CHAPTER 7.

Ron Dow’s case: Turning the library into the learning hub of the campus

Andrew Wall & Nikhil M. Varerkar

(with contributions from Tahir Rauf)

7.1. Ron’s story

  7.1.1. Introduction to Ron’s case

In this chapter we put forward the case of Ron Dow, who as Head of the Libraries at the University of Rochester initiated a host of innovations that transformed the purpose, perception and use of the library at this research institution, enhancing students’ learning opportunities as a result.  Indeed, Ron was known throughout the campus as an innovative and transformational leader. While we may not always think of librarians as educators, Ron (who also earned a Ph.D. in Higher Education) forcefully argued that this is indeed their central function. As stated by a collaborator:

“Libraries are often called services, and we talk about the library service, or a service institution … Ron immediately said no, the library is not a service, it is part of the educational mission of the university. Services are dormitories and dining halls. Services can become an outsource at any time and so you must remember the library is integral to the educational mission of the university and that’s how we’re going to be positioned.” (Ron’s collaborator)

The library, for Ron, was not just a place, but rather it embodied the hopes and dreams of students who toiled in its stacks and scholars whose ideas filled its shelves.  The library, for him, was the hub of the campus, the one place all students must go again and again to discover.  Ron devoted his career to make this vision a reality.

Ron made a big first impression. It was not just that he was a large man (though he was!), rather it was the strength of his personality, the vigorous nature of his handshake and the quick manner in which he sized you up and began to tell you about his library.  Upon our first meeting, when he ushered us into his office and we sat across from him at a small meeting table, he began to share his passion about the library.  He had pulled out a series of photos from before his leadership, and then showed us some current photos, and quickly reeled us in to his vision.  It was apparent that it was not us who were conducting an interview for a research study, but rather Ron who was pitching to us why the library matters within the context of the modern research university.

The focus of this case-study is on Ron’s leadership as Head of the University of Rochester’s libraries.  This is a library system intended to support the academic activities of a top ranked research university, and boasted over 3.5 million volumes and an extensive collection of electronic resources at the time of our study.   While its collection is stored in several locations across the campus, the main library has been traditionally located in a very central building that is literally and figuratively the University of Rochester unofficial symbol and community landmark.  (See Figure 7.1 for more facts about the University of Rochester Libraries).

Ron’s case is especially instructive of how leaders in higher education can apply entrepreneurial processes towards advancing traditional academic values that are rooted in the disciplines of the academy while at the same time navigating the challenges of fiscal resource tensions.  The modern university is faced with the challenge of balancing academic values associated with the freedom to teach, learn and engage in inquiry toward ends that have been agreed upon as just and in the public good, while simultaneously facing on-going fiscal resource tension and growing calls for public accountability.  Leaders within this context are challenged to maintain institutions of higher education as both committed to higher learning and as financially viable. What is perhaps most surprising in this case-study is that rather than finding a tension between financial interests and the academic mission, we found congruence.  The lack of obvious or insinuated tensions revealed an instructive case for navigating troubled financial times and supporting the mission and values of higher education as a purveyor of the public good.

Figure 7.1. UR Libraries Profile (as of 2007)

  7.1.2. Highlights of Ron’s professional journey

The library and higher education are two things that Ron knew extremely well.  Professional experiences in libraries were Ron’s formative professional experiences, and he spoke somewhat longingly of his first professional appointments in the University libraries, of the mentors that he met along the way, and the lessons he learned about the role the library carries in the lives of students and in maintaining an archive of knowledge.  Ron’s commitment to the idea of the library as the hub of the campus was fostered by his formative professional experiences at a library first at Hamilton College, then at Dartmouth in the Business and Engineering section, and ultimately at NYU’s business library.

Ron’s interest in business came from an academic course exploring the subject that was a part of his Library Science Master’s degree program. Indeed his interest in both business and the library took him beyond the comfortable stacks of the university and to libraries in the business sector, expanding his experience and understanding of the role libraries can play in business and life. Ron knew of the library also beyond university walls, and he told a sober tale of his days running one on Wall Street.  His description of his experience there had a harder edge; he spoke first of his experience building a library for Lehman Brothers, Inc. that ultimately had a staff of 64 and a budget larger than the University of Pennsylvania library’s of that time. But the story was not simply of his success in a business context; rather it was also of hard days and the difficulty of watching people lose their jobs.  At this point in his story, the pace changed and we were transported to seeing him pushing though his days in the context of a dog-eat-dog business environment.

Ron knew libraries, and he had experience with the stark realities of business.   One got a clear sense that both these contexts shaped his approach to leadership itself.

Ron Dow left Wall Street to return to the academic library, landing at Penn State University where he would be a leader within their large library system, and where he would become Ron Dow, Ph.D., and would be promoted to full professor with tenure (as at Penn State, librarians are considered part of the faculty). His doctorate was in higher education administration, partly explaining the fluency with which he spoke seamlessly about a broad range of higher education issues, be it the organization, finances or history of the academy.  Ron’s scholarly commitment to the library and higher education helped to land him as the Head of Library at the University of Rochester, the position we found him occupying on a fall day in 2007 when we first visited his office to talk with him about his entrepreneurial experiences as an administrator within the university.

  7.1.3. Ron’s innovation #1: Changing the library collection strategy to solve a fiscal crisis

How the idea came about and was evaluated/refined

Ron was selected as Head of University Libraries in 1996 at a time of significant fiscal tensions at the University of Rochester.  One of his first challenges became emblematic of his entrepreneurial spirit – the need to make a budget recommendation in a time when budget cuts were imminent.  Ron’s strategy was not to protect his new library budget, but rather he saw the budget crisis as an opportunity to radically change the paradigm of the University of Rochester library itself.   While higher education library budgeting is typically seen to be incremental, where each budget year is an extension of the previous year, Ron decided to propose a budget based upon a re-thinking of the entire University of Rochester library collection.

Ron began his leadership at the library with the goal of increasing the quality of the library collection despite the extreme budget constraints of the institution of the time.  He began this process by recognizing that in order to increase the library collection quality over time he needed to garner the support of institutional leaders for the library. To garner support in a difficult budget year Ron decided to propose a voluntary library budget cut, saying:

“I knew … that the collection that was being purchased wasn’t necessarily the right collection, it was simply things being purchased along this ‘just in case’ model …  So I wrote to the Provost and said, I want the 2% cut, and my thinking was, one, it makes me a better partner with the college for later, two, it gives me an opportunity to create extensive urgency in the library for doing something different, and three, if we did it right we would never again have to hear the argument from the college administrators, or anybody else, that the collection we were purchasing did not match what was going on at the University of Rochester.” (Ron)

He was convinced that in the end this change would be beneficial to the students and the faculty at the university, as the collection would better match their interests and needs.

Planning and gathering the needed resources

The urgency created by a budget cut created the context for Ron to go to his librarians and explain that each of them would need to make a 35% budget cut.  He asked his staff to consult with faculty to come up with a list of core materials that were essential to support the faculty and curriculum of the University of Rochester, and subsequent cuts would then be made after first and foremost fulfilling the must-have items that faculty needed, thus reducing the collection of anything the faculty did not report needing.  The change in thinking was remarkable in that it focused not on continuing past material collections, but rather refocused the library collection on what the faculty and students had to have to complete their activities.  In his own words Ron indicated:

“…you’re going to take a 35% cut to your budget and what you must do is come up with a core collection for the discipline you support, meaning serials and list of publishers where we buy everything, that if we did not buy them you couldn’t say we supported this discipline at all and you couldn’t even really offer degrees in this discipline because you’re not following the standard things. So… you the librarian must go to the faculty and come up with a list of what are the standard titles, you then must come back to the head of collections and convince that head of collections that you have done that.” (Ron)

The library was committed to buying those collections that faculty reported they must have, but everything else that had been purchased till then was open to removal from the budget.  Once the collection had been trimmed to include only those items reported to be needed by faculty, then faculty were asked for a list of wants.  This, in turn, ensured the buy-in of the faculty for the radical move of stopping to purchase many of the existing collections.

Implementing and monitoring the initiative

This plan was put into action, and this required still a lot of decisions to be made in terms of what to purchase or discontinue.

Ron reported that after all the faculty requests were met, expenditures for that year were $200,000 less than previous – funds that could be reallocated even after the 2% overall budget cut to support some of the innovations he was envisioning.

Although responding to the budget cut was a one-time initiative, the radical restructuring of the library collection that was achieved as a result had important long-term consequences.  Now Ron had effectively positioned the library to be able to keep up-to-date the most essential areas of its collection within the existing fiscal constraints, and even more importantly had gained the support of faculty and central administration for this radical move:

“To sustain that collection meant that we need on average 9% new money every year just to buy the same things that the faculty have told us we must have. Every year since then I’ve gotten the money that we’ve needed to sustain that collection plus some additions. So that overcame a reluctance on the faculty to deal with resizing the collection because now they were in charge. It showed the college and the provost I was the team player because never in our provost’s entire academic life had he ever had anyone take a 2% cut, ever.” (Ron)

The paradigm shift from seeing the library collection as an incremental and constantly growing set of materials to a collection organized around supporting current faculty teaching and scholarship was a risky step for a new Head of the Libraries, one that Ron navigated to both transform thinking about the library and build rapport with University administration.  This non-traditional approach to advancing the library collection was symbolic of the entrepreneurial leadership spirit that Ron brought to the University library.  His ability to see fiscal resource constraints as an opportunity for redefining the paradigm of the library is indicative of his leadership approach.

  7.1.4. Ron’s innovation #2: Transforming the library into a student-centered space

How the idea came about and was evaluated/refined

Ron’s vision for the library was not simply as a collection of books, a repository of knowledge, but as a uniting experience for all students.   A key challenge he faced in realizing this vision, as the Head of the Libraries at the University of Rochester, was the fact that the existing facility that was the University Library was not inviting to students.  As Ron described the library facilities when he started:

“[The] University of Rochester has this important literature [but] the literature of the disciplines was put in a very tired looking facility … the furniture was worn out, the spaces looked tired, they looked like they were from the 50s and 60s and there were no students in the library except during test times, so it was a pretty empty place.” (Ron)

Ron began to put forward a vision of the library that would invite students to participate in literature and learning:

“It seemed to me that if you wanted to focus as a librarian on bringing students to the literature, to support what was going on in the classroom and going on in the major, then you needed to go back to the issue of facilities because the facilities had to reflect the same quality as what was going on in the literature that was in the library.” (Ron)

Thus, Ron’s commitment to renovate the main building housing the University Library came forth as an integral component of his efforts to transform the library into a vibrant student-centered place.

The real challenge he faced was a financial one, as facilities renovation projects are inherently very expensive and at the time the university was experiencing severe fiscal constraints.  Ron was aware that funding his proposed renovations was not likely to be considered a priority by the central administration.  Yet he was confident that he could succeed in securing at least some gifts that would allow him to begin to renovate a few key rooms.  While he knew that at his university such an entrepreneurial approach to fund-raising was not encouraged, he was willing to take the risk of disregarding current practices and channels in order to achieve his goal.

Planning and gathering the needed resources

The strategy that Ron employed to address the library facilities reflected his entrepreneurial leadership approach and large personality.  Ron described telling the story of the need for facilities improvements in every venue that he could, including in front of the University Trustees.  As he sought funds from donors on his own to transform the environment, he would communicate his vision of the library as not simply a collection of books, a repository of knowledge, but as a uniting experience for all students. His approach was to talk about the need for facilities upgrades to change the library to be a place for students to engage in learning.    All students spent time doing research for classes, writing papers, engaging the collection filling the library shelves and as such the library should invite students in.  The following passage shows how Ron made the case to one of the University Trustees in order to support a specific remodeling project.

“I was invited by the provost to talk about the library and my agenda for it and I said basically the same thing and [a trustee] was a member of that group and he followed me over.  You know, I didn’t recognize him, but he came over and he looked around and then he came to see me and he said ‘I understand what you want to do, what could you do for $250,000 in the periodical reading room …’ and so we began to look at it and we said, you know, the chairs were old and worn down, the floor was cork and worn out, there were florescent lights on the ceiling so you couldn’t see the art on the ceiling, so it looked like a space that was very tired.  It didn’t have lights on the tables, it didn’t have Internet access, it didn’t have anything basically and it was pretty empty.  We said for $250,000 we could do this, but for $500,000 we could do much more and so he gave us $500,000.” (Ron)

This first initiative, as well as all the other initiative comprising Ron’s facilities renovation project, was informed by student input, so as to ensure that the new spaces being created would truly attract and better serve students on campus.  Listening to students in qualitative ways became a key resource for Ron and his staff to understand how to transform the physical space, use and educational culture of the library.  Ron saw student assessment, conversations with students, and an understanding of how students live and experience the library as key resources for making decisions that would bring the library closer to his vision of an engaged student learning space.

“So one of the things that students said is they want to be able to move seamlessly between the different environments in the library, the quiet study, the collections, the group study, group talk, meetings, food, technology, entertainment, general reading, a place to just chat and meet – All of those elements have now been designed in some fashion into this building and yet it still has to meet the scholarly needs of faculty, graduate students.” (Ron)

In the effort to gather information about student needs and study habit as part of the design process, at some point Ron made the innovative move of hiring an anthropologist full-time on his staff, to lead a series of research and evaluation studies. This anthropologist also had the task of training library staff to do ethnographic interviews, so as to empower them to be a part of the research team engaging in these studies.

“Listening” to his clients’ needs sometimes led to controversial decisions that were not too popular with his staff.  For example, one evening after having visited with the university student government association and hearing about their desires, he made the unpopular decision of allowing students to bring food and drink into the library:

“One of the things he did was food and drink. Well, if we had taken a vote, believe me, the library staff would never have agreed to food and drink in the library and he just one day announced we will permit food and drink in the library. And I thought my God, you can’t do that! And now most libraries are doing it, but we were really one of the first and … and there are reasons why you don’t want food in the library because it puts your collections at risk, because … you get bugs and things, but nobody has ever dropped a soda on one of our computers.  I mean, it is surprising as much food that comes in here, and we never had a really serious bug infestation in our stacks, so it’s hard to argue.” (Ron’s collaborator)

Implementing and monitoring the initiative

Ron pursued his vision for transforming the library facilities one room at a time, as soon as he was able to secure a donor for a particular space – sometimes coming up with creative solutions!

“[A donor] would’ve liked to redo the Welles Brown Room, but you can’t rename the Welles Brown Room. But we could [rename] the lobby, so he paid to do the lobby and the Welles Brown Room including the air conditioning for the room so that we could recreate the front of the library and make it … a more welcoming place, a place that appeared for students to represent what was inside.  … Along the way we ran into Bill Gamble, who did the Gamble Room upstairs and we got to know … the primary Board Directors of the Gleason Foundation, and the Gleason Foundation generously gave us the money to renovate the Great Hall and they’ve given us $5M to renovate the back of the first floor.” (Ron)

As success breeds success, Ron’s projects became more and more ambitious.  His last project, funded by a gift of $5 million from the Gleason Foundation, involved the transformation of 20,000 square feet previously used for storage and staff offices into an innovative space for students’ use that included both quiet spaces and spaces to work together in small groups, using furniture that was conducive to different types of activities students might desire to conduct at the library. This innovative library space attracted national attention, as for example it was feature in a 2007 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Carlson, 2007).

The transformation of the library into a space that truly invites students in was a core initiative for Ron. Remaking the library facility was a key to achieving Ron’s vision of the library as a student-centered space that contributed to student learning and growth. The library in that vision becomes the hub of campus academic life, and the librarian, by extension, becomes no longer just keeper or locator of material, but an educator who is a learning partner of faculty and students.  Depicting this vision was part of Ron’s leadership, and selling that vision was central to raising the funding necessary for achieving facilities transformation that will stay with the University for a long-time.

  7.1.5. Ron’s innovation #3: The Library Technology Initiative

How the idea came about and was evaluated/refined

Ron always envisioned integrating the University of Rochester library with student life on campus. Ron knew that for students to use library resources effectively, they first need to visit the library frequently.  But this was not enough. In his own words, here was a second component of his vision.

“The second component of the vision then was getting students involved with the collections and that meant beginning to work with the librarians.  Librarians have a very set way of thinking about things and they’re very passive, they wait for students to come. They’re very helpful, but they’re very passive, and they view the library as delivering a service to the campus – so that when you come in I will assist you because I deliver a service – and I disagreed with that perspective.  My perspective was that librarians are educators and that the reason a student comes to the library is to read, to study, for social interaction or because their faculty members have charged them to undertake a writing assignment.” (Ron)

He emphasized a proactive approach by librarians and shared his belief that ‘librarians are educators’ with his colleagues and staff. He encouraged the ideas of hosting a breakfast for incoming students’ parents and an annual Halloween event called the Scare Fair for students, as ways to initiate and establish a rapport with the student community.

He also felt that today’s youth are used to many technologies and would expect to be able to use them in the library, but he also recognized that his library was way behind the times when it came to technology.

Planning and gathering the needed resources

So, sensing the need for upgrading and integrating technology in the library processes, Ron also identified the right persons who could develop and lead the initiative of a ‘digital library’, and put this person in charge of the planning.  In this, as well as other cases, Ron showed skill in identifying collaborators who would complement his limitations. He knew how to hire the right people for the right task.   Despite his initial skepticism about the cost and legality issues in digitizing the library, he never allowed it to be a barrier and instead encouraged new ideas to flow and provided his collaborators with the required freedom to innovate and come up with solutions that would benefit the community.

Implementing and monitoring the initiative

As a result, new technology initiatives were launched which included development of course pages and creating digital reserves, and all this at a very marginal rise in cost.  For example, the library invested in the integration of web search engines with traditional card catalog and on-line library reference materials.  Rather than seeing the library as a physical location, these investments in technology, in infrastructures like a search engine, and in digital collections, all created a new vision of the library as a hub of materials that can be consumed in traditional or through technology as a vehicle.  The libraries investment in this technology encouraged the digitalization of the library via access, searching and purchasing processes.

Ron was very astute in assessing and understanding the changing role of technology in the world of library. He was aware of the constraints that confined the library from making larger investments in technology and thus sought creative solutions that would make the technology initiative possible.

“We realized that we had to invest in making the technology more users friendly, more students friendly. We buy the technology, so we have Voyager [their online catalog created as part of the technology initiative], we buy it, we can’t change it we don’t have the code, we can’t make that product any different than what is sold to us, but we can change the front end, so we began inventing different ways of getting into the catalog.” (Ron)

Most importantly, he redefined the roles and responsibilities of his staff in order to make this happen:

“ So we cut back on their [the librarian’s]  other duties, outsourced training, and that gave the same number of people freedom then to do the kinds of work that the library was coming to count on, because we were coming more and more the technological center”. (Ron)

Ron allowed his team all the possible freedom to be creative and approach the problems and constraints as if they are opportunities to accomplish their vision for library. Ron calls this “painting a vision.” He believed in articulating a vision, giving a broad statement – a broad feeling to generate energy and build momentum around a vision – and then empower people to do their job and invent ways to achieve that vision. The success of these initiatives built a strong case for more investment in technology. The integration of new and effective technology in library has since become a continuous process.

  7.1.6. Updates to Ron’s story

In 2008, Ron decided it was time for him to retire. As he left the University of Rochester Libraries, he also left behind a cadre of capable and dedicated staff and leaders who had played a role in his many innovative initiatives. One of those leaders was appointed as the next Head of Libraries and continued to move forward and expand many of his initiatives, most notably the library facility renovation and the technology integration.

7.2. Analysis of Ron’s entrepreneurial activity

  7.2.1. Ron’s practices about vision

Ron’s library budget, facilities and technology initiatives reflect his ability to articulate a clear vision and provide a direction. His decision to take a 2% budget cut when most of the other departments were struggling to protect their budgets was part of his strategy to achieve his vision for the library. He had a very clear idea about how this initiative would contribute in successfully achieving his goals for the library. His voluntary commitment to a budget reduction was appreciated by the top leadership and provided Ron with the necessary platform to develop and strengthen a positive relationship with senior administrators at the university. Ron then successfully capitalized on his strengthened relationship with senior university leaders to make a strong case for the necessity to restructure and upgrade library facilities. In implementing these initiatives Ron was very focused on getting students to come and use library facilities. He was well aware that he needed to urgently do things to upgrade library facilities so as to make it attractive for students.  While restructuring the environment was the beginning for Ron, his vision encompassed changing the culture of the library on the University of Rochester campus, which in turn required changing the way his staff and students viewed the library, from a passive location of resources to an engaged location of education and ultimately learning.

Entrepreneurial success demands a clear vision, but it is not enough to have one without having the ability to share it with team members, colleagues and collaborators and inspire them to achieve it. A good sense and understanding of the environment in which a vision would endure and flourish is an important ingredient for entrepreneurial leadership. Ron had the ability to quickly analyze the institutional environment and use it astutely to promote his vision. He also had the skill to communicate it effectively to all his constituencies and initiate dialogue and build confidence in his staff. One of his collaborators described Ron as “a very political animal who really understands the intricacies of the campus politics”.

Along with the ability to look at a larger picture and provide a broad vision, Ron also possessed the effective skills of a practitioner who understood how to transform that vision into a reality. He had a very good grasp of ground realities and facts. In his own words,

“My approach with major change is to articulate a vision, give a broad statement, a broad feeling to generate energy around doing something, build momentum and then don’t do anything. And if I’m successful, the people I’m trying to convince will have internalized what I have said. … But when I don’t do anything, if I’ve been successful, they will run ahead of me and they will invent it”.  (Ron)

Ron was also very successful in communicating and sharing his vision with his constituencies outside of his staff, and as a result created space for him to challenge the protocol and lead the process of raising additional funds to restructure and upgrade the facilities.  He was especially effective at making people feel that their own dream ­and vision – for the library, the students, or the university at large – could be achieved by supporting his initiatives. Ron was constantly making the case for the library.  For example, in our interviews with Ron, he consistently gave us his pitch, making us feel as though the library was our library, that we had a vested interested in the how the library has been transformed as a space and how it functions as a part of campus life.

To support these communications, Ron used a number of complementary strategies.  First of all, he was a great story teller, and was able to generate excitement about his vision for the library by recounting the development of some of his major innovations, and showing the difference they had made.  He also used very effectively visits to the library facilities, especially the newly remodeled spaces, so that people could appreciate first-hand the kind of environment he had been able to create – or, conversely, the dire state of some facilities so as to motivate the need for their renovation.  He also had sets of photos about how various spaces looked before and after a renovation that would show the remarkable difference, while always discussing the implications in terms of improving students and faculty’s learning experiences and, thus, the core mission of the university.

  7.2.2. Ron’s practices about opportunities

Ron is a good example of a ‘learning leader’ who has always been open to new ideas and looked for opportunities in a dynamic environment. ‘Success strikes when opportunity meets preparation’ – Ron exhibited excellent insight in identifying opportunities and inspired his team to prepare for them in order to achieve their goals.

Ron was an idea generator as well as facilitator of idea as an individual. His colleagues described that he tried to “flood the system with ideas”.  Flooding the systems with ideas is a key concept that emerged from discussion with and about Ron’s library leadership.  One was never sure in the discussion of a particular leadership initiative whether the idea was Ron’s, his staff’s, or someone yet unnamed, rather one was clear that new ideas were valued and that ideas were the fuel of his library leadership.  Comments from Ron’s collaborators would lead one to believe that while we heard from Ron about projects or initiatives that were successful, not all of his ideas were so successful. Rather, many of them did not succeed or take flight.  It was perhaps Ron’s open-door policy with staff and his approach to flooding the system with ideas that led one to understand that not all ideas or opportunities became actions, programs or activities that innovated the library, but those that had success were connected strongly to his vision of the library as a place of student learning, where ideas and literature are themselves alive.

Where did Ron find opportunities for innovation?  First of all he seemed to be very alert and attuned to the needs of his clients (i.e., the users of the library) and to proactively search to understand what these needs were and how they could be addressed – as illustrated in all of the innovations featured in this chapter.  He wanted to understand what the faculty really needed before making his radical revisions of the library’s budget and collection.  He employed creative ways to discover students’ study habits as an integral part of the process of remodeling the library facilities.  And he recognized the reliance on technology of today’s undergraduate students as a motivation the technology transformation of his library.  He was also not afraid to critically examine his practice and the practice of his staff to make sure that it met the needs of the students and faculty using the library, and to suggest even radical changes when he thought they were needed. He was also very aware of what was going on in other libraries and the field of higher education more generally, scanning the environment to identify novel solutions and, thus, opportunities for his library to improve through their adoption.  He recognized the contributions that other fields can provide – as especially illustrated by his looking at technology as a way to revolutionize how a library can support student learning and faculty research, and his decision to hire an anthropologist as part of his staff.

Ron also saw opportunity where others may have seen problems or roadblocks.  As we saw in his story, a budget crisis created the context to change the libraries’ fundamental approach to collection purchasing and building good will; space in need of enhancement became the opportunity to transform the library into a student-centered place; technology changing the way libraries are experienced became an opportunity to transform the librarians’ practices and the type of services offered to students and faculty. And Ron also expected his entire staff to embrace this approach to problems:

“What I do is I give people the opportunity to solve those problems and I don’t deal with them as problems, I deal with them as opportunities.” (Ron)

While Ron was good at uncovering many opportunities, evaluating which of those opportunities were worthy of investing time and energy was a key element of his process of initiating innovation.  While assessing new opportunities, Ron drew from his rich work experience in academia as a professor, educational administrator and a librarian. While Ron was clearly the final “decider” in these cases, he understood leadership to mean that he wanted staff to move forward with ideas of their own accord.

Moving from recognizing an opportunity to acting on it also involves a process of determining which ideas will “take.”  Ron Dow described that he “floated” a lot of ideas and saw what “sticks,” a process of seeing how stakeholders take up or don’t take up any given idea.  Ron promoted the idea of getting to know students through ethnography assessment approaches, where librarians intentionally gather information from students by talking with them.  His commitment to assess what students needed from the library was emphasized by his bringing a university ethnography researcher onto his staff to lead these assessment activities.  The formal use of ethnography assessment approaches to understanding the library and its users were an important component of Ron’s leadership and understanding of the library; yet his entrepreneurial initiatives were driven not simply by data, but also by a clear vision for the library as a place of student learning and engagement.  His push to orient the budget to the collection utilized by students and faculty, to improve facilities, and to advance technology, all fit within a broad vision of the library, one that assessment data supported but did not drive forward.   While data supported his thinking, he was also known to make decisions about whether to pursue an opportunity that were bold and more ad hoc.

  7.2.3. Ron’s practices about risk

The ability to take risk, the skill to evaluate it and the astuteness to minimize it are essential traits of an entrepreneur that Ron demonstrated to a high degree.  Ron’s initial budget decision, his push to transform the library facilities, and his willingness to support technology development, when they began were all unproven and risky endeavors.  In all of these circumstances, Ron seemed to evaluate the risk of “missing the boat” higher than the risk of “sinking the boat.”

Ron’s leadership revealed not only his appetite for risk, but also his talent for evaluating and minimizing it.  For example, suggesting a reduction of 2% in the budget at a time when the library was struggling with poor infrastructure was a decision that involved financial risk. However, the risk involved in this decision was carefully assessed. Ron and his team had a clear strategy to minimize the risk and optimize the benefits derived from it. The library staff was proactively involving faculty and systematically streamlining the library collections by trimming down the less needed collections. Ron and his team knew the significance of strengthening the relationship with university authorities and were aware that only with the support from senior leadership would their various library initiatives be sustained and grow. Ron had evaluated the risk well and was prepared to take the budget cut in return for more autonomy especially in fund raising.

Ron also seemed not afraid of making mistakes, or even having his staff make mistakes, as illustrated for example by his decision to let a staff member go ahead with experimenting with the idea of a digital reserve even if he himself had some reservations to this regard.  In fact, Ron was seen by his colleagues as someone who supported the development of ideas realizing that not all ideas will “take hold”, or in other words be successful.  Ron almost brushed past the multiple ideas that never “took hold”, rather focusing on the successes, seeing the ideas that didn’t pan out as a part of the process; indeed making mistakes or unfulfilled efforts were all a part of his leadership.

  7.2.4. Ron’s practices about resources

Economic and financial barriers are major constraints that an entrepreneur has to deal with to successfully accomplish the set objectives.  Ron was very aware of these constraints and had a good understanding of the economic drivers for his organization, while demonstrating creativity and ingenuity to get the resources he needed to make his vision a reality.

First, he strongly held that libraries should invest in Research and Development, stating:

“Years ago I wrote an article for a financial journal in librarianship arguing that libraries needed to invest in R&D and if we look at companies who remain viable they tend to invest between 4 and 5% of their annual assets in R&D and we should too …” (Ron)

Ron saw the need to invest resources in developing new knowledge in librarianship, based upon a business language and budget model. His investments included anthropological research on students and faculty to identify work habits and needs impacting their use of the library, systematic assessment of the major innovations implemented, on-going technology training for his staff, and more generally making sure that all his staff was staying up to date.

While operating in a very decentralized higher education institution, as head of the libraries Ron had very limited opportunities to generate significant revenues through its own operations – and, thus, to increase the funding available to him – except for fund-raising.  Rather, his core revenues came from allocations paid by the various academic units, determined each year through negotiations with the Provost.  Ron saw these year-to-year budget negotiations as opportunities to generate good will and new opportunities.  As observed by a colleague:

“It is not a matter of numbers … we would get increases in our library budget when nobody else on the campus was, and part of that was that he so well understood the process that he would know what year it was appropriate to go to the provost and say well we understand the university is having a hard time so we’re only going to ask for this much and we’re going to do it in this way.”

It was not simply good will that was created in budget negotiations, but it was also the recognition that Ron was very aware, astute and good with people in relationship to finances.  A colleague described Ron’s finance dealings in the University this way;

“He’s very astute, I think I wouldn’t say clever, I think astute describes him better, he connects with people who can give us money”

Yet major innovations such as renovating the library facilities or other major projects required him to go beyond this core operating budget and look for grants as well as donors willing to support his vision.  As described in the story, Ron was very successful in fund-raising, something he perceived as a critical component of his work.  Central to his fund-raising practices was the development of relationships with the donor and the ability to provide a compelling case for his vision for the library and how a specific initiative would allow the donors to achieve some of their dreams. Ron articulated his approach to fundraising in the following way:

“You don’t just ask for money, you build a relationship and you create an excitement, you get people interested in what they can do and then you make the ask, and then you celebrate them and then you keep them informed.  So there’s a process.” (Ron)

For example, Ron told the following story of fostering a major gift from a senior friend of the university.  Due to his long-lasting relationship with the donor, he knew not to directly ask her for money, so rather he took her on the tour of the library and showed her the space he would like to renovate.  He described for her what the space could be like and later she asked what it might cost to do the project.  He told her and she ultimately made a gift to support the entire project.

Where Ron did have significant discretion, though, was on how to use the funds secured through both the internal budgeting process and fund-raising.  With the help of capable staff, he was able to make every dollar count by utilizing many bootstrapping practices.  One example is his extensive use of student help in the library to extend library hours and service for minimal cost.  Another example was his use and fostering of his existing human resource talent.  Ron was known to promote his own or the universities staff, rather than rely on externally attracted expertise.  His ability to use staff to pursue library technology, learning and assessment strategies point toward how he was able to add value to the library services using bootstrapping approaches that maximized its limited resources.

Ron recognized the library personnel as a key resource and valued the people with whom he worked a great deal.  He believed strongly in creating a supportive environment in which staff could have freedom to succeed and excel.  He pointed out that this belief was supported by the low turnover rate of his staff, and the success his staff had in being nationally recognized.

“One of the reasons that few people leave here is because they can’t find any place else to go that will give them that same amount of freedom, or have an open enough vision that they will accept what they are now.” (Ron)

Ron also took the view that individuals of high ability and training, who shared the same vision of the library as the hub of the campus and were passionate about their job, were more important than traditionally qualified staff.  In the context of the library, Ron hired PhDs in other disciplines to be librarians rather than simply hiring trained librarians, believing that the educational background in another discipline offered the library a value-added component.

“We hire the person who can do it the best. [Staff member] couldn’t get a job in many libraries because he doesn’t have a library degree; he has a doctorate in literature. We can live with that, and we get a really good product”. (Ron)

Ron emphasized freedom to be creative, support for different types of skills and abilities and the support to try new ideas, even when he was reluctant.  An example of this occurred when one of his librarian’s championed an idea for which Ron had doubts.  Yet, Ron supported the librarian’s initiative and ultimately the individual and the idea found success.

“[A staff member] brought forward a proposal to do digital reserves.  She had been reading about it, she thought it was easy to do and I was reluctant, cause I thought you know, this is going to be a lot more expensive.  We’re going to need new equipment, we’re going to need servers, there might be some legal issues.  I said well why don’t you do a test and come back and tell me what it’s going to cost and she never did.  She just did it and then came back and said its working and it didn’t cost anything, and I said, terrific, you’re the employee of the year!” (Ron)

A key element of Ron’s entrepreneurial leadership was the value he placed on individuals as a part of his team.  Ron described himself throughout the interview as wanting to support his staff in bringing ideas forward.  He wanted them to assess those ideas carefully, of course, but he was keen on seeing staff as a key resource to be valued, listened too, and engaged in the process of creating a new vision for the library. And he was always ready to “share the glory” with them when their ideas turned out to be successful.

As head of the libraries, Ron’s role was more that of conceiving ideas and securing the resources, rather than to carry them out into practice.  He simply did not have the time, and often the expertise, to personally oversee the implementation of the initiative he started.  For this, he relied on his staff, and once he assigned a project leader to a specific initiative, he gave him/her great autonomy as well as responsibility to carry out the task.  He recognized the importance of assigning the right person to this role, and he was good in making this kind of decision.

  7.2.5. Ron’s practices about growth

In the case of a university library, “growth” as traditionally interpreted (i.e., in terms of achieving an increasingly larger collection, budget, staff and number of customers served) may not be always realistic nor within the control of the head of the libraries – especially in consideration of the lack of opportunities for generating revenues beyond fund-raising discussed in an earlier section.  Indeed, this kind of growth may not even always be necessarily desirable per-se – especially if “growing” the library may occur at the expense of other important functions or operations of the university, given the finite pool of resources.  Rather, in this case study we may want to look at growth in terms of the success achieved in providing an increased number of useful – and utilized – services to students and faculty.

Within this interpretation of success and growth, we can confidently state that Ron was driven by the desire to “grow” and throughout his tenure continued to be very successful in this endeavor.  It is also interesting to note how “success breeds success” and thus allowed him to take on bolder and bolder innovations overtime – as demonstrated for example very concretely by the growing scope and impact of his facility renovation projects over time.

Since his budget and staff did not grow considerably over time, Ron did not have to deal with the radical transformations in the organizational structure and his own leadership role that are inevitably associated when with “traditional” growth.  However, over time he purposely developed and empowered several individuals in his organization to take on more leadership responsibilities – as a way to both grow leadership capacity within the organization and allow him to devote more of his efforts to “big picture” activities and fund-raising.

  7.2.6. Other interesting elements of Ron’s case

The unique challenges of operating a non-revenue generating unit 

While Ron and Pat operated in the same university, and thus were both able to benefit from its decentralized budgeting system and governance, as well as its tradition of entrepreneurial thinking and practices, there was a critical difference between their situations.  While the School of Nursing had control on its revenues – as it could raise tuition from students, be awarded research grants, and even as we saw in the previous chapter start some for-profit business lines – Ron’s library was not a revenue-generating unit.  Therefore, Ron could not increase the size of his budget except through increasing donations and rather depended on Central Administration decisions regarding the size of his budget.

This essentially reduced his ability to generate new funds to fund-raising with individual donors and foundations, and made the need for bootstrapping even greater.  At the same time, within these fiscal constraints, as Head of the Libraries Ron had a lot of freedom about how to use the funds at his disposal and how to select and utilize his staff; indeed, many of his innovations could not have taken place without such a freedom.

Taking advantage of the “loosely coupled system” characteristic of universities

Educational organizations – and universities in particular – are great examples of loosely coupled systems.  According to Weick (1976) “Loose coupling conveys the image that coupled events are responsive, but that each event has an individual identity and the coupling can vary over time. It also suggests that one can break organizations into largely self-functioning subsystems, and loose coupling is really the “glue” that holds them together”. Loosely coupled organizations may detect changes in their environment better than a large, tightly run organization. It provides more diversity to adapt to changing environmental situations by allowing more novel solutions and mutations to occur than a tightly coupled system.

A very sound understanding of the university’s organizational structure was Ron’s asset and he effectively capitalized on the loosely coupled system that existed in his university as a platform to allow the library organization to persist through rapid environmental fluctuations and fiscal uncertainties. He used this loosely coupled system to improve the library’s sensitivity to the environment and allowed local adaptations and creative solutions to develop.

The library was insulated from the market forces and external economic pressures, and this allowed more space for Ron and his team to be creative in their endeavors to restructure and reposition the library on campus. The process of reshaping the organizational culture was very critical, and if not for Ron’s maverick approach it would have been an unachievable task in a loosely coupled organization like the University of Rochester.

Capitalizing on the principles of professional bureaucracy

Within the library itself, Ron also initiated, nurtured and effectively used the principles of professional bureaucracy (Mintzberg, 1979, 1980). Professional bureaucracy reflects decentralized structure where core professionals or specialists work closely with clients and largely independent from their colleagues. Professional bureaucracy indicates that the work to be done may require great knowledge and skill and tasks to be performed are controlled by those who perform them.

Ron not only hired trained librarians, but recruited professionals and specialists from other disciplines who were very capable and duly trained for the operating core, and then gave them considerable autonomy and control over their work. This approach allowed these professionals to work independently within the organization, but closely with the students and faculty that they served.  Throughout his leadership he proactively worked at developing new expectations about the role of librarians and the library on campus, new systems to evaluate new ideas and make timely decisions, open communication expectations and vehicles to invite open two-way communication between leadership and other employees, and most importantly multiple leadership opportunities for his staff.  He truly tried to empower his staff to be innovative and entrepreneurial themselves, and that meant giving them room to experiment and take some risks.

Creating crisis as a way to promote innovation

While we have seen in other cases the use of existing crises as a motivation for innovation, Ron occasionally created crisis as a way to generate urgency for change and innovation.  For example, the potential of a budget cut in the university could be considered more of a difficulty than a crisis, yet Ron used the potential budget cut to create an urgency to change the way in which the library budgeted for purchasing the library collection – one of his most transformational and lasting innovations within the organization.

  7.2.7. Concluding thoughts about Ron’s case

This case-study reveals a story of how a communicated vision, keen attention to fiscal resource pressures and supportive management of people can generate a context for organizational transformation.  The library under Ron’s leadership clearly changed in three important ways that added value to the students and faculty it served, as well as the University of Rochester as an institution. First, the library was physically transformed into an inviting space where students and faculty are pleased to be and visitors are brought to see.  Second, the library moved from being library centered to being student centered, focusing on how the library could be an important partner is the education of college students and adding to the learning experience of the students.  Third, the library was transformed into a forward-looking technology center, where the vision of the library as a “place of books” is transformed into a digital hug of disciplinary knowledge and learning and students can access the collections in ways that may be more efficient and close to the way they are used to operating. Perhaps the single most entrepreneurial leadership act undertaken by Ron, though, and the biggest value he added to the university was not the voluntary budget cut, renovation of the library facilities, or the development of any specific new technology, but instead it was the use of each of those initiatives as opportunities to transform the culture of the library from a passive environment to one that is active, engaged in outreach and sees itself as a core component of the educational mission of the university – thus enacting Ron’s vision of the library as an educational space that is not a service, but a foundation of students’ educational experience.

These contributions to the University, its students and faculty, came as the result of not just a few major initiatives – although these were clearly critical – but also from Ron’s continuous engagement in innovations, both big (like the budget initiative) and small (like allowing food and drink in the library). Each of his big initiatives can also be seen as resulting from the collection of a number of smaller ones – as the facilities renovations, for example, not only developed “one room at a time”, but were also interspersed with important moves such as hiring an anthropologist to lead the study of students’ campus life and work habits, and training librarians so as to gather the needed input to inform the renovations. Altogether, Ron’s initiatives spanned across many areas, including offering new services for library users, starting a new budgeting system, facilities projects, restructuring staff roles and responsibilities, and overall changing the culture of the library.

None of these efforts would have been possible had it not been for Ron’s first initiative, to have a vision to realign the library with key faculty disciplinary collections in a time of a budget crunch.  The opportunity to transform how the collections were purchased created good-will with administrators and faculty alike.  As Ron said, “faculty was satisfied—the only things they said to the provost were positive things.”

The case of Ron Dow presents a story of how entrepreneurial leadership can add in organizational transformation when both core academic values and fiscal resources issues are attended to simultaneously.  While there may be academic examples where entrepreneurial processes and practices create contexts for the application of business ideas to higher education that threaten core activities and values of universities, none of that is clear here.  Rather, Ron’s leadership affirmed at every turn the institutional commitments to disciplinary scholarship and to student engagement in learning, as well as to the key idea that the library is a central and common component of academic life.  Ron’s leadership is a case-in-point example of the potential of entrepreneurial thinking and action when applied to the challenges of leadership in higher education. Ron was effective and successful in taking advantage of the loosely coupled organizational structure, which also allowed him sufficient space to be a maverick in his approach. Ron used fiscal resource tensions to drive change and saw his job as providing the resources to maintain and advance the library as a place of active learning.   His vision of the library was compelling to think about and made that much more appealing when you sat and listened to him selling you on the virtues of the library.  His entrepreneurial leadership provided solutions to problems faced by mission-oriented institutions, who also ultimately have to survive, sustain and grow in a world with harm economic realities.

The fiscal realities of higher education make it clear that the academy needs leaders that consider both the fundamental mission of institutions to be places where students can be transformed through the acquisition of knowledge and skills.  However, this transformation needs to happen in the context of leadership that attends carefully to providing resources that can make lofty mission statements possible.  Ron’s sage leadership through difficult budget times begs the question of not simply, “Is there an entrepreneur in the library?”  but “Where else do institutions of higher education need entrepreneurs that have the sense to balance fiscal tensions with core academic intentions?”

7.3. Commentaries on Ron’s case

We are collecting readers’ insights and lessons learned from reading Ron’s case on the companion website, and we invite you to add yours by following the specific guidelines provided in the “Guidelines for Contributions” document.

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