I think it's about time for us to get started. Welcome everybody. I'm Cliff Lynch. I am the director of the Coalition for Networked Information. And you've joined us for the first project briefing of the final week of our virtual 2020 spring member meeting. And we are going to start the final week off with a really interesting panel. We actually have a panel of five and Jennifer Vinnapal from Ohio State University will, excuse me, the Ohio State University as they say, will be moderating it. The presentation is really interesting. It deals with how you position IT projects in organizational culture and organizational culture change. At least that's my perhaps over simplified version of it. And it builds off a very nice article that came out an edge cause review, which I strongly suspect Jennifer is going to have a point or two in her slides. Or if not, we'll put it in the chat. We'll hear from the panel. And I would invite you as we go along through the panel to use the Q&A tool down at the bottom of your screen to pose questions at any point. The panel after it's finished talking among themselves will address all of the questions, but there's no reason to wait till the end of the panel to start posing them. I also direct your attention to the chat on the side of your screen. And there'll be a few URLs that may be helpful, but will come through there during the course of the presentation. I think that that's all I really need to say about the format of this. You can see our panelists and their affiliation on the screen. So I won't troop through all of that. I will note that at the end Diane Goldenberg Hart will moderate the Q&A. So with that, let me just thank you all for joining us. And let me offer a really big thanks to our panelists for starting us off on the final week of the virtual meeting on a very high note. So over to you Jennifer and welcome. Thank you, Cliff. So I'm going to start this panel discussion with a story. I started working at the Ohio State University Libraries on November 15, 2016. So that's about three and a half years ago. And I was hired as the Associate Dean for Information Technology. I've since added distinctive collections to my portfolio. So when I arrived, there were two highly anticipated IT projects that were literally sitting on my desk in little little stacks, a website redesign project and a project to create a discovery service. And so in the first two weeks, two or three weeks of my job, people would repeatedly ask me how about those two IT projects? How are those projects going? What are we doing? When would we see something of these two projects? And there was something about that that just didn't sit right with me about these projects. And I just couldn't figure out, I couldn't really figure out what it was. There was kind of irking me. So I mulled this over for a time. And at the same time, I was also learning about the library organization. I was attending strategic planning meetings. I was starting to understand the library's culture. And in those strategic planning meetings, Library Director Damon Jaggers was my boss. He was also relatively new in his job at that point. He was emphasizing the need for agility, for flexibility, and for learning. And he was being very clear about his goals for the strategic planning process and for the organization. And those goals included organizational learning, inclusive participation, risk taking and accountability, and shared leadership. So at the same time, I was participating in these meetings and I was mulling over these two IT projects. And sometime in that next month, it finally occurred to me what was really not sitting right about these projects. And I realized that in fact these were not IT projects. These were library's projects that would admittedly lean heavily on IT. But they didn't really belong to IT. The framing was wrong in the way that we were talking about these projects. These projects belong to and were the responsibility of everyone in the organization. So this realization converged with what Damon was trying to create in the strategic planning process in which he was trying to emphasize agility, flexibility, inclusive participation. He was seeking to create what's called a learning organization. Oops, trying to advance my slides. There we go. So a little bit about the learning organization. The scholar Peter Senge, who's spent his whole career researching and writing about the topic, says that a learning organization is adept at creating new knowledge and then integrating that knowledge into improved work practices. And I've got a quote here. So he describes five disciplines in organizational needs that an organization needs in order to be doing this creating and this integrating into their work practices. The most important discipline that he talks about is called systems thinking. He says, at the heart of a learning organization is a shift of mind from seeing ourselves as separate from the world to connected to the world. From seeing problems as caused by someone or something out there to seeing how our own actions create the problems that we experience. So we work within a system and the individual in the organization are interconnected. Learning organizations aren't produced via top down mandates. They require positional leaders to create the conditions for everyone in the organization to envision and create change and then support that growth as it happens. So, you know, I was asking myself, well, what kind of leadership helps to develop a learning organization? How do you actually do that? How can we as leaders emphasize organizational learning in our everyday work? So research has shown a relationship between certain leadership practices and the successful development of a learning organization. In particular, research has focused on transformational and transactional leadership practices and also transformational and transactional behaviors. So, in transactional leadership, the leader seeks to strengthen an organization's culture, strategy, and structure. The leader sets goals, is explicit about what's expected, and provides constructive feedback to everyone to keep everyone on task. However, in transformational leadership, that's kind of what we think of as a heroic style leadership. The leader is charismatic and inspirational. They provide a vision for where the organization is going. They help individuals transcend their self-interest for the sake of the larger vision of the organization. And together, these two leadership styles or behaviors emphasize systems thinking when they function together. The two serve different but complementary purposes, encouraging organizational exploration and learning, and that's the transformational part. And then what you need to do is take that learning and institutionalize it into the organization and that's more the transactional part. So back to my two IT projects. I was interested in positioning these libraries projects, so no longer IT projects, as opportunities for organizational learning to advance the goals that Damon and the executive team and others in the organization were setting for the organization, agility, flexibility, learning, etc. So I did not want the organization to just stand by and watch from the sidelines while IT developed a new website and a discovery system. I wanted everyone in the organization to be invested in the work, to own and take responsibility for the process and the product, and I wanted the process to push us into uncomfortable places in order to learn to work differently. So here are a couple things that we did, and these may not actually sound all that innovative to you, but these actions did, for us, they were different, and they did advance our learning organization agenda. So we appointed a non-IT employee from the teaching and learning group to run the website redesign project. The assumption was all along that someone from IT would run that project. Project sponsors, which I was a sponsor on both of them, and we had others also participating. We coached project leads on relevant leadership skills, such as systems thinking and influencing without positional authority. We also reinforced ideas of collective responsibility and participatory decision-making by encouraging broad staff participation in project-related events. The projects practiced agile and iterative development, design driven by user experience testing, and incremental release of new content and features, and this was all new to the organization, and in fact the incremental release part of the website proved particularly challenging to employees and also to the executive leadership. We had to adjust to the idea of an unfinished and ever-changing product being available for everyone to see and test and improve upon, and the first iteration of our new website, which was available only internally, came out without any design at all and with minimal content. It was really just a proof of concept. So after this experience, I wondered if others also designed ostensible IT projects to advance organizational learning, and if so, how they were doing it. So today, my colleagues are going to talk about their experiences doing just this. So for the next half hour, I'm going to ask Carolyn, Salwa, Rosie, and Hannah some questions related to their work, and then we're going to open it up for questions from the audience, and please remember to put your questions either into the Q&A or chat tools. So the first topic that we're going to discuss has the idea of systems thinking had any impact on your work or the work of your organization, and you can comment on this either if you had been aware of the concept of systems thinking, that would be interesting to learn, but if you hadn't but realized that you were kind of functioning in that with that sort of mindset anyway, in what way has systems thinking or has it had an impact on your work in your own organizations? And I can throw this out. I'm going to throw it to Carolyn because I know you had in Northwestern been talking about systems thinking. Sure. You can hear me okay, right? Great. Hi, everyone.  I hope that's okay because I wanted to talk a little bit about how the libraries have embraced the learning organization as a whole. So not just the specific discipline of systems thinking. I would say yes, it's definitely impacted the work of the organization, and I do have two examples of that which I think we can get to later in the panel, but I would say the examples are more in how we approach the work and lesson being deliberate in the framing of the projects. So but where Northwestern University Libraries were deliberate was in the roll out in the education of staff in the five disciplines. So that personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and finally systems thinking. We had a two-plus year task force, and that was actually created with the support of the library's leadership, and that happened after a core group of us attended a Deetta Jones Library Management Skills Institute that focused on the learning organizational principles. I was on that task force for the first two years, and we used that fifth discipline field book to really come up with some exercises that the library could do, encouraging people to use tools and philosophies from the learning organization in their daily work. And one of the things I think that we're most proud of in the library is we underwent about a two-month process to really come up with some shared values. So I think about 80 staff participated in honing some and kind of articulating personal values, and then we figured out of all those personal values what are really shared for the library staff. And then we created a sort of shared vision statement that has, I think, guided us throughout the work. So the evidence might be a bit anecdotal, but I've seen, for example, in our department head meetings that we actually call each other out a lot in our mental models. So we use that sort of ladder of inference tool and we'll say to one another, hey, I think you're jumping up your ladder of inference. Like, let's bring it back down. Where are the other points of view here? So that's how I would say not only systems thinking, but how the learning organization as a whole sort of just seeped in. We did train, and I say train because you do want to bring up the disciplines and stuff. We got, we hit actually every supervisor. So the task force created content and we did a 10 session hour long training with all the supervisors in the library, as well as held open sessions for staff. So we really rolled rolled it out to local staff in terms of philosophies and tools. Does anyone else want to jump in and talk about systems thinking as a general principle in your libraries? So I will. I would say that we haven't explicitly touched on the learning organization per se, but within Emory libraries, we've done a lot of work around the concept of first team. And for those of you who aren't familiar, that's where a team, basically team members decide where their first team is, right? The first team that you have allegiance to. And then oftentimes that is for me, in normal circumstances, might be my staff. So I might have allegiance to my staff. And so what we've been working on is as a leadership team, saying no, our our leadership team is where our allegiance to. And there's actually quite a bit of overlap when you look at systems thinking and you look at sort of the first team approach because it asks you to be vulnerable with each other, the first team model, manage change together, building trust together. There's a lot there that's really similar to some of the systems thinking work. And at Emory, this is actually a really big concept because the organization has been heavily siloed. So most people had been making decisions based on what was in their best interest, assuming that it had little to no impact on the rest of the organization, which is just not true. And that became very apparent too around technology, right? You can make a decision to have all of the books do in library A after 14 days and in library B, maybe it's 15 days and library C, it could be 16 days. And that makes no sense to end users, right? So a lot of that first team approach has helped us rethink how we collaborate together and the work that we do. And I do, like I said, I think it has a very similar touchstones to systems thinking. So the I've never heard of the first team approach. Do others of you also have a sense of, I mean, it's it's really easy to kind of want to in library, library leadership, any kind of leadership to protect me in mind, you know, I have two divisions and, you know, to want to protect those divisions against especially IT against others, you know, asking for so many things. So how do you, you know, I'll ask Sawa and Hannah, do you have a way of thinking about the interconnectedness and reminding your staff that, you know, especially in an IT unit, that we're actually there for each other, even, even beyond the, you know, the walls of our division? That's an interesting question, Jennifer. And I was actually, if you hadn't called on me, I would have said, my, my perspective on this is more from my work that I've been doing. So I bring an interesting perspective. I've been at UC Berkeley now for about 11 months. I'll be coming on a full year June 2 next week. So a lot of this work, these ideas in the thought processes I have here were things I had employed at my previous institution, Georgetown University, and Surf University of California, Berkeley, but I'm bringing them on here as well. And what I realized, so I studied about systems thinking at my MBA coursework and reading all my business reviews and case studies was like, yes, systems thinking, and we think as a whole. But I had actually never seen it into practice until I started working. And then you realize that it's not just one person thinking this way. It's a cultural change. It's a shift in not one person's perspective, but you have to bring the whole organization together. And it starts with helping your small team, your first team, or wherever is your immediate allegiance, helping them realize that we cannot have all the expertise in the world, even if we're brilliant coders or brilliant systems administrators or do the world's most brilliant DevOps work. We have to rely and engage on others. And that transformational ideas don't really always have to come from top down. They can come from operational leaders, positional leaders, bottom up. And in order to empower employees to actually think that they can produce these transformational ideas and that they can actually be a part, they're not just a silo on the side, but they're part of this network actually requires creating a culture of coaching. So as Carolyn was saying, asking people, well, what do you think or how would you tackle this, which empowers the employees to think differently? Well, if I would tackle it this way, then clearly I would need to involve another member who may or may not be part of my team or my unit. And it's interesting because we're seeing it actually play out in this COVID-19 times, where many of us and many of our teams have left those boundaries of our unit or divisional. And we're actually just supporting, we're looking together to support these online virtual synchronous asynchronous learning environments that have popped up. So six months ago, if I had taken a project to my IT team saying, hey, we need to change these loan dates, let's think about it. Maybe the response might have been, well, we're too busy and this is all we can think about. And right now, in just six months, the responses are, well, how can we help move the organization forward during these trying times so that we're all working towards this common goal, wherein they're taking this responsibility as one connected organization and they're part of it. And I just want to build a little bit on what Saul was talking about there and sort of working from the moment that we're in. I think we're all challenged in a really good way right now to think about the broadest possible system that we're in, which is like the public health system. And within that, the university system and how does the university system start to get a handle on reopening to students. So we're all participating in developing the reopening scenarios. And it's just clearer than ever that our ability to be successful hinges on our ability to understand and engage like the broader system that we're in. I should say that I came to GW in 2015 in large part because of the opportunity to do more with teams and also to work in an environment where leaders are assigned portfolios that don't necessarily fall against those strict functional area divisions. I found that a very exciting prospect. And I should say that in the past four years that I've been at GW, the library organization has expanded to include other general academic support units. So today we're known as GW libraries and academic innovation. And the academic innovation part refers to online course development and instructional design and support for the learning management system, which is Blackboard for us and all of the classroom design and support for the academic technology that makes for an effective classroom experience. So as a leadership team, we've sort of expanded our view and are actively working toward growing together because this kind of bigger collective thinking doesn't just happen overnight. And whenever there's organizational change, you know, on the org chart, there are certain levels of fear and concern that come with that. But we have worked very mindfully toward the bigger vision of what we will be able to do together. And I feel like this moment that we're in is really giving us an opportunity to show how broader thinking can have benefit. And just like one word on projects, because I love that that's in the title of our talk here. Peter Sange says that unless teams can learn, the organization cannot learn. And I think that project work is one of the most important ways we have to carry out strategic shifts in direction. So a project is a defined space or it can be, should be maybe there should be some boundaries there. There can be team agreements about what happens in a project space. They should be safe enough spaces where trust can be built. And I just don't think our organizations can learn as effectively without projects and without the teams that do them. So you set us up for the second set of questions. They hear a series of questions. How are you leveraging IT projects or other kinds of projects to create organizational change? Which projects have you done this? The one I was going to just ask you, Hannah, since you were already suggesting this to reflect on is the third, are there particular kinds of projects that led themselves to advancing organizational learning in this way? Are there are there things in, you know, are there projects that might be even better for this than than others? So thank you for that invitation to keep talking. When we pitched this panel, when we thought Xi and I would be in person, the examples that I was planning to bring to it included how we organize ourselves to take on a large scale library enterprise platform migration. And I think the reason that I felt like that was such a great example is because of that third bullet point. It's a project where the benefit is quite broad. The user base is quite broad and it shouldn't rest just on one point of view to be deciding about it. I'll share some of the learning objectives that we had when we set up that catalog migration project. We felt like there should be an opportunity for the team to own the work in common. So not just resort to dividing up work among sort of functionally derived tickets, but to say to the team, you own all of this, even if you're from cataloging, even if you're from user experience. And in doing this, the second objective would be that we would cultivate understanding and appreciation for other functional areas outside of our own. And third, that we would imagine a future in which we would all work together as the most integrated organization with the greatest appreciation for our system and to really be able to back each other up once we were operating on our new platform. And I want to just share a really quick story about what happened on this journey with this team. So we were trying to explicitly sort of work against some of the like, I am my job condition that Senge talks about as an organizational learning dysfunction that of course naturally creeps into organizations over time and that we need to be mindful of. So we tried to appoint people to our team who served as sort of internal networkers in their typical way of performing their role. And so this was a long-term project. We worked on it over many months. And at the end, when it was time to start testing some loads from the vendor, the team decided that they wanted to get together in person to do this, even though it wasn't necessary. And even though we wouldn't be able to do it now, they decided at that moment to get together. The vendor was late, delivered the loads on a weekend. The team came in on a Sunday afternoon to do this work because of their belief in what would be for them the most effective way of working. And they found some problems with the load on that Sunday afternoon. And they heard from other colleagues outside of our school that maybe there wasn't so much to be concerned about here. But I would say that our team was really confident in its work. They explained how they reached their conclusion, its downstream effects on the system, and they advocated against accepting that test load. And in this process, one of the quietest, most reserved members of the team spoke up with a very clear and convincing articulation of the consequences for accepting a faulty load. And it would have been so easy for him to remain silent. But I remained convinced that he spoke up because it was a safe space. Because others had come to understand his contribution and respect his work. And that was part of the organizational learning that we were trying to achieve with this project. How about others of you? Does anyone have anything come to mind that's a project that worked particularly well in this respect? I do. So I would, I mean, again, it's hard for me to use the word project here. But I, the particular kind of work where I feel this lens itself, while is our our software development work for repository services. And one concrete example I have, where I think Sanjay says something like, you know, you've reached a learning organization where the ultimate goal is learning, right? Nothing else. And I think one of the concrete examples from our software development team was back in the fall, we were at the San Vera connect conference. And we met up with another San Vera partner so much Western to San Vera partner. And they heard about a new technology, a new programming language that we're experimenting with. And they asked us point point, hey, like, would you guys mentor us? Would you just take two weeks, you know, two weeks of time and mentor us? So we ended up doing a shared sprint with them. And it was a just a two weeks sprint, where the goal was they could learn something about a new programming language. Our goal was we knew Princeton worked really well with a remote team, which is actually coming in handy now. But as a remote team, and also, they do pair programming really well. So that was the goal for this two week shared sprint. They had a big retrospective at the end. They both teams learned something. And, and, and then we moved on. So I would say that was one example from your question. Jennifer, if I may add. So when I first think when you first asked us this question for the edge of cause interview, I was thinking in a very abstract way. I'm like, all right, what kind of problems lend themselves well, what kind of problems have I applied systems thinking or organizational learning to or have had had people invest outside of their boundaries and like, of course, clearly complex projects. I'm not doing this if someone's creating a small web page on some instructions only to be only to realize actually, even that in itself could lend itself to thinking outside of your boundaries, working with others, seeing if how you think you might apply this doesn't works or doesn't work. But there was something in here that Hannah talked about where this person spoke up. And it actually leads into what Sanke talks about a learning organization where there is a difference between compliance and commitment. And if the person was just interested in complying, they may have not said anything, but they had a commitment towards the success of the project because the entire team was invested in the success of the project was the success of the team. So that's important. And so it and it again ties back into empowering the employees and empowering the members of the team to think this is their projects, they're supposed to lead this, they're responsible for the success and we'll give them the tools and the guidance around it. At Georgetown, one of the projects that we took on a few years ago, so this was probably 2015-2016, was something to do with our repository. Our art and art history department contacted us, they had the server that housed a couple hundred thousand slides and they wanted to migrate it and they couldn't afford the server costs anymore. And of course the initial response that I received from the team as we talked about this project at the leadership and then when I went back and spoke to the team around this project was, well, it's not art, they're not our collections. So why would we host them? And there's so much work and they're going to ask for a whole different interface and it's just so different. However, coming in with this culture of coaching was like, well, they've asked us for our help. How about would you be interested in talking to them through this project? And if at the end you realize this isn't something we as a team can do, we can discuss this further or how would you handle it if an external stakeholder approached you and you're representing your department? Couple conversations down, we realized this was one of the most fun projects the team had ever embarked on. They were committed to making it successful, but beyond that they were committed to ensuring that the faculty members got exactly what they needed and even if that meant making some major tweaks that under normal circumstances the team would not have been very amenable to. It's a great project. It helped Georgetown University at that point, library, retire the servers that the art and art history department had and it brought in traffic to the library repository, which was a great success story. It was almost like three birds with one stone or three birds with one pebble. But it does go back to compliance versus commitment and how do we earn our team members this commitment over compliance? I'm going to move on to the last topic and I'm going to throw it to Rosie. Whoopsie, back. There we go. So do you, Rosie, is this something that you talk about kind of openly in your organization? It sounds like with your first teams that is a way that everybody kind of talks openly about your strategies for organizational growth and learning and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and also if you've encountered any challenges in this work of yours. So like I said, we don't, we do talk a lot about the first team approach and it does definitely overlap with Simpsons thinking more recently because of the pandemic. We have been talking more about, okay, where do the silos exist and what do we need to do? How can we rank the silos from the worst to the least worst because it's really not the best and start to tackle the changes individually. So that is one of the things that we are working on and so we do talk about it. I don't think that we have explicitly, you know, said let's sit down and read some books on system thinking. There's some articles, but we definitely talk about how do we move the organization forward to think about things holistically. In terms of challenges, I would say that challenges are sort of bifurcated the way that we handle work, at least within my team. I have two sets of challenges on working with the larger organization. One of the projects that we've used to sort of reframe thinking was like other people, the repository. Our repository prior to the launch of the new digital collection site, which happened last month. We had five to eight, ten, depends on how you want to count repositories. None of them worked together. They were all their own little silos and sometimes they were very specialized in all kinds of ways from what content they would take in. So we had one repository that would only take in audiovisual or born digital material. It wouldn't take in anything else. And then we had another repository that took in theses and dissertations and then another one that took in faculty works. None of them talked to each other. So when we embarked on the repository project, we did actually spend much to Yolanda, my boss's impatience sometimes, about a year doing requirements gathering. And primarily that was because nobody believed that there were requirements were similar to one another. Everybody believed that these repositories had built up over time because my needs are nothing like their needs. And that year long requirements gathering session actually helped them see, oh, university archives and scholarly communications have a whole lot in common. We both have the exact same needs. There was a lot of belief like no, no, no, my processes are completely snowflake. And over time they started to see the value in working together and understanding each other's needs, which has created greater empathy amongst the staff. But it's hard to break out of that culture. That culture has been around for very long time. It was around long before I showed up. And while we've been doing a lot of work to break it down, I suspect it will be something that's always there. On my teams and it is sort of a fear of having everything supplanted onto them. They're worried that if they engage in conversation similar to what Saul was saying, that they're going to be committed to something that people aren't going to necessarily listen to them or hear them. And it's really trying to release their anxiety and have them trust that no matter what, that I will be their advocate. And that even if it doesn't seem like I'm not advocating, I am advocating. And I think that's probably the hardest thing is for them to build that trust with one another. And that also comes from the fact that my team is relatively new. When I started, there was eight people. And now we are at 20 people. And so it touches on, there's a lot of fear there of building relationships and building trust and developing the team and trusting in me along the way because it just keeps feeling like a lot of change all along. So yeah, I think that that answers both of your questions. I'll just I'll interject here that I, as I've been I've been saying just over the past week or week and a half, the expression that culture eats strategy for lunch and breakfast and dinner. And I've been saying that a lot recently. And in fact, this just this morning, I had a meeting with my boss and said that that the thing that I was hired that I that I understand that I was hired to do three and a half years ago, I'm finally able to start it because I needed to spend three and a half years working with my colleagues on organizational change and learning so that I could get to what I thought I was going to be doing on day one in 2016. Any other challenges that you all want to share in doing this work? You know, one thing I would like to share is I have been talking with my it teams in particular, but also my teams and in our library loan and digital strategy areas around the emotional labor we talk about it. But then when rubber meets the road, does it get acknowledged by leadership by like library leadership? Do we actually tell you? I see that you've put in a lot of work in this project. And I'm so sorry, we have to pivot. And then do we just walk away? Or do we give them more reasoning to think about? Well, it's not wasted work. Let's come back to it. We have to pivot because of whatever the organization has changed. There is a hot potato that got dropped or there's something that's going on. But your work isn't wasted. We value this emotional labor that you've put in, not just the physical and the mental and all this work that you've done. But people get, again, the commitment, they get attached to the work that they're doing. And how do we ensure that they realize that being part of this team is taking a pivot only to come back to it at a later date and that the work isn't wasted? So I did want to acknowledge that that has actually helped me work with my teams, particularly as Rosie was saying around IT teams where there's this fear of letting go or doing something in a different way and then it gets saddled on to you if the word is or you get, you know, it's put on to the team and now you're responsible for the success without any resources or support from other entities or units. So we could have one last word or we could pivot to answering questions from the audience. Any last thoughts? I just wanted to echo a thought from earlier. I feel like one of the biggest challenges is just remembering that we're in a process that doesn't have an end. It doesn't have an end by design and Senke talks about this. And Jennifer, you were saying in your experience, the sort of ever-changing and unfinished nature of showing work in progress was an adjustment both for the teams and for leadership and just wanted to echo that. And I think it's compounded by the fact that this is never something that we can just check off. We're always going to need to stay excited about learning, which I think a lot of us are, but in case we ever thought we were going to be done, that's a surprise. So I think I'm going to turn this back over to Diane, who is going to moderate questions. Great. Thank you, Jennifer, and thank you to our panelists. And thank you to all of our attendees for making time to be with us here today at C&I's virtual spring meeting. We're really delighted to have you here. And for this very compelling panel conversation, I'm going to start right away with the question we have in the Q&A box. And just remind folks, please go ahead and type in your questions or comments in the Q&A or in the chat. We'll answer them live here. And this first question is from Lisa Hinchliff. Hello, Lisa. Lisa asks, have any of you been able to scale or export your approaches to the larger library organization, i.e., is the overall organization transforming by the efforts of IT or are the effects more internal to IT? And if yes, what factors enabled that? I'm going to take a stab at that just from the Ohio State perspective. So this is something that the executive team, meaning the associate deans and the dean of libraries are being very explicit about. Hence my question earlier to the panel, is this work you're doing explicitly or is this something you're doing individually? So we're trying to be very explicit about framing all of the experiences that we're having, whether it's a discussion about the purpose and structure of management committee through any projects that we do, any interactions that we have with each other and with other folks in the organization. So we're trying to structure all of that to advance organizational learning and remind ourselves that this is how we live, this is how we live our values. This is what it looks like in practice. This is what's going to help the organization grow to be able to, let's say, answer those kinds of questions themselves amongst colleagues or this is, you know, or what have you. So we do talk very explicitly about and the way that the executive committee has functioned since I've gotten there and only increasingly so since I've been there is as a group that thinks across the organization, we ourselves are not invested in protecting our own divisions and looking out for what's best in our divisions. Apparently that was more of a thing before I got there, but you know, we advocate, for example, when we have position openings pre-COVID, we would advocate on each other's behalf and it wasn't just, you know, I need that position for my team and you don't need that position. Occasionally we would find ourselves advocating for each other and saying I don't need that position right now, you actually need that more in order for the organization to function better as a whole. So interesting. Anybody else want to respond to that? I wanted to jump in and talk about a project. It was actually the first opportunity that I had to be sort of part of commissioning a larger scale team to take on some pretty complex work and it was actually outside of IT. So this was some work that we did with our collections strategy and the learning objectives that we had in mind were to try to get everyone across the organization, you know, in an appropriate way to be more mindful and more aware of how the complexities of the collections budget worked and we were moving in a direction where we were preparing to move away from making a lot of individual allocations to individual topical areas and asking what can we do when we come together and have some big ideas that maybe we can actually afford if we get together and discuss it. So I just wanted to offer that as an example of something that was not an IT project but was pretty exciting and borrowed from agile principles. So that's another thing I wanted to say. At this point, agile process I think is pretty well established in software development practice but we've been successful in bringing some of those principles into a scholarly communications team that we have that's been operating for a couple of years an open educational resources team and then we maintain this as part of our ongoing collections work. I think there was a question about factors and I think that being prepared one factor in the success of this is being prepared to support people in leading from where they are in the organization and also encouraging and making it safe for the teams to take the risk of showing their work in progress and doing that regularly. So I'm just building up that habit. Interesting. Thank you, Hannah. Anybody else on that question? I was going to say, I think one of the benefits of even if an IT division within a library were to take on systems thinking approach and really think about things in that manner, it does have a broad impact on the rest of the library because oftentimes the rest of the library is relying so heavily on IT and IT resources are often very limited within libraries that if they start to take things on, it starts to seep out whether people realize it or not and we've seen that in other places too. I think really great example is actually we're getting a lot of requests for project management software right now in every library and I think they've seen project managers work with the organization, not just in IT projects, I should say, but also building projects. But the more that there's project management around major initiatives, the more it raises people's heads and says, huh, maybe I should be thinking about things in a different manner than I have been doing. So all of that is to say is you could try to keep it contained to your IT area, but it's pretty hard to do that because so much of the organization relies on IT. Kind of the genie is out of the bottle maybe. Yes, the genie definitely gets out of the bottle really fast. Thanks for that Rosie. Any other comments on that question? At Berkeley at UC Berkeley comparable to what Jennifer said, it comes from the senior leadership where all the AULs and our UL we practice the style of matrix leadership where we support each other's teams and we support each other's projects, which means when as a matter of fact, just this morning I received an email from one of our AUL saying, I know your team member is really, really busy, but we have this thing coming up. Let's talk about how we may be able to work through it or I can ask my team member to pause this because I know that your teams are busy as opposed to being like, here's a project deal with it. It's not my problem. So we do comparable to what Jennifer was saying. We come together, we talk about it, we advocate for each other's teams, almost to the point where we think all the teams are our teams because we're one organization. I'm not moving forth as digital initiatives and IT and someone else's scholarly resources. We're moving forward as library and we've done the same thing as Jennifer said around positions and where that helps is it also lets our teams see that there's this culture that's changing and hence even if culture is eating strategy, that strategy is also changing because the culture is changing and they're actually coming together and it helps our teams feel more comfortable now engaging with each other realizing that oh well in Division A will actually understand Division B's problems or when Division B is proposing a project they actually start thinking about well this will have an implication on IT or digital initiatives. Let me converse with them before I put forth this project. So we're seeing those improvements as senior leadership has come together to realize we're a matrix organization and that's how we'll move forward and it's been very positive. Thanks Salwa. I just wanted to read aloud here also a comment that Carolyn put in the chat. Northwestern leadership really embraced and endorsed bringing the learning org concepts to all staff. That really did help the learning org team with their work of developing sessions to learn the concepts and tools associated with all five disciplines and keeping that fresh encouraging people to use the tools on a daily basis. So we appreciate that. Okay so moving on now and thank you all for those contributions and Lisa for that question. Lisa's follow-up is very appreciated. If no one has other oh okay so she's saying let me go on to the next question. I'll come back to Lisa's. All right so we have another question from Hongma. In terms of sharing collective ownership what would be your advice to communicate to those specific areas who strongly feel owning their territory and prefer not having others to influence the work they feel belongs to their department or departments? Let's say even if you have already had buy-in from the leadership team that's a really good question. I would say that actually kind of goes back to one of Sange's pieces of advice and Carolyn talked a little bit about this too calling each other out and having a safe space to be able to do that so it may be having that conversation with the leadership to say team is not on board. And I had to have one of those conversations recently and you know there's the way things were and then there's the way things are now and some of the anxiety about the way things were creeped in and then I got in there and I was like you know how can we make this happen better and their leader said to me oh yeah I know it's so awful that it keeps happening this way right and so you sort of have to trust that everybody has bought in and that everybody will have each other's back. Otherwise you know you are not going to be able to change a situation where staff are really struggling with understanding that and I think you know Carolyn's comments about bringing the staff on board around the concept of the learning work can be helpful. I have to say I'm always kind of surprised by the things that help move people along in their thinking. I mean sometimes it might be and it really depends on the person so it's not easy to answer Hung Ma's question across the board. Some people you have to have a face to face and one of those difficult conversations and say look you know I understand you you're being protective you know about your staff and I think that's a really admirable trait to make sure that your staff are safe. You know maybe digging a little bit to understand why their perspective is their perspective but then sometimes you might need to say look this is the direction the organization is going and this is your organization so you're going to need to go along but in other cases I found that there was an interesting moment I was talking to someone in the organization recently who actually attended a CNI presentation last week. We happened to both be attending and suddenly they kind of had an insight that allowed me to then move into a conversation that I had intended to have anyway but it was just it was kind of more fodder for having the conversation and a fruitful conversation and in other I'm finding in other circumstances the disruption of the pandemic and all working from home it's in some ways it's provided us with opportunities to think very very differently about things that we were very resistant to before for example I always got a little bit of side eye about one of my staff members who works remotely and comes onto campus maybe once every six eight weeks and suddenly now we're all working remotely and it's working okay for many of us and some of us are going to be working remotely maybe for the next year I mean until there's a vaccine right that suddenly everybody's thinking about an openness to the idea of remote work has changed and I think it's going to have implications for how we recruit how we talk to people about work-life balance how we how we talk to people about how we think about equipping people with tools and technology for their work I think it's really in some ways it's opened up conversations that we know we're never able to have before really interesting um anyone else on that we do have a comment I just want to say Lisa's question was actually slightly different and I just wanted to address she asked how you can coach staff through compliance to like pass the compliance right like they just just complying and I just wanted to say it's not always possible um and I and I think that's okay where I had a situation recently where the staff member didn't even want to be compliant um and you know having those conversations with the staff member and saying like listen the organization is changing and it's okay if that organization that we are now is not the organization that you want to be a part of um because when you were hired we were a different organization and what we were doing was different um so I want you to think through that think through like is this the organization that you want to be in because that work that I am asking you to do is not going to suddenly go away um and they did they actually chose to leave and and go on and find a new job and I really truly believe that that was the best thing that that individual could have done for themselves because they would have been so unhappy you know doing the work that I was asking them to do um so I know that's not necessarily a comply or else or get on board or else but sometimes it's okay if they don't get on board that's an excellent point Rosie and thank you thanks for going back to that and uh raising that aspect of this particular kind of challenge it's very useful um I think on this on a similar um related theme we have a comment from an attendee Randy Oldham who writes I find it's often imposter syndrome the resistant staff member slash leader is often afraid that if they work with someone else that this person will find out that they aren't an expert in a particular area of whether they are or not I find this especially true with it because staff don't really want other people to think that they are not it savvy so that's really useful thanks Randy I don't know if anybody wants to comment on that okay so we have another question now uh from an anonymous attendee comments a great panel on an important topic most of the discussion is focused on the ways of addressing different systems and cultures within the complicated organization of the library do any of the panelists have experience with systems thinking outside the library with other organizations in the university or beyond say with commercial service providers anyone I can address it to not commercial service providers but outside of the library with organizations in the university I can speak from an example with main campus it and how again it was one of these things of commitment how we're ensuring that the campus is getting what it needs or the university is getting what it needs versus oh my staff my teams are too overworked and this involved us working around when we were migrating to a new ILS as a consortium as part of Georgetown University we were part of the Washington Research Libraries Consortium all campuses and Hannah was part of this so Hannah might be able to add a little bit here this was George Washington Georgetown all of us at the same time as we were migrating we need we realized we needed to work with our main campus it on lots of projects particularly those that involved integration with campus systems and in the past there had been murmurs this was before my time around things of territory and library it projects versus campus it projects and how are those separate and where that helped us again it came from the senior leadership where we started with setting a culture of this is going to help advance the campus organization this will help us be a part of a system that's moving towards something positive now where let's figure out where our role as a library and our role as IT organizations two separate IT organizations are it took a lot of conversations there was as Rosie said it's okay sometimes people don't really want to be a part of it and that's fine even if they are part of it begrudgingly maybe but they see that they're committed to making it successful even if they're not complying with what might be there so there's always this tug between compliance and commitment and I have to say when I left Georgetown University I was really proud of this relationship that the library and main campus IT had where most of our projects were one project that we could work on together and these boundaries or these areas around territoriality or my project versus your projects were I'm not going to say they disappeared completely but they were not as big an issue they could be talked through they could be understood they were always going to be issues around deadlines and turnarounds well they're not part of the project they don't understand how important it is I needed it yesterday but then that comes up to leadership where how do we ensure that we're using these principles to help the teams realize that what you're looking at is the small slice and in this big picture this bigger slice it blends in in a way so that was actually really helpful in helping us move forward significant enterprise IT projects where the library and main campus IT could come together in partnership and I'm doing the same here at University of California Berkeley where we have this one IT project where we come together the main campus IT library IT and we work on projects together so it's okay if main campus IT reaches out to a library staff member asking for something around box service and main campus IT and library IT isn't involved as or weren't consulted as long as we're aware that this is happening at the same time I can't speak from a vendor perspective with an example well that was really interesting thanks so definitely a strategy that applies that can apply to many different organizations and situations so I appreciate that question as well I'm still keeping an eye on the q&a box and the chat if you would like to try them in with another question or comment please feel free to do so now wonderful presentation with some fantastic questions and invite any attendees who are still with us to please hang around if you would like to have a word ask a live question or make a comment chat with our panelists please feel free to just stick stick around with us we'll be here as well for a little while longer according to all you need to do is raise your hand and I can let you do that so with that it just I just want to thank our panelists one last time for joining us here at CNI we're so delighted you could come and share this your findings your experiences on this topic with us really interesting and lots to think about and also to our attendees thanks so much for being here take care everyone bye bye


We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These words from the Declaration of Independence are familiar to many of us, and yet it took 143 years for women to get the right to vote and 189 years for black people to get the right to vote. And still today, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are still only words for many people. Here in Boston, life expectancy varies by 30 years, depending on where you live. In Roxbury, with many poor and black people, life expectancy is 59 years. In the back bay, wealthy and mostly white life expectancy is 91 years. It's tough to have liberty when you are in prison. The United States incarcerates 716 people for every 100,000 people. Our rate of incarceration is more than five times higher than most countries in the world. Millions of people in our country don't have health care, a decent job, good education, a home they can afford, and that makes it pretty hard to pursue happiness. So on this show, you are going to meet people who are making it possible to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, people today who are making the words of the Declaration of Independence come true. Welcome. Thank you. Today, we're very honored to have Celia Wislow, recently retired top elected official of the largest health care workers union in the state of Massachusetts in New England. Welcome, Celia. Hi. Hi. We'd like to learn a little bit about your background, where you're from, and how you got the values you had to work as a leader in the union. Can you tell us something about that? Sure. Well, I wasn't raised to be a union leader. I was a young girl with two scientists for families. I grew up in LA, and when I was away at school, my first year, my father sort of lost it and cut all the kids off. And so I didn't become an engineer. I started working as a clerical worker, and within a year ended up at Boston City Hospital, which had a union. And I think I got a lot of my values from my father. You scientists, you tell the truth, you try to find out what's at the bottom of anything. You experiment, you try things, and you push back, because he was a little Polish tough guy, and I think I learned some of that from him. I was bored at city hospital. It was a wonderful place to work, but I had been going to school and all this, so I started looking around. We had a union there, though no one could really saw it, because it wasn't really visible. We would get raises every so often, and a woman named Therese Murray, who later became the Senate president, was working for nine to five and organized a bunch of the older ladies and young girls to we were girls back then. And this was what year, Celia? This is 1973 or four. And we would meet over at the Jesuit Hall across the street, and she teach us about some of our rights and stuff, and so we started to go to union meetings. And it was not really appreciated by Tom Kennedy and Matt McGrath. They kept moving them around, and they were little Irish gangsters, I would say. So I learned my tenacity from my father and my mother, and I learned about the union just by stumbling into it, and being organized by somebody who organized me to be an organizer, and that was the beginning. So what was the union, you mentioned there were these Irish gangsters, what was going on with the union back in those days in the early 70s? Well, it actually started in the late 60s, AFSCME started organizing parts of the city of Boston under Kevin White, then Tom Kennedy had this little local of cable splices and stuff from the police department started organizing. So Kevin White, being the strategic thinker he was, decided to give everyone the right to join a union, but he split them up among different unions so that he could keep them from, you know, taking them on directly. And so he gave Kennedy the clerical and technical workers, which was, I was a clerk at City Hospital, and he gave them what we call a no-show jobs. And if someone goes back through the archives of the Herald or the Globe, there's this one article where Kevin White says, you know, that was the best investment, those are no-show jobs because they got exposed. I ever made, he kept a whole lot of people really quiet in the city of Boston. So he did it intentionally, he bribed them. So you started going to union meetings, Teresa Murray encouraged you to do that, and what was happening then when you went? Well, firstly it was small, like there was like seven people in the room and they weren't expecting people to be there, but it started growing over time and we found other people in the city, in the union who wanted to start coming. And I think my favorite scene was when one of the people, I think it was from UMass, was reading a financial statement, you know, to the president, Kennedy, and all of a sudden these big guys, that's all I remember, I was a little girl, these were big guys walking towards all of us, and we were mostly women. And we were all in the rows and two of my co-workers, Emily and Joni, said, all right, dear, pick up your chair, this is going to get messy. And they both picked up their chairs, these are older ladies, put them over their shoulders, and I'm like, Joni whips out this flashlight that's this long, she said, I carry it just for times like this. And then Adele Berry, who is one of the people who I originally got to know, had to be 70, 65, starts walking towards them by herself and goes, go ahead, hit me, I look really good on the news, do it, I'm begging you to do it. And the guys put their hands up and walk back, because they didn't know what to do. So that was sort of what it was like until the local got trusted. Right, so where did you get the guts and the other folks to do that, you think? I mean, that doesn't sound like something little girls would normally do. Honestly, no.  As a young lady, so if you ever got in trouble, just clock the sucker, you know, he taught me some really good moves. But I never thought of using it, it wasn't like, and then when I had to, you know, I looked at them, they told me what to do, I followed directions. That's great. So what happened after that? I know you became interested in changing the union. So it was more democratic. It got trusted. We eventually, maybe you can explain what that means. I'm sure everybody knows what that means. You came in and threw out Kennedy and Matt McGrath. Well, how did that happen? That doesn't just happen automatically. We were doing all this stuff and we were making it more public and started hitting into the newspapers. And they are trying to organize, SEI was trying to organize state workers. So here's SEI being, you know, shown as corrupt, just as they're trying to expand into state workers as organizing. So they took them out. They took away, they took the union away from busted into the office, you know, got them arrested. Really? The parent union did this? So those guys got arrested? Yep. They were arrested because he went down to the bank to try to clear out all the cash and the bank had heard it on the news and they arrested him on the spot. Wow. So what happened after that? Can you tell us? After the trusteeship was over, there was about two or three years where the trustee actually ran and won. But he wasn't from the local. And I don't want to go into a long story about that, but there were some problems with the dues and dues vote and stuff.  And the first time it was three women, Nancy Mills, Betty Jean Andrews and myself. And we ran, we won. We didn't, I'm not sure how we expected to win. I mean, we worked really hard, but we did it all based on having spent a number of years organizing against Kennedy and then, you know, meeting out the members along the way. And we won. We were the first all women's slate in Massachusetts. And what was that like running? Tell us a little bit about that campaign, if you want to call it that. Well, it was a campaign for, you know, a better union. I'm not sure how developed our vision was. We wanted to organize. We wanted to grow. We wanted to get rid of any corruption that was in the local. And we wanted to bring rank and file members up. Nancy was a staff person, but the rest of us were rank and file. And we won. And then it began a period of six years where we really started changing the union. We actually had organizers for the first time. We did more social justice things. We went to the Martin Luther King events in New York, in D.C. We got people more involved in social justice issues. And that was about six years under Nancy. And that was I was president, but she was in fact in charge because she was the executive director. And then the structures changed so that the top offices had to be not staff, but rank and file. So we made a decision to do that. And how did that happen from staff to rank and file people like you who came up starting as a clerk, as you said, at City Hospital? I think for people like me, we kept feeling like staff would manipulate us and operate us and tell us what to do. And they were sort of the power behind the scenes. And at a certain point after enough years, you get frustrated and angry with that. So I think that's where it came from. In the end, when I left, we've now gone back to staff can run under 1199. And it's not my model, but I can see the rationale for it because many workers come out of the workplace, go on staff, learn what they need to know, and then run for office. And I still think it was the right decision back in 285. It sort of stopped the influence of outside forces on the local. But it had its limits too. And how did that change happen from staff to having to be? We had to change the bylaws. So we had a convention. We organized around it. We had bylaws proposals. It was sort of a fight because the staff wasn't particularly happy with that. And we organized members into a rank-and-file caucus to get them passed and they passed. Right. So could you explain a little bit to people who don't know much about unions, what benefits the unions provide to the workers? And you mentioned also you got the union involved in social justice issues. Can you explain a little bit about what you mean by that and the benefits? So most unions are used to, you know, when you go back 20, 30 years, we're about negotiating good pay benefits, health insurance, you know, workplace issues only, sort of economic workplace issues. And we were from a younger generation and we had, like I had been involved in the anti-war when I was younger. And so we had, I came in there with a bigger vision of what was going on in the world. And our local was, you know, 70% women, lots of people of color, at least down at City Hospital. And those are economic, real social issues for people. Just the union had made a decision. They don't do that. And we decided that. In fact, that was the role of a union. And I think it was happening in a lot of the country. A lot of SEIU locals, but other locals, were getting more involved outside of the workplace alone and out in the community. And that was what made it exciting, you know. And how did that process work? How did you get, you know, a clerk at City Hospital or someone who's working there to be involved in larger things? Well, for example, I was there during the busing crisis. And I was award secretary, but we were all friends. So when they was going to be, there was going to be a people from Columbia Projects were going to go down to the beach in South Boston and go use the beach.   But we started getting more involved in those issues. And I think there was an influence of progressive people who had come to work at the hospital, sort of, you know, we would get our favorite, are you a group running through handing out leaflets or May Day flags and we'd sit in the cafeteria going, there goes one again. But it was a sort of city hospital. I'll say that more than city hall, but city hospital was sort of, you know, every nationality, every language, every social issue, immigration, anything you wanted was part of the day to day conversation. And so it wasn't that hard to get people to expand. I think the racial tensions took years to overcome in terms of after busing, winning support for affirmative action, getting people to support immigration rights. It was fascinating. On my board, we thought it would be an easy sell because we've been doing so many progressive things on the board. Well, the African American leaders blocked with the white Irish leaders about how those people are taking our jobs. And the whole conversation blew up. So I stopped it and I went back the next month and I brought all sorts of leaders of ours who are immigrants. And I just had them sit at the front of the panel and tell their story of how they got there and what the immigration story was. And by the end of it, the board changed its mind and took about supporting immigration rights. But it was because they listened to the stories of their friends and they had never heard them, never asked. And suddenly, oh, this is real. This is my friend who had to go through this. These are people they knew and worked with, but they never really took the time to hear their stories. We do a lot of education in 1199 and we have an education whole sector of the union. And they did a book every couple years where they would take people who are not English speaking or very limiting speaking and have them write their stories, do it on a computer, write their immigration stories. And then they would read it out to a big, you know, a couple hundred people meeting of members. And every single time, the whole place would fall apart. Everyone would be crying. And I think it's been that kind of education and exposure to different ways of looking at a problem that has allowed people to be much more open to changing the world. Yeah. I mean, and what are the benefits, both on a practical and educational level, does the union provide? I know it provides some, you know, workforce training and other things like that. But I wonder if you can provide that information. A lot of people don't know really what the union does for its own members. Well, we do a lot of training, get money from employers, people can go to college, they can get basic reading, writing skills, computer skills. We provide social events for people. We provide caucuses. So we have a Latino caucus or African American caucus so people can get together and share their culture. And I think I was at, I'm a Unitarian, whatever that means, given the world if people don't know. But we talk a lot about how, you know, what's powerful in changing the world is our community and our commitment to each other. And when I was listening to it the other day, I went, that's exactly what a union does. It creates a community of people who learn to have each other's back, you know, through struggle or through just getting to know each other. And it gives people a sense of being a part of a bigger world, not just themselves individually, facing their problems. And can you say a little more about how it does that? I mean, you mentioned the different caucuses and the education things. Well, we have tons of conventions and conferences where we actually get people together to discuss issues of the day. We bring in politicians who are interviewed by our rank and file members, not just by staff or elected officials. We let them ask the questions of the politicians, which, you know, when you're sitting there and you're a personal care attendant and you get to ask a question of Charlie Baker or somebody else, you know, you suddenly have a different image of yourself. You know, you just ask the governor a question and he had to answer you. So I think now the way we do it is we let rank and file leaders learn to lead. We train them to lead. You know, we train them in the history of the labor movement. We train them in how to run a meeting or speak up. And that's, I think, the lasting imprint is there's a whole lot of people out there who learn from SEIU and 1199 how to be leaders out in their world in their community, even if they're no longer in the union. Right. And you mentioned questioning politicians. You talk a little bit about the work the union does to elect or oppose politicians. I know you do a fair amount of work, not just endorsing, but also putting people on the street. We will get a whole cadre of political activists from the local. We'll train them, we'll put them inside campaigns and especially the weekend before or a couple of weeks before that we'd have staff and members. So we do it together, go out and work in the campaign. So knock on doors, take new telephone calling, do all the sort of nuts and bolts kind of work of an election.  The purple people are here.  And then in turn, we have expectations then that we'll be listened to afterwards. Right. And can you talk a little bit about how the union endorses people, whether that's, you know, how that's done? The recent past has been we have a meeting of rank and file leaders like stewards, we call them delegates now in 1199. They meet and interview the candidates. They get it down to one or two they like, they send the endorse their recommendation to, there's a small executive board in Massachusetts. The executive board then reviews it. And they can't pick somebody else. They can only decide whether or not to go with the selection of the members. And if they pick that, if they agree with the selection, then we commit money and time and work. And so it's really sort of much more from the bottom up than when I was at the beginning. Right. And so what advice would you have for young people who are interested either in social justice and specifically in working in a union? You know, I understand things have changed since the 1970s at City Hospital when you started out there. But I was wondering from your viewpoint and having been a leader in the union so long, what do you think would be helpful for people to know? I would say two things. It would be good even if you're a college educated, young liberal, left-wing whatever. Get a job in the industry you're working in. Get a job there so you know what the work is. If you don't know what the work is, then you're using your mind but not necessarily your heart about what needs to change. The second thing I'd say is I notice women have a really hard time. Not a hard time in the work, but they have a hard time understanding that unions are about power and being elected is about power and women have a really hard time grasping that and feeling like they have it. Guys, it's easy for guys. They just think they inherited it. But I found an analogy for my father. He gave me about lasers. A laser is really just one light bulb or a strong light bulb that's shown through, it takes all the waves that are going everywhere. So think about all your members there all over the place that going up and down, left, right. And it shines all those lights through a ruby which makes everyone go up and down in the same direction in the same wavelength and that can burn a hole through that wall. That light bulb through a ruby can burn a hole through a wall. And that's what I think women in particular, but any labor leaver, you are not the power. You are the laser that can focus the power to get stuff down. But if you think you're at, you're in trouble already, but if you think your role is to focus it and aim it in a direction that will make a change in the world, then you can hold on to it much longer. Nor I understand that. And particularly for women, how would you suggest they try to exercise their power within a union? I know you described some of the things you did early on, but. You really have to push your limits of what you think. You have to move around, try different things. I mean you might not want to be a negotiator, but you might need to learn negotiations. You have higher office. I never had a path that I was following that. I will just be honest about that. I just was bullheaded enough that if someone said you can't go there, I went there. So I would tell women to be a little more bullheaded and try. There's nothing wrong with failing. You've got to try it though. If you don't try, you will always be the one behind the desk. You need to be willing to stand up, not just for yourself, but for the people around you. If you're standing up for yourself, you're probably not going to be that comfortable. But if you stand up for people around you and remember that's what you're doing, then you might be tough enough to do it. Well, you've done that for a long time. And I wonder what's kept you doing this. You mentioned your dad was a scientist. You had gone to college.  You came from an educated family. What kept you in this work, which often can be frustrating working with people who aren't scientists, aren't maybe so well educated in the formal sense? No, I found it so. It was like once I got thrown out of school, I was suddenly like, oh, this is so much more fun. To me, it was like, oh, I'm not just in my head anymore. This is really interesting. And I just made myself learn. I didn't go to back to school for 20 years. I finally did. But I would read things. I would try to learn about the healthcare industry, not just negotiation. I educated myself as I went along. And when I got bored with something which I can do, I would go find something else to get in trouble with and learn about that. So I think at the point I ran out of things to get my hands into or try new. That's when I started thinking about retiring. It sort of took me 40 years to get through all the places I could get my hands into. You mentioned earlier one piece of advice you give to younger people who perhaps are thinking about this is to work in a place like Boston Medical Center, which is now what they call City Hospital. How long do you think someone who's perhaps educated and interested in social justice needs to work in a place like that to sort of get it, what it's like to actually be the people they're going to represent perhaps in the future? I had never thought of it like that. I mean, I'd say at least a year, if you think you need to realize you can't live on this kind of money very well. You need to realize you're just going to hate a supervisor and then what are you going to do about it? Are you going to bite your tongue? Or are you going to, you need to figure out how to be friends with people who are not like the kids you knew in college. And you need to actually, and I would take a year at least. I mean, I'd probably say if you asked me five years, but that's just making stuff up. I think you really have to understand the lives people live to represent them or to learn how to represent them. And you can do it otherwise. I just think you'll have a better anchor and a better ability to survive the long haul because you'll have understood what they went through. You did. You didn't plan it, but you're dead. Well, mine was accidental. This one was more to my part. And do you have any sort of final thoughts for young people coming up in social justice and the workers' rights and the union movement of what's going to be most helpful for them to think about now and in the future? I believe that people active in the union movement are going to be so critical for the future. Our economy is so split. People are suffering so much. And I see around me, including my son, they're making $13, $14 an hour after having some college. People, the country cannot continue like that. And we need young people. We need people who are committed to go into the trenches, to go into the unions, to work alongside the unions on social justice in the community because we have to turn this around. And with Trump in place, if we don't turn it around, if we don't turn it around soon, it's only going to get worse. We need every one of those young freedom fighters to step forward and fill the breach because, oh, people like me have retired, but we need other people to step in and step up. Thanks. Well, you certainly laid the foundation for them to do that. And when we talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and we say it's pretty hard to pursue happiness when you're making $13 an hour and trying to live or get a place to live in Boston, get an apartment on $13 an hour. With 20 people that afford one or two better in place. So I think a lot of people don't understand often what unions do. So I really appreciate your taking the time to come in here and explain not only your own history, but the place of unions in our country. And I just really appreciate the work that you do. And the legacy that you have is certainly being passed on to other people today. Well, thank you for the time. So thank you. It's really an honor to have you here, Celia. Oh, it's an honor to be here. Thanks so much. Okay.


You're welcome back. It's still the breakfast on POS TV Africa. The main thing now is that Jack was seen from everybody wants to go abroad. And it's understandable. People seek greener pastures abroad. But there are those who fall victims of sex trafficking crimes and the syndicates that perpetrate this.  We're being joined by very lovely ladies who are survivors of this sex trafficking. We have to my immediate left. We just simply want to call her Rachel. Rachel, good morning and welcome to the program. And we have Odion also at my far right. Welcome to the program. Okay, well let's start from the beginning. I'm sure it was a very mild watering proposal that came to you and then you wanted to go out of the country. What was it like? Let me start from Odion now. Excited. Because I never knew that it's going to be something that would make me feel sad. Make me not be happy. At the first when they told me they said that I'm going to do a non-job over there. In Dubai? In UAE. So getting there, it was something that's different. I saw something different in there. But I'm not going to do this.  Shattered at me. I was forced to do what I don't want to do. Okay, well when you say they told me, was it a group of people or what? Was it just somebody that approached you? It was my friend that approached me. He brought me so close together. He told me, look at this. There's an opportunity to travel with. There's another opportunity that he said to Dubai. That the lady said I'm going to do a non-job thing. I said, non-job. Okay, no problem. I'm going to go. Okay, was it the same story with you? Yeah. Okay, how did it get to you? How did this information get to you? It was for my cousin's time. When she told me, I was very lucky that at last I want to raise my family off. Then they told me that it was selling. No, I'm going to be selling. Then when I got there, it was something else. Could you speak a little bit louder so that I can get here? It was something else. And when I got there, they told me that if I refused to do it, that they are going to beat me. Then I'm going to still pay them their money. Then anything that makes me to misbehave, any amount of money I've paid them before, they are going to cancel it. Then I will start from the beginning again. So you were supposed to pay them for something that they had asked you to go and make money for yourself? Yes. You were supposed to pay them? Yes. Oh, that's interesting.  Or is this the same madam for instance? Let me come back to you. Is it the same madam that sent someone to get people from home? It's the madam that told people. So people were not like, you would tell someone. Like saying there's a vacancy somewhere? Yes, yes. You would tell the person that don't tell them that this is the job they are going to do. They just tell them that they want to go for maybe a catering job, tillering job or addressing. Did your friend know what you were going to do? Or he was also deceived? He was not. I think he knew. He knew? Yes. Because they paid him. Actually, they gave him money. I never knew. When I got there, that's why my madam told me that. He gave him money. Oh. And when you came back, did you confront him? I didn't even see him. When I came back. Okay. When you got there, was it just you? Or you were many that were doing the same thing? We were very many. Like in our house, we were about to eat to 10 girls there. Oh. Three of us came the same day. Then we met the other girls there.  It's someone's house. They're right there in the house then they're not turning it into a bath. In the house. Then maybe it would be like a passage that would divide the room. Each of the rooms, small, small for each of the girls. That was the same thing with you? Yeah. Okay. In case you're just joining us, we're talking to survivors of sex trafficking. They went as far as Dubai. Having been deceived here in Nigeria that they were going to take off jobs in the UAE. One of them, Rachel, was promised a job as a seller or a store attendant or whatever name you would want to call it. But she didn't know that it was going to be something else. And the same thing with Odion, the way now turned into sex slaves.  Because we've heard stories about people who are taken to those kind of places. Not just threatening you. Sometimes they ask you to swear to some gods that you do not know. Did it happen to both of you? Yes. Okay. So how did you get this kind of salutation? Now you're in Nigeria. That means somebody saved you. How did it happen? Let's begin with Odion. I was turned back because my place, the place we were. Speak out please. The place we were. So the bus that place, police, the bus that place, they were fighting, shouting. So the bus that place, we ran at. Okay. So I went to the UAE government. Okay. So they returned me back. So you were deported? Yes, I was deported back. Okay. What happened to you? How did you get back home? It was 152 when we were inside because during that period it was the first time period. That was when they wanted everybody to go back to their country. So we were inside when they came to Buster. So law ran out. So I had somewhere before, but the police were actually leaving. So I came back by myself because I was already tired. I was ready to go back home. So I came back. That was how I followed them. So when you got there, I'm sure that you had passports before you went to that place. Was it that they seized your passport? Why was it so difficult for you to run away as it is until you had to be deported before you could get back to Nigeria? My passports. I didn't use my own passports to someone's or not to use it. That would resemble someone that looked like me. Oh. Well, it's also possible that it was your passport that they didn't want to give to you. Maybe both of you. Because we here, you can't go to someone's country without a passport. So maybe the process of the passport, but you never got to hold it, which means there's a very big syndicate that is doing this from Nigeria to the UAE. Okay, now we've seen all that and we thank God that you're back to the country in one piece, no matter what has happened. We thank you for your courage for even coming out here to say what you're saying, because it's not everybody that can do what you're doing. But we're interested in since you came back to Nigeria, what you've been doing. First of all, when did you go to the UAE? That was last year. Last year? What about you? Last year. Now you're back to the country. What have you been doing? Because a lot of people are still being deceived as we talk right now. So what are you doing to correct that? Because what you face, maybe you don't want another person to face. I'm an Asterisk. Yes, I do face. Okay. In fashion design, I made crook. Oh, really? Okay, but what about trying to get people to know what happens in the UAE? What are the activities that you've been doing? We... You didn't know each other in the UAE, did you? No, we know each other. Oh, you came back here? I say, organization of survivors. Yeah, so... In Benin, we walk door to door. We have to talk to people. Tell the youth, the younger ones, that look at the way they will trick you, talk to you, that we have to do something. We are... We want to... My sister, my brother, is in a bird. We want to carry if we're not mean, ask job or to say something. There's nothing like that going on there. It's actually a different thing that we go there to do. So we just tell them, talk to them, that we too, we are survivors. We went there before. So we saw many things. So we have to talk to you guys. Every one of the madams told us that two of our girls traveled before we came there. So the madams said, they'll be talking to the girls, telling them that you push not for visiting all these stories. Okay, so this group that you have formed, the survivors of the... It has a name? No, we don't have a name. Okay. That is in Benin City. How many of you are in that group? It's just four of us. Four? Yeah. So how have you been managing to go from house to house? Did you make so much money in Dubai that you are now spending going from house to house? That's one village thing. How big do you intend to take these, let me call it evangelism, to the people who may be ignorant? We just... I will talk to ourselves. You don't have any support from any organization? No. Do you have any plans to talk to the government, for instance? Yes. So is someone helping you to facilitate that? Not yet. Not yet. But you want to talk to the government. So if you have this opportunity to talk to the government, what would you tell them? I would tell them that they have put join hands together so they can talk to the youth. Go to villages like that because it's mostly in villages to go and talk to girls, pick them from that place, tell them that, look at, deceive them. From there, take them. There is an organization called Civil Life Initiative. It's an NGO. Have you had any contact with them? Okay. Well, maybe we too will look for ways to connect you with the right people and all that. But for it, like I said, for you girls to come out, you have been trafficked to the UAE. You were deceived instead of getting the jobs that you were supposed to get, you were forced into becoming sex slaves, into doing prostitution that you didn't dream that you were going to do. But like I said also, we thank God that you got back home in one piece. So if you're watching us right now, know that it's not always greener on the outside. And if it is green, someone might have watered the plants that made it green. So like they said in the gods, gods are not to blame. I think that's the novel that was all I wrote to me. The gods are not to blame. Stay where you are. That might just be the best advice that you will get from anybody. Fetch the water where you stand. That might be the only fresh water that you have because if you go into a wider body of water, it might just be salt water and you didn't know from afar. We'd like to thank Rachel and John, two survivors of these heinous acts of syndicate or syndicates that take our girls out to other places deceiving them that they're going to have very lucrative jobs and end up making them become sex slaves. We hope that after now or now that you're back to the country that the prosperity you were looking for in the UAE will find you where you are. So whatever we can do in the media, generally I'm not talking about just plus TV Africa to encourage you to keep on the good work that you're doing, house to house. It's not an easy thing. Even the pastors even the evangelists know this. Even the politicians that want your vote they know this. It is a very tedious job. We'd like to thank you for what you're doing and we hope that through you girls and the other ones that we're not able to come here, a lot of people will be informed. Thank you so much for coming on this show. Well you've heard it from odd John and Rachel that were taken to the UAE. Some people are taken to Italy. Some people are taken to other countries of the world with the promise of a better life and then they end up doing something else. You could fall victim as well. So if you're watching us now be advised and make sure that you also tell somebody what is happening. These two ladies are some of the most courageous people I have known I've come across in all my years on earth to come to do what they have done here. Most times you don't even see the faces of the people who confess that this is what they have come through but they were able to show themselves. We do hope that every other organization that can will give them the opportunity to talk to the people because every media house has its fans anyway. So let them talk to the people and let more girls especially get to know that it's not always rosy everywhere else than where they come from. That's how it's been on the show this morning. Thank you so much Richard for coming thank you Odion for coming and for you watching us. Thank you for being a part of our show this morning on behalf of the entire team of the Breakfast on Claw Stevia Africa. My name is Nyamu Ghul at Gadji. Let's do it again tomorrow. Bye for now.