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Showing posts from March, 2016

Breaking in the new kid

Starting a new job is humbling. I used to be the founder of a well-respected library district where I knew (almost) everybody and everything. Now I'm the new guy in an association where I sometimes forget which floor my boss is on. The late Missy Shock, a very insightful training coordinator I hired for Douglas County Libraries many years ago, told it like this: we go from unconsciously incompetent (we don't know that we don't know), to consciously incompetent (OMG, I know NOTHING), to consciously competent (OK, I need to do this, then that), to unconsciously competent (you're done with the task before you realize you started). My own phases as the new director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) have gone more like this: exhilaration. What fun to learn! New city, new building, new people, new issues. It was thrilling. This lasted about four weeks. humiliation. "I know I've asked this before, possibly twice, but how do I..." "In the 29