Doing less with more

My good friend Andy Woodworth wants to retire the phrase "Doing More With Less":

Unless someone can unequivocally demonstrate how “doing more with less” is a good thing (which I doubt highly), I think librarians should drop the phrase from their lexicon forever. It does nothing but cover up the real hurt of what budget cuts mean for our communities; because less is less and spinning it into some kind of positive helps no one.

Not only do I agree with this sentiment 100%, but I think we should taking things a step further- not only retiring the phrase, but the mindset altogether. In jest I commented on Andy's blog that we should try doing less with more for a change, but the more I think about it the less I'm convinced that I was joking.

So what does "Doing Less With More" mean exactly?

1. You Can't Do Everything. Implicit in Doing Less With More is, well, the doing less part (actually, I think it's explicit in this case, not implicit). Thinking about my previous post, whenever Gordon Ramsay revamped a failing restaurant, what was the one of the first things he did? He simplified the menu. Most of these eateries had boasted menus longer than a sequel by George R.R. Martin, with a page seemingly for every cuisine that had been trendy at one point. Never mind what the actual purported theme of the restaurant was, or whether or not the kitchen was any good at turning out General Tso's chicken or media noche sandwiches. Establishments that embraced such a scattershot approach to their offerings were trying to pander to everyone but ironically enough pleasing nobody in the end.

So, too, are libraries tempted to overextend themselves so as to please as many of our patrons or stakeholders as possible, offering all manners of services and/or programs regardless of actual demand, let alone whether or not we can afford to pay for them. The rapid advancement of technology is in part to blame for this kind of overextension, for as librarians we all too often feel obligated to remain either out in front of innovation as it occurs or at least remain open to its transformational capacities in how we do business as librarians. While I am by no means advocating a Luddite approach to this problem, we must at the same acknowledge that there are only so many FTE hours in a week. By all means leave yourself room for "20% Time," but don't forget to spend some time identifying your strengths and leveraging them, so that you do not wear yourself hopelessly thin.

2. Efficiency Is Your Best Frenemy. What's the first thing that any institution does in response to budget cuts? That's right, workflow assessment. The idea that one can always squeeze a little more efficiency out of any existing procedure in the workplace is by no means new, nor is it limited to the library world, but librarians' recent infatuation with assessment (or, as I like to call it, the "A-word") can make this process a double-edged sword. Again, please don't get me wrong here- I am a self-proclaimed stats geek and proud of it, and I have used assessment constructively in my own office to bring some long overdue change to workflows that were riddled with various inefficiencies. However, whenever I hear a fellow librarian talk about breaking out the stopwatches I can't help but think about Amazon, who has recently come under fire for pushing Taylorism to inhumane extremes in its distribution centers.

As a manager I have no choice to think about the bottom line, but at the same time bottom-line thinking absolutely terrifies me, especially as I see more and more of it trickle into our profession. I've always liked to think that what makes librarians different than their private-sector counterparts is that we don't run things like a business. Of course there are various business principles which can be successfully adapted into the library workplace, but however much we now compete with businesses like Barnes & Noble and Amazon and services like Netflix or Hulu for our patrons' needs we follow their business models at our own peril. Do we know where to draw the line when we assess, or is the temptation to turn a data point into an actionable performance benchmark too strong in this leaner, meaner age? Doing Less With More doesn't mean you need to reject efficiency and assessment, just that you know how to deploy these things intelligently, discreetly, and (above all else) humanely.

3. Find Your Joy. I blog a lot about joy being at the center of librarianship. Indeed, in a Doing Less With More philosophy, joy is absolutely essential, as the goal of doing less with more is to spend more time on what really matters- i.e., your joy. Once you've found that and made it the center of your work, everything you do will proceed outward from that point and inform your work as a librarian. It is far too easy in this day and age to simply circle the wagons and assume a purely defensive position, but once you allow yourself to succumb to a "Doing More With Less" mindset there's only one logical outcome. The older and presumably wiser I get, the more I become convinced that framing is more than half of the battle. A more cynical person might think of Doing Less With More as nothing more than window dressing, an amusing but sad attempt to put a positive spin on a truly depressing situation, but I see it as an opportunity to turn the tables on the prevailing negative discourse and refocus our efforts on the joy of librarianship. Because it is this joy that will carry us through the darkness.

"I can get sad, I can get frustrated, I can get scared, but I never get depressed – because there’s joy in my life." - Michael J. Fox

Gordon Ramsay's Library Nightmares

When left to my own devices, I like to watch either BBC America or the Food Network. One of my guiltiest pleasures is Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, a series on the BBC where the celebrated chef with the foul mouth and ill temper visits a restaurant teetering on the brink of closure and attempts to rescue their operations with expert advice and tough love. Although Chef Ramsay does not shy away from yelling and dropping the f-bomb when warranted (when you see the condition of some of these kitchens you'll curse as well), he is first and foremost a mentoring figure in this show, which may come as a surprise to those who only know him from reality cooking competition Hell's Kitchen on the Fox Network.

No matter how short his fuse, Gordon knows the restaurant industry inside and out, and if he sees so much as a spark of life in an establishment, no matter how beleaguered, he will move heaven and earth to kindle it so as to give the proprietors the best possible odds of success moving forward. The Food Network now has a similar show, Restaurant Impossible, in which Robert Irvine, another U.K. chef, stages similar eatery interventions. I find both shows to be eminently watchable, and will easily surrender my afternoon or evening if either network is running them back to back. Not only do I find the human drama compelling in and of itself, but I think the challenges that people face in the food service industry are almost identical to those facing libraries today.

What are these challenges? After dedicating myself to way too many hours of informal "research" on the living room couch, I've decided that every episode of Kitchen Nightmares or Restaurant Impossible can be boiled down to the following three themes:

1. Unlearning dysfunction

2. Embracing passion

3. Committing to change

Let's look at each in the context of the show(s), then how it can be applied to librarianship...

1. Unlearning dysfunction. When Chef Ramsay or Irvine (for simplicity's sake we will just call him 'Chef' from here on in) arrives on the scene, the first thing he does is experience a typical service at that restaurant, both as a diner then as an observer in the kitchen. Only then will he give his honest, often scathing assessment of the establishment's operations. Usually the restaurant in question is failing because somewhere along the line it embraced a critical mass of dysfunctional processes, which Chef will proceed to unpack and identify, one by one. No workplace chooses dysfunction willingly, but it is uncanny how easily dysfunctional processes can become enshrined as "the way we've always done things" and therefore off-limits to critique or change. Nor does dysfunction spontaneously occur from out the void- instead, it is the net result of received wisdom and questionable assumptions which may very well have been true at some point in the organization's history but are no longer valid.

For example, when I took over my ILL office we were still fulfilling article requests by photocopying the pages in question then scanning them through a document feeder. Despite the fact that most of our peers had long since moved over to an all-digital workflow for these kinds of requests, my initial pleas to acquire a new scanner were rebuffed on the grounds that our copy and scan method was more efficient. While this may have been true when the workflow was decided upon some ten years ago, faster scanners and software that could automate the fulfillment process had since come onto the market that disproved the underlying assumption that "digital = slower." In my case it took some detailed time studies and the fortuitous intervention of another administrator to make my case and get that scanner, proving that the hardest dysfunction of all to overcome is the one that once made perfect sense.

2. Embracing passion. Another constant which emerges from the myriad failing restaurants featured in both shows is that there is either no passion left among the owners and workers or that there was none to begin with. A kitchen that is bereft of passion might as well shutter its doors permanently, as even if all of the underlying dysfunction can be rooted out and eliminated the service will lack the very soul it needs in order not just to survive but to prosper. Usually the midpoint of each episode will feature Chef sitting down with either the owner or the head chef and trying to remind them of why they got mixed up in the food service business in the first place. Once that spark is successfully kindled, it is possible to start talking about things like excellence in service, attention to detail, and a focus on quality, with the goal of providing an overall first-rate dining experience, but without passion these things are all just empty words and phrases.

The same is manifestly true for libraries. I'm sure many of us have had the good fortune at one point in our careers to have worked in a library where a genuine passion for sharing knowledge and championing intellectual freedom- what I like to call "the delightful absurdity of librarianship"- was fully embraced. The idea of working in such an environment is what lured me into library school and down the path of becoming professional librarians, in hopes that someday I might be able to nurture a similar oasis of my own. Working in a library should be a joy so infectious that even the members of your staff who are just in it for the steady paycheck can't help but smile and laugh along with everyone else. When we fall short of this ideal is it because of all of those external pressures that have always been there to some varying extent, or is it because your workplace does not cultivate and embrace a passion for librarianship?

3. Committing to change. Diagnosing the problem is often the easiest part of these restaurant shows, especially when the establishments have obviously gone so far down the wrong path. Even if Chef is able to help a kitchen crew rediscover their passion, the food service industry is still no cakewalk, such that it is all too easy to fall back into the old dysfunction or embrace new bad habits as a form of compromise. One of the things that Gordon Ramsay does in his Kitchen Nightmares is pay a follow-up visit to the same restaurant a few months or even a year later to see if his mentoring and advice were taken to heart. Although sometimes the places embrace Chef's wisdom without reservation, most of the time there's been at least a little bit backsliding on the restaurant's part. Even the successful establishments are not immune to this- in fact, success can often lead to complaisance and renewed temptation to cut corners.

Genuine commitment to change isn't just hard, but an ongoing challenge. Assuming that you are serious about questioning your fundamental assumptions and getting your staff to embrace a passion for their work, it's still all too easy to default to dysfunctional behavior, especially when the chips are down. Back to my example of scanning ILL articles, even after I had secured the new hardware and software it was a constant battle with my staff not to panic when we felt overwhelmed by the learning curve of an all-digital workflow. Instead of running back to the old copy and scan workflow when things got busy, I played the part of cheerleader and encouraged staff and students to tough it out until the new way of doing things was as comfortable as the old. The result was better service for our patrons, better care and handling of our library materials, better use of natural resources (not to mention saving us a boatload in paper and toner costs!), and a more enjoyable experience for our students, who instead of passively photocopying articles were now actively engaged in tweaking the image quality as they scanned so that they took a genuine pride in their work. Whereas before we practically had to force student workers to do photocopying duty, working at the scanner became the most popular student activity in our office!

It's too bad that there is no library equivalent to restaurant reality programming, because I think many library workplaces would in fact benefit from a Gordon Ramsay-style intervention. I consider myself fortunate that I was able to get a free consultation from a giant in the resource sharing community, who offered some valuable constructive criticism about improving our workflows and making the office a better overall place to work. Even though I considered his advice to be friendly, I have to admit that you need to have a thick skin about opening your operations up to such scrutiny, as the natural impulse is to defend even the most indisputably dysfunctional of policies and procedures. That being said, I wouldn't have traded his visit for the world, for even during the uncomfortable bits I was learning more than I could have possibly picked up through any other means of evaluation.

The library world needs its very own Gordon Ramsay, though perhaps with less swearing. Any volunteers out there?

How to Leverage your workforce: librarians and the art of the con

"Hire good people."

Writing on the topic of library management, the one and only Will Manley recently evoked the immortal Casey Stengel as an example of how even the best manager in the world is doomed to fail if he doesn't have quality players on his bench:

It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? When he (Casey) managed the Yankees he had Hall of Fame players like Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, and Whitey Ford. When he managed the Mets he had a motley crew of “has beens” and “never weres” like Marv Thronberry and Choo Choo Coleman.

Any time somebody hands me the latest bestseller by the management genius du jour, I mention two words: Casey Stengel.

Then I mention 3 more words: hire good people.

All right, then. But which people?

I've been in something of a curious situation here at my library, where after being obliged to replace two FTEs (or 2/5's of my support staff) in the first 90 days of my tenure as manager I have not been able to make a new hire since, due to uncertain times and the looming prospect of a University-wide library reorganization. As a result, I've had a lot of time to ruminate upon the kind of people I would hire, if only I were given the nod.

While it is tempting to simply fill whatever holes appear in your org chart, when the panic of "OMG who is going to do X, Y, and Z if Joey leaves!" subsides I encourage you to take a step or two back and think of your office more in terms of the big picture than individual workflows. To paraphrase the Presocratic philosopher Heraclitus, all workflows flow. Even the very word "workflow" connotes fluidity and change.

In the modern library workplace hiring a person just to perform the tasks that his or her predecessor did is a fool's errand. Instead, you should be thinking in terms that are as broad as possible-- i.e., in archetypes. I've touched on the theme of party balance in gaming and its applicability to library management, but this time I'd like to come at from a slightly different and somewhat less legal angle...

Leverage is a popular television show currently running on TNT. Its premise is quite simple: Nathan Ford (played by Timothy Hutton) is a former insurance investigator turned modern day Robin Hood, leading a gang of semi-reformed criminals who use their unorthodox talents to fight injustice one con at a time. Now why in the name of Melvil Dewey would I compare the library office workplace to a den of thieves? Because in Leverage, every rogue has a different but integral role to play in each week's caper.

First we have the mastermind (the aforementioned Ford, played by Hutton), who is both a skilled planner and an excellent reader of others' motives and intentions. Although the mastermind uses his talents to deploy the resources brought to the team by the other archetypes, it is important to note that the leadership structure in Leverage is not necessarily hierarchical in nature. The mastermind need not always be the boss.

Next is the grifter (Sophie Devereaux, played by Gina Bellman). The grifter is responsible for establishing the suspension of disbelief that makes each con possible, a task which she accomplishes with equal parts social graces and a thorough understanding of human behavior. If the mastermind can predict what a given person will do, the grifter knows what he or she will say-- it is in managing this liminal realm between appearances and actions that the grifter accomplishes her tasks.

Then we come to the hacker (Alec Hardison, played by Aldis Hodge), who lives and breathes in code. The hacker uses technology to circumvent the limits of conventional society, which often put him at odds with the law as well as his fellow man. He is a devotee of the latest in electronics, and is often more attached to his gadgets than he is other people.

After the hacker is the hitter (Eliot Spencer, played by Christian Kane), because sometimes when push comes to shove you'll need someone to do all of that pushing and shoving. Less simply put, whereas the grifter exists to exploit the tension between what seeming and being, the hitter exists to collapse this tension when needed... often with his fists.

Finally you have the thief (Parker, played by Beth Riesgraf). If the mastermind is a cerebral criminal and the grifter a social criminal, the thief is a visceral criminal. She is pure reflex, absent any reckoning of consequence, and delights in what she is able to steal more often than not simply for the sake of stealing it. Unlike the hacker, whose mischief is circumscribes by the limits of his technology, the thief is capable of analyzing and exploiting any system.

Even if you've never watched an episode of Leverage (if you haven't, I strongly suggest you give the show a try!), you can probably already see how well this team meshes. Not only are the archetypes different enough to be complementary in nature, but the team's skill sets are sufficiently overlapping so that they are able to reinforce each other naturally. The mastermind shares skills with the grifter, who shares skills with the thief, who shares skills with the hacker... and so on.

So how do you apply this to the library workplace?

1. Mastermind- This is your Big Picture person, capable of project management and strategic planning. The mastermind also understands the individual strengths and weaknesses of other team members and is able to leverage (no pun intended) these assets accordingly. As I pointed out above, this position is not always the boss. You may in fact have several masterminds in a successful office, each focused on a specific goal or outcome. Not having to rely on a traditional hierarchical organizational structure can be an asset, but it also can present its own managerial challenges. Rather than rely on the arbitrary nature of the org chart, the mastermind secures buy-in by engaging his teammates as per their archetypes.

2. Grifter- Your grifter knows how to Get Things Done by working the system both internally and externally. Libraries are social organizations on multiple levels-- not only does a library depend on the good will of its patron base for harmonious operations, but it also derives its mandate (not to mention its budget allocations) from faculty, deans, corporators, or public officials. At the same time libraries interact with one another, in consortia and other reciprocal arrangements on which we all increasingly depend. The grifter makes sure that you maximize your benefit from these myriad social interactions.

3. Hacker- IT departments are great, but the IT needs of librarians are so peculiar to our profession that there is an increasing need to recruit library staff with developer/programming skills rather than rely on external rosources. Library systems used to be more static, changing every couple years or so; now they are moving targets, thanks to agile development models that reward rapid iteration and field testing by the end users. Living in perpetual Beta can be stressful, but it is also a great opportunity to bend the ear of your vendors and customize their product to your evolving needs. Without your own resident hacker, you are behind the 8-ball in this new synergy.

4. Hitter- No, I'm not advocating violence in the library workplace. The hitter in this context is your throughput muscle, someone on whom you can count to execute and expedite once a given course of action has been decided upon. Hitters are frequently overlooked or dismissed entirely in contemporary management theory, but they are absolutely critical to the operations of any library unit. They may not be the most technically savvy or socially outgoing, nor are they necessarily Big Picture thinkers or natural born troubleshooters, but hitters know how to put their noses to the grindstone, and no library could function adequately without them.

5. Thief- If you haven't figured it out yet, your thief is your troubleshooter. There isn't a problem he or she doesn't delight in trying to solve. Thieves are always testing the limits of your policies and procedures, attempting to find better/faster/cheaper ways of doing things. Sometimes the thief is perceived of as lazy, because unlike the hitter (who is good at following orders, rolling up his/her sleeves, and doing what needs to be done) the thief is constantly thinking of an easier way to do the work at hand. Make no mistake about it- you need thieves as much as you need hitters in your organization, as even the most seemingly efficient of workflows could always stand to be improved in some way, shape, or form.

Okay, so working in a library isn't exactly a criminal enterprise, but the skill set does seem to be disturbingly transferable. "Pimps make the best librarians," says Avi Steinberg in his fabulous Running the Books, detailing his time as a prison librarian in Boston.

Psycho killers, the worst. Ditto con men. Gangsters, gunrunners, bank robbers–adept at crowd control, at collaborating with a small staff, at planning with deliberation and executing with contained fury–all possess the librarian’s basic skill set. Scalpers and loan sharks certainly have a role to play. But even they lack that something, the je ne sais quoi, the elusive it. What would a pimp call it? Yes: the love.

I would beg to differ with Mr. Steinberg about the con men, but otherwise he's right on the money. When putting together the ultimate library team, there's no substitute for proper villains...

Everything I know about management, I learned from Gary Gygax

Today's post is inspired by GenCon, which just wrapped up this past Sunday in Indianapolis. While I didn't get a chance to go this year, I've been catching up with the blog/Twitter/Facebook posts from those who did, so when I sat down to write this morning the pieces of this theme that I'd been kicking around for quite some time just seemed to fall into place finally. So put on your robe and wizard hat and enjoy!

Full disclosure: I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons since I was in elementary school in the early 80's, when thanks to Jack Chick and a fearmongering movie called Mazes and Monsters (starring a very young Tom Hanks) owning a set of polyhedral dice was tantamount to consorting with Satan himself. Although I have struggled over the years with my identity as a gamer, this soul-searching never actually prevented me from playing or running various roleplaying games-- mostly running them, as it turned out, as I found worldbuilding a much more satisfying outlet than simply playing the part of one character in said fantasy world.

Indeed, as I look back on my years behind the Dungeon Master's screen, I realize that in addition to scratching that creative itch, I was busy building the exact skill set that I would draw upon as a library manager later in life. Okay, maybe there are no funny dice involved in running a library office, and if the dragons in your workplace aren't of the metaphorical variety you might want to contact OSHA or your local shop steward, but being able to manage a group of several individuals of varying ages, backgrounds, and temperaments through a shared goal-based narrative while keeping things both fair and entertaining is pretty damned close to my current job description! Therefore, I present to you a primer in Gygaxian Management, named of course after Dungeons & Dragons creator E. Gary Gygax. To wit:

1. It's about having fun. Remember my post a couple of weeks back about the importance of fun in the workplace? Well, this is where it comes from for me. When I sit down to run a session of D&D, it is my ultimate goal that everyone walks away from the table happy-- even if their characters encounter adversity and their best-laid plans go off the rails. Bad die rolls and unexpected character deaths are just as much a part of the gaming landscape as unhappy patrons and unanticipated workflow disasters are in the library workplace. My job in either situation is to keep spirits high while finding a way to keep things going, so that my players/workers actually feel like coming back even if nothing that day turned out as planned.

2. Rules are rules, but there isn't a rule for everything. Despite the fact that D&D (and myriad other RPGs) have made a cottaqe industry out of selling rulebook after rulebook to its deep-pocketed base of hardcore gamer customers, your players will invariably want to do something which is not governed by the small library of tomes amassed on the gaming table. Similarly, one of the most frustrating aspects of a service-based job like library management is that while there are so many rules that you can't possibly master them all no matter how many years you spend in your position, you will frequently find yourself asked to adjudicate on a matter where even the best-documented policies and procedures will fail you.

Both behind the screen and in the office it falls on my shoulders to analyze the situation, consider the spirit and intent of the existing guidelines, and then make my best informed guess as to proceed. Making field rulings is a large part of what a manager does, because otherwise progress would grind to a standstill as every last extenuating circumstance was hashed and rehashed to death; the same is true for a Dungeon Master, who needs to balance playing the game "by the book" with keeping the action lively for all players involved.

3. Die rolls are meant to be fudged, and rules are made to be broken. Sometimes however the problem is not that a given rule doesn't exist, but that its application in a particular circumstance would be contrary to the spirit of play. Say the party of adventurers are in the thick of battle and I roll a series of critical hits for the monsters they're fighting that I know will result in the death of the entire group (otherwise known as a Total Party Kill or TPK). Do I let the dice fall as they may, or do I pull my punches somewhat so that the group is able to prevail, but only by the skin of their teeth?

Following the rules to the letter and respecting die rolls is actually quite a bone of contention in RPG circles, but I've always believed that it is a Dungeon Master's duty to err on the side of Awesome. Ditto for the library manager. When a patron chafes against a local policy, instead of getting your back up, ask yourself whether the rule is in fact helping or hindering your patron's library experience. For example, if your patron is trying to finish his/her dissertation and really needs these 20 ILL articles ASAP, does it really make sense to hold that person to a daily request limit for the sake of honoring an arbitrary policy? Rules speak to the general, whereas every player or patron has specific wants and needs. This is by no means an invitation to make things up as you go along, but never let a stupid rule keep you from doing your job.

4. Retcons are bad for party morale, so use them sparingly. All of the above about breaking rules having been said, you must take care to be clear and consistent when you do make a field ruling or reverse a decision at the table. Players crave continuity, as it allows them to more fully immerse themselves in your RPG setting-- violating the rules of the shared universe that you've agreed upon, even if your intentions are good, will therefore often be seen as a "retcon" and be seen in a negative light. Similarly your staff also desire to operate in an environment with well-defined rules and clear cut expectations. While you may feel like a library superhero whenever you swoop in and ask your direct reports to reverse X, Y, and Z at a patron or colleague's behest/request, managing to the exception will quickly erode your staff's morale and inevitably lead your them to think that you do not trust their own judgement and expertise.

So doesn't this advice directly contradict what I told you in points 2 and 3? Yes- yes, it does. Welcome to management! Yours is a constant balancing act between trying to do what is fair for your patrons and what is fair for your staff. This means being as transparent as possible about the decisions you do make, so that even if someone disagrees with your ruling, they understand that you are doing your best to act in good faith.

5. A well-balanced party takes all kinds. As Dungeons & Dragons has evolved over the years through several successive editions (it is currently in its 4th such incarnation), it has increasingly focused on "game balance" as one of its design goals. To be fair, D&D has always favored a well-balanced party of adventurers: fighters for muscle, clerics for healing, wizards for offensive magic, and thieves for picking locks and disarming traps.

This propensity for balance at the table goes beyond mere character classes, however, and into the personality of the players themselves. Every table has its "theater major," who loves hamming it up during the actual roleplaying portion of the game; the "minimaxer," who delights in exploiting the limits of the RPG's mechanics itself; the "rules lawyer," who will call the DM out for inadequate or incorrect rulings; the "powergamer/munchkin," who takes winning very seriously and may storm away from the table in a huff if his/her character dies or they blow a critical roll; and the "natural born player," who just loves the game itself and enjoys any opportunity to play it, regardless of how their dice roll.

To be successful, a gaming group needs a healthy mix of these archetypes, as they both complement one another as well as serve as checks against each others' worst tendencies. This is the same for a successful office as well-- in order to succeed, I need staff who are customer-friendly, staff who push the limits of our policies/procedures, staff who are good at enforcing said policies and procedures, staff who take their work so seriously that it can cause them agita when things don't go quite right, as well as staff who simply appreciate the job and can provide some much-needed perspective for those of us who occasionally get a little too emotionally invested in the daily grind. Too much of any one of these groups is a recipe for disaster, but find just the right balance and you are golden, my friend.

6. Don't play favorites. Cultivating a balanced table means that you can't favor any one player just because he or she is your best friend, or because their style of play is similar to your own (i.e., selection bias). It also means making sure that you are not inadvertently shutting people out just because they don't speak up as often or as loudly as the other players. While some players simply favor less active engagement than others, it is your job to make every effort to be inclusive at the table, so as not to exclude by omission. It goes without saying of course that you should never, ever take out any personal animus on a player, even if the only things at stake are hit points and imaginary treasure. A good Dungeon Master doesn't need to be best friends with everyone at the table; a truly great DM could run a successful game with his mortal enemies.

Now it is time for a painful admission: back when I was a young and foolish Dungeon Master, I needlessly harassed my little brother. Instead of being delighted that he had shown any interest in D&D whatsoever, I went out of my way to torture his poor character until he left the game in tears, never to return. Sure, this was probably more about sibling rivalry than anything else, but even so I ended up driving him away from any interest in roleplaying games whatsoever in the process. Who knows what could have been, had I not been such a jerk? Maybe my brother and I would have had gaming in common throughout all these years, along with our other shared interests.

It is easy to see how this basic rule also holds true for the workplace. Whether it is intentional or not, feelings of exclusion are absolutely toxic in any office environment, and can lead to more serious performance or morale problems. "The boss is not your friend" is a cliche often evoked in a negative context, but if you think of your role as the facilitator of your office you can see the wisdom it is meant to encapsulate.

7. It's not whether you win or lose. The last point is simple, short, and sweet. Whether I'm winning or losing at the gaming table, I enjoy every moment of it, and try to make sure that my players share in this enjoyment. The same goes for my workplace. I may not be able to control every outcome, and there may be days where the workflow and patron needs are so overwhelming that the best we can do is hang on for dear life, but I will do my best to make sure that my staff leave at the end of the day feeling valued and with a sense of accomplishment. We may not always be able to slay the dragon, but in the end it's the struggle itself which makes the whole endeavor epic, and not the outcome itself.

So thanks, Gary. You taught me more than I could have possibly imagined. Now let's roll for Initiative before attacking the rest of the day...