Leadership in Academic and Public Libraries

9

Change – what can go wrong and how to do it right

Abstract.

Leaders, staff, goals and time are the four major reasons for a change project to go wrong. Leadership style and staff behaviour are linked and goals and time schedules of deliberate large-scale change projects, which are often unrealistically short, affect leadership style as well as staff behaviour. All four aspects need to be considered thoroughly before the implementation and during the realisation of major change projects.

Keywords

change goals

change time

dual leadership

leader

leadership

staff

team members

9.1 Leaders

‘Not many years ago good leadership equalled good and smooth administration’ (Pors and Johannsen, 2003). Nowadays, ‘Leadership is about facilitating, guiding ...