November 2006

My IEEE Membership Dues Have Been A Marvelous Investment

By Vern Johnson

How About Yours?

My son is an engineer, and like most young engineers, he is busy with work, family, house, yard, community, church and so on. The list doesn't end. He has no extra time and money is tight. To top it all off, his employer doesn't pay for professional society membership and he lives in a small city far from where section meetings are held. He has little to motivate him to become active in a professional society, and thus he is limited to his associates at work for professional ideas and guidance. He needs more and doesn't even know it. He needs to become active in his professional society, volunteer some of his non-existent time, and grow professionally. I have mentored many other young engineers, but he needs to cultivate a group of professional mentors in his own field. And besides, who ever heard of a son listening to and acting on his father's advice?

Thinking about my son's need for motivation takes me back to a long-ago discussion led by industrial consultant Fredrick Hertzberg. Hertzberg presented a practical definition of motivation wherein he defined two categories of factors that will change people's happiness with their employment:

1. Motivational Factors - deal with what people do, keep them happy and motivated.

   - Achievement
   - Recognition
   - Interesting work
   - More responsibility for what they do
   - Growth to a higher-level task
    

2. Hygiene Factors - deal with the workspace environment, keep people from being unhappy.

   - Policies and administration
   - The kind of supervision
   - Working conditions and interpersonal relationships
   - Pay, status and security accrued from the task

Hertzberg concluded that:

• Doing meaningful work makes people happy. Unhappiness stems from the way they are treated.

• Enrichment is making activities more challenging, more rewarding and more meaningful. Ask: Will people get a sense of achievement? Is there a possibility they can find intrinsic interest in what they are doing? Can the assignment be expanded to give more responsibility?

• The only way to prevent obsolescence is to make sure people are constantly doing things that keep them up-to-date.

• To change the way people feel about their employment, working conditions (hygiene factors) can be improved so they won't be unhappy, and/or their assignments (motivational factors) can be improved so they will be happy and motivated.

• The payoff from motivation is "not a minimum job, but a good job." It results in happiness and maximum performance.

• With hygiene, people are stimulated and they move. With motivation, they develop their own generators and move on their own.

Hertzberg's work indicates that to attract membership, professional societies should offer an environment that is supportive of personal growth. But they must provide more than atmosphere. Members must do things themselves, they must participate in learning opportunities that utilize their talents and offer challenge, meaning and significance. I checked on the IEEE Web site (www.ieee.org/web/membership/benefits/) and discovered many reasons for activity in the organization, but discovered that most were hygiene factors. Yes, these are great member services, but they aren't the things I can share with my son to get him motivated to become active, volunteer and grow professionally.

The aforementioned realization gave cause for introspection. My employer never paid my dues or volunteered my time. I did that myself, and I did it willingly. Why? What personal experiences allowed me to determine that my IEEE membership dues have been a marvelous investment? The following is part of my personal story that is presented to answer this question. It is not different than that of most active IEEE members, and doesn't come close to the experiences of many others. But they are my experiences.

Over the past years, I have attended many planning meetings of professional society committees. Some were within the IEEE, some not. Regardless of which society was meeting, those gatherings usually seemed like no more than a bunch of men and women sitting around making comments about how the society should position itself, how a standard should be written, how to assist members to keep up-to-date, how to improve services to members, or how to organize a technical conference. Many of the meetings seemed like bull sessions that took up a lot of time. Then one day, I paused, looked around the room, and realized that the people who were sharing ideas were giants in their respective fields — some technical and some leadership. And I realized that our ideas were becoming position statements, standards, and technical conference agendas with national — even international — significance. While serving on an IEEE-USA committee, I wrote several of the organization's position statements that impacted how it interacted with media, governmental organizations, and other professional societies for several years. Those experiences are exciting to think about, and they certainly provided me with a number of wonderful learning experiences.

Because others were interested in what I was doing as an engineer, I have made presentations in Cheng Du, China; Taipei, Taiwan; Berlin, Germany; Vienna, Austria; Toronto, Canada; Madrid, Spain; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Honolulu, Hawaii; as well as many places around the US mainland. All were exciting learning experiences. Am I bragging? No, I am just saying that by having membership, volunteering, and doing some things that challenged and stretched my abilities, I found that opportunities arose. I didn't plan for those opportunities, and most were unexpected, but I was lucky to have them happen to me because they helped me grow. Although I didn't plan for them, at least not specifically, I learned that the process of joining, volunteering and doing creates opportunities. And luck happens to those who do it.

You and I are individuals. We have our own value systems and are motivated differently. In order to motivate my son in the broadest way possible, I need your help. I ask for you to share one of your experiences that you think will help motivate a young engineer to be more professionally active.

It will be helpful if you include some description of your maturity as an engineer at the time of the experience you share with me. Let me recommend that you do this by you indicating the "color" of your maturity on the following scale (Let's have some fun doing this and not worry about counting years.):

Red: engineering student
Green: 0-5 years experience as an engineer
Blue: 6-20 years experience
Orange: 21 years experience to retirement
Grey: retired

Let me give you a couple of specific personal examples of the kind of response that I am requesting:

Example 1:

One evening as a ‘green' engineer I attended a Tucson, Arizona, IEEE Section meeting. Prior to introducing the night's speaker, the chair mentioned that the Section's program chair had accepted employment elsewhere and that there was a need for someone to replace him. After the meeting, I indicated my willingness to help, and assumed he would say something like, "Thanks. Once I identify a new program chair who has more professional experience, I will mention your willingness to help." But that didn't happen, and before I could catch my breath I was the new program chair (in fact, my title was vice chair for meetings). I asked around a little to see how I should identify speakers and get them to come to our meetings. After a few days, I figured out that it was all up to me. So, I identified some people I would like to come to Tucson and speak at a meeting that I was attending. I began to invite speakers by telling them that it would be valuable to Tucson engineers if they would come and share their ideas, and I was surprised that they took my invitation seriously — almost all of them agreed to come at their own expense. Wow, what an opportunity: I would meet them at the airport, drive them to register at a hotel, take them out to dinner, and then take them to the Section meeting. I became personally acquainted with most of them and found that they willingly shared ideas about their careers. I never thought of them as my mentors, but they were. I continued this for a year and a half (about 15 meetings). During that time, I attended Section leadership meetings as vice chair for meetings. That was my introduction to both technical and professional leadership aspects of the society.

Example 2:

As an ‘orange' engineer I learned that the IEEE Educational Activities Board was doing some things that interested me personally. I volunteered to serve on the board if they had an opening. They did, and within a couple of months, I was off to my first meeting in Piscataway, New Jersey. For the first couple of meetings I did my best to help out while I could figure out how the committee functioned. Then I learned of the need for someone to present a conference talk on continuing education. I could do that, I thought, so I volunteered and did it. A few months later, an IEEE staff member called me at home and said that a proposal had been funded to support the attendance of a small team of professional leaders at a continuing education conference in Cheng Du, China. He said that if I was willing to prepare another presentation on the same subject as I presented at the previous conference, I could join the team. I did. My wife came with me and while we were in China, we toured several educational facilities, dined and interacted with some of the brightest technical professionals the schools we visited could produce, as well as several university and professional society presidents. We were the guests of honor, and we learned more about the Chinese people in our 10-day visit than if we had been individual visitors for a year. Since that time, many professional and personal doors have been opened because of that visit, and my resume was significantly improved. Besides, it really was fun and exciting for both my wife and me.

Now, back to what I am requesting of you. Besides a paragraph outlining a single specific experience you have had, and your engineering maturity at the time of the experience, if you include your name and city I can have your response published as a "reader feedback" article in Today's Engineer so that it can motivate other engineers to grow. Or if I receive enough responses, I will include it as part of a follow-on article on the subject. For example, if I were to send a paragraph I might end with, "I am in the ‘grey' group, reside in Tucson, Ariz., and, yes, you can use my words in a future IEEE-USA publication."

Please take the time right now to click on my e-mail address (v.johnson@ieee.org) and share a paragraph with me. After submissions taper off I will share all of them with my son and see if they are of a sufficient number to do a follow-on article. Don't wait to find time to carefully prepare it and send it later. Just write it out now as you think about it and then click "send." If, later, you find an extra supply of time and decide to clean it up, just send me a second version with a reminder to replace the first. But you do not need to do any clean up unless you want to, I will need to do a slight amount of editing anyway to make it fit with others. If you put off writing a description of your experience, and you are anything like me, you will forget it. Mentoring is rarely successful when it is placed on the back burner.

This article has been very personal, so it seems fitting that I end with a description of my present situation. I recently retired and became one of those "grey" engineers, but I am still growing because of the examples set by those I work with while serving in my present capacity. I am a member of IEEE-USA's Communications Committee, and a member of the team that brings you Today's Engineer, which focuses on building careers and shaping public policy. In this capacity, I am surrounded by people who challenge and support me to grow in my areas of interest.

By the way, I have found a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (where orange careers turn to grey). As a retired life member (years of membership plus age equals 100), I have more personal time and can remain active, volunteer my services and continue to grow. But, I no longer have to pay dues (life members don't pay dues).

Thanks again for assisting my son with this mentoring activity. I look forward to hearing from you.

Vern R. Johnson is Associate Dean Emeritus at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz., and is IEEE-USA's Career Activities Editor. Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.