Quiet, Please by Scott Douglas

Quiet, Please by Scott Douglas is a memoir of a twenty-something male librarian in Anaheim, California. It aims to be humorous and anecdotal, but fails to do either well.
As a recent graduate of library school, I took offense to most of what Douglas has to say. His stories about working with the mentally disabled, physically [...]

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The Building Blocks of Execution

According to the authors of Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (2002), there are three building blocks to execution. The first is “the leader’s seven essential behaviors;” the second is “creating the framework for cultural change;” and the third is “having the right people in the right place.”
Of course, you can’t have the last [...]

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More on the Discipline of Execution

Bossidy and Charan (2002) explain that coaching is “the difference between giving orders and teaching people how to get things done” (p. 74). Effective leaders must coach, not scold or threaten. Leaders must show their subordinates what they have done wrong in order to foster a learning environment in which people can improve and grow.
Leaders [...]

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The Discipline of Execution

This semester, my last before I receive my degree, I am taking a course called Library Planning, Marketing, & Assessment. One of our first assignments is to form a group, choose and read a book about leadership, and present it to the class. My group formed out of the desire to read something a bit [...]

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