King County Library System 2020 Organizational Reform Plan
This report presents a long-range reform plan for the King County Library System (KCLS), addressing two core organizational problems: dysfunctional decision making at the Director's Administrative Council (DAC) and branch personnel feeling excluded from governance. Drawing on principles of organizational behavior and management, the report assesses KCLS's current culture, then offers issue-based recommendations across four areas: decentralizing decision-making authority, restructuring internal communication channels, implementing a structured change management process, and fostering teamwork. An implementation timeline and itemized budget totaling $71,300 accompany the recommendations.
- Executive Summary: Overview of KCLS cultural problems and reform goals
- Assessment of Organizational Culture: Diagnosis of KCLS culture, values, and DAC conflicts
- Decentralization of Decision Making: Expanding authority of area and branch managers
- Restructuring of Internal Communication Channels: Fixing top-down and bottom-up communication failures
- Change Management: Five-step process for implementing organizational change
- The Need for Teamwork: Strategies to build trust and cooperation across KCLS
- Implementation Plan, Timeline, and Budget: Phased timeline and $71,300 annual budget breakdown
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What makes this paper effective
- The report uses concrete, real-world examples from KCLS operations — such as the microfiche repair delay, the PAC Terminal upgrade, and the video loan policy rollout — to ground every recommendation in documented organizational failures rather than abstract theory.
- Each of the four recommendation sections follows a consistent problem-then-solution structure, making the argument easy to follow and evaluate independently.
- The inclusion of an itemized budget and phased implementation timeline transforms the policy argument into an actionable management document, demonstrating professional report-writing conventions.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The report applies issue-based evaluation as its central analytical method: it isolates discrete organizational problems (centralization, poor communication, unmanaged change, absent teamwork), diagnoses each with specific evidence, and prescribes targeted remedies. This technique — common in organizational behavior and public administration courses — allows the writer to avoid over-generalizing while still building toward a coherent systemic argument.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an executive summary followed by a cultural diagnosis of KCLS. It then moves through four labeled recommendation sections (A through D), each self-contained yet mutually reinforcing. The report closes with a two-table implementation plan covering timelines and an annual budget of $71,300. This structure mirrors professional management consulting deliverables and is well suited to graduate-level organizational behavior coursework.
Executive Summary
The current culture of the King County Library System (KCLS) can be described as ineffective, inefficient, and unproductive. The need for corrective measures to optimize the system for service delivery cannot be overstated, and this is the subject of the following long-range plan. The problem to be addressed is two-fold. First, there are inherent tensions at the Director's Administrative Council (DAC) that effectively obstruct efficient and effective decision making. Second, branch personnel feel that their input is not taken into consideration and that they have no meaningful voice in issues affecting their respective branches. In seeking to address these dual components, this document highlights the specific factors tied to each and offers recommendations grounded in best practices in organizational behavior and management.
Assessment of Organizational Culture
In basic terms, culture concerns the beliefs, attitudes, and expectations that bind a specific community together and give it an identity. For the purposes of this report, organizational culture is defined as the behavior of people in an organizational setting as governed by the beliefs and values they share. The organizational culture of the King County Library System is therefore the system's basic personality — the foundation upon which employees adapt their behaviors, perform their day-to-day duties, act, and even dress.
At present, KCLS's culture is not aligned with its mission or with the aspiration to make the library system "the county's main source for reference information" and to "expand the types of services offered by the library system to meet the growing needs of a diverse urban and rural community." The influence shared values have on the efficient running of an organization's operations is often significant. In the case of KCLS, there is no common network of shared beliefs and values, as a consequence of conflict between DAC and branch personnel as well as conflict among DAC members themselves. This effectively obstructs efficient and professional service delivery.
At the branch level, staff members feel that the decisions made by DAC are not sufficiently consultative and often end up negatively impacting both patrons and line staff. A clear example is the implementation of new policies or programs that affect branches without prior engagement with branch employees — such as overnight changes to the Public Access (PAC) Terminals without staff input or training initiatives to prepare staff for sensitizing the public about those changes. Staff members also feel that their concerns are either deliberately ignored or forgotten altogether. In one particular instance, a microfiche reader took a full year to repair due to issues with the authorization of the repair work.
At the same time, the Service Center team comprising top management appears too focused on interdepartmental competition. The informal running of DAC meetings provides fertile ground for that competition. With items introduced on the spot, only those who can garner the support of friendly members or aggressively present and defend their agendas can expect to see those agendas move forward. This means that from time to time, excellent ideas are disregarded or indefinitely postponed — not because they are ineffective, but because of organizational politics. The current way of doing things defines KCLS's organizational culture, giving rise to de facto policies that guide employees and senior officers alike and dictate the overall direction of the organization. Meaningful adaptations must be made if the library system envisioned is to be achieved.
Decentralization of Decision Making
Two of the most prominent issues this report evaluates are bureaucracy and centralized decision making. KCLS is a highly centralized organization with a hierarchical structure in which key decisions are made by the Director's Administrative Council — a body of eight individuals through whom all decisions concerning the direction and management of the library system must pass. A number of advisory bodies, such as the Language Committee, assist DAC, but formal decision-making authority rests with that council. As a result, lower-tier managers such as the 38 managing librarians have limited decision-making potential and cannot implement policies or adopt significant measures without DAC's express approval.
This structure has both advantages and disadvantages. While KCLS benefits from uniformity in decision making and better coordination across all libraries, the system suffers from delayed authorization of courses of action — which negatively affects service delivery. The microfiche reader repair that required over 12 months for authorization is a direct illustration of bureaucracy as a consequence of centralized decision making.
Decision making ought to be decentralized so that individuals beyond the eight DAC members can share in decision-making responsibilities. KCLS already employs a high percentage of professionally trained staff. Librarians are required to hold, at minimum, a Master's Degree in Library and Information Science or an equivalent qualification — these are men and women fully capable of making rational and appropriate decisions about the day-to-day management of library processes.
It is recommended that the authority of area administrators be expanded to include authorization of specific aspects of branch operations. Currently, three area managers each oversee at least 11 of the 38 branches. Each should be empowered to address service delivery issues unique to individual branches. Branch managers, in turn, could be given greater authority to handle matters at their branch level — including day-to-day concerns such as minor repairs. Issues unique to a specific branch should not need to be escalated to the monthly Public Services Meeting or to DAC.
The Public Services Meeting should be restructured to include only the three area managers rather than all 38 managing librarians. Discussions should be limited to: (i) service delivery problems affecting multiple branches, and (ii) policy issues originating from the Service Center. Only concerns that cannot be resolved in that forum should be passed on to DAC.
Additionally, in keeping with the spirit of decentralization, the physical offices of the 38 branch managers should be relocated to branch level, and area supervisors' offices should be moved out of the Service Center. Keeping administrators and managers closer to branch personnel enables more effective day-to-day management. The Service Center should house only DAC members and the staff of the seven central departments.
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