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On Being Worthy of Our Members

1/1/2012

Serving as ACI President has allowed me to meet and greet hundreds of ACI national, international, and local chapter members and interact with dozens of our volunteer leaders who willingly sacrifice more time than most of us to make this organization work. I have gotten to know several cycles of ACI Board members and Board Committee Chairs, met chapter officers, and interacted with many of our technical, educational, and certification committee Chairs. In all cases, I am humbled by the dedication of our volunteer leaders who are literally the glue or "paste" that holds our "cementitious composite" together.

These folks spend long and alternately exciting and tedious hours on behalf of ACI, finding ways to maintain focus on the "big picture" while still paying close attention to the details. They can somehow hold it all together even when seven differing opinions are on the table and an eighth is brewing in the hallway. After more than 30 years in ACI, I now understand that our most effective leaders share the same virtue: the desire to be worthy of the time, effort, energy, and goodwill of the volunteer members.

When we consider the breadth and depth of our volunteers' contributions, we realize that it's not easy to conduct the affairs of the Institute so as to be worthy of those contributions. Starting with pure logistics, volunteers come to our meetings on their time and on their dime, and they go back to the day job with not only a fresh load of ACI tasks, but also with a bigger backlog of their own work (given that inboxes and e-mail queues always multiply when left unattended). But these dependable people didn't come to our meetings to nap—they came to work. They came to engage in the business of our chapters and committees. They came with the expectation of making a difference in programs, policies, and procedures, or the content of our ever-growing range of ACI documents.

And who told them that they could "make a difference by joining ACI"? We did! We recruit our members with the promise that they can get involved, they can have a voice (or a pen), and they can use their unique combination of interest, experience in one particular area, and inexperience in other areas to supply the group with both answers and tough questions. (A committee that is not asking questions that the members can't answer might not be a cutting-edge committee.)

Of all our committee and chapter members' qualifications, their expectation of making a difference through cooperative involvement over the long haul is perhaps the most important. Knowledge and experience can be supplemented, but the attitude, motivation, and desire to contribute, listen, learn, and develop creative compromises are absolutely priceless. But these attributes are likewise fragile; and after a few go-nowhere meetings in a row, the motivated member votes with his or her feet and looks for action elsewhere. We need our best leaders on the front lines of chapters and committees precisely to keep our motivated members in the game. When the members agree that the goal is clear and important, the process is understood and under control, the progress is measureable, the gap to completion is closing, and individual member contributions are respected and valued, they will keep coming back. Why? Because ACI participation is worth what it costs them in time, energy, and resources.

Imagine a digital clock prominently mounted on the wall in a committee meeting room. Imagine that it not only shows the local time and the number of calendar days remaining until the next chapter event or document submittal, but also displays elapsed time since the scheduled start of the meeting. This "Harsh-Reality Committee Clock" would also be programmed to display the continually increasing cumulative fair-market cash value of all the participants' time since the scheduled start of the meeting, including the fair share of the travel costs for each member. Imagine also that members customized their meeting-table space with annual calendars, framed photos of their families, and a snapshot of their desk back at work, showing the inbox and to-do lists. Being aware of the real cost and sacrifice of chapter and committee membership would be a stark reminder of the need for effective leadership and well-planned and conducted meetings.

I therefore propose a New Year's toast to all of our members and to our outstanding volunteer leaders who carry the heavy responsibility of making each meeting worthy of those wonderful members.

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

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