Monthly Archives: April 2013

“Look at the faces of the kids”

Posted on April 29, 2013 | 9 comments

In a thoughtful article about Presidential Libraries in Slate last week, Tim Naftali, a former federal official with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), described the school children who come to visit the museum side of the libraries.

“Depending on the location, these libraries receive between 60,000 and 400,000 visitors a year. And students and teachers around the country use these libraries’ online resources in the classroom. You cannot look at the faces of the kids and their teachers that come to your museum without feeling pangs of regret if what they see is not as accurate and informative as it could be. At the Nixon Library, 12,000 school kids on formal school tours visited each year. Before the National Archives took over in 2007, nearly 200,000 students had been taught that the Democrats used Watergate to overturn the electoral result of 1972 and that Richard Nixon did nothing that presidents before him had not done; the only difference was that he got caught.”

I thought about a president’s supporters Saturday morning as I watched Starlee Kine discuss a feature she had done for “This American Life” on interactive exhibits at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.   What she exposed there was eye opening to me when I listened to her piece in 2011.  As she spoke on Saturday, I looked not at her face, but at the face of the man sitting next to her in the MSNBC studio, New York lawyer Ed Cox, Richard Nixon’s son-in-law.  Presumably he, as I had in 1980, voted for Reagan when he ran for President.

Cox had a golden opportunity to expand the debate on privately funded exhibits at federal archives and museums beyond the grievance based arguments used by Nix0n’s side in the near past.   Would he use the opportunity to say, as I have, that it did not serve Reagan or civic literacy well to support the type of educational outreach Kine described?  To have an exhibit in a federal presidential library and museum make little children’s faces turn “ashen” as they were told they were wrong?  Instead of making it clear there were options and Reagan and his team chose different ones than they did in role playing?  And that putting up an exhibit that made children’s faces drop, and subjected them to intimidation, showed deep insecurity about Reagan and his legacy?

Cox did not.   But it is only fair to point out that he is not just a private citizen, but also chairman of the New York Republican Party.   Some Republicans treat Reagan as if he is a mythic figure, others say it is time to “tear down this icon.”  That’s for the party members to sort out.  I’m a political Independent.  I have the freedom and whatever to say “I voted for Reagan, whose signature cause was anti-Communism.  Having a privately funded and controlled exhibit in a government administered presidential library that houses his records such as the one Kine described does not serve civic literacy well.  Don’t do that to children.  This is America!  We’re not ‘Back in the USSR.'”

Had I been present in the studio, I would have identified myself as a Reagan voter who turned Independent.  And as such, believe his legacy should be examined like that of any other president, not as something fragile and closed off from scrutiny, but robust and open to multiple perspectives.  I was supposed to be there, sitting next to Tim Naftali, one of four guests on “Up with Steve Kornacki” on Saturday.  But I couldn’t work out the logistics in time to accept the invitation. Tim and I represent two generations of National Archives officials (he of more senior rank than I) to work with the Nixon White House tapes and files.

Copy of Maarja Krusten, Tim Naftali, NARA 102512

Ed Cox argued on MSNBC on Saturday that exhibits at the museums in presidential libraries traditionally reflect the president’s perspective.   To suggest that it has been and must remain so is a deeply conservative position.  Moreover, that this has been so is not transparent.   Not every visitor who comes to the museums knows who paid for the content and what and who influenced it.  Nor do they all know that the National Archives, which is supposed to be objective and fact based in the way it handles its mission, administers the libraries.    To me, that matters a great deal.   But I can only speak for myself there.   My training is as a historian.

One problem in the past handling of exhibits has been what I’ve called here at my blog the father’s name on the birth certificate.   While a president’s published memoirs (whatever writing assistance he may have had) clearly are labelled and carry his name, exhibits at the presidential libraries traditionally have been presented as if curated by objective professionals.  That’s akin to publishing a history book under Michael Beschloss’s name but having Lyndon B. Johnson and his assistants write it.

As a former federal employee, Tim approaches issues related to the archives and museum sides of the presidential libraries differently than do most academics.   I’d like to see more of that.  I often am frustrated when I see people–often clearly well-meaning–look at the federal entities that house a president’s records and temporary and permanent exhibits about his administration.   Rarely do they examine in-depth why things are the way they are.    Members of the public are in the mix, but in ways I’ve never seen anyone address.

For example, Anthony Clark, a researcher who until recently worked as a staffer on Capitol Hill, said in an interview on Federal News Radio last week that due to all the issues that surround exhibits paid for by private foundations, NARA should be in the archives business only.  And that museum activities should be left to private entities.   My interpretation is that he means going forward and that his proposal should not apply to the presently existing libraries and museums.  To argue otherwise that NARA should focus only on the archival side would remove any leverage the National Archives, a non-partisan federal agency, presently has over the exhibits at the existing libraries.   Clark shares more of his views in an article he published last week in Salon, “Presidential Libraries are Huge Failures.”

Clark correctly points to a drop off in visits to the museums associated with presidential libraries over time.  NARA officials publicly have discussed the fact that the foundations for the oldest presidential libraries take in less money from donors than the newer ones.   The number of visitors to the presidential libraries and museums can be quantified but why people visit is harder to sort out.

Clark counts visitors, points to more spending and greater emphasis on exhibits and looks back at the days of Franklin D.  Roosevelt.  He looks at the establishment of the first (donor-restricted) presidential libraries and writes

“But in the years since, these archival institutions have evolved to become enormous commemorative memorials. While the president’s papers are still housed in them, the archives have become afterthoughts to state-of-the-art museum exhibits, in-depth educational curricula, often-controversial public programs, and in some cases, overtly political events.”

But much has changed since 1940, including the rise of a 24/7 news cycle, cable tv and talk radio and electronic platforms to share a wide range of views and opinion, some solidly sourced and rational, some not so, even visceral and emotivist.    The complicated people angle needs to be considered in looking at the tangle of issues surrounding presidential libraries and museums.

The late Robert Remini, an esteemed scholar who once served as historian of the U.S. House of Representatives Republican, chronicled the rise of partisanship in Washington in his 2005 work about that body.  Columnist David Brooks observed in a column (“The Modesty Manifesto”) in The New York Times in March 2011

“If Americans do, indeed, have a different and larger conception of the self than they did a few decades ago, I wonder if this is connected to some of the social and political problems we have observed over the past few years.

I wonder if the rise of consumption and debt is in part influenced by people’s desire to adorn their lives with the things they feel befit their station. I wonder if the rise in partisanship is influenced in part by a narcissistic sense that, ‘I know how the country should be run and anybody who disagrees with me is just in the way.’”

As in many things human beings do, the extent to which people are introspective and reflective varies.  This includes both ordinary citizens and VIPs.  Political, ideological, and partisan loyalties and values are especially difficult to sort out.  Judging just by conversations with people I know, for many, how they vote is an integral part of how they see themselves as people.   The extent to which individuals are willing to accept that perspectives on a president they supported at the ballot box are going to and should vary depends on the person.    The security of a president’s supporters, whether they voted for him or worked closely with him, is not easily aired out in public debates about exhibits and public programming at the presidential libraries.

Perhaps some museum visitors have visceral reactions such as “counter this!” to articles such as James Moore’s about the George W. Bush Presidential Library.   (I saw the link via a posting on the Archives & Archivists Listserv, presumably due to an autoforward, not for anything it added to the debate.  Moore’s screed is not about archives, records, exhibits, or history.)   Are the members of a president’s foundation and family able to show the necessary detachment to say “let’s not counter propaganda with propaganda, let’s try to educate and raise the level of debate, instead?”

As in so many things, it depends.   I’ve noted at my blog from my time working for the old NARA Office of Presidential Libraries that the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library (and its Museum in a separate city in Michigan) had a good reputation.  Former President Ford believed that “presidential papers, except for the most highly sensitive documents involving our national security, should be made available to the public . . . and the sooner the better.”  By all accounts, the release of his records went smoothly.

Tim Naftali observes in his article in Slate that

“The National Archives is nonpartisan; it is supposed to act in the spirit of open government and transparency and be a leader in the custodianship of history. Presidential families (though there are notable exceptions like the Truman, Johnson, Ford, and Carter families, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg) often oppose nonpartisan programming and have often placed obstacles in the way of releasing materials.”

As Tim Naftali points out in discussing the Joint Operating Agreements at the libraries and museums, NARA in some cases has veto power over the content of the exhibits.    That is a very important point.  It is not the job of a non-partisan federal agency to make visitors feel good about the political views they hold.  Or to make little children feel uncomfortable and bad about exercising their freedom equally to agree or disagree with what a U.S. president did!

If NARA had the funding to foot the bill for all the presidential libraries’ exhibits, you wouldn’t see some of the questionable choices visible at some of them in the last few decades.  Some of them stem from competing objectives, even from culture clashes, as I’ve demonstrated at my blog.  Benjamin Hufbauer has examined how some of the libraries and museums operate and evolve in Presidential Temples:  How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory.

But to understand why the libraries and museums sometimes struggle, it’s not enough to say, as Anthony Clark wrote vaguely, “we should tell,” and “we should leave.”  Because members of the public and the people assessing goals and needs within the private sector foundations and presidential families and the three branches of government are far from monolithic.   Some value nutritious, well-balanced food, some junk food, and some mostly baloney.  Getting them to assess honestly, then publicly explain their choices, whether “healthy” or “comfort food,” is difficult.

Even considering the need to have the necessary conversations about these issues is not easy.  Not in Washington!   I realized that in April 2009, when I joined members of the public in submitting comments to NARA on alternatives to the present system of presidential libraries while Adrienne Thomas was Acting AOTUS.   I argued then that

“Assessment of alternative approaches to the present system of donor-restricted and statutorily controlled Presidential Libraries first requires examination of their operations, their cultures, and how stakeholders (including the creators of records) view the Libraries and the records and exhibits associated with them.  Some issues that appear unrelated to each other actually may be intertwined.  Since there has been no such examination since the passage of the Presidential Records Act, I recommend that this be done before the formulation or consideration of alternatives to the present system of Libraries. Whether it is done through a commission (such as the post-Watergate public documents commission) or some other mechanism, the goal should be conducting as realistic an examination as possible. This requires creation of a genuinely safe zone for discussion, the goal being maximum candor and reflection by all the stakeholders.”

I also pointed to the fact that it was challenging to make the pivot from being president and having press secretaries put out your story to becoming the subject of historical scrutiny.   None of the points I raised in my Thomas-era submission made it in to NARA’s final report to the Congress.  Yet, as I noted at my blog in the spring of 2011, Sharon Fawcett, then Assistant Archivist for Presidential Libraries, asked me in February 2010 if she could quote similar comments I made elsewhere on the matter.  That suggests there were complications surrounding the mandated 2009 request for public feedback .

If Ed Cox missed an opportunity to start a meanginful conversation about the libraries and museums, so did James Moore with his polemic about a “Cheney Presidential Library” in The Huffington Post.   By contrast, what Tim Naftali wrote in Slate resonated for me, as the daughter of displaced persons who fled Communism to come to the United States after World War II.  Tim focused on civic literacy and obligations.   Most importantly, he brought an insider’s perspective to bear on complicated issues.

I say that not only as an admirer and friend of Tim Naftali but also as someone who came out of the “Nixon wars” not seeking revenge or retribution but asking why and how do these things happen?   And isn’t there a better way?   I so regretted seeing Tim have to go through some of the same things my generation of archivists did and wish he had been spared some of that.  I fought very hard on his behalf here at my blog!

Whether it is because of my wiring or because of what I experienced as a member of the first generation of NARA archivists to identify “abuse of governmental power” information in Nixon records, I believe in dialogue and conversation.   My outreach in submitting comments at The New Nixon blog seemingly failed, except in my gaining a blogging friend in former Nixon chief of staff John H. Taylor.    I appreciate the fact that Father John permitted me to share how he reacted when I, of all people, first showed up the Nixon site in 2008!

Much has changed since John launched a Nixon Foundation blog, then left his position as foundation executive director in January 2009 to become a full-time Episcopal priest.   Change is not always progressive and linear.  If you go to the blog at the Nixon Foundation’s site now, you no longer have the ability to submit comments.   Moreoever, the record of some of the comments has disappeared.  In an ironic echo of the controversy over a Watergate tape with 18-1/2 minutes missing, in its present format The New Nixon blog shows that 33 comments were submitted under the post Anne Walker put up in April 2011 about NARA’s Watergate exhibit.  But while they once were readable, clicking on them (they actually included pingbacks to my blog posts) now takes you nowhere!   A dead end?  That is not a good place to be.

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Posted in NARA, Richard M. Nixon, U.S. History

Speak out in the open

Posted on April 24, 2013 | Leave a comment

It was Twitter that led me to write the series of posts I started last week and continued this week and am concluding today.   Last year I joined some discussions on Twitter about the National Archives and Records Administraiton (NARA).  I saw someone tweet about AOTUS David S. Ferriero that he just wants to be populist and hip.

My reaction?  That so is not the David Ferriero I know.  The tweet seemed unfair, the description unwarranted.  But my response in a reply tweet was muted.  There were several reasons for that.

One, I blog, so my support for the Big Dude’s vision and leadership qualities is well known.  I like and admire Ferriero.

Two, I actually understood why someone might have formed that impression even if I didn’t agree with it.  The reasons are complicated, I’ll leave it at that.

Three, except when very provoked, I rarely tell someone “you’re wrong, I’m right.”  And when I do, I regret not biting my tongue and letting it play out.  I try to recognize that how things look varies.  I don’t always get that same respect back.  This is Washington.  I’ve had people try to steamroll me or play the “I’m special” card.  And I’ve had things done (not just in the far past) in an effort to control what I say in Fedland, even to intimidate me.  I’m glad NARA’s officials don’t do that these days.  That doesn’t mean other people don’t in DC.

All of that affects my reluctance to shut someone else down even when I see things differently.

Social Media use is complicated.  Which is why I’ve never said at my blog,  “we are many and we all speak” and that it occurs “out in the open.”  Instead, I’ve used my blog to urge people to look at who is not talking and to figure out workarounds for that.  Or at least to judge acquired data accordingly.  I put up a Facebook bleg (wait, that only applies to blog begs) yesterday on sources of information on self selection, bias, inability to join public conversations.  I don’t think I’ll get many responses, my own Googling suggests little attention to such issues.

Maarja Star Fleet Captain 1992It’s nice to dream of being in the Captain’s chair, in charge.   I’ll never head an agency or be a Senior Executive!  I’ll end my career in the managerial ranks right below SES.  But I did once sit in a replica of Captain Kirk’s chair on the starship Enterprise in an exhibit at the Smithsonian in the early 1990s.  I’m putting up the photo for my fellow Star Trek fan, NARA Philadelphia historian-archives professional Ashley D. Stevens!   She inspired me with a blog post yesterday morning.

The truth is, regardless of rank or status, we’re all affected by various elements, some of which we discuss, some of which we don’t.  Some problems are so complicated, some facts so central to what I call Hidden Washington, they don’t lend themselves to crowd based solutions.

I’m glad NARA is about to issue guidance on Federal Social Media records.  It’s long overdue!  Of course, the records of content providers already are scheduled in most agencies.  How an agency represents on the web is interesting, of course.  But external information and public interaction are only parts of studying government.  Historians also expect one day to study internal records showing formulation of public affairs strategies.  And how to engage and put out federal agencies’ stories.

As I noted in a post last year (“Together Yet Alone”) in which I described my remoteness from the Society of American Archivists and from ARMA, and quoted a thoughtful post at Rebecca Goldman’s blog, some things we face alone and we don’t share.   The remoteness hasn’t developed because there aren’t smart people discussing fascinating issues.  There are!  But the view I saw of some issues I care about was skewed on Twitter.  Not deliberately, of course.  Circumstantially.  Some questions no one brought up.  Others were discussed primarily from the technological angle, not the people angle.

You look for signs of capacity and assess understanding of and willingness to discuss complex issues and tough challenges.  Being on Twitter also became complicated for me over time.  There were some quiet, truly independent voices, real bright spots that flashed from time to time here and there.  Often from outside Washington.  But in the end, it was the reminders of Washingtonian ways and values in my feed that led me to say “I need a break.”

I recently wrote here about how leadership requires having a handle on technology and humanistic issues, both.  And pointed to David as someone who does.  The Big Dude understands the people side of leadership.  He has said that the further you are from Pennsylvania Avenue (NARA) or Fifth Avenue (the New York Public Library), from headquarters, the more difficult it can be to see how you fit in to an institution.

I think Social Media tools do more than enable brainstorming, in those areas where doing so on the record is possible.  They also can help mitigate a sense of isolation or remoteness.  I would love to have had access to an Internal Colloboration Network in the 1980s although I couldn’t have discussed many of the Nixon tapes issues in my NARA work unit.  For part of my career, I worked at a National Archives annex in Alexandria, Virginia, not in what now is Archives 1.  But tech tools are not a magic bullet.

I like the way Ashley Stevens, who started work at the National Archives in Philadelphia last year, blogged this week about “Embracing Change?  NARA in the 21st Century.”   You’ll find a link to here post here.  She wisely pointed out that people have different comfort zones for communications.  Including engaging in the open or behind the scenes.  Some feel able to speak up in staff meetings.  Others prefer to send a discreet email to a supervisor.  Ashley:  “All of these avenues must be open.”  Me:  “Yesssss!”

And I smiled to see how with the historian archivist’s eye for faithfulness to the record, she reproduced her comment at my blog and carefully added “David S. Ferriero” in brackets after “The Big Dude,” as she had picked up my nickname for him.

Big Dude was a name David himself adopted at one point after I told him about my nickname for him in 2011!  It was on the same day in May that Sharon Fawcett, former NARA Assistant Archivist for Presidential Libraries, commented at my blog about an issue about which I had put up angst ridden posts in the spring of 2011.  I reacted with a very short post called “Yay!”  Just a few sentences which concluded with “Oh, and Ferriero, whatever you just did, looks as if you did well, Big Dude.”

That evening, I put up a post in which I reproduced an email David Ferriero sent me earlier in the day.  And explained my reaction to seeing Sharon comment at my blog:  “I was so astonished.  So un-Presidential Libraries.  But very Big Dude NARA.”  The Old NARA was closed off, defensive seeming in posture.  Very Washington.

Ferriero had written at his blog in September 2010 about “Leading an Open Archives.”  He quoted Charlene Li, a Social Media expert who wrote that people have to embrace openness enabled encounters, even with critics or those who raise questions.  I immediately thought of that when he reached out to me in May 2011.  Easier said than done.  I had been so candid about my concerns about NARA at my blog and on the Archives & Archivists Listserv in 2010 and 2011.  I understood when David reached out to me in May 2011 that what he blogged about wasn’t just talk, he could walk that way, too.

Ashley wrote in her blog post, “We must shake the misguided notion that if someone questions how something is done or suggest an alternative means of accomplishing the same goal, it does not make that person subversive.  Rather, they see something that could be slightly better.”

I’ve noted on the Archives & Archivists Listserv that what I write about here might have application for archival institutions in general.  For any workplace, actually.  There are ownership issues, individual and corporate.  They are complicated.   As time goes on, you and your team, not your predecessors’ team alone, help shape perceptions inside and outside the institution you head.  And how you represent matters.  Always.  Even external presentations are seen and absorbed inside institutions.  The throughline matters.

The Big Dude’s throughline is authentic to me.   It is a sign of how different my view of David Ferriero is from the tweeter who thought he wants to appear hip that I wrote this series of posts in recent days.   Was it easy?  No, of course not.  Should I pretend “the brand” (a term that does not come naturally to me) is bright and shiny and magically transformed?  Of course not!   Doing that, rather than not speaking up, would subvert Transformation.

Many good accomplishments in “my beloved NARA” that are worthy of applause.  Not just for Ferriero but the hard working people behind the scenes.  Some issues that the National Archives faces are complicated in their internal and external elements, both.   I took a really deep breath before I decided to write about some of them at my blog.  In December 2010.  And in April 2013.  Especially the one I wrote last week about “Changing Course.”  But this I know.  Capacity matters. And this I believe.  The Big Dude is up to dealing with them.

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Posted in NARA, Workplace issues

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Capacity

Posted on April 22, 2013 | Leave a comment

I’m sharing a message with Nixonara readers, especially those who work at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), but it applies to all who work with records.   It builds on one I initially posted on the Archives & Archivists Listserv on Friday.    Because this is where I am, after stopping to think through some issues.  Only some of what I had to think through centered on NARA and even there, I’ve only shared part of that here in April.

The National Archives is both an institution with a special mission, one I cherish, and an executive agency in Washington.  It is, as I’m reminded whenever I visit Archives 2 or Archives 1, a workplace for civil servants.  Bureaucrats, if you will.  I read a lot about leadership and management, but I’ve never seen anyone write in depth about some qualities I’ve observed in the best leaders, such as generosity, a level headed sense of where they are in relation to others, and the ability to keep their egos in check.

As I looked back at my blog, I saw so much joy expressed here at times.  Perhaps we all actually do have what some psychologists call happiness set points which help us adapt to various experiences.  Those set points seem to vary from person to person, according to an article I read in yesterday’s New York Times.  The data on how happy people and unhappy people react to bad news or events was interesting.  I thought of my late sister’s generosity of spirit and about resilience, both qualities I admire, when I read this part:

“Dr. Lyubomirsky writes: ‘It appears that unhappy individuals have bought into the sardonic maxim attributed to Gore Vidal: ‘For true happiness, it is not enough to be successful oneself. … One’s friends must fail.’ ” This, she says, is probably why a great number of people know the German word schadenfreude (describing happiness at another’s misfortune) and almost nobody knows the Yiddish shep naches (happiness at another’s success).'”

When I visited Archives 2 in July 2011 and had a wonderful reunion with Jay Bosanko, Neil Carmichael, Joe Scanlon, A. J. Daverede, and Chuck Hughes, I also stopped in the cafeteria, as I do on many of my visits.  I watched NARA employees and contractors come and go.  And I laughed to myself.  There I sat, bursting with happiness.  And they looked just like federal employees in any agency or department.  Of course.  Because that is who they are.

Granted, not all of them received laugh out loud emails from the Big Dude, aka AOTUS David S. Ferriero, sharing laundry hints for getting out lipstick stains, as I did within days of that July visit, after David learned I had been too exuberant in hugging Chuck Hughes.  Although I’ve had many a NARA employee tell me they enjoy Ferriero’s sense of humor and whimsy!  As one observed to me when I delightedly shared some stories, “That’s him.  That’s the way he is!”

But there’s another difference, too.  People who work at NARA are dependent on the executives and managers who outrank them, all the way to the top guy.  Which means it matters greatly how everyone views capacity, from the Big Dude on down through new hires.  Their own.  That of first line supervisors.  That of others in their reporting chains.  And stakeholders.  And why they hold those views and act on them accordingly.    Or more importantly, hesitate, hang back and do not act.

And how those finely tuned, divergent views of chains of capacity throughout the agency affect what happens.  Because actions do speak louder than words at times.  But that gets awfully complicated.  Trust zones. Safe havens.  It takes insight and care to make them happen.  And what works for some, doesn’t work for others.

I admire NARA’s Open Government initiatives in the executive branch.  But I don’t know how it will work out to have the same executive (Pamela Wright) tasked both with being the agency liaison to the White House on Open Gov and with being in charge of an Office of Innovation in NARA.   There’s the potential for the former to be a check on the latter.  That means there has to be great sensitivity to how some things are done.  And huge reservoirs of good will and smart effort to make it work.  Can it?  I don’t know.

Time will tell.  I’m enough of a free spirit to wonder whether NARA can catch lightning in a bottle that way.  I found the vibe David articulated early in his tenure, that anyone can be a leader, regardless of rank or position, to be so attractive and refreshing.  Will bureaucratic imperatives affect that?  My posts last week looked at what I’ve seen happen in the past with Washington initiatives I found attractive in the abstract but which proved very hard to implement.

Was it easy for me to emerge from my blog break and write the posts I put up last week?  Of course not!  Truth be told, I was a little scared.   I wished I could have avoided doing that.  I sometimes wish my expertise was in areas other than the federal government.   And that I didn’t have to focus so much on the most challenging parts of dealing with records, presidential libraries and records management.   It would be much more fun to be part of different stakeholder communities.  To write about other issues.  Topics that are complex to be sure, but clearly safer or more joyous or more press release ready for others to get behind.  Less lonely!

There even are times I simply wish I had a single point of focus on the agency.  That I could come to NARA in one role, only, as a passive listener of the many wonderful presentations in the McGowan Theater.  Presentations that at their best are thought provoking, insightful, and even inspiring.   And at times, poignant, touching.  But it’s the reminder of the complexity of some of the issues discussed in the best presentations that reminds me that what NARA does operationally, behind the scenes, right now, really matters.  You can’t dive deeply in to shallow waters.  The wading pool?  It’s for children.  Fine for when we are small but a place we outgrow.

So, what did I write on the Archives & Archivists Listserv Friday?  Here it is.  Although his comments were public, that is to say, you can read them on the Listserv’s web interface, I haven’t asked the NARA employee whose reply comment earlier in the week about “Count Potemkin” led me to write if I can use his name at my blog.  So I’ve redacted it.  But think about what follows below the photograph, especially the last paragraph.  And consider, how did I ended up sitting in the front row of the McGowan Theater, on June 29, 2011, not as a guest of AOTUS, but of the Big Dude?

NARA photo Archivesnews Flickr feed David Ferriero, Maarja Krusten, Tim Naftali 062911 5891277548_1f2495d0ee_b

My message to the Listserv Friday and to my blog readers today:

“Yesterday AOTUS David S. Ferriero put up a beautiful post, “The Spirit of Boston,” in which he discusses running the Boston Marathon, his ties to the city, and the launch this week of the Digital Public Library. One of NARA’s newer employees, Ashley D. Stevens, who works at the National Archives in Philadelphia, put up a post this morning about running a race in Philadelphia.

[A NARA employee] recently used the term “Count Potemkin” in a comment here on A&A to me about re-visiting NARA. I used the two bookend posts above by NARA employees of differing rank and position to explain why I support David’s Transformation effort. https://nixonara.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/keep-wicked-calm-carry-on/

David’s efforts to change NARA’s culture are ongoing. To me, supporting Ferriero means more than acting as a cheerleader. It requires offering honest feedback at my blog, which David reads.

There have been some miscues at NARA, which I think other archival institutions can learn from. I looked at some yesterday in a post spelling out where I think some of Ferriero’s subordinate executives might have acted differently than they have. https://nixonara.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/changing-course/ Complicated stuff, and I use Tim Naftali as an example of someone whose situation could not be resolved through “crowd sourcing” or citizen brainstorming. Too many unseen elements. There is no point in presenting NARA’s work environment as a fairy tale when it is a very grown up place.

And I explained in my follow up post (above) this morning why some transformation initiatives I’ve seen in Washington have faltered in the past. Some of you might have seen similar problems with ballyhooed projects at places you have worked.

Some NARA employees have told me that the issues I raised about the agency in my Thursday post on changing course are “third rail” but I don’t see them that way. And I have complete trust in Ferriero that it is all right to discuss them, not just me at my blog, but anyone in NARA. It is precisely because some employees have been cautioning me over the last year and a half not to raise them at my blog that I did so! “Yes until no.” It’s real! I know it. I’ve been living it. Think of how I first caught Ferriero’s eye–talking candidly and in an informed way (here and at my blog) about the complicated baggage NARA trails with the Nixon records and presidential libraries! That is when I realized that David has enormous capacity and is very different from most Archivists of the United States and Federal agency heads.

Maarja

https://nixonara.wordpress.com/

 

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“Misperceptions have arisen”

Posted on April 21, 2013 | Leave a comment

The extent to which I remain “ever the idealist,” as my former boss at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) characterized me in the 1980s, shows in many of the blog posts I’ve put up here at Nixonara.   You don’t always have to spell things out directly to reveal what you value.  That I put up so many posts here in January and February about working across boundaries, trust zones, and teamwork, before falling silent for a while after a cri du coeur  in “Stewardship” about the need to understand your colleagues, tells you a lot!

I haven’t decided yet in what direction to take my blog.  I’m obviously writing much less than I did in 2011 and 2012.  I realized after the end of February that I needed to stop and think about Fedland and NARA.  My conclusion?  Washington is awfully complicated.  But you can learn a lot in working here.

One thing you learn to do is assess evidence and to manage expectations.  The former is tricky.  Talking to people enables them to share their perspectives.  You can gather a lot of data.  Some of it may conflict with what you yourself have sensed or experienced.   You then have to think through where you are standing and the different places they are standing.  And their and your fields of vision, information acquired, assessments applied.

You can be risk averse and passive.  Or you can assess risks, move ahead as appropriate, and be active.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I took a deep breath in April 2010 and submitted a comment at a brand new blog started by the Archivist of the United States (AOTUS).  I had worked at NARA’s Nixon Presidential Materials Project from 1976 to 1990.  I knew the agency needed to change significantly in many areas.  I didn’t know if that was possible, beyond the superficial.  But I liked the sensibilities David S. Ferriero showed in his first blog post as AOTUS.  He had, after all, called it “No Small Change.”  I liked how he explained a thoughtful vision that sounded quite un-Washington yet feasible.  So I offered my thoughts and concluded with a wish for greater engagement:

     “Just as NARA would benefit from hearing more from its stakeholders, stakeholders would benefit from learning more about NARA. Granted, there are limits to how transparent an executive agency can be about some of its operations. However, I’ve read enough articles and blog postings about NARA since I left its employ to believe that some misperceptions have arisen simply from lack of contextual information. Only one former U.S. Archivist, Robert M. Warner, has written about his tenure. His book, Diary of a Dream: A History of the National Archives Independence Movement, 1980-1985, is out of print. I hope NARA expands on existing efforts to do exit interviews with selected retiring officials and staff and to consider implementation of a formal knowledge transfer program.

With so little known on the outside about this important institution, seeking and sharing more information about how the agency works and why things play out as they do would be a good step towards capturing useful institutional memory. (I know the Archives’ Assembly has interviewed some people.) There are some fascinating stories there, beyond what NARA captured on its 75th anniversary site in 2009. Some might be suitable for sharing with the public. Some even may be add texture and useful context to discussions of how NARA best can work with its stakeholders. I do applaud your interest in outreach and wish you and all at NARA the very best.”

I obviously believed that NARA (1) needed to be braver about facing its own history and (2) had not communicated well about how it operated in those areas where some transparency was possible.  I don’t just mean lapses, such as putting out press release versions of events in 1991 that facts did not support.  I meant taking into account that historians make up significant portions of its employees and stakeholders.  And that even more so than in other parts of Washington, you have to be smart and courageous in how you communicate internally and externally with people trained in critical analysis who value fact based output.

What made me think about my first comment at AOTUS blog?  Reading an article in The New York Times today (“Hitting Rewind, Bush Museum Lets Visitors Decide”) on the first exhibits at the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum to be dedicated on Thursday.  Peter Baker, a reporter for The Washington Post during the Bush years, writes that visitors will be presented with decision points on key issues handled by the administration and allowed to vote.  (Curiously, it appears that the announced results will show how “the room” has voted.)  It sounds like an attempt to have visitors try to put themselves in the place of a decision maker, assess a situation (to the extent the exhibit content providers permit), and learn what it is like to be President.

In theory, I like that approach although it remains to be seen how it plays out.  In 2011 “This American Life” did a report on a similar project at the Reagan Presidential Library.  It requires confidence in citizens and some degree of independence and objectivity to produce a credible project.  I didn’t see enough of that in the Reagan exhibit, which did little to strengthen civic literacy.  The idea itself is promising and I’m interested to see how it works at the Bush Presidential Library.

So what about NARA?  How do I see it, three years after I posted my observations under “No Small Change?”  Where is it in terms of greater transparency and using Social Media tools to improve understanding of its mission and operations?  It depends on where you look.  And how you assesss it!

The Big Dude, aka AOTUS David S. Ferriero, is authentic in his vision for One NARA and in his guiding principle of “yes until no.”  I often say that he is his own best spokesperson and representative.  You see that especially in how he handles Q&A in his public appearances.  Many such sessions reflect Ferriero as I’ve seen him in person.  But he heads an agency which has deeply ingrained bureaucratic habits, some of which are harder to change than others.

I work in Washington, I have many friends and acquaintances at NARA, whom I talk to and meet for lunch, and I often attend public events at the agency.  So I observe some things in person and others virtually.  Speaking of the virtual world, can I give yet another shout out to Meredith Doviak, who supports David at AOTUS blog?  She represents NARA so beautifully behind the scenes as well as in public work products.  You see her in the second row of McGowan Theater sitting next to me on my left last April, looking over her shoulder to her right at a person asking a question of the panel.  I so enjoyed watching Meredith tweet the launch of the 1940 Census in April 2012.  I like, respect and admire her greatly.  Would that we all could work with such tech savvy, pleasant colleagues!

Archivesnews Flickr photo NARA A1 Census 1940 launch 040212 original resized c 7045471847_61f1514c0e_o

You can figure out a lot about NARA not just by work product but by how people and work unit websites “represent.”   That there is not a single corporate voice in Social Media suggests NARA is comfortable revealing unevenness in the character of its work units.  So you can see which functional areas remain quite conservative and oriented towards the old fashioned notion that the agency’s officials designate who is welcome to offer input.  And which embrace continual learning and are progressive and open to engagement by one and all.   I’m using the words conservative or progressive in bureaucratic terms to describe applied (as opposed to aspirational) vision and operations, not politically, of course.

In some cases, NARA functional units seem to reflect or mimic the professional characteristics of stakeholders with whom they are accustomed to dealing.  You can look at non-NARA forums where those stakeholders gather, then back at what NARA is putting out, and see conforming psychological characteristics.  That some stakeholders limit which issues they discuss is reflected also in NARA’s blogs.  (No, I’m not thinking of the Presidential Libraries unit, which has no blog, just a Tumblr which shares cool documents but doesn’t air out operational issues.)

Whether the conformity with the vibe stakeholders display is intentional or coincidental is hard to determine, however.  As also whether NARA wants it that way or is open to stretching.  Although the variations in progressive or conservative operational tone are striking, I haven’t asked why in my face to face conversations with NARA officials and friends.

That I like David’s voice at AOTUS blog is clear in the types of posts there to which I’ve linked here since May 2011.  But of course, he’s the Big Dude, he’s in charge of it all.  And he’s a former psych tech.  I wish more officials at NARA displayed the comfort zones with both the technological and the humanistic aspects of rapid change in the 21st century that Ferriero clearly has.

I really can’t pick out any of David’s subordinate officials who show that to the same degree, although they all show differences in their vibes and how they handle their obligations.  And they have different work experiences as bureaucrats at NARA or other agencies or institutions.  That’s why I recently wrote here that David Ferriero is sui generis.  Which makes the tone at the top all the more important!

The Transformation goals for NARA are very attractive.  I’ve learned to manage my expectations in part because of what NARA has taught me directly and indirectly.   Some of it has taken me aback, but better that, than the misperceptions to which NARA was more vulnerable in a less transparent age.  Some of what I see from NARA has made me applaud.  Some has made me sigh.  That won’t change.  But some good people in NARA clearly are working on achieving meaningful change.  I still see risk aversion and defensive postures in places but I also see some courage and a genuine desire to learn and improve in others.  And that’s no small change, right there.

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“Keep Wicked Calm” (Carry On)

Posted on April 19, 2013 | Leave a comment

602165_10151651674033783_5123091_nSome of my friends are surprised at my state of mind these days, given my enthusiastic and at times joyous support at Nixonara since May 12, 2011 for the vision of Transformation at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).    I put up a post yesterday touching what some NARA employees seem to regard as a “third rail.”  Yet I express so much support for the Big Dude, aka AOTUS David S. Ferriero.   And I’m not depressed or dispirited despite shaking my head over some miscues by NARA officials.

I’m 62 and about to mark 40 years in federal service.   That I was part of an archival cohort that no one protected means I’ve had a very different career path than the one about which I once dreamed.  Shouldn’t I be cynical, cautious, and resistant to David’s vision?

What, you think I’m wired like an ordinary civil servant?  Nah, I’m free spirited.  I go my own way.  That’s why I put up a post pointing to bureaucratic stifling of initiatives, concern about fiefdoms, and hyperbolic over selling of outcomes and I ended with a laughing reference to a fun reception at NARA.   Why?  Because I know true Transformation takes time and requires perspective.  It is a long term effort that is not for the faint hearted.

5k3NARA employee Ashley D. Stevens put up a wonderful blog post this morning about running a race in Philadelphia.   I loved her honest, candid account of how she trained for the race and how she felt as she ran.  And her last paragraph is inspiring to me:

“Now that I’ve run this race I’m often asked by friends, ‘now what? or will you run another race?’  I’ve never really seen myself as a marathon runner.  And in many ways, I still don’t.  Will I run another race in the future?  That’s a definite yes.  I’d like to bring my time down even further.  Will I become a marathon runner?  Well,….the jury is still out on that one.  My motto is never say never.”

Ashley’s post was a beautiful bookend to a lovely post I read yesterday, right after David posted it at AOTUS blog.   In “The Spirit of Boston,” Ferriero wrote about running the Boston Marathon, his ties to Boston, and how he reacted to the bombings on Monday and the reportedly unrelated fire at NARA’s John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.   A poignant lead in to a post about the launch in Boston of the Digital Public Library of America, for which NARA is teaming up with several archives, libraries, museums and cultural institutions.   Elaine Didier put up a comment (she’s a NARA official, director of the Ford Presidential Library), as did I and others.

The way Ashley described a practice run reminds me of how I see NARA’s Transformation effort:

“It wasn’t a bad run.  About half way through the run I suddenly felt like I couldn’t do it anymore.  Perhaps it was a dip in the adrenaline but I felt like I wanted to stop.  Luckily I pushed right through it.  I focused my mind on the songs and not on my body yelling for me to stop running and just walk.”

She said of the race, “I was tempted on more than one occasion to quicken my pace to stay with the pack.  But I mentally had to tell myself that the race wasn’t about them but me.”   There’s a good lesson there, as well.

I’ve seen so many ballyhooed efforts collapse under their own weight in Fedland.   In one case, it was because processes that worked in the private sector were oversold in a public sector organization without regard to its unique culture and work environment.   This is why I shake my head at some of the advice offered by consultants in links I’ve seen on Twitter.   That doesn’t mean I’m resistant to creative solutions.  To say that about me would be an excuse for not applying more discernment to what is being peddled by the experts.

The need to display Return on Investment in Washington complicates matters.  In one case I studied years ago,  the “accomplishments” touted were so minor and peripheral to the agency’s mission, they made employees roll their eyes and tune out.   This is not the case with NARA’s citizen outreach to make records accessible and useable.  However, that shouldn’t blind the National Archives to the fact that it is vulnerable to applying autofill, cookie cutter templates to other parts of its mission.

In another case, employees didn’t have faith in the executive designated by the agency head to lead the initiative.   The official had a tin ear, among other problems.  That the person drew the ire of employees because of who he was kept employees from focusing on the objectives of the initiative, which largely failed.  A hazard in having one person rather than a large community be the “face” of an endeavor, a problem that is hard to overcome in bureaucracies.

David Ferriero’s vision is authentic in a way I’ve rarely seen in Washington.     The Big Dude definitely is his own best spokesperson but he can’t do it all!  Which is why NARA’s messaging is uneven and always will remain so.  As I read Ashley’s beautiful post, I thought of what David had quoted from Thomas Carlyle this past December.

“Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragement, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.”

To that I would add, follow your instincts.   Don’t get trapped by dogma.   The “experts” often say that there always is some resistance and you should expect that and stay on course.  Not only is that too simplistic, it can lead to making excuses, blaming others.   Hearing but not listening.  It  overlooks the complicated reasons that may lie behind resistance.

Sometimes staying the course requires taking detours and zig zagging rather than running on a path marked by others.  Not all marathons are run on a set route!  The important thing is to face the obstacles and push through them wisely.   And to be nimble!  And above all, courageous.

Maarja out for a walk 041613It’s Spring in the Washington area.  But flowers bloom at different times, depending on where you live.   I thought about that as I posted on Facebook a photo of me this week with a double blossom cherry tree to cheer a friend in Estonia, where there still is some snow in April.   The cherry blossoms on the trees around the Tidal Basin in Washington get press attention.  But I most appreciate the double blossom cherry trees that peak later than the “Washington VIP” trees.  And, yup, as you can see, I’m still wearing my NARA tie!

Soon it will be commencement season.  One of my favorite posts at AOTUS blog was the one in which David quoted Steve Jobs’s speech at Stanford:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.  Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.  Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”

Words to live by!

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Changing course

Posted on April 18, 2013 | Leave a comment

I smiled when I saw the wise observation in a comment here yesterday by Ashley Stevens of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Philadelphia.   And no, I’m not just calling her wise because she is a fellow Star Trek fan!  No, it’s because of what she said about the Big Dude, aka AOTUS David S. Ferriero, and Transformation and innovation at NARA.

Ashley recently shared some observations at her blog about classic Star Trek.  Her post interested me because she discussed change and mid-course corrections during the first season of the TV series.    I’ll touch on those themes in this post as they relate to NARA.   Star Trek can help set the scene.

One character, Yeoman Janice Rand, appeared in only a few episodes in 1966 before she was dropped from the show.  The creative team went in another direction, instead.  It happens.  Rand is pictured at left in one of the pastel drawings my sister and I did of Star Trek characters during the mid-1970s, when we watched the show in syndication while in college.   The pastel on the wall to the right is one we drew of another Star Trek character, Nurse Christine Chapel.

Our Star Trek drawings 1 c

Maarja the classic Star Trek fan ca. 1971Even “visionaries” sometimes leave the bar too low.   Although the late 1960s TV show was set in the 23rd century, there were no women in command positions.  Yeoman Rand, an Assistant to the Captain, and Nurse Chapel both held jobs traditional for  women in the mid-20th century.   On the show, technical support characters wore red tops, scientific and medical staff wore blue.   I was ahead of the times,  however!  A photo of me in 1971 shows me wearing yellow velour of the type Captain Kirk wore on the show!

Ashely said in a comment on my Wednesday blog post about David Ferriero’s vision that “its great to know that change, innovation, and transformation are being embraced from the top by “The Big Dude.”  What i find problematic as one in the field is the slow trickle of this concept from the top-down.”   She explained why, then wrote, “Active steps need to be taken from the bottom-up in order to take full advantage of the bright minds, young and old, who are brimming with ideas but confronted by complacency less we lose this rich, diverse resource.”

How Ashley views what I call the New NARA headed by the Big Dude, aka AOTUS David S. Ferriero, shows in the conclusion of her comment at my blog.  She said I had given her an idea for a post at her own blog.   I hope she follows through!

But that actually moving NARA from the old way of doing things to the new will take extra effort shows in what came after my first thought.  First, I smiled to myself, “Yay, Ashley, I’m so glad you said ‘young and old’ and didn’t fall back on stereotypes.”   My next thought was, “NARA still displays use of stereotypes and stock images some times.  Are its bureaucrats going to slow down Transformation?”

Events move fast, people rest on their laurels, and complacency and calcification can set in even among change agents.  I wasn’t thinking about the people whom Ashley described saying “we’ve always done things this way.”  I was thinking of silos, fiefdoms, and the complex elements that result in press release ready results in Washington.

Until this past winter, I might have just had the first thought.  What happened in between, to make me shift my thoughts to bureaucrats and stereotypes?  The presentation in February at MIT by two NARA officials, Bill Mayer and Pam Wright, that resulted in a blog post at MIT’s Center for Civic Media.    (Google “Bringing a Nation’s Archives Online” and “MediaShift IdeaLab:   How Do We Liberate the National Archives?” for the blog post, which includes the Prezi slides.)

There may have been good intentions in what the two officials said, but for me not only did the presentations fall flat, the summary Prezi gave me pause as regards NARA.    The blogger used an unattractive GIF of “upset” NARA employees.  The Prezi used shallow, cartoonish terms such as “fear, confusion, belittling” to describe purported resistance in the agency to embracing Social Media.   I’m not saying that selling NARA’s employees on use of Social Media was easy.   I should know.  I have many friends among them!  I’m saying there were many fine distinctions among people and different reasons for why they stood where they did.  And the pace at which they adopted and still are adopting new ways varied greatly, as well.

What is in the Prezi is disappointing because it seems knee jerk.  Cookie cutter.   Cartoonish.  It made NARA sound as if its employees worked in a fairy tale when they actual inhabit a fascinating, complex, grown up world.  That’s one reason why I protested the shallowness of the Prezi and the blog accounts in a post I put up at the end of February.

Change agents know better.  Especially ones who deeply understand institutional culture and eschew boiler plate explanations.   Better to express empathy and understanding of how change occurs and how diverse people are in their reactions than to juxtapose simple terms such as fear and “happy!”  Especially at MIT.   I know, binary images are a pet peeve of mine!

But I also admire courage and believe you have to be brave and step outside yourself to go beyond the shallow.  It is too rare in Washington perhaps because it is not rewarded often.  But oh I wish I could see more of it!

I’ve praised what NARA is doing in its efforts at engagement and commended its Social Media staff here and at the agency’s blogs.  The goals are good:  finding ways to make information in archival records (paper and digital) readily available and sharing knowledge.   The secondary goal, improving civic literacy, matters a great deal to me, as a former NARA employee.

If brag presentations at MIT unwittingly revealed NARA as Washingtonian and bureaucratic in the flavor of the month appeal to hacker culture and reduction of government to cartoonish images, what really was going on?   And what was the goal of the presentations?  Couldn’t they have been done so that they met both internal and external requirements?  I say yes, they could have.  So the question is, why weren’t they?

The MIT blogger wrote of the session

“Government organizations often pressure their employees to speak with only one voice. There’s a fear of staff or the public saying something wrong and hurting the brand. Wright says that single voices strangle and paralyze institutions, preventing them from having an authentic conversation with the public.”

The reality is that NARA, as many institutions, especially in the federal government, works in a complicated environment and always will.  There are areas in which it can loosen the reins.   I can tell you that David Ferriero’s “yes until no” is authentic.   I greatly admire that in him as a leader.

But when Tim Naftali, then director of the NARA Nixon Presidential Library, prepared to testify on presidential libraries issues for a hearing initially scheduled for 2010 and later cancelled, his statement was vetted by the Office of Management and Budget.   And Tim told reporters after he left federal service that his boss had put him under a gag order at one point as far as speaking with the press.   You know what?  I would have gagged Tim temporarily, too, under the circumstances.  It’s necessary at times.

There always will be officials whose voices are controlled and issues within agencies that require vetting and message discipline and message coordination.  That doesn’t mean there aren’t some low risk areas where you can loosen up.   Certain high risk ones?  No, and there’s nothing to be gained by suggesting that this is not so.

The tolerance that David Ferriero shows at his own blog for various comments (look at the conversation under AOTUS’s post on “Culture and Values” in June 2011) won’t show up everywhere at NARA.    The goal of One NARA is commendable but there is a great deal of diversity in the mission and mission support units.  Think of some of the issues that come up with the Information Security Oversight Office, such as former director Bill Leonard’s appeal on the classification of a federal record!

The Prezi with stick figures and stock phrases said “we are many, and we all speak.”   It also asserts, “Ask a question where everyone can see (and answer).”  But that simply is unrealistic.  The public-private presidential libraries partnership is complicated.    NARA’s Presidential Libraries office has a Tumblr, but, as I predicted here at Nixonara, not a blog where people can post questions and judge the quality of answers and follow up, as needed.    People from inside and outside NARA.   Could a Tim Naftali have answered or asked some questions where everyone can see–while employed by NARA?   No, I don’t think so.

But I do have a question now.  It is this.  Why do I  sometimes see caution flags from people within NARA?  Not from the Big Dude, of course.  David Ferriero really is the real deal and he wouldn’t do that and has not.  Others?  Yes.  Repeatedly.  People within NARA telling me that I shouldn’t blog about the agency’s  Social Media strategy or tactical choices, that talking about digital strategy officials will only get me in trouble.    People telling me, “watch out, don’t go there.” Meaning where I am in this blog post–today.   More than one person and more than once over the last few years.

I wave them off but do wonder why people hold that view about a functional area whose chief says she wants authentic conversations with the public.  But then, I’m not exactly the public, I’m a hybrid insider-outsider, a curious place to be.   Supportive of NARA and David’s beautiful vision but yearning for substance and nuance in some of the agency’s presentations.   Thirsty, really thirsty, for change I can believe in!  I love much of what I see in NARA now but there definitely are growth opportunities.

I’ve seen too many change initiatives undermined in Washington over the last 40 years because of over reliance on hyperbole by officials whom employees turned away from and tuned out.   Web X.0, People 1.0!   The usual answer–to pound out responses by the Powers That Be saying “we’re right, you’re wrong”– rarely works.  Still, I do see glimpses of a New NARA.   I’m grateful that after I put up my “Stewardship” post, I didn’t see a coordinated message campaign at NARA’s blogs to tell me to fall in line and stop questioning how the agency presents social media accomplishments.   That’s a step forward, based on what I’ve seen elsewhere in Fedland over the years.

But to ensure that there is lasting Transformation of internal agency culture that will serve the agency well for generations to come, not just in the short term, requires embracing continual learning bravely at deep levels.  I’ve seen it in parts of NARA.  I’d like to see more of it among various officials.

A Fedland Press Release is a Press Release.  Typed as a ribbon copy with carbons in the 1940s.  Mimeographed in the 1950s.  Printed on a dot matrix or laser printer to hand out in the early 1990s.  Or shared on the web in 2013.   Sticking to a Press Release account of complex issues, packaged in glitter as teaching and learning, aims too low.   It doesn’t show moving beyond comfort zones.  Yes, some venues require caution, simplification and some reduction.  MIT?  I don’t think so.

If a TV series can change course, so can NARA!  Continual learning.  I’m convinced those are more than empty words.  Some of my friends in and associated with the agency say I’m too idealistic.   That I shouldn’t bother to follow NARA Transformation so closely and intensely.  That’s ok.   They can go their way, I can go mine.  I’ve always been inner directed.  And as David Ferriero laughingly agreed when he met one of my former bosses (the one I fought so hard to help) in December 2011, challenging to supervise!  An untamed bureaucrat, wearing the boldest, yellow  sweater instead of red or blue even at the age of 20, when I was a temporary employee as an undergrad in a federal office in Washington.

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“Step Out of Our Comfort Zones”

Posted on April 17, 2013 | 3 comments

In October 2010, AOTUS David S. Ferriero wrote a blog post I read with great interest:  “Open to Change.”  He discussed the Charter for Change, a plan to transform the way the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) operates.  I had worked as an employee of NARA’s Nixon Presidential Materials Project for 14 years before taking a job as a federal historian.  The blog post showed a New NARA in its content and glimpses of the Old NARA in the 74 comments it drew, most of which simply were variations on a theme of subordinates telling the boss, “I’m in.”

I didn’t know Ferriero yet–he wouldn’t reach out to me for several months yet.  But I liked the way he wrote in his blog post, in bolded letters, yet, “It’s time for us to step out of our comfort zones and rethink how we
operate as an agency.”  The pillars he described were attractive.  And I liked the way he wrote,

“It’s going to take courage and creativity to ‘hard-wire’ these pillars into our culture and our work. We need to move forward quickly with the proposed changes. It’s crucial that each of us feels a sense of urgency and makes a commitment to these changes. We need to pull together as an agency to be successful.”

AOTUS couldn’t have known my reaction as I didn’t comment and we didn’t know each other yet.  (I later learned that David read Nixonara, which I wouldn’t launch until December 2010, almost from the time I started it.)   But I definitely was primed and ready to watch NARA start the long haul work of transforming itself!

I had referred to Ferriero already as the Big Dude at my anonymous blog, Archivesmatter(s), but wouldn’t tell him my nickname for him until May 12, 2011.  His response to me told me more about the potential for change at NARA than any public affairs output from the agency ever could!  With his permission, I reproduced it in “The Big Dude’s NARA,” a post in which I described my realization that David is the real deal.

I’ve been thinking this week about change as I read one of those repeating threads that occurs on the Archives & Archivists Listserv.  The one about the usefulness and manner of sharing news links on A&A.  It played out in 2013 just as it has when it has come up as a recurring thread time and again during the 16 years I’ve dipped in and out of following the Listserv.

A subscriber asked why she received so many emails with news links from Peter K.  A couple of subscribers posted that they appreciated the news links and the List was off on a series of “me, too” posts, including one from the current President of the Society of American Archivists, Jackie Dooley.  As I read the comments, I thought I might as well have been back in 1997, when I became active on the Listserv.  So I tackled the issue from another angle, pointing to the fact that the news links varied greatly in reliability of information.  Some represent straight news reporting with apparent efforts at fact checking.  Others come from advocacy sites or biased sources.  And some are commentary.

I pointed to the missed opportunities on the Listserv for crowd sourcing, annotation, fact correction, course correction (that is, using a link to have a deeper or more informed conversation on the List).  I have occasionally posted comments clarifying what news or commentary links said about presidential or federal records.  But I have almost always been alone in doing so.  Sure, I’m very inner directed.  But there’s a point in a community where you have to decide if you’re coming across as tiresome or wearying, even if you think you’re using tools others have yet to pick up.

A critical mass of people has to pick up the same tools and demonstrate their usefulness.  And it has to happen organically, because they see the value of doing so.  Telling people they are too passive doesn’t work any better than appeals to join the chorus!

Why did I reactivate my account for a Web 1.0 email subscription forum?  Because there still are people who gather there, including students and new archivists who subscribe both to A&A and to the Students and New Archives Professionals roundtable list.  It’s the same reason I blogged here in 2011 that the National Archives and Records Administration shouldn’t shrug off the fact that email subscriptions to its blogs didn’t work for a couple of months just because the RSS feeds still worked.

In August 2011, I wrote about how I liked the way the Big Dude, aka AOTUS David S. Ferriero, had developed his blog.   The title of the blog post?  “Represent.”  David is sui generis and remains his own best salesman.  Not only do I enjoy seeing him in person when I visit NARA for receptions and events, I read his speeches with great interest.  And I like the posts at AOTUS blog where he describes what has influenced him and how he reacts to different elements in his job as agency head.

I’m deeply interested in efforts to make inclusiveness work.  Easier said than done!  Before I took a break from Twitter, I saw someone (was it @digiphile?) tweet a link over the winter to some advice that change agent officials (below the agency head level) need to keep pounding out links to stories about innovation and transformation.  I shook my head and thought, “no, if done exclusively, it makes the Tweeter look self-centered, insular, myopic.  Focused on his or her own individual success and organizational function.   It can’t be ‘about me’ that way.”

Readers and listeners sense when something is “all about me.”   And when a person has heart.  As my late sister, a team leader and supervisory archivist at NARA did instinctively, when she took pleasure in others’ accomplishments as if they were her own.  People need to come to see the value of what you’re selling in a natural way.  That requires you to understand that a hard sell won’t always work and that people learn in different ways and at varying paces.

Most of all, you have to like the people with whom you work.  I don’t actually mean customers and clients–although such advice often is offered for obvious reasons to people in public facing jobs.  A customer may be a curmudgeon or a joy to work with but as the organization’s representative, you have more obligations and a harder job than he or she.  You have to stay on an even keel whether the person you’re dealing with represents badly or well.  That’s why I like the realistic, practical advice on dealing with customers that is offered at one of the best NARA blogs, the FOIA Ombudsman blog of the Office of Government Information Services.

But no, I’m actually thinking about teamwork within organizations among colleagues.  If you’re playing zero sum games or operating in a rewards system where you believe being elite and special works best, you may win short term but the organization will lose long term.  And yes, I often go back and re-read what Ferriero said about leadership lessons while he still was director of the New York Public Library.  Some insightful, wise advice there from David about rewards, recognition, and leadership.  A great interview.

At the end of February, I wrote in “Stewardship” about a presentation made by two NARA officials at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.   Neither the shallow, insular blog accounts of the challenges the agency faces nor the superficial Prezi depicted the fascinating, complex, and at its best, very grown up, NARA I know–an agency undergoing much needed Transformation.   Not in a fairy tale way but as part of a fascinating, complex narrative.

A National Archives which is many things to many people — from museum visitors to K-12 teachers to genealogical and historical researchers to the users of federal records in the early stages of their existence in the federal agencies.  But to those who know it best, from deep immersion in its mission activities, not silly, which is what I protested against in my February post.   An agency where people are traveling in a number of ways, from trains on rigid tracks to all terrain vehicles to walking on foot!  What you won’t see there, however, are magic ponies and unicorns.

Which is as it should be–there are so many stakeholders who depend on NARA to handle its obligations wisely and courageously!  And to be Open to Change, truly open.  By stepping out of comfort zones.

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