1 INTRODUCTION

It has been said that for every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and completely wrong. The management of performance is no exception, so I will preface my remarks with an example that demonstrates the rule.

Once upon a time a very old and once respected Australian company and a new, progressive Japanese company decided to have a competitive boat race on the Parramatta River. Both teams trained hard. On the big day they were at peak performance.

The Japanese team won by a mile.

The Australian team's morale sagged. Corporate management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A Continuous Measurable Improvement Team of "Executives" was set up to investigate the problem and to recommend corrective action and a recovery program.

They concluded that the problem was that the Japanese team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering while the Australian team had 1 person rowing and 8 people steering. The Australian Corp orate Steering Committee immediately hired a consulting firm to study the management structure of the team.

After some time and millions of dollars, the consulting firm concluded that "too many people were steering and not enough rowing". To prevent losing the following year, the manage ment structure was changed to "4 Steering Managers, 3 Area Steering Managers, and 1 Staff Steering Manager" and a new performance-based reward system introduced for the person rowing the boat to provide more incentive to work harder and become a n "Excellent Rated" performer. "We must give him empowerment and enrichment. That should do the trick".

The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Although the focus of this paper is self-management of performance, I want to start by directing three pointed remarks to those of you who are also supervisors and managers.

•  Juran's Law states that 85% of the problems with non-performance can be traced back to the system, so that means only 15% can possibly be the fault of the staff.
•  Either you trust your staff or you don't. If you trust them you don't need lots of regulations and controls. If you don't trust them, get rid of them.
•  Direct orders from the boss saying "change your behaviour" rarely work for long. Fear is a dysfunctional means of managing performance.

2 PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AS ADAPTATION

Among Darwin's many attractions is its very large littoral zone. Naturalists define the littoral zone as that marine ecologic realm situated roughly between high tide level and the limit of the continental shelf. It is characterised by intricate inter-relationships between floral and faunal populations, high wave energies and, in the intertidal sub-zone, by alternating submergence and exposure.

I prefer poet Douglas Livingstone's description:

The littoral zone - that mysterious border that shifts restlessly between land and sea - has, to me, always reflected that blurred and uneasy divide between humanity's physical and psychic elements.(Robbins 1992)

Pre-evolutionists took adaptations to be clear evidence of God the Designer. Charles Darwin dismissed the idea of a divine blue print of perfection to work to, which is presumably what God did. Rather, he theorised that characteristics can only be passed on from a pool of already-existing variation, with evolution occurring through the action of natural selection (Ruse, 1986).

The central tenet of Darwinian evolutionary theory is that natural selection is based on genetic mutation to the reproductive cells, not the parent's own cells. Immunologist Dr Ted Steele challenges this, asserting that structural changes to an organism during its lifetime can be passed on to progeny and acquired rather than inherited characteristics are important in evolutionary development. Such characteristics may be new structures, func tions or habits actively acquired during the life-time of an organism (Tynan, 1993).

In Bibliographical terms, we are products of editing, not of authorship (George Wald quoted in Calvin, 1990).

Apart from explaining the subliminal verbal connections which inspired the title of this paper, what has all this to do with performance management? Performance management is about adaptation. The way you as an individual, or you as an institution, manage your performance has a profound effect on what you become. In a very real sense, performance management is the tool which creates you.

Performance management is also a simple task. It merely requires identifying and managing the links between micro level (individual), meso level (groups), and macro level (organisational) p rocesses.

To achieve this we need a reference model, a holistic approach to performance management and a genuine willingness to take responsibility for our own performance.

2.1 The reference model

We need an articulation of the reference model which goes beyond the current model of personal assistance.

Preparatory to developing performance measures and re-designing reference activities to improve productivity, the Library Services Branch of the Queensland Department of Education has developed a system of categorising reference questions and has conducted a study to identify the proportion of effort each absorbs.

Fig 1. Spread of Reference Queries, Department of Education Library

We are now developing strategies for delivering answers to those categories of questions which are suitable for dealing with in other than a personal service basis.

3 THE MOTIVATION FOR PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

There are two basic motivations for managing performance. The first is survival. Our economic context is characterised by diminished resources and diminished patience. Funding authorities and clients reject professional assumptions about services. Soft management may work well in growth situations but not in recession.

The need for better productivity, accountability and measurability is emphasised both by commercial and by not-for-profit organisations. Organisations are focussing on total quality, speed to market, and cost containment. Mastering only one or two of these three key areas will not be enough.

Geoffrey Hare (1989) has suggested that the management process most frequently employed by professionals may be called travelling hopefully with an assortment of useful luggage possibly sufficient to cope with the vagaries of climatic conditions en route. I prefer to think that professional librarians in the management of themselves and their services are on a voyage of discovery reminiscent of Christopher Columbus: when he set sail he did not know where he was going; when he got there he did not know where he was and when he got back he did not know where he had been - and he did it all on someone else's money.

The second motivation is the more personal, and the more important one. More than two thousand years ago Aristotle concluded that, above all else, men and women seek happiness. While happiness is sought for its own sake, every other goal is valued only because we expect that it will make us happy. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who has spent decades studying what makes people happy, concludes that the secret of happiness is to achieve a balance between the challenges we take on and the skills we develop to meet those challenges (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

4 THE NEED FOR PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Reference work is a creative and idiosyncratic process involving personal, independent and usually anonymous interaction with patrons. Since there is no concrete product to be evaluated poor reference work may easily go undetected unless all staff members are individually committed to continuous assessment and improvement, yet in many libraries staff claim that they are too busy providing services to take time to evaluate those services. Th is claim is often made with pride, as if it is evidence of a greater commitment to service than would be demonstrated by taking the time to assess the reality of the service. (Burgin, 1990).

4.1 Half-right services

Despite most qualitative and subjective tests being inadequate as measures of the success of library and information services, and their results frequently not supported by the results of objective tests when they are applied, user satisfaction is often cited as proof that the service is both efficient and effective. While clients may be able to judge the service they receive they have been shown to be poor judges of the quality of the info rmation received.(Pierce, 1984).

The existence of a serious problem in the provision of reference services, revealed by unobtrusive studies, has been known for years. It has been so frequently found that academic and public libraries provide correct responses to between 50 and 60 per cent of the questions put to them by users, that the literature refers to the `55 percent rule'(Burton, 1990).

Because unobtrusive studies are generally restricted to factual questions with specific correct answers such testing does not provide information about the answering success for the majority of questions asked in libraries.(Bunge, 1990)

Possibly because it is easier to measure than patron-perceived success, many libraries rely on librarian perceptions of answering success . Data, gathered from the public libraries that have used the Wisconsin-Ohio Reference Evaluation Program reveals that most librarians report a higher percentage of successfully answered questions (72.52) than the patrons report (61.64). The difference indicates that librarian assessments do not predict p atron perceptions very accurately. These results raise two issues for management of reference performance. Librarians are not the best judge of quality in the delivery of reference and information services, and checking reference and information service o utcomes directly with patrons is rare compared with utilisation of the unobtrusive study methodology (Bunge, 1990).

The Wisconsin-Ohio data identifies that whether or not the librarian is busy at the time the question is asked consistently affects question answering success. On average, success rates in public libraries dropped 8.17 percentage points when they were busy (Bunge, 1990).

When librarians searched with the patron for answers the results were better than when they merely directed or suggested a strategy. The positive correlation between collection size and answering success is obscured by the tendency in large libraries to be busy for a higher percentage of questions and to direct patrons rather than to search with them. Larger collections have the potential for providing answers to a wider range of reference questions, but this potential can be negated by being overly busy or leaving patrons on their own. (Bunge, 1990).

The patron-perceived success rate for the academic libraries which have participated in the program is 55.91 percent compared with 61.74 percent for public libraries. It is interesting to note that public libraries scored 61.57 for tertiary curriculum-related questions. Two differences between academic and public libraries might be partial explanations. Academic librarians more frequently reported directing users to a potential answering so urce rather than searching with them and were more likely to be busy when the question was asked. There was also a larger gap between the librarian-perceived success rate and the patron-perceived success rate in academic libraries than in public libraries .(Bunge, 1990)

In 1983 an unobtrusive survey of Reference Services in Maryland investigated what behaviours librarians exhibited as they attempted to answer questions and analysed the data to discover which of these behaviours were associated with providing complete and correct answers. The 55% percent rule held. This study concluded that size of reference collection, numbers of staff and serial subscriptions have a very slight influence on reference serv ice; demand (walk-in or telephone contact and busyness) has a slight influence on performance; but behaviours have a strong influence on performance. The factors that contribute to improved reference performance are basic communication behaviours that are within the control of the individual librarian.

The most important behaviour is verifying, that is paraphrasing or repeating the patron's question and asking if that is the specific question before trying to find the answer.

In descending order the next most important behaviours are:

•  Asking a follow-up question at the end of the reference transaction, such as "Does this completely answer your question?"
•  Using open probes to draw out the patron's specific question, for example "What kind of information on dogs are you looking for?"
•  Finding the answer in the first source searched, which indicates staff skills in analysing the question and a thorough knowledge of the collection facilitat ing efficient matching of source to question.
•  Paraphrasing or clarifying that is putting the patron's question or response in the librarian's own words to demonstrate understanding or indicating when th e librarian is not clear about the patron's statement; and
•  Giving the patron full attention.

Approachability

Comfort

Interest

Listening

Inquiring

Searching

Informing

Follow-up

The variables that contribute to good reference performance are specific behaviours within the control of the individual librarian (Dyson, 1992). The qualities associated with good referenc e service are behavioral characteristics, knowledge, and reference skills.

There are two essential dimensions to Reference Service: it is both an attitude and a product. Attitude and product are inseparable, two parts of a whole. Unfortunately the emphasis in rece nt years has been on the product aspect. We have lost sight of the fact that while results matter, how they are achieved also matters. It seems time to redress the balance with some attention to the attitudinal components of service.

5 DIMENSIONS OF PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT - EMPHASISING PERFORMANCE

5.1 Productivity

Terms borrowed from the biological and physical sciences can be used to describe what happens in organisations over time (Katz, 1966). An organisation is an energetic input-output system in which the energetic return from the output reactivates the system. Organisations are not closed systems and therefore their well-being is tied to transactions between the organisation and its environment. Organisations are living organisms subject to the same demands and requirements as is the ecosystem of the littoral zone.

Productivity or efficiency makes the difference between the survival or failure of the system over time and it marks the quality of that survival. This negative entropy enables the organisation to achieve surpluses that sustain its future. It really is always a matter of doing more with less. Unlike many biological systems, organisations have the ability to influence their internal processes in an intelligent way to make the best use of res ources and feedback.

Productivity in this sense is not so much about a numerical measure as it is about how we approach our work, whether our decisions in all aspects of the job are based on deriving a surplus for healthy organisational growth. It is a matter of quality. When this model is related to reference services, unanswered questions represent unrealised energy (Lubans, 1992).

The basic definition of productivity is that it equals output divided by input. If productivity is a function of attitude, and cost is a function of productivity, it all comes down to attitude (Charvat [1] quoted in Waterman, 1988).

We need to manage our finances and personnel to be sure we are getting the best and most service possible from available resources, and to be able to demonstrate that we are doing so.

5.2 Performance measurement

The most widely used measure of reference service is the number of reference transactions or inquiries answered, statistics which do not measure whether the response to queries is accurate, the service effective, or the resources used in supplying it efficiently deployed.

Statistical counts can only tell us whether business is increasing. Increased business in the user service area does not necessarily mean that we have a satisfied client. It may indicate increasing user-frustration with systems that have become increasingly complicated (Cullen, 1992).

A behaviourist from the University of California's Institute of Industrial Relations, Mason Haire, once said "What gets measured gets done". If you are looking for quick ways to change how an organisation behaves, change the measurement system or change even one measure. Conversely, if you can't work out why things aren't changing, look to the measurement system. Measures are an important part of both the explicit and implicit sys tems for paying attention.

In the 1947 Movie I see a dark stranger  two army officers have a conversation. "It's not what you do in the army that counts," says one, "It's what you're noticed doing". What gets noticed, gets done. Managers should analyse very carefully what they notice and comment on, and consider how that might skew the total system.

Performance measurement is a management tool which delivers the concrete performance data needed to arrive at a meaningful evaluation of an organisation's performance. Measurement is subordinate to evaluation because the measures are used in the process of evaluation to determine whether the service is what you want it to be, i.e. measures evaluate service against pre-determined objectives. While measurement may lead to evaluation and evaluation usually requires measurement, the two are different and can be applied separately (McClure, 1985).

Evaluation and measurement should not be perceived to be a narrow procedure confined to the upper echelons of management but should be a culture that diffuses through all levels of the library service and is accepted as an ongoing and formative process which monitors and regulates daily professional activities (Dalton, 1988).

Performance measurement is at the heart of a management information system consisting of clearly worked out objectives (Strategic Plan); a system for targeting progress towards those object ives (Annual Operational Plan); the transformation of raw data into the systematic provision of digested information for the system managers, a systematic approach to the monitoring and evaluation of services based upon agreed data, and a discipline for the environment in which management decisions are taken. (Components of Performance Measurement).

Gregory Bateson, in his book Steps to an Ecology of Mind, captures the essentials of a management information system when he points out that the map is not the territory. He says "What gets onto the map, in fact, is difference, be it a difference in altitude, a difference in vegetation, a difference in population structure, a difference in surface..." His point is that the way we humans make sense out of raw data is by communicating difference. We compare and contrast (Bateson, 1972).

To date, the most effective method used to assess reference performance is the record of the reference enquiry. The record must include: time, and length of time spent on the enquiry, staff member, nature of the enquiry, and whether it is by telephone, in person or via a surrogate, sources consulted, any search terms used, any referral or follow-up, and a brief indication of the category of the client. Periodic analysis of the completed sheets will identify performance problems.

User satisfaction is gauged from responses to the question, "Does this satisfy your enquiry?" Investigation of record sheets will reveal staff skills and collection deficiencies and will be a more satisfactory measure of the reference encounter than number of enquiries.

The system gives a valuable breakdown on levels, accuracy, and timeliness of service, categories of clients and questions, time and therefore staff and materials costs, involved in answering enquiries. In addition users respond more specifically when asked about level of satisfaction relating to a specific enquiry, than they do in user surveys which basically tap average or aggregate opinions (Cullen, 1992).

5.3 Something more than zero-defects service

There is more to managing performance than measurement and evaluation. You can have systems that are 100 percent in place and on the mark and still have under-performing staff and less-than-loyal clients. To be successful, there's an intangible something else you must have, something that's distinctive and genuine, that attracts people.

The Peabody Hotel in Orlando is a luxurious modern establishment with one difference. The twice-daily march of the Peabody Ducks, a procession of one lead duck and four mallards from their penthouse digs to the fountain in the lobby, makes the hotel memorable and fun.

Peach faced lovebirds fly around the Lombard Paper Company premises in Melbourne, tucking offcuts of paper into their tails to carry back to their nests, and a cockatoo minds the door and snuggles up to customers.

In the J. Peterman mail-order catalogues clothing and accessories are beautifully rendered in watercolours, with words carefully crafted to match. Peterman says

People want things that are hard to find. Things that have romance, but a factual romance, about them ..(J. Peterman, 1993.

These three businesses embody what so many formal quality initiatives lack: heart, soul, the feel of something extraordinary. We can take a lesson from them and concentrate on giving our customers more than "zero defects" (ho-hum) service. Where is the factual romance in your reference service?

5.4 Friendly facts, congenial controls

Active and successful performance management requires that you treat facts as friends and financial controls as liberating. This means you must have a voracious hunger for facts and you must see information where others may see only data. You must love comparisons, rankings, measurements, anything that provides context and removes decision-making from the realm of mere opinion.

Facts are friendly. Facts that tend to reinforce what you are doing and give you a warm glow are nice, because they help in terms of psychic reward. Facts that raise alarms are equally friendly, because they give you clues about how to respond, how to change ... where to spend the resources.(Schact quoted in Waterman, 1988.)

Ideally, friendly facts and congenial controls should have a circular, symbiotic relationship. Good controls generate the facts that you need to keep costs down, improve quality, and offer better value to users. The fact base, in turn, tells you how you can design even better controls, for any measurement system will outlive its usefulness as conditions change.

5.5 Benchmarking

The current management tool of the month is benchmarking, rating your services and practices against those of the front-runners. But the ominous news from the "Best Practices Report" an international study of 580 service and manufacturing businesses published last October by Ernst & Young and the American Quality Foundation, is that benchmarking against world-class performers is helpful only to top-performing companies. Medium performers show no compelling positive impact and low performers actually show negative results. The study suggests that low performers lack the quality infrastructure to support the organisation wide change necessary to emulate the best and should ther efore focus on training, empowering workers and nurturing cross-functional teams, especially those who deal directly with customers; and on getting better at what they already do (Hequet, 1993).

Difficult as it is for people to come to that understanding, I suspect that it is as important at the organisational level as it is at the personal one to understand and emphasise your own unique strengths rather than try to remake yourself into somebody else.

5.6 Self-management

The main reason TQM hasn't worked in many organisations is that managers don't like to feel they've given up control. TQM is being transformed into a narrow problem solving technique rather than an organisation wide empowerment of staff with an emphasis on customer service.

To get results managers must loosen the reins, and involve everybody. Involving all staff, of course, has little to offer if you are looking for efficiency in your problem-solving process, but it has everything to do with getting something done.

Employee empowerment means that the manager is less central to every decision and therefore in that narrow sense the manager is less "in control", but at the same time more in control of what counts: the results.

We have never come to grips with the question of management and control versus freedom and empowerment, yet there is a way of managing that keeps the leader in the position of directing, but recognises that, at some level of detail, the employee does know the job better. This style, powerful in enabling management and employees to work together on the same side of the productivity and quality issue, is called directed autonomy.

A helpful way of thinking about directed autonomy is a metaphor straight from higher mathematics, where many problems do not have a single, unique solution but rather have a host of feasible solutions contained inside a set of boundaries, which are defined by the sets of equations and inequalities that describe the problem. The manager's job is to establish the boundaries around a fairly broad solution space. The individual's responsibility is to find the best way of doing things within that space (Waterman, 1988).

In common with other technical professionals, reference and information personnel want autonomy, which usually means that they want a large role in setting goals and making decisions. They need a sense of achievement. They tend to be loyal to their profession first and their employer second. Ensuring the professional's goals overlap and are similar to the goals of the organisation is critical to establishing and sustaining their motivation. Once committed, though, they often set high performance standards and can experience anxiety over attaining them. They also can develop so strong an attachment to goals and standards that change becomes upsetting and demotivating. They need collegial support, stimulation and sharing (Rosenbaum, 1991).

5.7 Story-telling as an aid to performance management

Organisational anthropologist Joanne Martin has found that the stories people tell about their organisation, its leaders, or their peers, perpetuate the culture of the place much more signi ficantly than do official policies, systems and structures. Procedures manuals have rules, but stories have morals. Morals influence thinking and action more than rules do. It matters little whether the stories are true or fictitious.

Too often performance management is crippled by management enthusiasm for what staff see to be just another fad - and time is wasted in learning vocabulary, getting a slick veneer of the techniques and sighing loudly and often. Story-telling is fad-proof. Encouraging a lively story-telling environment is an effective way of passing on the standards and culture of the Library.

Stories can be used to lay out guidelines. If the staff know what the library believes in, they can internalise it, and then it is up to them to get the job done. They very largely manage themselves.

5.8 Brain dominance

Over the past thirty years scientists have learned a great deal about the individual traits of the brain's two frontal hemispheres. Brain dominance affects behaviour, learning and work styl es, and personalities. In the average workplace, however, the work preferences that are mandated, or judged "good" are left-brained. Traditional time management principles, for example, are designed for left-brained people who process information sequentially and logically, prefer to deal with concrete data, work in a step-by-step fashion and complete one project before going on to another. Left-brain oriented people thrive on consistency, get frustrated if their plans and daily schedules are changed and interrupted, dislike clutter and usually prefer to work alone in a quiet setting. Right-brain-oriented people enjoy change, flexible schedules, working spontaneously and intuitively, taking on new challenges and working on several projects during the day. They usually work well under a deadline, like to have their work in view, and lots of sensory stimulation within their work area. The right brain is heuristic, the left algorithmic. In managing performance and building teams we need to take brain dominance into account.

5.9 The Link between Play and Performance

The business world's mentality tends to be the more hours worked, the more work produced. This idea applies not only to the stretch of hours worked per day but also to the minimal amount of personal break time allotted to each day. A productivity curve which continually rises throughout the day is a myth. People usually hit a productivity peak at a certain point each day, or over a span of a certain number of hours worked, then their efficiency, carefulness, motivation, and creativity steadily wane. Working much beyond that effective productivity point, when fatigue is setting in, will often result in error, poor judgement, accidents and injuries, and overall uninspired thinking. Steadily d ecreasing mental and physical energy levels are the primary causes.

To stay alert and productive throughout an average work day, you need to top up your energy reserves before they drop so low that they affect your performance. The clue is to integrate a variety of short brain-balancing breaks into each work day.

Play is critical to maintaining abundant energy. Play allows the left hemisphere to rest while the right hemisphere creates new options and possible solutions to problems. Play helps release built-up tension, can open blocked thinking and trigger creative ideas, stimulates energy, allows you to safely explore new perspectives and new interests; and creates new links between ideas (McGee-Cooper, 1990).

Productivity breaks are being written into the daily "tasks" of the staff under my control within the Queensland Department of Education. These 5 minute breaks, taken at will, are designated to be spent on activities which they enjoy but which can be regarded to be connected with library work, although not necessarily part of their jobs. Each staff member may take, in addition to normal tea and lunch breaks, 3 or 4 productivity br eaks a day.

5.10 Positive reinforcement and self-fulfilling prophecies

Research at the University of Washington has pinpointed a simple way to predict with 94 percent accuracy which marriages will last and which won't by counting the number of positives versus the number of negatives exchanged in conversation. By listening carefully to what couples said - and how they said it - the researchers were able to predict marital success. Both absence of good words and presence of negative words were coded as a negative. In order to succeed, the researchers found, a marriage needs a ratio of five positives for every negative, five compliments for each non-committal answer or complaint, five expressions of affection for each outburst of anger or blame. People need warm , positive reinforcement from their partners to stay on course (Johnson, 1993). I do not believe it would be extravagant to suggest that people need the same 5:1 ratio of positive to negative/neutral reinforcement in the workplace in order to be capable o f optimum performance.

More than a century after Eliza Doolittle learned the King's English, Pygmalion in the Classroom burst upon the education scene. It argued the startling research conclusion that student achievement mirrors teacher expectations more than it does actual student ability (Rosenthal, 1968).

Robert Rosenthal had studied the notion of the power of expectation - the self-fulfilling prophecy - with research with laboratory rats. Half of the college students participating in an experiment were told that they had been given "maze-bright" laboratory rats, a more intelligent strain that been developed through inbreeding, the other half were told they had stupid rats. The rats were the all from the same strain, but the results were astounding. The "maze-bright" rats outperformed the others.

He reasoned that if rats act smarter because their experimenters think they are smarter, perhaps the same phenomenon was at work in the classroom. Subsequent work proved the hypothesis. Since then, some three hundred studies have confirmed the effect both in the classroom and in the workplace. If a manager believes that an employee is competent and that his or her work is worthwhile, the subordinate is likely both to be more effective and to see the job as more rewarding. Self-concept sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment. Expanding employees' self-confidence increases what they can accomplish.

5.11 Causes and Commitment

Man is a maker of meanings in a world that sometimes seems without meaning. Few things help us to find meaning more than a cause to believe in, or better yet, about which to get excited.

Causes are one thing; commitment is another. Commitment is not something that emanates from management edict. Instead, it results from extensive communication and management's ability to turn grand causes into small actions so that people throughout the organisation can contribute to the central purpose.

How "problems" are defined and the scale on which they are defined often precludes innovative action because the limits of bounded rationality are exceeded and arousal is raised to dysfunctionally high levels. When organisational, service and social problems are defined in big terms and management demands quantum-leap solutions people are overwhelmed, anxiety sets in, which limits capacity to use new and complex ways of dealing with problems.

The ability to recast major "problems" into a series of smaller, less arousing problems which staff and others can perceive as controllable opportunities of modest size that produ ce visible results and that can be gathered into synoptic solutions, is a critical management competence. Problems must be constructed to stabilise arousal at moderate intensities where its contribution to the performance of complex tasks is most beneficial. At this level of arousal staff are challenged without being overwhelmingly threatened, and, particularly in tight economic circumstances, a climate of continual innovation and service improvement is maintained, a factor critical in maintaining high le vels of morale and commitment.

5.12 Workplace design

The physical environment can have a major impact on the quality of overall service. Research at the Buffalo Organisation for Social and Technological Innovation indicates that a better-designed environment can increase employee performance to the financial equivalent of 15% of each person's yearly salary. The converse is also true: non-attention to the environment can lower performance, at least forty minutes of productive time per worker is lost each day because of poor workplace design (McGee-Cooper, 1990).

Workplace design tends to concentrate on efficiency rather than effectiveness. To be effective we need to be focussed, energised and creative as well as efficient. A sterile, though efficient workplace, does not evoke the positive emotions necessary to ensure that. But you yourself have sufficient control over your environment to add colourful folders and accessories, artwork, playful items, family photos, and anything else that evokes positive emotion. This will stimulate fresh energy and improved performance.

5.13 Linking morale with satisfaction ratings

Experience has shown that quality managers in service organisations are less apt to deal with sophisticated statistical techniques and more apt to deal with evasive data such as the emotion al content of customer complaints or empathy shown by an employee (King, 1991).

Recent theoretical and empirical work has been focused on how emotions are expressed in the workplace as well as how they are experienced. This work indicates that the manner in which one displays feelings has a strong impact on the quality of service transactions, the attractiveness of the interpersonal climate, and the experience of emotion itself (Ashforth, 1993).

Service agents are expected to experience and express certain feelings during service interactions, but attempting to conform to those expectations raises certain pernicious psychological effects (Hochschild, 1983).

Display rules (the requirement to display certain emotions as part of service transactions) are generally a function of societal norms, occupational norms, and organisational norms (Rafaeli , 1989). Societal norms are typically manifested through the expectations of customers. Customer evaluations of a broad range of services depend on 10 dimensions, including responsiveness, courtesy, credibility, approachability, communication, and understanding of the customer (Zeithaml, 1990). These dimensions suggest that the service encounter is fundamentally a social encounter and that customers tend to share fairly clear expectations about what constitutes good service.

Compliance with display rules facilitates task accomplishment if the expression of emotion is perceived by the target as more or less sincere. Thus emotional labour may increase self-efficacy - that is, the belief that one can successfully fulfil task requirements - and task effectiveness.

By fulfilling social expectations, emotional labour makes interactions more predictable and avoids embarrassing interpersonal problems that might otherwise disrupt interactions (Ashforth, 1993). But what is functional for the organisation and customer may be dysfunctional for the service provider. Portraying emotions that are not felt creates a sense of strain which may cause the individual to feel false and hypocritical and ultimately lead to personal and work-related maladjustment.

Darwin and Freud maintained that emotional reactions help one make sense of situations and connect one to others and to the context. Deep acting, where one attempts to actually experience or feel the emotions that one wishes to display, may distort these reactions, impair one's sense of authentic self, may ultimately lead to self- alienation as one loses touch with this authentic self and may impair one's ability to recognise or even experience genuine emotion. Further, the masking or reworking of authentic emotions that one would otherwise prefer to express has been linked to psychological and physical dysfunctions (King).

I am not suggesting that Reference Librarians should not care about those they serve. Indeed, the greater the personal interest in their customers, the better the service will be.

5.14 Morale

Ralph Lowenthal (1990) presents evidence that the success rate of a reference staff is positively correlated with staff morale. This is a chicken-and-egg dilemma - if people are providing p oor reference service because their morale is low then doing something to improve morale might improve reference service rather than assuming that some reference staffs have better morale because they're giving good reference service.

5.15 Technology

As a society, we have become concerned that the computer may threaten our fundamental societal values. As technological values become ascendant, what is the place of the old humane virtues? Adaptation to technological change creates new problems, suggests new values, and modifies the forms in which normative questions arise (Ladriére n.d.). Now in the forefront of technology, reference librarianship is in the midst of dramatic transformation. The new technology has created an opportunity to achieve new goals and to do things in a new way, however, technology potentially creates as many new problems as it solves.

New technologies create new freedoms and new dependencies. The freedoms are more evident at first. The dependencies may never become evident, which makes them all the worse, because then it takes a crisis to discover them. (Stewart Brand quoted in Mitroff).

To use any technology successfully, the user is forced to conform to its patterns. While the most significant example is that humankind must accept and imitate the computer's rigidly logica l thought sequences, adaptation rarely stops there. Many individuals who work with computers have so completely identified themselves with the machines that they have adopted the computer's standards. In all settings they insist on efficiency and speed and have little tolerance for ambiguity. They display little understanding of their own feelings and lack empathy for others.

Computers are bringing about a change in standards of behaviour. Where formerly isolation would have been regarded as antisocial and an insistence on efficiency and logic as cold, now such behaviour is tolerated and praised. The end of computer mastery not only justifies formerly unacceptable behaviour, it rewards and makes it praiseworthy. The computer has profoundly altered our sense of time, a change with many aspects. It has made possib le greater efficiency, therefore greater efficiency is now required. The acceleration of work the computer has brought inhibits reflection, which in turn inhibits understanding. All of these characteristics impart a great sense of urgency to the worker, a compulsion not to waste time, a consciousness of stress.

Many of these modifications have implications for both the process and content of communication, the heart of the reference process. Low tolerance for ambiguity, poor empathy, little unders tanding of one's own feeling, a sense of isolation, an overly blunt style, insecurity, and the perception of being under pressure and lacking time have never been anything except enemies of successful interpersonal communication. Nor can a diminished comp rehension of the larger picture or less knowledge about one's reference sources be considered an asset (Stieg, 1990).

Technology is a useful component in reference work, but not the total picture. The librarian interacts with the computer, but still uses non-machine-readable sources and deals with people. At the same time, this diversity makes the task of the reference librarian more difficult than that of individuals who can devote themselves wholeheartedly to the computer, or of those who can reject it completely. The reference librarian must be a split personality, adopting the machine's values when interacting with a computer, and being what often seems the reverse when interacting with people (Stieg, 1990).

The variables that contribute to good reference performance are within the control of the individual librarian. For some of you, this might mean that you have to be assertive with your orgsanisation. Organisations, like people, are creatures of habit. For organisations, the habits are existing norms, systems, procedures, written and unwritten rules - "the way we do things around here". Not the least of the fears about change is tha t, deprived of the protective cushion of habit, you might do something that looks foolish. You might have to make what billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett calls "the intelligent-but-with-some-chance-of-looking-like-an-idiot decision" (Waterma n, 1988).

6 CONCLUSION

As it is out there in the Littoral Zone, life must be founded upon the infinite possibility for choice and accident. A profound sense of job satisfaction can be obtained by faith in change and in will and in accident, and by faith in ourselves that we will do the right thing, more often than not.

One of the great hindrances to performance management is the fear that personal inadequacies will be shown up, particularly that it will be clear to all observers that you are not an expert planner. Not many of us are as expert as we appear. Karl Weick suggests that people in organisations make meanings by engaging in "retrospective sense-making"; they identify the "decision" they've made after they act, not before (Wieck, 1979).

Man seeks meaning in organisations (Cohen, 1972). Meaning contributes fundamentally to survival, just as food and water do. The need for meaning runs so deep in people that organisations mu st supply it if they are to continue to be vibrant and competitive. If people cannot find meaning in work they spend eight hours every weekday in quiet desperation. If we can find meaning in work, we can keep ourselves recharged and the organisations we w ork for stand a chance of developing and thus surviving.

A sense of the "top line" is what makes the difference. This is opposed to the bottom line which we usually say is the ultimate criterion of the worth of our work. Balancing the top line (concerns with people and quality of life) with the bottom line (concerns with things, productivity, and profit) is essential for long-term quality energy and vitality.

Anthropologist Loren Eiseley (1978) tells of a man who observes shell collectors at the beach engaged in a kind of madness to out-collect their less aggressive neighbours. Also on the beach is an old man who from time to time bends over then stands up to fling an object out to sea beyond the breaking surf. The spectator asks this old man what he is doing.

"I'm a star thrower," he replies as he picks up another starfish and spins it far out into the sea. "It may live if the offshore pull is strong enough."

Shell collectors gather up the products of the beach for their own purposes, and give nothing back. Their focus is the bottom line. Star throwers focus on the top line and live at one with the littoral zone.

In ancient times the heart was taken to be the true seat of intelligence, with the brain being merely the instrument of the heart. Holistic management of performance requires intelligence with heart. No one else can manage your performance as well as you can yourself because only you will reap the benefits of a life of dedication and celebration.

A performance management system of the type consultants offer will only manage your library's performance on the level of the shell collectors. Performance management on this level may meet the requirements of people who know no better, such as auditors, but the service that results will fall short of what is possible when performance is managed with love and grace and gratitude.

7 NOTES

1. John Charvat is Division Manager of Zebco, Brunswick Corporation's fishing reel manufacturing division in Tulsa, Oklahoma 

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