Library leaders promote reconsideration of organisational purposes, processes, and relationships at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, USA. Systems thinking, fortified by information literacy, informs workplace changes that provide learning experiences transferable to better alignment of library outcomes with changing campus priorities. Grounded in Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) enriched by the Australian and New Zealand Institute for Information Literacy (ANZIIL) framework, this ‘thought leadership’ approach depends on data-driven, boundary-crossing dialogue and reflection. Ongoing practice ‘rethinking what we do and how we do it’ produces improved ways of working, communicating, cooperating and interacting within the library organisation and across the university community, as expressed in an emerging ‘learning commons’ initiative.