I think when it comes down to it, the value proposition
is really about trying to answer the question, “Why would people choose us?” Why did they want that product or service? And sometimes that’s an easier way to think
of it. Instead of trying to match product and service
to customer segment, just ultimately, what we are trying to discover is why they want
us and what we have, and what we want to tell them about that.
So, if you’re kind of on the fence here,
you say, you know, what, why have this conversation? What are the advantages? And I’ve hinted at a few of them already
and there’s more in your tool kit on page 5, maybe, if you want to jump there. I’m going to put a couple on the slides but
I mean, for me, this is my perspective, but I, I think what’s valuable is it
does force you to look at the customer first and look at the whole customer, the
user. So, we’re not just concerned, for instance
on, you know, how an undergraduate student uses the library.
We’re concerned about what is undergraduate
student experiences in their life. Because we have to compete with all the other
things going on. And so starting with trying to understand
who they are, you know, and this touches on other areas. It touches on, like, design thinking and building
empathy for the user and that sort of thing. So, I think it’s aligned with other trends
in libraries, like UX or Design Thinking. The second reason I think it’s a really valuable
conversation is, you know, once you get familiar with working in libraries, it’s easier to
make assumptions about, the work, and about people who are using it.
And it’s not, you know, there’s no ill-intention
at all, it’s just, over time, we do shortcuts and we make assumptions, and value proposition
design would encourage us to challenge and test those assumptions as we go. So, the process builds in a way to
check with your customers about whether they see the same things that you think you’re
seeing. The third reason, and this one, we talked a lot
about this when we did the liaison institute. It’s just actually articulating the value. That can be a challenge.
We like to believe we offer lots of valuable,
or, lots of value to campus, for instance, and want to believe in sort of the public
good of libraries but then when it gets to the nitty-gritty, we’re not always great
at actually just clearly and succinctly in that short, few sentences tell someone why
they should come or why they should use that product or that service. And so this, this forces kind of that articulation,
which I quite like. And then, a side benefit—and having run
this exercise a few times in different contexts—one of the best parts of having this conversation
in your organization is it builds a shared purpose. You start to realize we don’t all think
the same things. So, for instance, at the liaison institute,
you would overhear groups talking and they would start to realize, “Oh, we don’t
mean that when we talk about that or we don’t have that here or that’s not the same in
the department I serve.” And so then you start trying to hash that
out.
Are those differences real or are they perceived? What does that mean? It’s a really helpful way to work together. I do want to jump into the steps but we’re
at a purple slide here so let’s take a minute and see what kinds of questions have come
in. >>Judy: We have a question here from Bryan
Moynihan. Do you have any examples of completed business
model canvases from libraries? >>MJ: I don’t off-hand. I mean, I think it’s an interesting activity
to do even at a project level. So, if you, we can go back to the canvas. But the project level is a way to sort of
map out the resources that might be required on the left side and then ultimately who they’re
targeted at. The challenge with the business model canvas,
and you kind of hinted at it with your question, is that the bottom of that canvas is all the
finances. So sort of the cost, and then the revenue. Right, and as revenue grows, you can reinvest
and that sort of thing.
And that doesn’t always work in libraries
so you have to have a bit of creativity to determine it’s not always about increasing
revenue, it’s about maybe increasing, you know, return or several users, or, you have
to redefine that a little bit. Hopefully, that helps. We can chat offline about how you might run
a business model conversation if you want. But I think we should stick to the value proposition
for today. >>Judy: Great. Thank you. We have another question/comment from Steven
Bell. Does the term solutions provider provide the
value libraries could bring? Solutions that help you gain something you
need or eliminate a problem or pain they have? Or, is solutions too vague? >>MJ: I think that’s something we could
maybe play with throughout the rest of the webinar, to be honest.
When we get into the value map, particularly,
I think that’s where you can sort of see the value that, or the gains that libraries
can create or the pains that we can reduce, and maybe how that is seen. I think solutions provider is a fine term,
but it’s pretty generic too. Do you know? I think my telecommunications company is also
a solutions provider so you would need to be careful, but still, something worth thinking
about and keeping in mind throughout the rest of the webinar. Ok. I think we’ll move on. Alright. So the first stage is just landing
on your customer segment and so I’m, I don’t want to assume that segmentation is a common,
well-known term but, you know, it comes out of marketing. It’s just how you break up a large
group of customers or a market into a smaller, and sometimes more definable group of customers. And this can be important because you
may have to not only market or send messages differently to these subgroups but just, they
have different needs, and so while we are, libraries, one of the best things about libraries
is that they’re open and serve pretty much anyone who can come through those doors,
the reality is each of the people that come through that door, the doors have different
needs and need different services from us so we should be aware of that.
The high level here, how do you segment? Sometimes we get that question. It can depend a little bit on the context
but you know, common areas in marketing anyway are geographic segmentation, and where you live. Demographic stuff around maybe ages, your
age, or stage in life. That sort of stuff. Income or whatever. The third one is more behavioral. And this one’s interesting in the sense
of it’s a little, maybe harder to find. It depends on the context. But one example in the library community may
be dividing by high, frequent users of the library, of the collection, or whatever
the topic is versus infrequent or non-existent. So you can see the divide. It may not depend on what age people are but
their frequency may be really important in a particular context. The last one, marketers love psychographics.
Just your opinions and values about
a given topic might put you in a different category. You know, even what we’ve already talked
about today, your comfort level with management terminology might sort of segment the group
of people attending the conference call today, for instance. So, I just highlight those. I would give you a couple of tips if you’re
going to think about how to do this in your library. It’s best to choose a customer segment or
user segment that you can access and talk to. It’s pretty tough to offer services to people
if you can’t access them. So, in this activity, you’re going to think
about who these people are but then you also want to test your assumption. So, you’re going to want to talk to them
at some point.
So, someone who is readily assessable is very
helpful. If possible, you want to try to move away
from broad, generic categories and I think we tend to do this in higher-ed,
especially in libraries, where we say, “well, we serve faculty. We serve undergrads, maybe graduates. You know, we have alumni.” So we group into these really large categories
but even within those large categories, we can probably segment further. And, at least for me, I’ve found if you
can focus beyond, for instance, faculty and turn it into early career faculty or to faculty
in a certain discipline, you at least are starting to narrow it to a manageable set. Now, does that mean all early career faculty
think the same? No.
But it’s a smaller group than all faculty. So they may have different needs. And it can also be helpful and this may emerge
over time as you do the activity to find a segment that has a common objective. They’re trying to accomplish the same thing,
or a common frustration or obstacle. If they’re all facing the same pain, then
they can sometimes be clumped as a segment to figure out, “alright, that’s a pain
that lots of people have. Lots of people across whatever spectrum are
looking at it. So, what should we do about it?” So the first step is as simple as figuring
out who do we want to know more about. I’ll pause there and give you a chance to
throw in a question or two if we need some clarification. Any questions? >>Judy: I think we have a question which is,
would an example of the pain points be all remote users of the library? >>MJ: That depends on how good your remote
access is, I guess.
Yeah. That’s a good question. And pain points lead us nicely into
the next section so I think we can hold that for a second. Pain points…all I’ll say at this point is,
I think, is pain point depends a lot on the context and there may be very obvious ones,
such as accessing, maybe, remotely. But, there may be things we hadn’t considered
as we start to talk to this customer segment or talk about this customer segment with people
who work with them.
But it’s, I guess the short answer is, “Yes. It definitely could be, but it doesn’t necessarily
have to be.” Anything else Judy? >>Judy: We also have a comment from Rita Vine
on solutions. That solution may be more about us than them
and she suggests maybe it’s more of a conversation and collaboration rather than the solution. >>MJ: Yeah. That’s a good point too.
Thanks, Rita. Alright, let’s jump into stage number 2
here. So, we’ve picked our customer segment and
now we start to, or we have to understand this customer segment. And as I mentioned earlier, we want
to understand them, at least using this activity there are other ways to do this but for
this activity, it’s to think of this segment according to the three buckets you see here. So, you want to think of their jobs and tasks,
which we’ll talk about in a second, the gains. And gains is kind of a weird word but ultimately
what are their desired outcomes in life? What are they trying to do? What do they want to do? And then their pains and frustrations. And so, if we take a look at the first one
here, jobs and tasks, so, it is our chance to sit back and think, “Alright, we’ve
got this customer segment.
What do they want to get done in their work
and their life?” I highlight that because one of the challenges
in this activity is there’s a tendency always to look at them through our lens in the
library and say, “well, they need to do this and they need to do that.” And every library focused sort of things. And those are important to list because we’re
a library. But, the goal of this activity is to
think and be in their shoes. So, think from their perspective. And so the goal then is to think, “Alright. What else are they trying to do in their life?” And I hinted at it earlier.
We’re competing with everything else that’s
going on. And so, we want to acknowledge that
right now and get it up on the board. And this, if you’re going to do this with
your library, I’ll just tell you right now. This is a challenging piece because we’re
so used to focusing on how we provide services to them instead of understanding where they’re
coming from. And so, something to think about. Now, I’ve done a ton of talking, which is
unusual for an activity like this. Usually, I would give instructions and you
would go away and work on it. But, we’re in a webinar and that’s kind
of weird. So, I thought we would do another chat scenario
and I would just give you a customer segment. So I want you to think of teaching faculty
who are trying to, who are working on your campuses. What do they need to get done in their work,
and life, and just throw some answers into the chat box? You know, again, some library-related…so
some are trying to publish, some are trying to design a course for next semester, grade
papers, manage email, research, do advising, trying to teach…imagine that.
Get home in time for dinner… perfect. So, there’s one that’s outside the library. Save time and grade papers. They may work at several campuses so they’ve
got to travel. Research, design, and integrate media and technology
into their courses. Get tenure. Deal with their errant children. Hum…nice one. Create an engaging curriculum. Also, learn how to teach over distance. Get tenure. Pick up kids from school. Answer the student’s email. Exercise, be productive on several levels,
apply for teaching awards, create conference presentations, minimize teaching time to maximize
research time, emotional balance, get grants…look at these, pouring in. excellent. Exercise, run a marathon. Excellent. So, look at ‘em pouring. I’m just going to jump ahead. I think you guys are right on. These are, people in their whole sense have
a bunch of other things, including and often dealing with family stuff. And, negotiating that balance. So while we deal with one side of their life
and we’re not going to solve all their family stuff, the reality is we have to be aware
that that stuff exists because we have to somehow get a space in their work life.
So, if you look at your handout, this is the page
7, sorry, in your tool kit. I’ve listed a few prompting questions that
could help this conversation. So, as you just did in the chat box here,
you were, you know, top of mind—the first things that come to mind. So a short and quick brainstorm is great. And you got a lot of great ideas. But sometimes it can be helpful to add some
deeper prompting questions. And so I don’t have a slide of them but
if you have your toolkit handy, you know just look through some of those questions around,
you know, what do your customers need to accomplish that requires them to interact with others? What are the functional problems they are
trying to solve? Are there problems that you can think of that
they might not be aware of, that they maybe haven’t encountered yet? And so, to encourage you…and,
if you buy the value proposition book that I hinted at earlier, it comes with a whole
sheet of prompting questions as a way to facilitate.
I didn’t include them because they’re
not mine. I think some of these might be adapted from
them. But, it’s a great resource. So the slide here in light purple is just
an example. And I borrow this example from one of the
groups at the institute. So, they were given the graduate student segment
and so what are graduate students trying to do? And you can see, lots of stuff that is definitely
in the wheelhouse of the academic library. But, you can also see other things. Some of them may have kids and some of them
want to socialize and meet colleagues and you know, deal with being a teaching
assistant.
So you can start to see here the tasks can
vary quite a bit. But, it’s important to understand, at least
in the value proposition exercise what are they trying to do. From there, we can go to the pains, frustrations,
and things they encounter. And to be honest this one is typically the
easiest to brainstorm. Everyone has a set of complaints kind of in
the bank ready to go. And so, you know, if you think about it, what
annoys these customers or this user group? What prevents them from doing what they want
to do? And, again, I’m going to ask you to just throw
some ideas out there.
We’ll stick with the teaching faculty. What annoys them? What prevents them from doing their jobs? So we’ve got: lack of time, tech that doesn’t
work, firewalls, IT issues, meetings….yeah, that prevents me from getting stuff done;
large class sizes…absolutely; committee work, horrible websites, institutional passwords,
copyright, e-book digital rights management, demanding students at 2 a.m. who don’t want
to go to bed, helicopter parent…yeah, compliance issues, lack of sleep. Lots relating to time. Bureaucracy…no, that’s not a thing in
universities, unaware of resources, department politics…, course management systems,
rate my prof…that’s an interesting one, pressure to publish, assessment things, student
complaints…right. I must say, I didn’t have a timer but you
guys were much faster on that one. So, lots of pains and frustrations that we’re
aware of. Simple things, right? And, and things, not all these things we can
address…and we’ll deal with that in a second, but a similar list again from the
institute [cough: excuse me].
Around the graduate students, right, they
may have conflicts with one of their advisors or one of their co-investigators or maybe
they can’t get the data they need. Maybe they’re just depressed in general
about the job forecast and the outlook. Broken technology, similar to some of the
ideas you mentioned earlier. Lack of study space. Just dealing with life at that age—if you
went right from undergrad to grad. Dealing with relationships. Lack of time is another theme. So, again, we’re itemizing a list. Not all
these things a library addresses or deals with. And then the third part of our wheel here
is the gains and outcome. And, you know this one can be interesting
because it can be tangible objectives but I always try to push the group to, you
know, ask the why question and what’s the deeper reason for why we’re doing all this.
So, what are the outcomes or the benefit that
the customers want? As I said, it could be as simple as, we want
to succeed in school. But then the deeper why the question is why do
you want to succeed in school? And if you just keep asking why, you can sometimes
get to these deeper challenges. And, or deeper aspirations, sorry.
And, again, let’s do a quick brainstorm
while we’re here. So, why, or what are the outcomes or benefits
teaching faculty want? They want a better job. Prestige. Tenure. Contribute to the deeper knowledge base. Career success. Better pay. More successful students. Promotion, and financial security, help students
develop a passion for the discipline. They want a happy life. Stipends, make a difference in students’
lives. They want interesting projects. A high score on teaching evaluations. Maybe earn a sabbatical. Accolades. Make their moms happy…that’s a good one
Jeff. Yeah. I mean. These are all real pressures. So again, the other example with the grad
students is, you know, they’re looking for their future. They want to build their reputation
but also develop skills that make them employable.
Looking for grants. Maybe they want to start a family or continue
raising a family. They want to improve their scholarly self-esteem…which
was a great phrase from the institute. Employable skills. Attract grant money. So, there is the pressure that we absolutely
know about and can probably insert ourselves into and then there’s a bunch that we can’t. So, again, we’ll pause for a second for
questions. But, if you’re doing this activity, and
I’ll show you an example of one that I did with some staff here, you’re imagining this
as a series of sort of three micro conversations and what we typically do is we put a big circle
on the wall and then we put sticky notes in the right categories, so, this one is one
we did a year and one-half ago or so and we were just looking at a pretty generic undergrad
student and I would probably change that now but we were trying to understand what is someone
who is transitioning to the university look like?
And this is with staff from our learning common. And I show it not to show you all the examples
but just to show you that now you’re starting to populate this circular map, we’re starting
to get a fuller sense of who these people are, at least who these people are through
our eyes is maybe the point to make right here at this juncture. So you can imagine at the institute we have
10 groups, all having these conversations about different segments. So, around the room, you’ve got 10 maps,
sticky notes everywhere, and lots of ideas. I’m going to pause
right there and see if there are some questions about doing the customer profile side. >>Judy: Okay, we do have a couple of questions. We have one from Catherine Steeves who says
that libraries do often group users broadly and that campus partners like the registrar,
or alumni affairs, might help us to identify segments we are overlooking.
So, those who aren’t are users but could be. >>MJ: Uh-huh. Yeah. Absolutely. And there are a lot of really interesting
things that happen in the smaller segment. And so, as you start to identify them, you
know getting to know those segments, whether you map them or not, but just trying to understand
what they want to accomplish can be helpful. That’s a good point, Katherine.
>>Judy: Rita Vine from the University of Toronto
also has a blog post that we’ll share in the chat when window with some visuals of
how the value proposition exercise went last summer at the institute. So, in addition to what you just shared on
the slide, MJ, people can take a look at that in our chat box. >>MJ: Awesome. That’s good.
>>Judy: And then we have a comment from Steven
Bell, says the value of the library for faculty can largely be about helping save
time but they don’t always know how we can do that for them. >>MJ: uh-huh. And that’s the crux of the issue,
is that we know we can offer that but we’re either not communicating that or articulating
the tangible ways that we do that and so hopefully this kind of activity can start, can start
to have that conversation locally and sort of understand that and sort of be…we have
a consistent message then. And then faculty start to see that, hopefully. >>Judy: Okay, we have another question here
from Martha Conway. When in the process do we ask the customer
segment itself about their jobs and tasks and pains and frustrations? >>MJ: Martha, great question. If I had a chocolate bar I’d give it to
you. But, this is the key, so you’ve highlighted
the one drawback to sitting in a room by ourselves guessing about the customer segment.
So, let me just go back a slide [slide 40]
when we did this one, we took our best stab, and then before we moved on, we went out and,
you know, we have access to lots of graduate students here so we just started asking them,
“when you look at this map, does it make sense to you? Do these things matter? Did we miss things?” And we open the conversation. And you don’t have to do it with too many
people before you start to see, “Oh, there’s some glaring omission.” Or, “there are some things here that they
don’t think are frustrations.” And so, I would recommend that.
In the case of the institute, part of it was
having a conversation between three universities who, although have similar models, are very
different culturally and so, it was a bit of sharing among the professionals. But absolutely, you’ve hit the nail on the
head—we wouldn’t want to do this too long in kind of a meeting room and determine that
we’ve solved all the problems of people that we haven’t talked to yet. So, you have to figure out the best way to
engage…and I’ve got a few suggestions at the end of the process. But this might be a chance, if you’re doing
this in your library, to press the pause button and go access that customer segment and just
double-check. That’s a great point. Anything else Judy? >>Judy: No. I think you are good to continue. >>MJ: Good to continue. Alright, so we’ve talked about the customer
segment. Maybe we’ve even gone out and talked to
them, which is ideal, as we just mentioned. Stage 3 then, and pages 10 to 12 in your tool
kit look at what we offer—starting to describe the products and services.
And just like the customer profile map, we
see that square one here has three categories. The first is where you articulate products and
services that we think there might be a match, that they might be interested in. And then, perhaps a little bit more challenging,
and we’ll get to these, is how do they help. Not just that we think they will want them
but what pains and frustrations do they relieve and what gains or desired outcomes do they
help our customer segment achieve? And so, we’ll take the first one here in
green—the products and services. Which to be honest, is straightforward. What products or services do you offer that
your customers would be interested in? And, again, I’m going to throw you one last
brainstorm here, and say if we’re thinking of teaching faculty
or faculty has a lot of teaching on their plate, what do we do in the library that they
might want? I mean, you can think of your local context
and throw some ideas in there.
So we’ve got course reserves, interlibrary
loans, tech support, e-reserves, maybe help create assignments, assignment design support,
webinars, systematic reviews, research guides, copyright clearance, information literacy
classes, 3D services, the full text of articles, classroom tech that work great. We can have them check out technology, such
as iPads. We’ve got writing centers and information apps. We can offer them scanning. A coffee shop. Helping, and working with their student study
groups. Help them purchase materials. Provide support for open access. Exactly. So, as we start to articulate all of these
things, we again just brainstorm them. So when I gave this task to the group at the
institute related to graduate students, of course, it depended on who was in the group
and what they knew about what the library offered to this particular group, but, you
know it can be specialized services like GIS.
It could be future services, like, you know,
here are your salary expectations in this field. We can help them document their impact for,
you know, promotion or for applications, that sort of thing. Provide a place for them to put their stuff
in the repository. You know, so you can see there is a range
of things that we think they might be interested in. So, as we push on to the second part, its
simply the things that…the frustrations that they have that we might help relieve. So, again, how do your products alleviate
the customer’s pain and how will you reduce the frustrations, and maybe their experiences
as you go? So, in this case, I didn’t give you a brainstorm
because it depends a lot on the local context and there’s a bit more thinking involved here. That is to say, ultimately are we saving them
time? Are we saving them money? Are we saving them some sort of effort in
some way? Are we making things easier? Usually, when you do this in a group,
it’s a longer conversation.
The ideas don’t come as quickly because
you’re trying to articulate what exactly are we relieving when we have this. If you flip to your tool kit on page 11, again,
you can see some of the deeper prompting questions. So, can the library’s products or services
produce saving in terms of time, money, or effort? Can we fix underperforming solutions, and
which ones can we fix? Let’s see…can we eliminate or eradicate
common mistakes that the customers make? Eliminate barriers? And so, what’s interesting here is it does
tie back to the set of pains we discussed when we talked about the customer segment. So if we understand what their frustrations
are, which ones can we relieve? And it’s hinted at in the comments and,
you know, we can’t relieve all of them. We still have to stay on mission as a library
but we have to relieve, you know, the ones that are related to us, what are we doing
about it? And so, that’s kind of our task as
we start to wrestle with these questions.
And for the students, for instance, for, at
the liaison institution, the group talking about grad students, I’ve only picked a
selection…they had way more ideas than the ones I’ve listed, but…you know, we offer
citation management tools. Those can be helpful as they embark
on long-term research projects. We’re always here to help and we’re not
judgmental about it. We can help them find grants. We can save time by giving them good quality
remote access from anywhere in the world. We pay for a lot of very expensive
resources.
And that is of real value because grad students
can have access to them. We help them reduce some anxiety about teaching. So, you start to see these aren’t just quick,
off-the-cuff ideas. These are an attempt to articulate how and
why. Is it the time? Is it the money? Is the effort? What is it that we’re doing that’s relieving
their frustrations? And then the last one, the third one, is the
gains. What are we doing that helps push them forward…
is a way I think about it. You know, how do our products, how do our
services help them accomplish what they want to accomplish? We want them to achieve what they want to
achieve and so, how do we, how do we do that? How do we give them that momentum? And again, I’ll just point you to page 12
now in the tool kit for the same sort of set of prompting questions.
You know, it’s how our products and services
exceed their expectations. How do we make their lives easier? And not just, I mean, better usability and
a more intuitive website is good, but is that sufficient? How do we push to help them accomplish
what they want to accomplish? And how do we push at some of the deeper stuff? They have broader aspirations than just getting
a good grade on an assignment so how do we help them with those broader things? And, these sorts of challenges, again,
aren’t as easy to rhyme off. There’s a lot, typically there’s a lot of
discussion among groups. You know, what are we helping? And this is why I think this is where the
meat of the conversation, as we do a bit of inward…as we look inward…this is where
the meat… it’s sort of like, “ok.
Do we all agree that this is why we do this? And this is the value we are creating. This is the gains we’re creating. So, again, just example-wise—the Institute. For grad students, well, we help grad students
enhance their communication skills. Give them access to resources. Provide, again, here’s your citation management. But we help them increase their efficiency. Maybe we even promote their work through some
of our programming or poster sessions or that sort of thing. And we also know they need to study.
So we’ve got a dedicated, quiet, study space. So, we’ll
pause here in a second for some questions, but again, just as I think back to a product
we were working on where we were trying to come up with some digital strategies,
this is our kind of response. So, as we think of it, how do we reach people,
especially undergrads more digitally? What kind of things…why are we doing this? What is it that we’re helping them accomplish? What is it that we’re relieving? And then, you know, having that conversation. At the Institute, this would be the second
map that they have done so after we’ve gone through this we now have ten groups, two maps
each, and we have 20 maps full of sticky notes.
Trying to draw lines between what the customer
segment needs and what we offer, and recognizing that some things don’t fit. So I’ll pause there for a second because
I think there are maybe a couple of questions that have come in and I’m happy to try to
answer those. >>Judy: Ok. We have a question here, should we also be
asking how are our products better than our competitors’? For example, how is the library institutional
repository better than academia.edu? And, how is the library citation manager better
than whatever faculty tell us they’re using? MJ: Yes. So the short answer… I mean, that’s a fantastic question. The short answer to the value proposition
exercise is this is just the first part. We articulate our value but we have to be
aware of the broader environment so for that, I would refer you to the business model generation
book. There’s a whole set of questions about the
competitive landscape, so remember it’s a business book so they’re talking about
the environmental scan, you know, the external factors that impact your ability to succeed.
But I think even that could be well
adapted to our context. And we start thinking, like, alright, we have
to be aware of these other things that the faculty in this case, in this question, are
maybe looking at or considering and not just be afraid or dismissive of it. If it’s being seriously considered by our
segment, then it’s up to us to have some sense of why they see value there. I know that’s not a great answer but I would
just point you to the Business Model Generation book. I think it may be the 4th chapter where there’s
a lot around the environment, the border environment.
>>Judy: Thank you. We also have from Bryan Moynihan, have you
ever employed design fiction narratives about the future escape to help envision new solutions? >>MJ: I mean, I’m aware of them. I haven’t facilitated that kind of conversation
myself. I might say if you want to employ that strategy
in this technique, one way to do that might be to go to the customer segment
that you’re looking at.
So, for instance, teaching faculty and, and
start to ask them about what they want or what they might see value in new solutions. I think a design fiction narrative might
be a different technique, slightly outside of the value proposition. But, that would be my first take at it. Again, happy to chat more offline if that
wasn’t satisfactory. >>Judy: Ok, a practical question. How much time would you recommend allowing
for these exercises, if, for example, the department was on an all-day retreat? >>MJ: Yes. Good question Adriana. I, if you go to the last part of the tool
kit, I’ve set up a couple of sample agendas for you. So, if you have 3 hours, here’s how you
might have the conversation, sort of a half-day scenario. If you have a full day, the kinds of timelines
you might need? These would all be adjusted based
on whatever else you wanted to cover and whether you wanted to spend time talking with the
customer segment that you were focused on, you’d have to incorporate that. I think, minimum if you want to have it in
one sit-down conversation, you probably need to move pretty quickly.
You’ve got three hours maybe. Another strategy is to just break it up over
a series of meetings. So, do the customer profile map in one meeting—maybe
take an hour. Come back after some reflection and do the
value proposition, or sorry the value map canvas, the square one at the next meeting. And then just debrief it over a series of
meetings, which can work too. Just depends on the size of your team and,
you know, pulling everyone together. >>Judy: OK, we’ve got a couple of questions
here too about whether can you make the distinction or if is there a strong benefit to making a clear
differentiation between what is a gain creator and what is a pain reliever. So, a question about that distinction. >>MJ: Yeah. That’s a fantastic question.
It always comes up at this stage. And I’ll admit, I’ve wrestled with it
myself. And it’s not well defined in my opinion
in the book. And I’ll tell you the resolution I’ve
come to. And that is, it is true you can phrase a pain
reliever just more positively as a gain creator, and then it’s sort of like they’re the
same thing. But, where I think the distinction is, is
whether the customer side views it as a pain or a gain. So, for instance, if they feel like
remote access is a frustration, then I would keep it in the pain reliever category because
what you’re doing is recognizing they see it as a huge pain, we’re relieving that
pain rather than say they see it as a pain and we’re creating a gain.
If that makes sense. So, I like the alignment of going back to
where we think the customer segment would categorize whatever the issue is. I hope that helps. In some ways, it’s six of one, half a dozen
of the other. Like, if it’s a gain creator, fine. And a pain reliever, it could still work. It’s not like it’s invalid in one of the
sections. I just think if you tie it back to the customer
there’s a better chance that you’re going to send a clear message later. I hope that helps. >>Judy: That’s great thank you. I think we can move on. >>MJ: We can move on. Ok. So, in the fourth stage, in some ways, we’ve
done two separate activities. We’ve looked at the customer segment and
then, or, and then looked at the value that we create or produce at the library. And, really what we want to do in a true value
proposition, and you saw from the definition earlier, is bringing those two together.
So, we’re acknowledging the library has
certain elements that appeal in a certain way to a specific set of people. And so, this is that point where we’re taking
all this brainstorming conversation, hopefully, some confirmation, and, and we’re looking
at where we’re at, putting them together and you can see,
so this is just the examples from earlier. And in this context, we were looking at undergrad
students and as a number of you have pointed out in the chat, the library is not going
to address everything an undergrad student needs, right? You come to campus and maybe you want a romantic
partner—probably not something the library wants to facilitate. You may meet in the library but it’s not
on our mission to make that happen. So, we have to acknowledge. And this is that stage where you go, “Ok,
these are the important things you should be aware of, important desires, important,
you know, frustrations that we can’t solve those and they’re not really for us.” But, which ones can we solve? Or, which ones can we assist with? And so that’s where there’s a bit of sorting
out early on at this stage and there are many ways to go from this to a set of sentences.
I’m going to show you the one that we did
at the institute because I think it’s the most straight forward and I’m on the learning
side of the library so when we write like learning outcomes, for instance, it’s a
little more like that where there’s a rhythm and an expectation. And so the activity that we did was called
the value proposition ad-lib, basically a fill-in-the-blanks kind of activity. So, the parts that are purple on this slide
are the parts that you swap out. So it’s a little bit, it’s awkwardly laid
out here but I think the example in the next slide will show you.
What you want to do is think
of making a clear statement. What are the products or services? Who do they help? And what are the people that they help, and what
do they want to do? And then the last part is some clarification
of how. So, I know that looks confusing. Let’s take it one step at a time here. So the first one is some libraries have an
open access fund. So, you want to say, “Ok, if we’re going
to come up with an explicit statement of value, let’s try this one. Our open-access fund helps mid-career faculty. So this is a particular described segment
that we’ve been thinking about and how did it help them? You know, or what do they want to accomplish? So, in this case, what are mid-career faculty
trying to do? Well one option, and this again is borrowed
form and example in the institute. So, an open-access fund helps mid-career faculty
who want to amplify their scholarly impact. Yeah, that’s good.
But why, or how does it do that? How does it help them? So we have this fund because it increases
access to their research. So this statement then is our attempt
to take all of what we’ve been talking about and boil it down into one statement. Now, the temptation here is to say, “Great. We’re done.” But the reality is there are many ways and
encouragement in the book that you’re prototyping multiple statements because we
don’t know, for instance, whether this is of any value to mid-career faculty. We think it is in our conference room and
our retreat, but we’re not sure. And so, we go with value proposition ad-lib
to start producing a number of these. So, at the institute, we did that. We had each group start to write these statements
and then the following morning when they came in they were up around the room, we had 20
statements, 25 statements, up around the room about the value of liaison work.
And then, in that case, we just said “respond. Write notes on it. Do you agree, or disagree? What’s working, what’s not?” So, we’ve come down to a succinct, explicit
statement of value but even then, we’re not sure if it’s right. And so this is part of that process. It is iterative. You’re continually asking, but we’re getting
closer now to why we have an open access fund, who it’s for, and what we hope it does for them. And now, of course, just going back to one
of the questions from earlier, we need to find out whether they see that same value. Because, it might be a great idea in our circles,
in our libraries, and our profession, but is it a good idea to mid-career faculty? That’s the thing we still have to test. So, as I said, if you get the value proposition
design book, there are several other ways to get to a value proposition statement but
I like this one because it’s simple. It’s a bit of a plug-and-play. And it’s easier to do that in a group.
And at this point, I see a couple of questions
might have come in so let’s pause again. We’re nearing the end but let’s pause
again. >>Judy: Okay, we have a question here from
Rebecca Stuhr. In keeping the idea of thinking from the user’s
perspective, would it be better to start with the need first? So, our users need to accomplish XYZ, we can
help through and then move to the services by developing such-n-such services. >>MJ: Yeah. I would encourage you to experiment. So, I don’t know that there’s a right answer
or a wrong answer to that question or even to drafting a value proposition statement. I use the one I showed you in the institute
partly because it was a formula that meant everyone in 10 different groups came up with
a similar sentence structure, which made comparison easier. But, in the case of your context, it may
make sense to go let’s start with the user and then end with our response
to the user. And if that seems to just fit better.
I encourage you to do it that way. I think the point that we’re trying
to get to is that we understand what needs we’re meeting and, and who we’re
meeting them for. Good questions, thanks, Rebecca. >>Judy: Ok. I see no more questions at this point. >>MJ: No more questions. Alright. So the last stage, and we’ve talked about
it a little already, is we have to get to that validating that we’re even on
the track. And, So, there are lots of ways to think about
this and in the case of the liaison institute it was really difficult to validate and check
anything because we were doing a retreat with three different libraries, you know, sponsored
by ARL and so it was sort of a broader conversation there. But, in marketing terms, business model
terms, and value proposition terms, they talk about fit.
And so there are three types of fit. And if you’re on track, you sort of negotiate
through each of these stages. And I want to outline them a little bit and
then talk about what you need to do. And if you look in your tool kit, they’re
there as well. There’s a lot of text there so I apologize
for that but on page 14. The first fit is, what we are looking for
is a problem-solution fit.
So we want to understand the problem and that
we’ve designed, or at least imagine a solution that matches. And typically, if you’ve done the exercise
we just talked about where you looked at a customer segment and identified the job’s pains/gains
and started to articulate a value proposition at the end of that, you’re kind of at the
problem-solution fit. But what’s missing is whether
the customer agrees with your value proposition statement.
And so, you’re still at the creative
writing stage where you think you’re on track but you don’t know for sure. And so the next step is to test, to
test whether the customers see the same value. And you can do this in lots of ways—sorry
I’m just getting over a cold—and this is on page 14 in your tool kit. I mentioned the first strategy earlier, which
is just sit down and talk to the customer segment and say, “this is what we thought.
We’re trying to describe people and, you
know, teaching faculty facing the challenges in work and life that you are, does this make
sense? Did we miss anything?” So, you’re just doing a bit of customer
interview style. Another approach is to just start looking
at the matches between your two canvases. So, are there pains that have clear and direct
pain relievers? And are there, you know, gains that your user
wants that have direct and clear gain creators? And where are those obvious lines? And I will say, one of the groups at the institute
spent a lot of time, and they did the matching strategy.
They just spent a lot of time connecting
a sticky note on one side of the canvas to a sticky note on the other side and trying
to articulate what exactly that relationship looked like. And that got them a little closer to understanding
why we think that problem can be solved with this solution. But really, it’s still early days. So you want to move on then to the next kind
of fit, which can take some time but is called the product-market fit. So, again, these are obviously from a business
context but at this stage, you know customers are using your product or service, and that probably
usage is increasing so a market is starting to emerge. And usually, you would say, this is starting
to show that the value proposition is on track. That there’s some value here. And people are seeing that so they’re voting
with their feet, right, so they’re starting to use it. They’re moving away from whatever they used
before to your solution. And so, you’re not quite done though. People can use your service but they
can also overwhelm hour service, so you’ve got to figure out, “Alright, what
is the demand going to look like? We’re on track.
People like what we’re doing but is the
value there?” And so, that moves you into the last, the
last fit, which is a reality beyond the scope of this webinar but
what they would call a business model fit. And that brings us way back to the beginning
when I showed you the first kind of business model canvas and you remember the value proposition
was right in the middle? What you would have at this time, when you
have a business model fit, is you would have a value proposition that customers want. So, you have a set of products and services,
clearly articulated value, they keep coming, but you also have an infrastructure, a support
set up. You’ve got resources allocated and you’ve
got a balance. So, you’ve balanced between “we can deliver
this value but we also have all of the infrastructure behind it.” So again, I would refer you to the Business
Model Generation book, in this case.
And, just look through some of their advice
for how to balance. But, this would be an indication that not
only is the value worth it but that the organization can continue to deliver that value. And that’s one of the things you have to
face in libraries too. We have limited resources, we can’t do everything
for everyone. So, its entirely possible, if I just go back
a slide {slide 55} that we have a growing market that loves our service but our
service is too costly for us to deliver, for whatever reason its too user, or staff intensive,
or time intensive, or money intensive.
We might have to say, either we
change that service a little bit or we have to stop because the market, we can’t
reasonably and sustainably deliver that. So let’s, I want to jump to more of the
mechanics of the show as we wrap up but let’s pause here for questions. >>Judy: Thanks MJ. We have a question from David Scherer. Could you articulate, could one articulate
the business model fit as library strategic plan fit? >>MJ: Articulate the business model fit…oh,
yeah.
You know that’s a… let’s go back
a slide [repeat slide 56]. One way to think about it, you
know, and each organization’s a little bit different but, I mean, ultimately if we’re
seeing the traction that a particular service or combination of products and services are
getting, then recognizing that then fits the strategic plan, which means resources have
to be diverted, or found, for that kind of thing, and there’s a commitment to that, I
think that’s a great way to think about it.
Because in a business model sense, it’s
about, alright, now we can scale, grow, we’ve got revenue, we can, you know, reinvest, that
sort of thing. That’s not typically how libraries think
about things so, yeah, maybe it’s now more about we now fit within the strategic model. Great. Or, the strategic plan. >>Judy: Thank you. Another question. Are value propositions being used as a foundation
for the assessment? >>MJ: That’s a great question for Rebecca. I would say they could be. So, remembering that value propositions come
out of management literature, assessment, to be crass, comes down to the bottom line.
You know, people like it enough to keep buying
it and you keep making money and sustaining the organization. I think our challenge might be to turn that
internally and say, “Is it enough then if we think of assessments as more than just
usage metrics, for instance? Like, usage is a good indication that we’re
on track—we’ve got people who like the service and keep coming back, but we might
want to challenge ourselves to dive a little deeper. I would say, I have not done, myself, a ton
of work at the assessment stage.
Typically, I’m facilitating the upfront conversation
around value proposition but I think, you know, it is a really good conversation
to talk about assessment. I think we are talking, for instance, about,
or assessment often lands on just assessing products and services and if you can somehow
connect it back to the segment and talk to assessment from their eyes, from their perspective,
it might be valuable as well. And, I apologize, I don’t have a
better answer for that, but I think it’s an important thing to think about. If we’re going to start to articulate our
value proposition then how will we know we’re successful…still a helpful question to ask
on the front end. >>Judy: ok. Ken Liss asks, what is the relationship between
value and outcomes? >>MJ: Value and outcomes…can we get a bit
of clarification on that Ken? If possible… I just, I’m not sure about the outcomes part.
Or Judy if you have a sense of what… >>Judy: I don’t but why don’t we give,
… Shaneka Morris suggests value is what you deliver. Outcomes are what you measure. >>MJ: Oh, so I think…I put that along the
same lines as my answer to Rebecca then. If that’s a distinction we want to make,
we want to continue to deliver value. I think asking the question, “then what
outcomes would we expect if this was successful and we’re on track” and then the other
question that always happens in assessment then is, “how do you measure it?” Because goodwill and even good usage are not
always enough. So, I think the question will depend a lot,
a lot on whatever the service or product is that you, that you’re trying to
measure. Ok, we’ve got 10 minutes left. Sorry. >>Judy: Ten minutes left. Ok, a quick comment from Steven Bell, perhaps
we’d want to identify the outcomes we aspire to and then identify the products and services
that deliver value related to achieving those outcomes, or that outcome.
Does this backward design work here? >>MJ: Yeah. I think, I mean part of, part of this activity
with a value proposition, at least the reason I like using this activity, is to have that
conversation. I think what it also does is provide you the
freedom to figure out what works in your context. So, for instance, if we want to work backward
after we’ve talked through this value proposition canvas and we’ve looked at customers and
we’ve looked at the value, then say, “Alright, what do we do now?” it’s an important conversation though to
turn, to take the reins back of the staff group or team or whatever context you’re
looking at and determine, “where do we go from here?” That, it’s a process that provides that
freedom but at last provides a foundation initially, to dig into the customer segment…to
try and understand where the needs might be. Again, I’m not sure I’m fully answering this.
I’m happy to take that to a phone conversation
or something offline if you’re keen. >>Judy: Sounds good. Let’s move on. >>MJ: Let’s move on. So, I think we’re right on track here. So we’ve talked through basically the theory,
and the mechanics of the activity but I know some of you are on the call here because what you’re
interested in is how you do this conversation and what you need to think
about. And I’ve had a few of these conversations,
again, in various contexts, so, I’ll just throw some questions out to you, again. I don’t know for sure what you’re after
but these are things I like to think about when someone asks me to come and do a session
or I’m thinking about doing one here. And, I’ll talk through them a little bit
but I want to leave some time, again for questions at the end of questions about these.
So, I’ll fairly quickly through the next
slides. What your objective is one of the things
you have to think about right away. Do you want to start a conversation as we
did in the ARL, or liaison institute? Or, do you have a problem that you
want to solve and that you need all hands on deck? Depending on your answer to that question
and maybe other possible answers will impact the design of your workshop.
The second thing I like to think about is
what do you want them to take away. So, what are the deliverables? If you going to invite everyone to come to
a 3-hour workshop or a full-day retreat, what are the tangible takes always that they’re
going to get? And then you will always get the question
at the end, “so what are we going to do with all this work?” And many of you will know that and many of
you may have asked those questions. And so, thinking a little bit ahead, what
are the next steps after you ask all of these people to spend their time working on this,
what is your commitment as the facilitator, as an organizing group, or whatever? Timelines are important. And, I’m sure many of you are planning for
staff retreats in the spring/summer season, so when is everyone available is a simple
logistical question but it’s also helpful to know when you need answers on some
of this stuff. When, what’s going to impact the change? What are the other organizational realities
that you’re facing? Where should you host the meeting? Onsite, off-site? I have no opinion on that one other than its
helpful if you have a flexible space with moveable tables, that sort of thing.
Who needs to be there? Usually, when I am invited, it’s just staff. But I think it would be really interesting
to have this conversation with more stakeholders in the room, including even possibly members
of the group that you might be trying to understand. You know, even if it’s just an hour panel
of early-career faculty…to understand them and maybe ask them questions or have lunch
with them, that can be helpful.
I’m often asked what’s the best group composition
and how do you assign groups. And if I’m not asking it, then I usually ask
whoever wants me to come. And, this, again, depends on your objectives. So, three options I can imagine right off the
top is you just randomly assign people to groups. It gets people working with people they don’t
usually work with, but sometimes people lose interest too if they’re, you know, not with
someone they want to be with. You can let them select. You can also just assign groups ahead of time. As far as group size, I think 4 to 5 people
is probably the best and if they get too big it’s either harder to get to a consensus or
people disengage a little bit.
If it’s too small, it can feel overwhelming. So, I like 4 to 5 people. How will participants select their customer
segments? You can do it randomly, just draw out of a
hat, you can assign it, or you can let them choose. Again, it depends a bit on your objective
for the meeting. If you want to solve a problem, then you don’t
want to leave a lot up to chance. If you want to just have a conversation, then
random can work. Should you order food? Yes, you should always order food. Always. People like that. I’m going to buzz through these. I’ve only got a couple more slides left
and then we can have wrap-up questions. So, you’ve decided to have a session. You got it set. You answered all those early questions on
the timeline what should you do in advance? Gather your materials. I like to draw the charts, the maps that you
saw, the customer profile map, and the value map, ahead of time so that they have a big chart
and they’re not trying to draw it themselves.
If you’ve got hand notes or prompting questions,
some of that, kind of a team tool kit for what they’re going to encounter—get that
done ahead of time. If you are planning to assign groups, then
you want that done ahead of time. I sometimes ask whether you need PowerPoint
or not. I tend not to rely on PowerPoint but the advantage
of PowerPoint in a room that’s full of small groups talking is that you can put clear instructions
up on the screen. And so it can be really helpful to have a
screen with something, with PowerPoint up so that they can see and groups can self-monitor
and stay on track. And the last thing and someone hinted
at it earlier, outline your rationale. So, start with “why”. When you being that session, make sure everybody
knows why they’re there and what they’re trying to accomplish. And, that sounds simple, but it can be hard
if the…help them understand the context, the need for the conversation, and what you hope
comes out of the conversation.
So, doing some up-front thinking there can
help. And, one last slide. Remember the basic stages that we just went
through in the activity. Get your customer segment. Understand your customer. Think about your library’s response to that
customer, try to connect them by articulating the benefits, and then, really, start to validate. Start to figure out whether we’re on track
or not. So, we’ve gone through a lot of stuff and
I’m, we’re pretty good on time. We’ve got a few minutes left if there are
any questions, I am happy to take them. And I should say, just before those come in
if at any point, you know you’re reviewing this and you have a question or you want to
run a session and you want to give me a call, I’m happy to try and help. I’m not an expert but I’ve done this a few
times so I can give you my two cents. Sorry, go back to that last slide.
Yes, happily. So are there any outstanding, burning questions? >>Judy: Well, we do have a comment from Rita,
who reminds us that in the final report of the liaison institute, which is available
on the ARL website, there is an appendix that has additional kind of organizational details
about, you know, how to do a multi-library event, which that was. >>MJ: Cool >>Judy: So, if people want to look at that
report as well. >>MJ: Definitely.
>>Judy: Ok. I’ve got a question here. How do you, or do you, publish to customers? >>MJ: How do you… >>Judy: Publish…from Andrea Stewart. Can we get a bit of clarification on that? Publicize, maybe? >>MJ: Oh, share the work. Yeah. I mean, I think that may depend a little bit
on your local context. I like to do it in the sense of just laying
it out as we’re working through a process and we’re at a very rough stage but we don’t
want to get too far afield and so help us understand this.
So that might be, for instance, when you’ve
done your customer profile map, that round one, but you could also do it later when you’ve
got a statement and just ask people to respond. So, do you know what you think of this? To be honest, some of the more challenging
conversations come from staff. So, you know, you’re debating among yourselves
whether you got the phrasing right.
That can be helpful. But I think if your organization has a culture
where you’re comfortable being open, there’s nothing here that’s private in the
sense of confidentiality. You’re trying to understand the environment
you work in and deliver service according to so, so if the team is comfortable displaying
the work, I don’t see any reason not to. >>Judy: Thank you. We are just about out of time so MJ I just
want to thank you so much for a fabulous presentation and set of tools. I know this is going to lead to a lot of wonderful
and fruitful conversations in our libraries.
So, thank you for being here with us today. >>MJ: Glad to be. Thanks for inviting me. >>Judy: Absolutely. So this concludes today’s webinar. I want to thank all of you for joining us
and wish you a pleasant afternoon.
