by Denise Rumschlag MLS, AHIP
St. Vincent Hospital
Indianapolis, IN

Looking to raise awareness of the library by administration? Want you or your library to move up in the eyes of your institution? Try creating an elevator speech to boost the worth of your work!

This year for National Medical Librarians Month, the Advocacy Working Group of the Regional Advisory Council to the GMR discussed how to advocate our worth to our administrators.  In the past we have looked at ways to market the library to clinicians and consumers; this year we wanted to focus on reaching administration.  Time is in short supply for most of as we multi-task our way through our busy days. So how do we even reach administration when our paths cross only briefly through out the week?  One proven method is to be prepared with an elevator speech.

What is an elevator speech?
The idea behind an elevator speech is to be able to convey your message in the length of an elevator ride, about 30 seconds or 150 words. In that short length of time you want to clearly and concisely present your message to a targeted audience.  Although it’s called an elevator speech you don’t want it to come off like you are presenting a canned speech.  The passion for your work, your unique contribution to the organization needs to shine through.  A great elevator speech will leave a lasting impression on the listener and will convey the worth of your work to your organization.

What do you say?
What you say depends upon you and your own personal style, what message you want to convey and to whom you are speaking. The message to the Chief Nursing Officer about resources that support your hospital’s magnet journey maybe be very different than your message to the Head of Pharmacy or the Chief Financial Officer. Your message must have meaning, it must resonate with the receiver. Joy Kennedy, Head Librarian of the Health Resource Library at Northwest Community Hospital, Arlington Heights, IL, uses her own personal style of story telling when she bumps into administrators in the elevator or in the hallway.  Stories have an emotional impact that numbers do not have.  She makes it a point to tell recent stories of the library. She tells how resources and personnel made the difference in the lives of patients and their families.  We all have helped a patient or their family not only by finding information, but by taking the time to listen to them. Let your administrators know the support you give, not only to clinicians but to patients and families.

Some institutions, like Gundersen Lutheran in LaCrosse, Wisconsin take elevator speech to the top floor.  According to Melinda Orebaugh, Director of Library and Health Information Services at Gundersen Lutheran, their CLO brought elevator speech to their organization. There are four major points they incorporate in their elevator speeches and this format is required at manager meetings. The four points are:

• What are we trying to do?
• Why is this important?
• What will success look like?
• What do we need from you?

Melinda says this format works very well for her; she uses it regularly in formal and informal meetings. The format helps convey the bottom line value of the library. It can be used to clearly align the library with the institution’s strategic plan.

How to get started?
You may already have an elevator speech,  a strategy for trying to quickly convey your worth to administrators. If so we want to hear from you, you can help the rest of us get started. Share your successes and even your near-misses with us all, and we can learn to be better communicators.  If you don’t have one there, not surprisingly, there are many elevator speech resources on the web. There’s even a web program that will help to build one!

For this celebration month for Medical Librarians we encourage you to share your speech here with one another! In text or audio format we want to hear from you! Remember keep it 100-150 works and about 30 seconds in length.  It needs to be concise sound bites that are easily digested. Share your elevator speech, help us all learn from one another!

Tips and ideas on Elevator Speeches from the Web
To save you the trouble of a quick Google search, here are some places you might want to visit as you plan your elevator speech:

A free 15 second Pitch Wizard helps you create and keep a multiple speeches on the internet:
http://www.15secondpitch.com/new/index.asp

Do’s & Don’ts of Elevator Speeches:
http://www.quintcareers.com/elevator_speech_dos-donts.html

Elevator Speeches 101:
http://www.elevatorpitchessentials.com/essays/ElevatorPitch.html

Preparing Your Speech:
http://bschool.pepperdine.edu/career/content/elevatorspeech.pdf

Here is an example of a 30-second elevator speech:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Advocacy, Regional Advisory Council. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.