I Wondered What It'd Be Like When I Got Here

The last R7 Director column by John Hedtke, the last R7 Director

This is my last R7 Director column and, as it happens, the last column from ANY R7 Director, because Directors are no longer associated with specific regions. I want to tell you about the last three years on the Board, where we are now, and about those campaign promises I made 3-1/2 years ago.

Three years ago when I took office, I was wondering what it would be like in 2008. I figured I would be glad to be done with my term (I was right) and I had hopes that I'd have achieved my campaign promises (see below), but I really didn't know what else to expect. As it turns out, anything I could've expected from my 2005 POV would've been wildly inaccurate. In the last three years, we've seen major changes, including:

• the departure of Pete Herbst, followed by Rob Moran as interim Executive Director and our new Executive Director, Susan Burton
• a complete revision of the Annual Conference, including support for continuing education certificates, a focus on presentation topics relating to the conference theme, and the vendor room being open on Wednesdays (which it seems everyone had wanted for years)
• an open STC Office, figuratively and literally: the STC Office door used to be closed at all times; getting in was something special and not for the mere hoi polloi membership
• a complete revision of the STC Office internal procedures, including moving our software into the 21st century with the purchase of iMIS
• a complete revision of the dues structure, so chapters and SIGs get specific amounts for each member, regardless of size, and get the money much faster, as well
• the elimination of regions and the role of "Sponsor" for the Directors, bringing us in tighter compliance with NY corporate law and also freeing the Directors and other Board members to start working strategically instead of tactically

The list goes on, but you catch the drift: we've seen huge changes. In fact, when I chose to run, it wasn't at all clear to me that there was going to even BE an organization in five years. Personally, I was only betting even money that we'd survive we had so many problems. I am much happier with where we are now: I'm willing to bet 5-1 or better that we'll be around in five years. But what's going to happen in the next five years is not something I can guess at very easily (though I really hope I'm around in 2013 to find out). Things are going to continue change in ways that I'm not sure anyone can envision.

A little history here: the STC Transformation effort some years ago, designed to "transform" the STC into I'm-not-sure-what, was just a disaster. The management was bad, the communications were ghastly, and the end results were dismally small. There weren't clear goals, measurable benchmarks, a timetable, or even a clear sense of direction.

My reaction when we were ultimately told that the Transformation was complete was "Oh, yeah? How can you tell?" "Well, there's been a change to the membership status so you can pay $10 less and get electronic rather than paper publications." (To be completely fair, there were a couple other things, but this was the biggie.) "Well, gee, don't do me no favors, now." After 2-3 years of messing around and beating drums and telling us how good it was all going to be when they got done, this was all they could pull out of the magic bag? What a failure!

Except, I've come to realize, it wasn't. What the Transformation accomplished at the time was nothing, nada, bupkes. What the Transformation did that was so good was that it gave subsequent Boards the permission to consider changing things. I don't think we'd be here now if that hadn't happened. I couldn't have imagined saying this three years ago, but the Transformation was a screaming, wild success.

Changing things was a new thought for the STC. (It still meets with lots of resistance a few years later.) But all of a sudden, Board members were saying, "Why do it this way? Couldn't we do it this other way? And what happens if we do?" Individual Board members had certainly said this over the years, but this was the first time in recent history that we'd had a whole Board thinking about this.

And change things we did. When Pete Herbst decided to leave, we hired Rob Moran as interim ED to guide us in the transition process and to help us find a permanent ED. He stepped us through a lot of the more painful parts of the initial transition and our search committee found Susan Burton as our permanent ED. She's first-rate.

With the decision in 2005 by the STC membership to eliminate regions and remove sponsorship from the duties of a Director, the Board was able to start approaching things strategically. That was another big change. The first questions we asked were "Where are we now? And where do we want to go?" It turned out that no-one really knew where we were, so we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.

We quickly realized there were a thousand things that needed to be changed, starting with the STC Office. Our internal procedures weren't working. Our membership software was hopelessly inadequate: the annual membership process was handled manually and required the work output of the entire office for about 2 months just to get everyone entered in seven different databases, none of which had all the data for a member's record. (The horror, the horror!) We ultimately bought iMIS, an association management package, that is doing all sorts of good things for us.

While all this was going on, the Board was looking at where we'd like to be. We've spent lots of time on strategic planning, developing the infrastructure to support the STC (a lot of things worked only because they'd never broken down, but we were on thin ice), and figuring out what to do next. As a result, we've got a good direction and the Board's doing well at implementing our plans as fast as possible.

As for my campaign promises: when I was running for R7 Director, I very intentionally kept my campaign promises modest, because I figured it would be easier to fulfill them if I hadn't promised the moon. As it turns out, I didn't have to promise the moon to make it hard; I could've just promised Tukwila or Grant's Pass and still had trouble. There were three things I wanted to accomplish:

• Create a list of the complete range of services available to members, chapters, and regions from the STC Office
• Set up a newsletter bureau
• Set up a speaker’s bureau

Let me address these in reverse order. The speaker's bureau, providing a list of speakers and topics to chapters and communities, is about to go live. Several other IT projects necessary to being able to keep running (notably getting the iMIS software in place) took priority. However, by June, we'll have the first few dozen speakers entered so we can test the system. If everything looks good, the STC Office will be opening this up to all and sundry thereafter. Check that one off the list.

The newsletter bureau, aimed at giving newsletter editors and web managers a resource for content from authors, is not up yet… but the structure of this is very similar to that of the speaker's bureau system we're testing. Once that's up and running, I have high hopes that we'll be able to get the newsletter bureau set up not long thereafter.

"Creating a list of services:" This was the answer to a question I'd had for about 20 years that had gotten me the brush-off for just about as long. The answer to this question is "No-one knows right now." The reason no-one knows is this: I want you to imagine a closet that things have been getting pitched into for years and years. More things kept getting added to the pile but nothing's been cleaned out in ages. For the last couple years, the Board has been cleaning out the closet. We're removing the mess far faster than it accumulated, but we've still got a few years to go before the floor can be swept clean and everything's back in place.

As a result, we're still putting things in place and evaluating what we can do for members, so there's just no way to produce a canonical list of services. The best I can say is "You want something? Talk to any of the Board members." The Board's the best place to start; if nothing else, you can find out who the right person is to talk to, if there's anything like it being done already, and so on. Be sure to follow up, too; Board members can forget things. There's no promise the Board or the STC Office will be able to get to it right away or that they'll say "Yes" to your request. It's not like there aren't a thousand other things to do, too. But it's our job and our pleasure to do what we can for the membership and we will give reasonable consideration to just about anything.

Hot tip for increasing your chances of success: depending on what it is you're asking for, be prepared to show a business case/what needs to be done/how to do it/ideas on raising money or finding budget/an offer to volunteer to spearhead the group to do this. The Board and the STC Office both adore people who put their money where their mouths are and show commitment to making something happen. It also makes it far more likely your idea will be considered that much sooner. Hey, if you're unsatisfied with the response you're getting, consider running for a seat on the Board. It's a worthy goal and you can help make the STC become what you'd like it to. Come talk to me if you're interested; I'll be glad to answer questions.

Let me close by saying that it has been an honor and a privilege to serve this region, which I love and am enormously proud of, the STC, and the membership. I'm not done working for the STC—I will continue as head of the Ethics committee this coming year—but I am pleased to say "My three years are up! It's time to party."

Yours truly,

John Hedtke