In March, Jim and I attended a workshop on using the ARL 2030 Scenarios (I know, it was a while ago, but its been a busy year). If you have not had a chance to look at the scenarios, I urge to to at least give them a skim. I was intrigued by the idea of scenario planning, reading through the materials on the ARL website and watching a webinar on scenario planning made me even more interested in how one would use the scenarios to do strategic planning.
The workshop was focused on using the materials in the user’s guide to start a strategic conversation as part of a long range planning process. At the beginning of the workshop, attendees talked about how they hoped they would use the scenarios. Several attendees talked about the need to develop new services, while others wanted to use the scenarios in developing a strategic framework for their organization (either from scratch or renewing an aged strategy). Still others talked about using the scenarios to approach workforce transformation within an organization, or how to utilize a new space. As the workshop progressed, we tested how to use the scenarios for a variety of purposes, and they seemed to work beautifully — ARL has pulled together a terrific set of materials that would make it easy for an institution to apply the materials in an institutional setting — “just add water and a few facilitators.”
We are interested in hearing from institutions that have used the scenarios, and what their findings have been. We are even more interested in bringing groups of institutions together around a shared concern or uncertainty and the ARL scenarios are one tool we may be able to use to find shared solutions or to identify areas where we can see we will need to move collectively. Are you willing to share your findings with us? Are you interested in doing group planning with other members of the OCLC Research Library Partnership? Get in touch!
Many thanks to Susan Stickley, who did a terrific job facilitating the workshop and to the ARL staff who have worked on the scenarios and supported the workshop.
Merrilee Proffitt is Senior Manager for the OCLC RLP. She provides community development skills and expert support to institutions within the OCLC Research Library Partnership.
