In this edition of Impact Experts Question Time, we’re excited to welcome Sheila Bennett, Head of Libraries Strategy and Delivery for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Sheila’s work focuses on empowering those on the frontlines of social impact, and her love for public libraries shines through as she advocates for their role in improving lives.
Join us as Sheila shares her proudest career moments, biggest lessons, and some fun, unexpected stories from her journey—including the time she named a llama!
What is the biggest thing you have done to create or improve social impact?
I’ve been privileged to be part of incredible teams who have worked on strategies that I hope played a part in making things better for many people across the country – for example I held the pen on the 2012 Government Digital strategy, the 2014 digital Inclusion strategy, and the 2016 Libraries Taskforce strategy supporting public libraries across England. However, I’m fully aware that strategy documents are only the start – they provide a framework to support people who work at the frontline who can make huge individual differences to individuals lives and the real heroes in making a positive impact.
What is your biggest work lesson? And why?
There are two things I’ve learnt from my various jobs. One is the power of active listening, to ensure that what you subsequently work on or bring forward will really meet the needs of your end users, whoever they may be. The other is about identifying, developing and using the talents in a team to best effect. It isn’t always the manager who has the best skills or insights to take something forward successfully – your job is to support the person who has, in every which way you can to do it.
Can you share some key milestones or proudest moments in your career?
Seeing the strategies I mentioned above through to publication were all very big milestones – then you take a deep breath, and move on to the really hard work in making those aspirations a reality! In my time in local government I am very proud of the work I led to transform a registrars service from losing money through to being cost-neutral by marketing it more effectively – and in doing so, making it more convenient and easier to access for people who needed its services.
I’m not sure if I can frame some of my other proudest work moments in terms of specific milestones, but I have always tried to be a supportive manager who coaches people to be the best they can be – so there’s a real pride in seeing those people shine and achieve amazing things themselves – sometimes things they told me earlier in our discussions that they’d never be able to do.
What were your most unusual moments at work?
They range from requisitioning ships for the Falklands War (I worked for the British shipping trade association at the time); handling a rather recalcitrant pony to stand in a massive PR photo for my Council (and avoiding it trying to bite and stamp on me); and naming a llama (it was born on 1 January 1990, and I jumped in to call it Jubilee, because the Council was celebrating 25 years later in the Spring and we took it to all our roadshows). I’ve also spent a lot of time standing in a hard hat shivering at various emergency incident sites over the years – ranging from eco-warrior protests, to deneholes opening up on the main Eurostar line and swallowing up a house in the process. I also got involved in managing the accessible queue for the late Queen’s lying in state, and running a cloakroom for guests at the Coronation 9 where I got to speak to everyone from the Poet Laureate to Lionel Ritchie)
What is the thing that brings you the most #workkjoy?
My work at the moment focuses on supporting and advocating for public libraries. They are so important and worthwhile, and I am committed to doing whatever I can to help them make their case and highlight the potential they have to make people’s lives better.
What is one of your pet hates? Why?
I get very exercised by people writing imprecisely, especially when they retreat into management jargon – it doesn’t make them more effective, doesn’t make them sound more clever or important, and makes it harder to cut through to identify what actually needs to be done. I always championed the use of plain language in the Council I worked for, and I continue to fight that corner!
What is your favourite quote that you would like us to include? And please explain why.
I’m constantly cracking out quotes from writers, poets, ets. But they are very much in context, and I don’t really have an ‘inspirational quote’ that I’d point to as a generalism.
My two daughters would tell you that they grew up with me firing off various questions and exhortations. I’m not sure which , if any, they found especially helpful (!), though they are things I continue to ask myself every day to challenge my work: ‘Why do you say that?’ What are you trying to say?’ and (when I’m in danger of putting things off) ‘Do it now!’.
