Grounded leadership for complex workplaces, career transitions, and purpose-driven professionals.
Grounded leadership for complex workplaces, career transitions, and purpose-driven professionals.
For years, much of my professional work, writing, and reflection has been shaped by my experience in libraries, public service, technology leadership, and organizational operations. If you have spent time on Jaketha.com, you may notice older posts that speak directly to library leadership, public service, staff development, workplace culture, and operational challenges within library environments. …
I recently had the opportunity to present two sessions at the Louisiana Library Association (LLA) Conference—an experience that led to meaningful conversations with colleagues across the profession about leadership, collaboration, and workplace culture in libraries. My breakout session, “Breaking Down Silos: Leading with Collaboration,” explored how organizational silos can develop within institutions and how leadership …
Mindfulness in libraries often gets misunderstood as something soft, slow, or optional. In reality, mindfulness at work is a clarity skill—especially in high-interruption environments. It’s not about being calm all the time.It’s about not carrying every moment into the next one. Three practical ways mindfulness shows up at work: Before opening an emailPause for one …
Why Silos Still Exist in Libraries Most libraries value collaboration.Many still struggle to experience it. Silos aren’t always created by ego or resistance. More often, they form quietly—through overload, unclear authority, and past attempts that didn’t feel safe or productive. Common library silos tend to be: When collaboration becomes a slogan rather than a practice, …
What Burnout is Really Telling Us Library staff are tired—not because they don’t care, but because they care deeply while navigating constant demand, limited capacity, and emotional labor that often goes unnamed. Burnout in libraries is frequently framed as an individual problem: But what if burnout is actually a systems signal? When staff are stretched …
Loss in the workplace does more than interrupt routines — it reveals culture. When a colleague passes, the absence is felt not only in workflow, but in shared history, unspoken moments, and the quiet realization that our professional spaces are made up of human lives, not just roles and responsibilities. In these moments, people look …
In any organization—public, private, or nonprofit—people are the heartbeat of daily operations. But even the most mission-driven teams can falter without clearly defined expectations for behavior, communication, and accountability. That’s where a Staff Code of Conduct becomes not just helpful, but essential. As part of my MBA program, I developed a comprehensive code of conduct …
The recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act—casually referred to as the Big Beautiful Bill—has stirred concern across many professional and academic communities. While much of the national conversation centers on its broad restructuring of higher education funding as it relates to nursing, library professionals in particular are also asking a critical question: “Will this …