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Working Together And Winning Together By Stanley C. Theobald
ASM Managing Director
The following remarks were made by ASM's Managing Director during the ASM Annual Business Meeting, held in Pittsburgh on Oct. 13. Read the President's Report and President-Elect's Remarks from the meeting.
We do not often enough take a look back and assess progress against what we said we would do. Last year we said the ASM Vision was "to be the first-stop resource for technical knowledge, education, networking and professional development in the metals and materials community."
This vision can't happen without having a strategy to accomplish it. I'm happy to report that our Strategic Plan and all of its actions will be communicated to all of ASM in January 2004. And, we will work with the ASM Boards, committees and councils to develop programs and activities that respond to the action plans of the Strategic Plan. Progress will be monitored by the Board.
We said that the ASM staff at Materials Park would partner with our members, our Board, our committees and councils, and our Affiliate Societies to achieve the objectives of the Board. We have made great progress on building relationships --and we are ready to take it to the next level.
We said that we would work with the Board to align the staff organization structure with a greater focus on serving our members and customers. Beginning last October, we worked to create an organization that emphasizes member and customer service, and the response from our membership has been excellent. We will do even better in the future, as we recognize that our business is all about partnering with ASM members and being responsive.
We said that we would set goals, coach, develop and "enable" our staff to succeed. We are very proud of how far we have taken performance management, assuring through personal objectives and team competencies that we are forever serving our membership better.
An important responsibility of all chief staff executives is to set the "culture" of the staff organization. We have made good progress in creating a high-energy, passionate, results-oriented and highly efficient environment.
We also said that we would increase the "value proposition" to our members and their companies by doing exciting things that are relevant. This continues to be a critical issue. We have made good progress by:
Partnering with other materials engineering societies
Board metrics that are success barometers for the ASM business
Process improvement in internal processes to eliminate non-valued activities
The "Corporate Loyal" program (a program of executive-level corporate visits designed to increase awareness of the value of ASM)
International eMembership initiatives with France, India, China, Japan, Mexico, the U.K., and in Australasia.
Very good progress has been made with the ASM Materials Education Foundation and its Materials Camp program, which included residential, day and teachers' camps. These have met with resounding success and we look for even greater involvement in 2004.
Of course, we have areas of our business that need strict attention:
Continued declining membership. We have made progress but we need to do more. This year will represent the smallest decline in membership since 1997.
I am also very happy to announce that ASM and TMS have signed an agreement for all student members and student chapters of ASM and TMS to become Joint Members of both societies. This is important to the future of the profession.
We have made great progress on our web-based delivery of information. We must find a way to get this in the hands more individuals and companies.
Through Corporate Loyal, we will continue aggressively helping corporations to understand the value that ASM provides.
We have not responded quickly enough to the marketplace on emerging technologies. This is a focus of our Strategic Plan and we will put infrastructure and processes in place to do this in 2004.
Although we had an excellent year with our conferences and expositions, we must work hard to deliver this kind of performance - or better - every year. Our incoming president, Bob Tucker, has made this one of his Presidential initiatives and will lead a Board Strategic Council in this area.
Finally, we have much more work to do on the image and identity of the Materials Science and Engineering profession and of ASM International. I am confident that we will make great strides as this has been identified as a critical issue out of the strategic planning process, and we already have a member workgroup focused on this area.
This new and energetic ASM is taking the best from the past reinventing the future. The key is all working together and winning together.
I thank you, the members of ASM, the Board and the ASM staff for supporting me in the last year. You have my commitment that we will continue to improve on those things that we performed well on last year, and we will pursue the areas that need more attention with an even greater diligence.
I look forward to working with all of you in 2004 and coming back next year with even better news. Thank you.
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