Tony Zanders

Building 2050 from Baton Rouge.

LinkedIn ↗

Instagram ↗

  • Trust The Process: 2019 Harvard LILFest

    Earlier this month, I was invited to attend the Harvard Library Innovation Lab’s 2019 LILFest. Sponsored by the lab and Harvard Law Library, and hosted by the Dorchester Art Project, It was a refreshing deviation from my normal day-to-day. Throughout the event we heard speakers from the lab and the broader community sharing PechaKucha-style talks on a wide-range of current interests at the intersection of libraries, technology, and the analog/digital divide.

    Jack Cushman from Harvard LIL kicking off the morning talks.

    As with attending events for the first time, I had no idea what to expect. But during afternoon reflections, I began to find some signal in the noise.

    The messy work of creating culture

    When we look at the exemplary workplace cultures in society, people who are a part of it have a shared optimism about the future, an unfettered confidence in their potential, and a tangible chemistry. After speaking with Adam Ziegler, Executive Director of LIL, it became obvious that this was the case. His team comes from a wide variety of backgrounds and careers – from law, tech, librarianship and beyond – joined together by a shared culture to build a better future.

    I think about the task new library leaders have when brought in to a turnaround environment and how the top priority should always be focusing on the culture. Nothing else really matters if the organization isn’t bought into a shared purpose and vision.

    The disorienting thing about culture-building is that the process can be ugly but the end result is beautiful. I’d imagine Adam and his team have had days where taking risks and charting new courses seemed unwise. But having been a part of this year’s retreat, I saw a community of people enjoying each other’s company working towards something larger than themselves. In this environment, no task or project seems too big, and the shared trust is present to take on risks that are necessary for innovation. There’s much to be gleaned here.

    Innovation happens when we try new things poorly

    If you’re not a part of an innovative culture, and your exposure to innovation has only been second or third-hand, it may seem that companies that innovate operate like Starship Enterprise – where everything is neat, sleek, orderly and futuristic. Having been a part of one at 4.0 Schools – an education incubator in New Orleans responsible for much of the innovation taking place in education reform today – that this is not the case. There’s a lot more failure than success.

    Ben Steinberg from Harvard LIL demoing a homemade synth machine.

    The main difference is the shared willingness to try and fail, and the expectation to quickly respond with improvements. Creating a space for this to take place is the key ingredient for innovation. This will become increasingly important for new library leaders who are asked to work wonders with few resources and a team of people who aren’t used to this.

    When your product is your people

    Being in this space with the LIL team made me think about the importance of people. Venture capitalists realize this when they decide to fund a team that drastically changed their original project to work on something different. They are investing in the people – not the current idea that brought them together. Technology CEOs realize this when they acquire companies with no intention on using what they built, but deploying that team of people who are gifted onto other problems, also known as an “acqui-hire” (hiring via acquisition). They too are investing in the people – not the company that brought them together.

    The inverse of this is also true. I had a call today with a manager at medium-sized regional academic library that left a strong impression on me. When talking to them about the future of work in libraries, they took on a gatekeeper persona, and cut the call off when I inquired more about their work and what they do. This brought me back to my days at Ex Libris selling the Alma library management system. In 2012-13, if you told a systems librarian that you had a were going to save their institution money by moving their servers to the cloud, that person had a decision to make: they could either say “About time! I’ve always wanted to put skills X,Y,Z to use. Glad I won’t have to manage this hardware anymore.” Or they could say “you mean, I won’t have any work to do anymore? I don’t think I like you, OR your new application.”

    The same analog can be applied many places. The key difference is the people within our organization, and their perspective towards managing change. Are they at a point in their careers where they feel reinventing themselves is not an option? Do they view a change in the status quo as an exciting opportunity or a dreadful omen?

    The answer to these questions has a great impact on an organization’s ability to navigate the uncharted waters of the next decade. Before any new buildings are built, or new software is implemented, or new initiatives are launched, the culture work has to be addressed. Because at the end of the day, the product we have to offer the world is our people.

  • On Building Something New

    🎵 Robert Glasper feat. Taylor McFerrin and Derrick Hodge – Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box (Radiohead Cover)

    Following best practice is the path of least resistance to building something new. But when the status quo is broken for so many people and organizations, it’s the path of most resistance that is required.

    The recommended diet of stories from EdSurge and Educause, articles from the Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed, fundraising announcements from TechCrunch, and conference presentations from the professional associations, all feature the same usual suspects telling the same stories from the same perspectives that have created the situation we’re in today. Part of the beauty of building something new is that there isn’t a blueprint. The challenge today becomes finding inspiration to innovate in a world that rewards iteration and risk aversion.

    This morning, I saw some posts I made on Y Combinator’s Hacker News back in 2009. It reminded me that it’s been 10 years since I started my career in tech – a decade that brought me from San Francisco to Boston, all the way back home to New Orleans. From three coasts I consulted over 400 universities in 40 countries, developing an understanding of our shared history and future that no single university could provide.

    In exchange for this gift, the next decade of my career will be spent repaying universities by building a company the likes of which they haven’t seen, one designed to help them unlock their potential amidst uncertain futures. My next several articles will try to unpack this vision.

    Sometimes, we have to look backwards in order to look forward. Stay tuned.

  • Property, Websites, and Financial Freedom

    1619-2019

    The Black community has a unique victimhood with regard to property. From General Williams Tecumseh Sherman’s false promises of 40 acres and a mule, to selective federal aid for immigrants and non-Blacks after slavery, all the way through the passing of the civil rights act, through redlining and more, America has never wanted Blacks to attain the most well understood vehicle to create and transfer wealth over the generations.

    Fast forward to 2008, seven years before I was in the financial position to own property or my parents were in a position to give me a down payment to, I owned a web property. tonyzanders.com was available, and I spent $9.99 to purchase it. While it was only worth $10, something about owning something that could create wealth felt priceless.

    Like a piece of physical property, I began to fix it up with ideas, files, links, pictures. I was excited to express myself on my own terms and left most of my content public. But back when this journey first began, I had no idea where to even start.

    Studying Philosophy and English in undergrad, I wasn’t exposed to CS or software development until I went to a conference in San Francisco at the Pier called Wordcamp.

    (yup, that’s me in the front row at the bottom all wavy 🌊 👨🏾‍💻)

    I sat a few feet away from Matt Mullenweg (Founder of WordPress), Tim Ferris, and others, getting inspired about their vision for the future of the web. The conference had two tracks: one for bloggers and one for developers. Attending the blogging track had a strong resonance with all of my coursework as a writer – not just as a space to get thoughts out, but also as a place to host, organize, secure and share files with the right audiences at the right time.

    The most exciting aspect was the chance to build community and connect with other researchers and enthusiasts who were using blogs to talk about the Harlem Renaissance, Race Theory, and other topics in longer than 140 characters. This track also introduced me to the importance of data ownership & portability – something that Facebook Notes didn’t offer.

    https://twitter.com/anildash/status/1161019967288107009

    I also learned that I needed to find someone to set up my site for me if I wanted to have this ownership. I came across a company called Dreamhost was running a hosting special that gave me 5 years of hosting for pennies on the dollar. They also had a one-click install product to get my WordPress blog up same day.

    Fast forward 10 years, I now realize that thanks to WordPress and Dreamhost, the dozen or so web properties I managed were a financial asset to me in the same way that a physical property is. While a bank won’t recognize it, I see the causal relationship between me having a space to teach myself HTML, CSS, web hosting and more (during a time when so many people wanted to express themselves without knowing how to) and the wealth I’ve been able to make for myself and my family.

    https://twitter.com/zanders/status/1159596749444591616

    Studying liberal arts in college, and graduating right before the downturn in 2008 meant that I had to rely on skills to create a good quality of life, not the proxy of a degree or credential. Owning a web property gave me the opportunity and confidence to do this.

    While I still believe in land as the primary vehicle for wealth creation and generational transfer, new schools like Lambda School and Rooted School, and programs like Code2040, /Dev/Color and Black Girls Code, create access and opportunities to the skills needed to learn how to “farm” the proverbial land in a digital economy.

    2019 and Beyond

    As a founding board member at Rooted School, we’ve been working for five years to have our graduates finish with a college admissions letter in one hand, and a job offer letter in the other. Through this work I teach Black and brown high schoolers in New Orleans all the time the difference between consuming and creating content, and the difference between creating wealth for yourself versus someone else.

    We introduce them to the next wave of creation and expression led by Webflow, Glitch, Gumroad and others, to demonstrate that regardless of your level of technical expertise, you can be a creator. This accessibility lowers the barrier to entry into financial freedom for people who have the intangibles needed to do great work, but lack the technical exposure and training.

    It’s in this context that I say that the web is a great equalizer, because once exposed to the power of the creative power of the web, oppressed people have the capacity for a far deeper appreciation for its openness, purity, and flexibility than the ruling class.

    So hats off to the next generation of tools, programs, companies, and founders that work to level the playing field. Maybe there’s a world where we can not only learn new skills to create wealth for ourselves and our communities, but we can also put that wealth back into investment instruments like Otis, and “banks” like Cash App will consider web presence and influence as an indicator of creditworthiness.

    Maybe one day.

  • Evolving The Diversity Residency

    🎵 “Heart of a Dreamer” by Derrick Hodge

    This week, I learned a lot about the library profession. I traveled to Columbus, Ohio as a first-time attendee of the IDEAL ’19 conference on Inclusion, Diversity and Equity in Academic Libraries. I joined five of my colleagues from Boston University Libraries for the 2-day event hosted by The Ohio State University Libraries.

    I managed to be active on Twitter for the better part of the conference. (See my IDEAL ’19 hot takes here.) But one thread that followed me throughout the sessions I attended, the meetings I scheduled, and the impromptu networking chats I had was the the potential of the diversity resident librarian.

    I first heard about diversity resident librarians a couple years ago over dinner with Jon Cawthorne. He told me about a program he was developing called the ACRL Diversity Alliance where academic libraries commit to hiring underrepresented candidates for a two-year residency.

    I began to think about this after a couple of chats I had during the breaks. During one, a baby boomer colleague asked me what I did at BU. When I said I was an entrepreneur in residence, he assumed I meant I was a diversity resident focusing on entrepreneurship or the business library. Maybe it was the age difference. Maybe it was the common understanding of residencies in libraries today. We had an interesting conversation trying to untangle these semantics.

    A second conversation was with two actual diversity residents. When I asked what they did, they struggled to explain their jobs. Maybe it was because they were still new. Maybe it was because the role changes overtime. Or maybe it was because it’s not a role that has a natural path forward. Either way, I did get a better sense that the work they were doing was not focused on diversity, equity and inclusion at their organizations.

    After all, the expertise required for this work isn’t taught in library school. Further, people don’t enroll in library school to become diversity coordinators – they go for an MLIS degree to manage information.

    Semantics actually matter when it comes to Diversity Residents

    The goal of diversity residents is both morally strong and strategically sound. It’s smart for organizations to have diverse perspectives and experiences when serving increasingly diverse populations. This is the same as affirmative action-driven admissions policies on college campuses. But colleges don’t label students “affirmative action admits” or “diversity students”. Once admitted, the student is able to blend into the community and focus on their area of study.

    Diversity residents in libraries don’t have this ability. The organization and the public knows that the primary reason they are employed at the organization is due to their race or ethnicity as opposed to their merit. This creates a few problems:

    1. It sends the wrong message to the resident. It suggests that the main reason you’re here is because of your background – not because of your potential, or the actual contributions you will make to our organization. “Your profile/persona – not your intellect, voice or passion – is what we need.” Not cool.
    2. It fuels tokenism. A paradox of diversity initiatives is that organizations are not diverse, therefore hiring diverse candidates is the solution. But most diverse candidates are not organizational development experts (as these issues aren’t even taught in MLIS curricula), while they are viewed as the expert in non-diverse environments, asked to serve on committees, speak at events, be present for photo opportunities, etc. This phenomenon is institutionalized through adding “Diversity” to the title.
    3. It puts the employee in a foyer, not on a ladder. Unlike 50 years ago, dismantling white supremacy through hiring non-whites is now socially acceptable. But “Diversity Resident” roles have no place to go as the individual gains more experience. Inside of the organization, there’s no natural place to advance to on the org chart – they essentially start from scratch after the 18-24 months expires in a new role, making the diversity role more like a foyer to enter a building, as opposed to a ladder to climb up it’s floors. By removing Diversity from the title, the organization is forced to fit the diverse hire in an actual formal position that their colleagues understand where it fits within the operations, along with other organizations in the community who would potentially consider this individual for opportunities.

    As Ariana Santiago tweeted

    https://twitter.com/aripants/status/1159126886175428608?s=20

    Replacing residencies for traditional employment

    The irony of me making this recommendation is that I’m a resident myself. A diverse one at that. So am I being hypocritical when I say that we should get rid of the residency model? Not exactly. While I’m not a Diversity Resident in the traditional sense, the difference is that I have 12 years of experience with a very clear direction of what’s next for my career, and my organization has a very unusual circumstance that takes place once every couple of decades. Below are a few reasons why the traditional diversity resident model for entry-level diverse candidates is not ideal.

    • More difficult for the resident: To have a potential end-date to your role when your desire is to work long-term hampers you from doing your best work. The mental burden of worrying whether you will be rewarded with long-term employment, not contingent on your actual performance but rather the structure of the agreement, is a very precarious position to be in. This is coupled with reserved interactions with co-workers, the next point.
    • More difficult for co-workers: Diversity Residencies create an environment where other members of the organization are not incentivized to invest in meaningful work relationships with the resident, given that they probably won’t be there after 18 months. People sense their “other” status due to their employment agreement, which only compounds the “other” status held by being non-white.
    • Not economic for the organization: Ultimately, the residency model does a disservice to the organization, as meaningful long-term responsibility cannot be assigned to a temporary employee. The organization also loses out on the institutional knowledge and leadership investment it poured into the employee.

    Let’s continue iterating on our good intentions

    Now, my opinions should not be taken as opposition to diversity residencies – I think that they are better than no effort at all. After all, reversing 400 years of oppression against Black people and another several decades of discrimination against other non-whites is the most difficult work of our time. All initiatives led by people who commit their lives and careers to right these wrongs should be applauded.

    But if the intention is truly to diversify the organization in the short-term and the profession in the long-term, the mechanics of the employment agreement should be reconsidered.

    We have to consider the structure of these programs not only from the organization’s perspective, which bears in mind a larger economic and operational context, but also from the perspective of the resident and the community they come from.

    Precarious employment agreements and lack of direction, coupled with non-transferable experiences and the collective emotional burden of tokenization are a recipe for burnout. The retention rates of these programs are less correlated to the recruitment efforts, but more to the program’s structure.

    Have you hosted or are considering hosting a diversity resident? Were you a diversity resident yourself? Let me know your thoughts on the future of diversity hiring on Twitter @zanders.

  • Libraries and The Vendor Conundrum

    🎵 Chorale (Five) – Iskra String Quartet

    Introduction

    In my first post as an entrepreneur in residence at BU Libraries, I mentioned that I would revisit the topic of vendors competing themselves away through “red ocean” iteration. It’s a very intricate topic that will require several posts to dissect. But I wanted to begin this commentary by defining the vendor conundrum that universities find themselves in today.

    The other day I was invited to my first meeting as a library employee with a vendor. After thousands of these meetings as a vendor over the past 10 years, I had a very unexpected light bulb moment. Before I get into my epiphany, I want to share a sincere apology to previous clients for all of the times you’ve had to endure my droning on about a product or service that was completely irrelevant to anything you were currently focused on at the time.

    I’m genuinely sorry.

    Over the years I’ve learned that there is pretty substantial distance between the world of a vendor and the world of a librarian. And the points of intersection between these worlds are actually few and far in between.

    This didn’t click for me until I began to meet with deans, directors, university librarians, CIOs and their ilk back in 2014. These were the days when the “business of higher education” was first introduced to me. Prior to this, I along with my colleagues had a well-established understanding that as for-profits, we were the capitalists with “real” business objectives, and our customers were the socialists who had the ability to prioritize ideals.

    The level of staff I interacted with held to this worldview (oftentimes both personally and professionally), and propagated it through most of our interactions. This had an unintended downstream effect: vendors developed a blindness towards the notion that libraries and universities themselves have business needs too – needs that are increasingly impacting the decision-making process vendors solely cared about historically: if and when you will buy my product.

    The Vendor Conundrum

    Now, the other day I had the surreal experience of hearing how I sounded all of these years: Knowledgeable, tech-savvy, and perhaps at times intelligent. But the three traits I was missing in that repertoire were humility, relevancy and empathy.

    The vendor representative recited a pitch and the expected alternate angles to overcompensate for missing two immutable facts:

    • Every library leadership team today has vast internal pressure
    • That pressure is most likely not what a company assumes it is

    The obvious solution would seem to be to lead with questions not statements, to listen more than talk, then work diligently to meet those needs. But the incentives at each point in the value chain are misaligned.

    First, commercial vendors are not consulting firms who design responsive solutions for clients, but oftentimes firms that have made large, irrevocable bets on product investments which require a multiple ROI back to shareholders.

    Second, employees who work for these firms are compensated based on generating said multiple ROI.

    When a company’s business interests compete with those of the institution, the library’s representatives aren’t aware of the conflict, and the vendor’s representatives are financially incentivized to keep them unaware—herein lies the vendor conundrum. 

    This creates a situation where institutions run the risk of funding potential competitors in the short term, or worse, outsourcing the institution’s value in the long term, thereby disintermediating itself out of the supply chain between consumers of higher education and service providers.

    I’m reminded of a conference I attended a few weeks ago in Baltimore with Academic Impressions. We had an icebreaker session where academic leaders predicted trends that will impact universities leading up to 2030. One was tech companies competing directly with universities for tuition revenue, either by acquiring a university and competing head-to-head with other institutions, or by picking apart different verticals within the higher education experience and offering them a la carte to students.

    Conclusion

    Now, it should go without saying, but is worth noting that I’m not anti-vendor. I believe that libraries benefit from third-parties to best serve their stakeholders. But I also believe that in order for this relationship to remain mutually beneficial, the power dynamic needs to be rebalanced.

    While there’s no magical antidote to this issue, here are some pragmatic solutions to help future-proof libraries from an unfavorable future outcome.

    1. Educate vendors on your situation. The companies that serve you, and especially the representative you work with, most likely isn’t aware of the operating context you have to navigate within your institution. The best vendors will take this to heart and develop products, policies, and pricing models that accommodate your needs.
    2. Expose staff to the business of higher education. Far too many vendor relationships are managed by employees who are not versed on the financial situation of their institutions.
    3. Develop a vendor relations policy. Increase your organization’s leverage by creating rules that govern the way your staff interacts with vendors. Iterate on it throughout the fiscal year.
    4. Share best practices with peers. Despite the amount of backchannel conversations that take place about vendor experiences, best practices that inform what happens after the contract is signed, post RFI/RFP, to set the library up for success are still lacking.

    I’m thinking through this everyday and curious to get your thoughts or talk through specific scenarios. Let’s chat @zanders on Twitter or by email at tony [at] skilltype [dot] com.

    Thanks to Louisa for giving me another set of eyes on this.