Why SHPE’s New Management Structure Matters • 04.17.09
Why does SHPE’s new management structure matter to the chapters? Why do I feel that our new management structure is important to SHPE’s future?
There are four important elements in governing and operating a Membership Organization, or any business for that matter: Strategy, Policy, Management, and Operations. The reality is that today the National Board of Directors (NBOD) spends most of it’s time on management and operations. All changes, big and small, require discussion and approval by the NBOD.
This is a slow process given that we are elected volunteers with limited free time and we only meet 6 or 7 times a year. What this means is that even small improvements requiring investment or changes in operational priorities take a long time to approve and implement.
So how does this affect the chapters? Let me describe one example: We have very talented members, and they have great ideas which they try to implement at the local level, and sometimes they need national support. This support is usually slow in coming by today’s standards.
That is one serious problem, but it does not end there.
These great ideas would benefit the other chapters as well, yet to transfer these great ideas and programs to the rest of SHPE would again require the intervention of the NBOD. A rapid change process requires the right strategy and policies that protect our mission and the nature of the organization but yet frees up our chapters and staff to act on behalf of our members and our community.
To accomplish this, the National Board of Directors needs to spend it’s limited and therefore precious time defining strategies and setting these policies, and delegate the management and operations to a skilled and experienced professional staff.
We are a great organization but we have the potential to be a National Force for the betterment of the Hispanic community. I believe that under this new structure SHPE can become a 100,000 plus members organization with 10 times the operating budget within the next 10 years. One can only imagine the benefits this could bring to our members and our community. This will mean that more of our children will become engineers and scientists and more Latinos will occupy the corner office, which then, will use their position to further SHPE’s mission, the Hispanic cause, and as President Obama recently stated, drive America’s future.
We began the journey towards this governance structure three years ago. We all believed we were on the right path and we started the transition, but we are not done yet, it will take the right leader to keep us on course and complete the transformation. Someonewho does not understand this will end up hurting the organization, our community, and our country.
