Manny Hernandez SHPE President 2009/2011

By Manny  Hernandez

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.

Share on Facebook

This weekend the SHPE National Board of Directors met in Lexington, Kentucky.  We discussed some very exciting topics and made some important decisions that affect our membership and constituents. The purpose of this blog post is to communicate with you some of what transpired at the recent meeting, and going forward I’d like to continue sharing about what the SHPE board is working on, and to give you the opportunity to ask me questions and start this two-way dialog.

Some of the more exciting things we discussed were upcoming events, such as NILA (National Institute of Leadership Advancement) in Fort Worth, TX from August 5-8. the SHPE conference in Washington, DC, Oct. 28-Nov.1, 2009, and ELI, Executive Leadership Institute, May 10 - 15 2009 in Palo Alto, CA, sponsored by Hewlett Packard.  We are making very important enhancements to the professional agenda for these programs, something near and dear to my heart.

One of the changes is with the ELI conference. We are including a new module called Emotional Intelligence, or EI. Essentially it is a way to manage one’s emotions and redirect them, in a positive way, to create cooperation and collaboration with others. This is a effective Personal Development tool that enhances people’s leadership skills. The experts claim that EQ (Emotional Intelligen Quotient) is more important to leadership than IQ.

The board of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers is very excited to be working on these new projects, and I can’t wait to share more news of this nature with you.

Manny

Share on Facebook

Why have I got a blog post title with two seemingly unrelated terms?  Very simple.  The Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers, or SHPE, has been innovating with new types of programs, like SHPE’s Executive Leadership Institute and other professional development programs as I outlined here in an earlier article. The problem is the word is not getting out to non-members.

SHPE members receive the newsletters and the updates.   Latino Engineers who are NOT SHPE members make up a much larger number of Latino Engineers than actual SHPE members.

How do we bridge the gap?

Social Media.

One of my goals as President of SHPE is to build on the grassroots efforts of many SHPE members who have started blogs and Facebook groups, and to implement a concerted, integrated effort for SHPE to reach out to non-members to get the word out about what SHPE can offer to enhance their careers.

This graphic, put out by Forrester, explains very well how the corporate demographic that we need to go after is already actively involved in Social Media:

Our target demographic already uses social media extensively.  Creators, or people who create blogs or Facebook groups, make up 43% of corporate America. Joiners, or people who join social networks such as LinkedIn or Facebook, make up 48%.  A whopping 91% are spectators, meaning they read blogs!!!

I believe the time is ripe for SHPE to actively engage in a conversation via the various social media tools out there, whether Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, and even our own social media applications as I mentioned earlier.  This effort would enable us to reach out to Latino engineering professionals who are not members and inform them about these innovative leadership programs.

Why do this?  Well the self-interested answer would be to gain new members.  The correct answer is to empower the larger Hispanic community, and our particular niche, Hispanic engineers. As our vision states:

SHPE is the leading social-technical organization whose primary function is to enhance and achieve the potential of Hispanics in engineering, math and science.

Social Media is also a very powerful way to receive feedback from the community.  The SHPE corporate website, a must-have, is a one-way conversation: the organization talking to the public.  Social Media enables a two way conversation.  It empowers independent thinking, as this blog, and other election blog represents.  It can also be a place to air grievances, something which SHPE should not shy away from, but should embrace as we move forward and change to provide more value to Latino engineering professionals.

What do you think?  How should SHPE get the word out to non-members about some of our valuable programs?  Should we launch headlong into Social Media? I welcome your thoughts.

Manny Hernandez

Share on Facebook

My vision consists of a three point plan to assist our professionals advance and realize their full potential.  1.  Skills for Success, 2. Technology for Collaboration, and 3. the Power Net.

1. Skills for Success.  I will continue to promote PDS/MGT/ELI programs that I have championed these past six years. These programs have proven very effective and I will continue to update and renew them to maintain their relevance for the budding manager/executive.  I also have plans to enhance the Professional Development Series with an innovative curriculum focused on helping our members acquire the skills to effectively compete in today’s global economy.

2. Technology for Collaboration.  Our members can be a tremendous resource to each other in identifying opportunities, providing career advice, or even bringing job offers to one another. As president, I will provide the technology and infrastructure to be able to connect and collaborate using the power of the internet. I will open SHPE so that our talented members can create the collaboration tools they need to exploit the power of their networks.

3. The Power Net.  We, SHPE, need to increase our membership from the approximately 2100 we have today to 10,000 members by 2011. We will attract and retain more and higher level talent by offering improved services, such as job postings via OneSHPE links, podcasts, a nationwide network of professionals, and the opportunity to apply their ideas and make a difference, both to each other and in their community and to America.

Share on Facebook