This month’s professional pick was Matthew Kelly’s The Dream Manager. It was pure serendipity that I’ve been reading this at the same time the Darien and Taiga statements came out – I don’t plan these things, but they seem to work out that way. Such is alchemy. 
The Dream Manager is an extended parable about a janitorial company that suffered from high turnover costs, and how it turned that trend around by investing in its employees and their dreams. Step by step we see how a company can go from struggling to amazing by treating its human resources like, well, resourceful humans. Here’s the money quote:
In our corporate dealings, let us never forget that it is people who drive every business and organization. On both sides of every transaction, we find people. It is, therefore, people who decide whether organizations will be successful or unsuccesful…and people have dreams.
I know I’ve probably lost one or two of you by now, if the very word “dream” didn’t scare you off already. But, as with all things, there’s a middle ground to dreaming. Far too much of library rhetoric is composed of either pie-in-the-sky speculation that doesn’t take the reality of the human condition into account, or extreme cynicism that blows apart any glimmer of hope anyone has to offer because what’s the use of trying and who needs an MLIS and by the way we’re all going to die broke and homeless, so, whatever.
But library workers are in a unique position to leverage the power of dreaming, because what do we do all day already? We help people achieve their dreams. We help the woman working on her resume, or the proud grandpa learning to e-mail pictures of his grandchildren to far-away friends, or the student who has to write a critical paper on “A Rose for Emily.” Library workers connect people with the information needed to achieve their dreams, tall or small.
[Because people are people, they sometimes don't behave very well. But, I've found, usually there's a frustrated dream behind that bad behavior. Life does not deal all of us the same cards, and while that is not an excuse to behave poorly, it is a reason. If you can ferret out the goal behind the frustration, and maybe remove the barriers to the dream, you might get somewhere. Just a theory.]
So, we’re all pretty well acquainted with patrons’ dreams. What if we approached our own dreams, and those of our peers, with the same attention and respect? If everybody in your organization felt valued and appreciated as a human being, with a backstory and outside interests, and goals and objectives, and, well, dreams, can you imagine?
Of course, it’s not enough to have the dreams. You have to have a plan to back it up. One major reason dreaming is frowned upon is because there’s no plan and no accountability. Enter the Dream Manager, the person in your organization who functions as a coach to help you achieve your dreams. This could be an official, separate position. It could be an additional task that a manager takes upon him/herself. It could be an extremely informal thing that a bunch of individuals within an organization decides to do, in the attempt to support each other. The important part is that there’s somebody there to bounce your dreams off of, who will give you constructive criticism and help you form a plan.
Now, honestly, if you knew somebody was going to listen to you seriously, and help you achieve your best self, wouldn’t you respond by working your little heart out? I know I would! This book is recommended for library managers, people who think they might want to be library managers, and front-line staff looking for a glimmer of hope. I would also like to challenge the cynics to read this one, too, and see if it’s realistic enough for them. As a confirmed “show me” skeptic, I think it will hold up well, but I’d like to hear from some bona fide gloom cookies.
What’s your take on dreams? Do you have a mentor, manager, or co-worker you could trust with your dreams? What could your organization acheive if there were a mechanism for people to grow their dreams in a realistic way?
I’ll tell you my dreams if you’ll tell me yours….
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