Viewpoint #1

In order to evaluate Mr. Szabo’s performance, first I’d have to formulate the expectations to measure him against - and that’s where I run into difficulties.

Whose expectations should I use - the county’s? library patrons’? the staff’s? Those could all be radically different. For instance, I don’t imagine the county had any very big expectations from Mr. Szabo, other than to keep the library out of the press, the courts, and trouble. Having gone for so long without a good library, the public wouldn’t know one if it popped up overnight, so probably your average taxpayer had no big hopes or dreams for the past six months of library life. Patrons at local branches may have had expectations - the one who wrote to AFPLWATCH certainly did - but what were those, and could they be met on the branch level that quickly in a system so damaged that any improvement could take ages to work its way down from the top?

What about staff expectations? After all, they know what a library should be and they know better than anyone how very far back we have to crawl just to be at the starting line again. And maybe that’s why the staff seem willing to be patient and to cut Szabo some slack - because they know where we’ve been been and they can see we’re making progress away from that bad place.

The happiest change was the first and the easiest. From day one, Szabo has treated everyone with respect. He’s done all the grace things; he never neglects to thank people for the smallest effort, he made visiting the branches a priority (some of them he’s been to multiple times), he knows staff names and positions, he doesn’t disparage, attack, berate or betray confidences. Only those who lived in fear and terror under the irrationality of the former regime can know just how huge a change that alone has been, and how conducive it is to building a better library, rededicated to public service.

There have been other changes. Of all the recent directors, he alone seems to understand the importance of development, of finding new sources of revenue to sustain and improve library services. Then too, he’s our first wonk - someone who sucks up an amazing amount of information on statistics, contracts, regulations, procedures, and can use all these data to effect in building relationships with commissioners, the press, the funding community, the staff and the patrons. And he acts professionally - there’s no attempt to pose as our pal, but rather an understanding of appropriate boundaries that ensures a welcome consistency.

I’m impatient for more change, faster change. After six years of hungering for competence and standards, I think we’re all starving for change. And when we feel that, we want to blame Szabo for not moving faster. Where is the org chart he’s been working on for months? Why are crucial administrative positions still not advertised or filled? Where are the decisions on revised rules of conduct for library users, for circulation, for computer access? How can we be sure the board is tamed and won’t revert to its old ways once Karen Handel leaves it?

But when I consider how many rocks there have been with awful things living under them, I understand why he has moved slowly to turn over each one and take the measure of what crawls out. I also believe that a good leader doesn’t parachute in and create change for the sake of change and the sake of appearance, but instead takes time to understand the world he’s landed in before taking action. I believe that even after six months there are still rocks that haven’t yielded up their secrets, and that Szabo may still need some additional time, not only to understand what he’s up against but also to assess the abilities of the team he’s inherited as his generals in the battle.

So I give the green light to Mr. Szabo, even as I acknowledge that we all want More! Faster! Better! Like the hole in the plaza in front of the Central Library, we have moved a few levels up from rock bottom, and I think we can see the rest of the way home from here.

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Viewpoint #2

Some of the things that have impressed me about Szabo:

• He seems to genuinely love libraries and, even more important, is able to explain accurately to others - including clueless trustees and inquisitive politicians - how public libraries operate.
  
  
• I like what I’ve heard him say about the need for a more obvious link between excellent library service and adequate funding for it. Far too many of Szabo's predecessors wanted to make themselves look good by hastily expanding services or thoughtlessly continuing to offer services the library system is simply not staffed or funded to provide.
  
  
• I like the fact that, although Szabo seems to possess a remarkable memory, he doesn't invent answers to questions whose answers he doesn't happen to have. Szabo's willingness to say "I don't know, but I will find out" - and then actually doing just that - is extremely refreshing and sensible, as are his avoidance of flip answers and his refusal to give simplistic answers to complex questions.
  
  
• Unlike Hooker and her erratic, make-it-all-up-as-you-go-along approach to everything, Szabo not only does his homework but seems fairly methodical in navigating the murky, shark-infested waters swirling around him. He goes to the trouble of obtaining the relevant facts and has sought out differing opinions about various issues. He seems to want to set and stick to priorities instead of going off in a million different unrelated or contradictory directions (a la Hooker). Szabo's down-to-earth posture and approachability has drastically reduced the melodrama and chaos at AFPL, and has already created such a better environment to make some actual progress in.
  
  
• Szabo's public statements are straightforward, jargon-free, and consistent from one forum to the next. (For example, reading the transcripts of the board meetings since Szabo started attending them doesn't leave me feeling confused or outraged like I often felt when I read what Hooker was telling the trustees.)
  
  
• In a marked contrast with many of his predecessors (and with Hooker in particular), Szabo seems like somebody who knows and cares about follow-through. The mere fact that Szabo remembers the commitments he has made from one day to the next (or one meeting to the next) is teaching people to trust him.
  
  
• Szabo hasn't made any grandiose claims or promises. He isn't needy, delusional, and doesn't annoy the staff with messianic pretensions. He frankly acknowledges the obvious fact that significant improvements in library service require the ongoing, genuine participation and support of the library's employees.
  
  
• Szabo's got a sense of humor but he doesn't rely on sarcasm to get cheap laughs or to make his points.
  
  
• Szabo doesn't bash other people in an attempt to make himself look better or (like Hooker did habitually) to make himself seem blameless or the feckless victim of inept colleagues. He seems interested in taking some degree of personal responsibility for what goes on at the library, and someone who prefers clear (rather than muddled) lines of authority and accountability. He doesn't seem interested in scapegoating or seem to relish dishing out blame for the various messes he uncovers. Szabo strikes me as a person mature enough to realize that even well-intentioned employees sometimes make honest mistakes.
  
  
• Szabo seems to seek out information from all quarters--even though assimilating that information must make his job as director more complex and difficult. His inquisitiveness is healthy for the library, because unfortunately the immediate subordinates he inherited are not all equally competent. My guess is that, by this point, Szabo realizes that some of the "information" some of those subordinates provided him during the past six months proved woefully incomplete or incorrect, and that some of the advice he's gotten from some of those individuals has been more self-serving and status quo-seeking than it has been wise counsel.
  
  
• Along with asking a lots of questions, Szabo listens to the different answers he sometimes gets without getting overly defensive and without signaling that he wants to hear a particular (or a particularly flattering or relentlessly upbeat) answer. I’ve heard Szabo's even changed his mind a couple of times in response to staff comments or to a colleague's counterargument to his initial inclinations about how to address a certain issue.
  
  
• As far as I know, Szabo hasn't told anybody, "Quit talking about AFPL's horrid past!" Not only is he not into denying that AFPL has a horrid (recent) past, he seems moderately interested in eventually grokking How Things Got as Bad as They Are. His curiosity about the genesis of some of the library's chronic problems could be useful in helping him correct some of those problems.
  
  
• Szabo has delegated responsibility for examining or resolving certain issues to employees or to employee committees, and he's wisely empowered those individuals or committees to run with the assignments he's entrusted to them instead of undercutting or ignoring their efforts. And Szabo hasn’t demanded, from individuals or from committees, instant remedies for complicated problems and doesn't seem likely to pursue faux solutions to problems instead of actual solutions.
  
  
• Szabo doesn't seem obsessed with any particular management fad. He certainly hasn't decreed that the entire library staff read Who Moved My Cheese or The One-Minute Manager or any of those other hobbyhorse-driven management tomes du jour.
  
  
• Szabo seems to have the energy and the stamina for The Long Haul - a good thing, as he's going to need both.

Still, as someone among the ranks of those who survived the ordeals of the past six years or so, I was hoping for a few radical changes by now, or at least for a swifter momentum of incremental reforms. For example:

• Why has there been no observable progress at rebuilding the library system’s technical services division, whose reckless decimation under Hooker and McClure accounts for so much of the confusion and dysfunction now rampant in the library’s attempts to link patrons to the library materials they need?
  
  
• Why haven't staffing allocations at Central and at the branches been overhauled so they reflect empirically-validated current workloads instead of the decisions made by know-nothing, politically-minded ex-trustees, some of whom are now dead?
  
  
• Why haven't the hours AFPL's libraries are open - especially weekend hours - been adjusted to reflect cuts in staff over the past few years and our communities' actual use of those facilities?
  
  
• What happened to the promised restructuring of the courier service?
  
  
• Where is the library system's revised collection development policy?

Sometimes I worry that the lack of major, observable changes in the organization (other than the infinitely healthier atmosphere and much better communication) in the first six months of Szabo's tenure isn't a sign that he's still casting about for the best--rather than the quickest or flashiest--solutions for the library's problems. What if, instead, Szabo's caution is merely an omen that he's just a nice guy who plans to rock no boats - ever? Well, that's still better than watching a vindictive lunatic beholden to a destructive, ignorant bunch of trustees wreak havoc on a once-functional institution.

No matter how talented, skilful, courageous, or industrious John Szabo turns out to be (or not to be), it’s going to take more than six months for any director to lead AFPL out of the demoralizing mediocrity it’s been mired in for so long now. I just hope the guy leaves the library system in better shape than he found it in. In the meantime, it's good to know that, at the very least, AFPL's new director is not Part Of The Problem.