‘We effectively communicate our methods and decision making, in the pursuit of transparency.’

‘We are a collaborative organization that provides a safe environment where staff ideas or concerns are encouraged and addressed.’ – The City Library of Salt Lake City Public Library System, Ethics Statement

Three weeks ago here, The Selective Echo laid out a measured peroration of the broader reasons why Beth Elder’s leadership failure at the Salt Lake City Public Library System necessitates her immediate dismissal by the Library Board of Trustees.

In the interim, The Selective Echo has been receiving ample testimony from a variety of stakeholders – internal and external – representing different constituencies that have amplified the themes and focused even more urgent attention on why Elder, who earns a $120,000 annual salary, no longer holds the legitimacy nor the confidence to effect any meaningful progress in her efforts to transform the organizational culture of one of the nation’s most respected library systems. As the following lays out, the community deserves a nationally-known director of impeccable qualifications and one who can facilitate new invigorating relationships with a talented, deeply committed staff and an array of stakeholders who look consistently to the library as a prominent source of civic pride. Unfortunately, Elder is not that candidate.

Furthermore, Hugh Gillilan, president of the Library Board of Trustees, has abdicated his appropriate fiduciary responsibilities and duties by endorsing – to the point of misrepresentation and lies – Elder’s incompetence and near-total negligence with regard to fulfilling the minimal performance expectations of her job description along with securing the essential buy-in for a strategic reorganization plan.

He has presided over this while disregarding virtually every concern or constructive criticism articulated by fellow board members, library staff members, community supporters, the Friends of The Library, and concerned taxpayers who will be asked twice between now and 2013 for tax rate increases to support the construction of the Glendale and Marmalade branches.

Some of the most disturbing examples are outlined in the next section, followed by a summarizing commentary.

CONTRACTS

Elder’s due diligence on executing contracts on behalf of the library has been nonexistent in numerous instances, despite the fact that the director’s official job description outlines competency in essential functions embodying the contract process. For example, she ordered payment on an $18,000 contract with Teresa Jordan, an independent consultant, without having a signed contract in hand or prior approval by the Library Board of Trustees. She scolded a supervisor in front of other staff members for not having a check ready for payment.

Jordan had been asked to secure grant funding for the library’s beehive project and for designing a digital archive of local content. While Jordan made at least one presentation to board members last June, there is virtually no evidence that the full scope of the contract had ever been manifested.

Jordan had laid out an ambitious plan to secure grant and corporate funding of $382,500. However, she only had managed to secure $1,000, which was granted by the Sarah Beth Coyote Foundation. There also appears to have been a $10,000 pledge by Chevron. Four other grant applications were submitted but no response was indicated.

Complaints about contracts including those involving local and regional vendors are numerous. A prominent contractor was concerned about Elder’s failure to follow through on details for a contract that ended up having to be signed just before a board meeting at which Elder knew she would be called on the issue.

FRIENDS OF THE CITY LIBRARY

Elder’s relationship with Friends of The City Library, which recently marked its 50th anniversary, is nonexistent. Even after one year, she did not know where the Friends’ used book sale was located. In February of 2010, she impulsively let loose a fit of rage at a community affairs assistant manager concerning a tribute video that the staff member was working on for the Friends’ anniversary. Elder chastised the staff member, saying the project was an inappropriate use of time. However, she changed her mind, realizing belatedly that she had asked for the project to be done.

However, some of the most contentious moments with the Friends arose during the long-delayed process of the City Library’s new Web site. ‘We were really put in a terrible position with the development of the new website. When it came to the Friends, we were not included or even consulted about what our page would look like or what information would be included. It was sort of dumped on us,’ Jeannine Marlowe, president of the Friends, explains. ‘But the real problem occurred when Beth [Elder] planned to list all of our Amazon books on the Web site. This situation became very contentious and, frankly, scary. We had several meetings with various people explaining why this should not be done and the possible repercussions that could follow. Each time we left we felt that we had solved the problem, only to learn later that there was never any intention of changing anything. It took a very strained and confrontational meeting involving additional people to get this resolved.’

Marlowe explains further that in the half century, no one can recall such a dysfunctional relationship with the library administration. Marlowe’s comments are worth quoting in full:

‘Our Mission statement reads that we work “in cooperation” with the administration. The operative word is “cooperation.” Sadly, this year, that relationship has been tested to its core.

‘In reviewing our by-laws and policies and procedures, we have realized that we worked so much and for so long on mutual trust, respect, and goodwill – almost the old-fashioned handshake. It was wonderful and amazing to think that we operated so well and with such faith and trust in each other.

‘We have now gone into what I term “protective mode” – we are rewriting our by-laws to make sure that we are clearly autonomous and as independent as possible. We need to make sure that it is clear that we make the decisions and have the final say on anything involving the Friends.

‘We have also moved to being involved with the creation of the annual wish list rather than just blankly approving it. Our volunteers work incredibly hard and we need to make sure that their time and efforts are not misused. We have been burned a couple of times with approving what turned out to be inappropriate requests. We need to make sure that never happens again.’

Marlowe also echoes what has been a persistently visible theme in the statements of other stakeholders:

‘We don’t need to always be right: we just want to be doing what is best for the Library, the staff and the community. We are volunteers, our time is precious and it is distracting from what we do best. The Friends are an incredible group of people – smart, well educated, experienced, insightful, thoughtful. We do what we do well and we always have. We raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the library. We are focused now on insuring that we do the very best for the library, and don’t bother with whatever gets in our way. We have been, and always will be here to keep the library vibrant and healthy.’

BOARD’S FIDUCIARY DUTIES

However, there are those willing to risk the library’s health for the mere purpose of preserving just one stakeholder who has proven reckless as a steward of the library’s ‘trust bank’ and outstanding reputation.

In a March 22, 2010 meeting with library managers, Gillilan said, ‘Good communication needs to flow both up and down in the organization without inhibition or worry about retribution. We think that is the heart of participative leadership.’ He later said at the same meeting, ‘As Board members it is not appropriate for us to be involved in the day-to-day management of the library.’

More recently, Gillilan and at least two board members – including Mimi Charles and Kevin Werner – have done precisely that, completing usurping their proper and duly designated roles by meeting in secrecy with Elder who has retreated almost exclusively to her fifth-floor offices in the City Library.

Gillilan often has refused to share the whole range of communications from staff members and external stakeholders he has received on a timely basis, suggesting that he has carefully filtered out the potentially most embarrassing criticisms. Many observers have remarked that they are astounded by Gillilan’s behavior and response to this considering his record as a minister, psychologist, and as a former chapter head of the American Civil Liberties Union.

At a closed-door session during the December board of trustees meeting, Trustee John Becker (a past board president who resigned after the meeting in protest) requested the board to immediately take up the process of a performance review for the director as her contract was scheduled to expire in four months (April 2011). Given his experience as a trustee, Becker was aware of the timeline needed to begin the contract review process.

Gillilan, who has no familiarity with Robert’s Rules of Order (a standard parliamentary procedure guide for trustees), permitted Elder to sit in during a closed-door session involving the discussion of her contract, which would normally have been considered improper.

Now certain that Gillilan was merely facilitating the board as a rubber stamp for the administration’s recklessness, Becker decided that he could no longer serve in good conscience.

However, Gillilan lied publicly about being unaware of the timeline (including a 90-day review window) in remarks after the April 2011 board meeting where Elder’s contract was renewed automatically. Gillilan said, ‘We were just working under the assumption that we needed to do her annual performance review, and we were thinking of how we were going to go forward and under what terms and that prompted us to look at the agreement only to realize that we were not fully aware of its terms.’

Becker says he was “doubly astounded” when he saw Gillilan’s quote and the fact that Elder’s contract had been automatically renewed for one year without any formal performance review taking place.

MANAGEMENT AND CONSULTANTS

Despite two management consultants who had been brought on board for short periods during 2010, virtually nothing has changed. A no confidence vote passed overwhelmingly among the library’s staff with 87 percent approving the resolution and virtually everyone else abstaining. As the first consultant, Ellen Reddick, a managing partner for the locally based Impact Factory, issued a three-page letter, alarming in its lack of professionalism. There are numerous typographical errors as well as poorly edited sentences and lapses in standard rules of grammar.

Lacking the requisite objectivity that a consultant’s report would normally reflect, Reddick’s summary is pitched decidedly toward Elder with several points omitted deliberately. Claiming the management team has usurped its authority without consequences and that it is holding the library, the board and director ‘hostage,’ Reddick concluded: ‘Participative Management has become a club with which to beat up the Director with no clear definition or agreement as to what participative management is or what the responsibilities are of the Management Team.’

When Elder applied for the Salt Lake City position, she wrote the following:

‘I have learned that to be successful, teams must first feel a sense of affection and openness for each other. Affection or compassion for team members becomes the foundation for caring about the team’s product and establishing a genuine accountability to each other. Openness allows for all opinions, points of view and alternate approaches to be shared.’

However, she has done everything but that during her tenure. She refused to share the results of the staff survey to the management team. She indicated that the relationship with staff is ‘not her job.’ As one staff member indicated: ‘She is not interested in working public service desks, not interested in sending positive feedback directly to staff. Whatever she does not want to do is “someone else’s job,” not hers.’ At a 2010 management meeting, she indicated that she had no idea that the public computers at the main branch had not yet been replaced, despite the fact that the project was part of her oversight.

Admittedly, the second consultant, George Needham, came on in the latter half of 2010 with more professionalism. His principal recommendation for reorganization called for a shift in emphasis from participatory management to collaborative design. However, Elder has egregiously misinterpreted the differences. She ‘collaborated’ with an individual outside of the library staff (not the consultant) to remove all references to participatory management in the Library’s policies and procedures manual that the board has approved.

However, no parallel mechanisms have yet been put in place so, in effect, the organization’s administrative and managerial infrastructure has been completely hollowed out with no existing checks and balances that permit a feasible balance of horizontal and vertical lines of communication between and among the library’s staff, management, and executive layers.

The gutting of the policy and procedures manual without satisfactory replacement could potentially cost the library dearly especially in times of tight budgetary resources. Elder has insisted on being engaged with every hire right down to a shelving aide job. At one of the branches where hiring for new positions has become a bloated process lasting four or more weeks, the added costs have easily topped $7,000 and there have been additional costs incurred to ensure the branch is adequately staffed while colleagues are trying to facilitate a process that Elder created without providing feasible tactical guidance or encouraging feedback on its efficacy.

COLLABORATIVE DESIGN AND SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE

As suggested in the previous Selective Echo piece, successful organizational transformation can only occur with the collaboration of ALL stakeholders, with the minimum representing a secure buy-in for full participation at all levels. Transformation efforts fail because organizational communication and collaboration have failed in this instance. There is yet no evidence of any of the following with regard to the library’s strategic plan nor of any possibility that Elder – given her completely compromised standing with regard to trust, credibility, and transparency – can effectively organize the huge tasks incumbent in this transformation. These include:

*Reliable methods for consensus-based strategic, long-range, or visionary planning that leverages the expertise and knowledge of a larger, diverse group of managers.

*Ability to establish appropriate normative directives for ethical practices in the library or a discernible pathway from organizational values to decision making about process, implementation, resource allocation, and evaluation.

*A cogent, cohesive design methodology for capturing and representing collective learning and internal knowledge to serve as guidance for planning and enactment of the library’s full complement of services.

After more than three years at the helm, Elder has yet to comprehend that organizational structure can only function with a fully elucidated and symmetrical social architecture that calls for leaders to propel forward with values that respect the integrity, substance, quality, and intensity of interactions with all stakeholders. It is ironic that she has persistently criticized what she perceives as the library’s culture of nepotism.

However, she has emerged as a paralyzed leader who cannot move forward nor retreat from the position in which she has trapped herself. She relies and delegates solely and desperately on Gillilan, Charles, and Werner as blind enablers that now have turned deaf to scores upon scores of stakeholders who consistently say the same thing. This might be among the most convincing signals that Elder’s tenure is hopelessly beyond repair.

She will never be able to achieve an authentic vision and discourse that can be shared with all stakeholders. She has violated the essential systems of ethical values and priorities for leadership and decision-making.

Management scholars acknowledge a values-centered strategy as the function capable of achieving the highest possible leverage in terms of consolidating a mutual set of commitments and values that all stakeholders can comfortably live with even if there are disagreements or differences in opinion.

NO CONFIDENCE

It is quite telling that library staff members reaching to the organization’s highest levels are becoming increasingly open about their concerns that normal business operating procedures have been completely disregarded. There are high-ranking staff members who are meticulous in documenting the errors, many of which will strike public stakeholders alarming in their carelessness and egregious tone.

Elder has betrayed the trust and confidence of virtually every constituency and has exploited the good graces of some notable publics. Most definitely, she has betrayed the trust of many supporters including Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker who is a strong believer in organizational independence along with the values that emphasize collaboration and mutual respect among diverse groups of stakeholders. Boyer Jarvis, one of the city’s best known community leaders, wholeheartedly approved of Elder’s appointment in 2008. However, in a March 28, 2011 letter, addressed to Gillilan, he wrote the following:

‘I see through a glass darkly at the how and why for the turbulence among the Library staff today, but I believe that turbulence must be surmounted. Based on what I now think I know, the desirable high morale of the Library staff cannot be restored while Beth Elder remains as Director of the Salt Lake City Public Library.

‘Therefore, I urge the Library Board to find a humane way to end Beth Elder’s employment, and to begin the challenging task of finding a new director.’

CONCLUSION

There is one final anecdote to share from a staff member:

‘Beth continues to give examples of her previous job in Denver. We are not Denver Public Library. Salt Lake City has different community needs and expectations from its public library. We want to be SLCPL. While the staff has never been closed to examples from other libraries, they feel this exemplifies how Beth has not embraced SLCPL and Salt Lake as her home. It’s as if she is doing all this “for” us rather than “with” us.’

Recently, the Library Journal indicated that Denver is planning to close seven to 12 library branches because of deep financial problems. While certainly the reasons for such a decision are complex and involve many factors, it should at least raise a modicum of alarm in every reasonable person’s assessment.

Elder has been inexplicably disengaged from the community. She refused offers by the offices of Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank and the Volunteers of America to conduct programs for staff, especially in the wake of several well-publicized crimes and concerns about safety, drug use, and interactions with homeless residents. This undoubtedly would have been a win-win public relations and goodwill proposition for all parties concerned. Furthermore, it would have provided key support to staff who deal with these issues on a daily basis. The Selective Echo often has observed staff members exercising admirable patience and prudent control in dealing with situations that otherwise could become disruptive and even violent.

It bears repeating: Gillilan and a few others prefer the damaging status quo. However, given the extensive evidence of Elder’s frequent shortcomings in meeting generally accepted standards and principles of leadership practice, Elder’s continued employment is plainly not worth the risk. Undoubtedly, keeping Elder would be a huge gamble impacting the library’s reputation and trust bank that ultimately would carry over into its capacity to secure developmental and capital funds as well as taxpayer support for a library system that is thriving and expanding.

The message should be clear to Gillilan. The time has come to demand Elder’s immediate resignation and for Gillilan to resign as board president. It would be the significant step to correcting what has become one of the most embarrassing demonstrations of organizational leadership in the city’s memory.

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