I’ve just been reading the Dec. 2014 issue of the Harvard Business Review, and points made in 2 of the articles really resonated with my thinking about embedded librarianship.
Advice in the article “Why Corporate Functions Stumble”, by Kunisch, Muller-Stewens, and Campbell, reads like a primer for librarians and knowledge managers (who are, after all, a corporate function): start small, focus on quick wins, don’t try to do everything all at once, etc. But my favorite sentence is this: “Managers who see themselves as functional professionals and don’t feel a need to fully understand the company’s divisions are guaranteed to antagonize business units.” Just substitute “librarians” for “managers”.
That’s followed by Keith Ferrazzi’s “Getting Virtual Teams Right”. Many embedded librarians end up on cross-functional teams, virtual or not, and the role can feel uncomfortable, especially for those new to it. Ferrazzi gives good advice, targeted to team leaders, on how to make virtual teams work. The same advice is useful for any team member on what to look for in a well-led team, and maybe some suggestions to make to your team lead too!
Over and over, articles like these have convinced me that we are not engaged in anything unique when we practice embedded librarianship — we are going through experiences that are common to other organizational functions as well, and we can gain a lot by applying the lessons from these other functions to our own practice.
The Embedded Librarians Café