Category: Decision Making

Why Young Professionals Say “No” to Leadership Roles

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We have all heard the standard career advice: start at the bottom, work hard, and get promoted into leadership. Becoming a supervisor or manager has often been seen as an important step on the career path. However, what happens if a person decides that traveling the leadership route is not worth the stress and workload? Is there a way to make these positions more appealing?

In an online post titled, Why Library Workers Are Saying “No” to Leadership Roles, Choice360 contributor Alejandro Marquez shares reasons why some young library professionals choose to stay away from leadership roles. While his focus is on the library profession, many of the factors apply to other professional careers. Among the several workplace issues Marquez cites, one is the arrival fallacy.

The arrival fallacy is the mistaken assumption that a goal or outcome will allow an individual to achieve happiness. In an organization, bosses often promise their workers a reduction in workload or stress simply by hiring new people. Often, there is no reduction as other people leave, positions are frozen, or institutional priorities shift. Instead of a reduced workload, leaders often inherit a backlog of issues, and the initial optimism can quickly fade as they grapple with the same systemic challenges. The cycle of hiring new leaders with the expectation of change, only to see the same problems persist, creates a sense of disillusionment and fuels discontent.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels.com

Does this mean that critical leadership roles will go unfulfilled in the years to come? That does not have to be the future. Marquez suggests several ways that young professionals can be encouraged to view leadership roles in a positive light. A starting point is by ensuring that organizations have carefully considered the concepts of compensation and workload equity.

Leadership roles demand significant time, energy, and expertise. Compensation needs to reflect a workload that accurately represents increased responsibilities. Workload differentials—recognizing that leadership roles often extend beyond a role’s core duties—are essential and must be accounted for. Transparent workload assessments and the equitable distribution of responsibilities are tools that can help this process.

To learn more about the reasons why young library professionals are avoiding leadership roles along with ways to address their concerns, please read the rest of the article.

It’s Not About Project Management

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Do you have challenges with project management?

For knowledge workers, projects are the key items that they work on day in and day out. Yet very few people have thought deeply about what constitutes a project and the best way to tackle them. This can create a vague sense that projects can be handled more efficiently and effectively, but it is not obvious where to start.

Thankfully, David Allen of GTD fame has spent his career thinking deeply about how we actually work and the ways to do it better. In a recent blog post titled, You don’t have a project management problem (you have this instead)…and why it’s such a squishy area, he explores the idea that most people don’t have a clear understanding of their projects.

I was often asked by line managers and training people whether I had a good “project management” seminar for their people. My first response is, “what exactly do you mean by ‘project management’?” Very few have an immediately good answer. They’ve often just heard it as a need from their reports or their constituents. “Do you have people who need to know how to lay out a GANTT chart or detailed critical path for complex projects like constructing a building or implementing a new corporate information system? Or do you have people who feel overwhelmed with the sheer load of things to do, many of which can’t be finished in a single action step?” Usually, it’s some combination of the two, but mostly it’s the latter.

Allen has a very clear definition of a project. It is anything that requires more than one action to complete. These means that most workers have anywhere from 20-50 projects on their plate at a given time. Also, he believes stress related to projects does not arise from the tactics of doing them, but instead the overwhelm of all the potential tasks to do. Therefore, Allen sees two problems to solve. The first is that organizational approaches to project management are either too complex for the project or not encompassing enough. As he states in the piece:

Problem #1 – I’ve never seen any two of those projects that needed the same amount of planning or detailing of steps to get them under control. It ranges from three bullet points on the back of an envelope in a coffee shop (usually your most productive thinking) to days of intensive planning with a dozen people, pages of outlined steps, critical path, the works. So, most single “project management” model will either under- or over-plan most of your projects. There’s no one-size-fits-all.

To learn about the second problem and his overall conclusions on the topic, please read the rest of his post.

The Perils of Probability – The Monty Hall Problem

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Have you ever pondered any of these questions?

  • Should I buy that airline ticket now or wait to see if the price will drop?
  • Should I buy the extended warranty on my used car or risk possible repair costs?
  • Should I buy a ticket for the lottery since the jackpot is very high?

Day after day we have to make decisions based on probabilities. Some choices are as simple as packing an umbrella when it’s an 80% chance of rain. Others are more complicated like how to invest retirement account money amongst many fund options. With the rise of prediction markets, more and more people are putting their money down on sports gambling without fully understanding the odds. Alas, many of those people are losing their bets because humans are very bad at understanding probability.

To learn more about the risks of sport betting, listen to the latest season of the excellent podcast, Against the Rules, from Michael Lewis. (Note – as much as the sports betting commercials try to sell you on it, think twice before betting a parlay!)

I explored the challenges we have with understanding probabilities in an article several years ago called Deal or No Deal, Mr Hall! – How We Misunderstand Probability The centerpiece of the article concerns a much-discussed probability puzzle called The Monty Hall Problem. Here is how the problem is described.

You are a contest on Let’s Make a Deal. Your game is to pick one of three doors. Behind one is a new car and behind the other two are goats. (For purposes of play assume you want the car.) Monty Hall invites you to pick a door, so let’s say you choose Door #1. Monty, who knows what is behind each door, opens Door #3 to reveal a goat. Then he gives you the opportunity to switch your choice to Door #2. The question: Are your chances of winning the car better, worse, or no different if you switch doors?

Monty Hall - Game Show Host, from ABC TV
Monty Hall – Past Host of Let’s Make a Deal.

What is your answer?

To learn the right choice, please read the full article on the Efficient Librarian website. Just know in advance that even the smartest college professors got the logic wrong when they first pondered it!

If you are thinking The Monty Hall Problem is merely a fun little puzzle, know that the ramifications of logic errors in other aspects of our lives are significant. Failing to understand probabilities can lead to poor decisions. As I state in the article:

We face a whole host of probabilistic situations throughout our lives. For example, is it worthwhile to buy extended warranties on appliances? To make an informed decision we have to know the probability that the appliance will fail and the projected cost of an uncovered repair. How about the weather? The accuracy of a five-day forecast is much lower than tomorrow’s forecast. Yet we often treat the two forecasts with the same value. Is it a better investment to buy stock in a single company or purchase a market index fund? The truth is that individual stocks are statistically more volatile than a weighted market index, yet most of business articles focus on finding the next home run stock pick.

If you enjoyed reading about The Monty Hall Problem, then I invite you to explore the follow-up article focusing on the logic behind the game show, Deal or No Deal. In that piece, we learn the important lesson that possibilities are not probabilities!

Enjoy and good luck with your next decision!

Meetings – A Healthy Conflict Space

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What’s worse than a boring meeting?

Imagine a conference room where those gathered, despite the best of intentions, are launching metaphoric war against each other. The participants spend their time engaging in personal attacks against their colleagues and any idea dared presented is destroyed in the crossfire. In the end, all that anyone takes away from the meeting are lasting scars.

Managing healthy conflict in a meeting is vital to the success of any organization. After all, one of the main reasons to hold a meeting is to robustly discuss ideas. However, without ground rules for engagement, meetings can become adverse spaces where no one wants to tread. Therefore, are their ways to manage conflict in meetings to get positive results and enthusiastic engagement?

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I’m excited to share that I wrote a chapter for a new book on library management publishing this fall. It is titled, Librarianship Beyond the Textbook: A Practical Guide for Real-World Challenges. In my chapter on running effective meetings, I share several ways to enable healthy discussion when everyone is gathered around the conference table. Here are a few suggestions to consider right now.

  • Set Ground Rules: Establish norms for respectful communication and ensure everyone understands that differing opinions are welcome. No one will be judged or criticized on their contributions.
  • Encourage Diverse Perspectives: Actively invite input from all participants by emphasizing that differing viewpoints are valuable for the discussion.
  • Focus on the Issue, Not the Person: Encourage team members to address ideas rather than personal attributes of the other participants. This helps keep discussions constructive.
  • Use “Yes, and…”: This technique from improvisation encourages building on each other’s ideas by tossing out the word “no.” The invitation in the “and” fosters collaboration.

In my chapter, I share many tips and strategies for successful meetings, including defining the purpose, selecting the participants, setting agendas, and ensuring next actions are assigned.

To read more about this topic and get great management tips from the other contributing library leaders, be sure to order your copy of Librarianship Beyond the Textbook: A Practical Guide for Real-World Challenges.

Six Skills to Survive AI

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Will AI take over the world, or at the very least, take your job?

With the rise of all manner of AI tools and agents, it is fair to ask how humans will compete against machine learning. Will all the degrees and job skills destined to be replaced by a computer? Is there anything we humans can do better than AI?

In his recent newsletter, author Daniel Pink wrote and shared a video about the Six Skills You Need to Survive AI. Pink is not an AI doomer, as he sees a future where people and AI collaborate in ways never before seen. To that end, he believes that there are specific skills and talents that humans have that AI cannot master. In the video, he shares six abilities that complement each other.

• Asking better questions
• Developing good taste
• Iterating relentlessly
• Composing pieces into something meaningful
• Allocating human and machine talent
• Acting with integrity

Let’s dive into the first one that he calls asking better questions. Pink points out in his video that AI is great at generating answers. In fact, it can provide dozens and dozens of potential answers to any inquiry. However, answers are worthless unless the questions are meaningful. It calls back to the old computer maxim of “garbage in, garbage out.” He believes that humans have the intrinsic ability to consider the meaning and objectives of a idea or problem in a way that computers simply are unable to do. To ask better questions, Pink suggests several starters, such as beginning inquiries with words such as, “What Does”, “What If”, “Why Not” and perhaps the most important question of all, “What are we trying to solve here?”

To strengthen your questioning skills, Pink suggests using a simple exercise known as The Five Whys. It is technique developed by Sakichi Toyoda for Toyota. The Lean Enterprise Institute has a good explanation of this approach.

5 Whys is the practice of asking why repeatedly whenever a problem is encountered in order to get beyond the obvious symptoms to discover the root cause. … Without repeatedly asking why, managers would simply replace the fuse or pump and the failure would recur. The specific number five is not the point. Rather it is to keep asking until the root cause is reached and eliminated.

I invite you to consider the recent questions you are asking at work, at school, or anywhere in your private life. What techniques can you use to improve the quality of your questions? Also, be very clear on the problem you are trying to solve when you ask them. By being very deliberate, the questions you ask today could lead to a groundbreaking insight tomorrow.

To learn more from Pink about the skill of asking better questions, along with the other five abilities, please see his video in the Pink Report.

Is It Ever Too Late?

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Have you ever heard someone say, “It’s too late to pursue that dream.”

When we are young, it seems like there is an abundance of time and energy to complete every goal set, finish every project started, and see the entirety of the world. Then as we grow older, time slips away and those youthful dreams feel unobtainable. And while some avenues may realistically close up as we age (like becoming an Olympic athlete in your fifties) is it really ever too late to chase most dreams?

According to Shola Richards, the answer is an solid “NO!” In a recent post on his website titled It’s Never Too Late, he explores why people give up on goals.

It’s never too late to do anything. So, why do we often think that it is? …

Sure, those dreams can be pushed aside, discouraged or ignored, but if you think that by saying “it’s too late” will succeed in killing those dreams, then I’ve got some really bad news for you.

Our dreams are persistent AF, and as long as you live, …

Shola clearly states that the only time your dreams die is when you do! In other words, so long as there is breath in the body there remains a path forward to obtain the goals that inspire and excite. He says:

Your dreams didn’t come to you so that you could throw your weakest excuses at them. They came to you so that you could literally do the damn thing.

If nothing else, remember this: persistent dreams only visit the souls who have the ability to transform them from imagined reality to actual reality.

With this clarity in mind, why not put this advice into practice.

Take a few minutes to consider the goals, projects, and dreams that have been shelved in your mind. Are you working under the misconception that they are no longer obtainable? Consider them one by one and ask two questions for each:

1/ Does this goal, project, dream, still excite me?

2/ Is there a very specific, undeniable, hard truth, no arguments about, scientifically valid reason this goal, project, dream is no longer obtainable?

If the answer is YES on question one and NO on question two, then I invite you to reengage. Write down exactly what success would look and feel like for this endevour. Then create ONE actionable item that can be done to move it forward in the next 24 hours.

Once that’s complete, decide on the next step and the next one after that. Before you know it, the dream will be realized.

Enjoy the journey!

Upcoming Webinars

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I’m excited to share information on three upcoming webinars that I’m presenting over the next two weeks. Registration for all of them are open now. This is your chance to get more comfortable with public speaking, be more productive, and became a better supervisor.

Thank you to the Florida Library Association and the American Library Association for sponsoring these webinars.

Florida Library Association Webinar
The Art of Public Speaking
Thurs. Feb. 19, 1 pm EST

In this webinar, you will learn the art and science of public speaking based on the Toastmasters approach. Free to FLA members. $20 for non-members.

ALA Webinars
A Plan for Personal Productivity for Library Staff: From Inbox to Completion
Wed. February 18, 2:30 pm EST

Is your inbox overflowing? Is your work spilling onto every available surface? Do you want to get more stuff done in less time while looking effortless in the process? In this energizing webinar, you will learn methods for workflow management based on the internationally recognized Getting Things Done (GTD) system. These practices work in any type of library and at any level of employment. With many libraries seeing record vacancies, mastering workflow is vital for peace of mind and completing valuable tasks. ALA Member Price: $80.10; Non Member Price: $89.00; Student Member Price: $44.50

ALA Webinars
Managing Employee Performance Using the SBI Method
Wed. February 25, 2:30 pm EST

The success of any project or plan relies on the work of your staff. All too often, library managers rely on employee assessment that feels like nothing more than a pointless exercise in filling out forms for both manager and employee. How can we manage library employee performance without stress, without unnecessary conflict, without busywork, but with positive results? In this webinar, learn a simple and widely tested approach to interacting with your employees that takes some of the stress out of the process. Using the Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) Model, supervisors can speak with staff in a way that is direct, yet supportive, while keeping the conversation on the topic at hand. SBI can be used to address poor performance or acknowledge great work. ALA Member Price: $80.10; Non Member Price: $89.00; Student Member Price: $44.50

Please note that all proceeds from these webinars go to the sponsoring organizations. Sign up for the webinars through the links provided.

The Wednesday Rule

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How many times have you looked back on a recent decision and wished you had done something different?

Regret happens far too often. It would be helpful if there was a way to consider the wisdom of your future self before making a decision today without the need for a time machine. However, maybe we can bend time and space after all. Not with a time machine, but instead with the assistance of a little imagination.

The Minimalists have created a simple approach to decision making that anyone can use to avoid future regret. It is called the Wednesday Rule. They explained it in a post on their website.

Here’s how it works…

Before you make a decision, simply ask yourself one question:

Will I be delighted with this decision next Wednesday?

It’s that simple.

They claim this approach can be used for any type of decision. By imagining how your future self will look back on this choice is surprisingly easy to do. The answer you receive will be revealing.

If the answer is yes, then it’s probably a good decision.

However, if the answer is No, I will not be delighted by this decision, then the decision is already made for you:

When in doubt, opt out.

What decision are you facing right now? Consider the options and then think ahead to the future having selected each one in turn. The correct choice may reveal itself immediately.

Read the whole post on the Minimalists website.

Time for a Yearly Review

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With 2025 coming to a close, have you taken the time to review the entirety of the past year?

A core component of the GTD methodology is the weekly review. This is an ongoing opportunity at the end of your workweek to review what was accomplished, identify unfinished work, and to look ahead to the following week. In fact, David Allen, GTD’s Creator, has always stressed the importance of this habit.

“The Weekly Review is the time to: Gather and process all your stuff. Review your system. Update your lists. Get clean, clear, current, and complete. You have to use your mind to get things off your mind.”

A yearly review is the logical extension of the weekly review, but on a higher level of focus. This is an opportunity to consider the status of your larger goals and update your long-term vision. It is a chance to bring clarity to the big dreams and ambitions that provide forward momentum. Keep in mind that it doesn’t have to focus solely on your job. The yearly review can cover all aspects of your life, including personal goals, health concerns, financial plans, and relationships.

Where does the yearly review start? It can begin with the following questions:

  • What were your wins?
  • What are you grateful for?
  • What risks did you take?
  • What is your unfinished business?
  • What was your biggest surprise?

After evaluating the past, the yearly review shifts to exploring the future. Again, focusing questions help with this task.

  • What would you like to be your biggest win?
  • How are you planning to improve your financial situation?
  • What are you looking most forward to learning?
  • What will be your biggest risk?

Are you ready to take on this challenge? If so, then dive right in. The steps to do a yearly review can be found on the GTD website.

Happy 2026! I wish you all a great new year!