News Detail

Wasn't the Summer Short?!

9/1/2011

ACI had a busy summer! Local chapter boards met to plan meetings and arrange speakers. Certification staff initiated efforts to orient the first sponsoring groups to offer the new ACI- CRSI Adhesive Anchor Installer Certification Program. Many committees continued their work via the Internet or teleconferences, and ACI 318 met in Denver for 2 days and made significant progress on the reorganized Building Code (visit the ACI 318 Web site for more details: www.concrete.org/COMMITTEES/318Public.htm). The ACI Board of Direction met via teleconference and members of the Executive Committee attended their annual summer meeting in Detroit and represented ACI at national and international meetings. ACI staff and the Greater Miami Valley Chapter focused on the last details for the Cincinnati convention (now only 6 weeks away), and Vice President Jim Wight stepped in to write July’s great President's Memo. Thanks, Jim!

After we left Tampa or wrapped up the year in our local chapters, a long summer stood between us and the next major ACI activity. Committee Chairs had plenty of time to issue meeting minutes, contact committee members, and follow up on various assignments. There was lots of time to coordinate activities, work on documents, and plan the next meeting. After all, didn't we deserve a break after giving all that time to ACI? But here we are, 6 weeks away from Cincinnati, and post-convention relaxation has turned into preconvention panic. You know the signs—dread instead of excitement in anticipation of the next meeting; settling for what you can do in the time available instead of the more exciting possibilities contemplated at the end of the last meeting.

My one-time boss Dick Frantz once confided his suspicion that intelligent people who prefer creativity and action to paperwork may subconsciously delay a routine task until it is so close to the deadline that only rapid and heroic actions can save the day, thus elevating the routine task to a crisis worthy of our talents. Where's the excitement in knocking out the meeting minutes right after the meeting? Where's the thrill when contacting a committee or chapter member early to check on the progress of a task he or she volunteered to perform?

Well, for you thrill-seekers out there, the real excitement is in getting things accomplished in your chapter or committee, and that is made more likely when you aid the members with timely attention to routine tasks. Excitement comes from informing and engaging your members in the work at hand and punctually letting them know: a) what happened at the last meeting, b) what is going to be discussed at the next meeting, and c) what is expected of them so they can arrive prepared for progress. The long-suffering ACI members who survived my chapter presidency and committee chairmanship will attest to my skill at "just-in-time" meeting planning. But that habit robbed my team of the opportunity to think about what we were supposed to be doing, except during frenzied debates in committee meetings.

My friend Dan Morris alerted me to what I call the "Pachydermal Committee Fallacy." This erroneous belief is popular with committees and task forces and is a perennial favorite at strategic planning retreats. This myth assumes that a hard problem can be solved if a large number of people meet to think and talk about it for a short time. The first fallacy is in assuming that we can all think creatively and talk and listen at the same time. The second fallacy is revealed by scientific observation—while it is true that the gestation period of an African elephant is 22 months, it is not true that 22 African elephants can deliver a baby elephant in 1 month.

It would appear then that good things take time to develop and generating creative ideas, making sound plans, developing a year-long local chapter agenda, and writing an ACI document are all in the category of good things that take time. We cannot do ACI-quality work by restricting our individual and group thinking to meeting time alone. We need our members thinking productively outside of meetings, which requires that we keep them informed, reminded, and motivated at times other than the hectic days or weeks immediately preceding a meeting.

See you in Cincinnati!

Kenneth C. Hover
American Concrete Institute
kch7@cornell.edu

Back to Memo List