48 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 292 2017 affiliation and expertise. But other boundaries were less obvious and no less important—leadership style, orientation toward change, tolerances for ambiguity and risk. We may not know what major challenge we’ll be tackling next. What we do know is we can do hard things when we work together, and when we recognize that leadership lives throughout our organization, not only in certain boxes on the organizational chart. In the words of my colleagues: [Leadership is] a shared responsibility. We all help lead from different places. Leadership is not one thing. Good leaders must constantly adapt. We worked hard to solve a problem, and we changed ourselves for the better. So maybe this isn’t a story about a collections budget. Maybe it’s a story about a group of people who decided the story could have a different ending and led the way there. The author wishes to recognize team leads David Killian, Deborah Bezanson, Dolsy Smith, Cathy Zeljak, and Amanda Hanoosh Steinberg for their efforts overall, and specifically their willingness to try on the role of “product owner.” Endnotes 1. The collections leadership recognized that working differently would be part of our overall objective and would take time. We cultivated staff willingness to re-prioritize the work of collections in order to create capacity to solve this fiscal stewardship challenge. Collections strategist Dolsy Smith designed the overall approach. Peter Cohn, director of research services, gave direction to the process of prioritizing and coordinating decision-making around a “wish list.” The wish list process was a companion to the work described here
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