I’m a big fan of Stephen Abram’s blog Stephen’s Lighthouse.  He does a great job tracking down and summarizing reports and research that is relevant to LibraryLand.  I often have to save up his posts until I have time to read them.

In April, he posted about springboard stories: qualitative anecdotes that can draw in your audience more than tables, charts, and bullet points can.  He linked to a one-page PDF summary about the elements of a successful springboard story that’s worth a look.

Springboard stories remind me of elevator speeches, or short bursts of information about your program that you prepare in advance so that you’re ready to engage in conversation when you run into a stakeholder.  Marcia Mardis and I, and then Judi Moreillon and I, have written for Knowledge Quest in two separate articles about elevator speeches, but I think I first learned about elevator speeches from Maurita Holland when she was my professor at the University of Michigan.

Taking the time of thinking about what you would say if you had someone’s attention is useful — otherwise, you tend to mumble and be off-track when the time arises spontaneously.  Planning an elevator speech or springboard story also helps us reflect on what we value and, in crisis times, what others value. Like actors, who rehearse their lines up until the moment they step onstage, practicing the articulation of our values helps us be prepared when the spotlight hits us at the unlikeliest of times.

Just keep in mind …

I know, I know, on some level it is about us having a paycheck to take home.  But that’s not our stakeholders’ top priority. Keep the focus on what libraries do for students.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 at 5:13 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.