Through annual goals libraries can pilot new initiatives, realign their community focus, and enhance their core work. Although most teams have some kind of mechanism for goal-setting each year, forward-momentum on these projects can be difficult to maintain. Lack of buy-in from team members, missing accountability structures, and poor prioritization can often lead to languishing goals, incomplete projects, and low team morale. For annual goals to be successful, library teams need to ensure that the goal development and implementation process includes shared decision-making, accountability, and meaningful assessment.
This poster presents a practical project management framework developed and tested within an academic library department to support collaborative annual goal development and implementation. This framework includes a process for brainstorming library community needs, addressing library worker capacity, and ensuring the team’s professional development. Its implementation resulted in better departmental communication, individual and team accountability, and successful goal completion. This poster will detail a step-by-step process for team-led goal creation, a project timeline template, and best practices for setting realistic project benchmarks. This framework can be successfully scaled to all library types. Lastly, this poster will include methods for project documentation and assessment check-ins, as well as recommended resources for goal management.
