Measured Moments Blog

Urgent is one of those powerful words.  It ranks right up there with FIRE or DUCK (or FORE, if you are a golfer like me!).  Unfortunately, I believe urgent may be a little overused.  A lot of things get done because they scream urgent.  This is a bigger problem than it was in years past because of advances in communication technology like email, cellphones and Instant Messenger.  Anyone can scream urgent at any instant.  So what's so bad about urgent? ... it seems to get things done.  Yes, but at the expense of what other things?  At the expense, probably, of the IMPORTANT things?

This is not to say you should not do urgent things.  In fact, many urgent things are also important and these are the things you should do first.  The problem is many important things are not urgent and they just don't seem to ever get done—or not until they become urgent.  An example:  on January 5th, computing your taxes is important but not urgent.  On April 14th, that has become urgent and also important.  Had your tax return not become urgent, it would continue to be pushed back.  For me, this blog is important but not urgent and I push it back on my busy schedule.

As those who attended the Industry Forum last month in Atlanta have learned, the Association is working on the details of a program recommended to us by several of the folks whom we interviewed last summer when we asked how MCAA could serve members better.  The need was to find companies with appropriate synergies to help with the distribution of products.  Getting the right level of information (well beyond just the name of the company and location which is what you can find from other Directories) is difficult.  There are search firms that perform searches but their fees are pretty dear and their knowledge of our industry pretty thin.

Our Partner Search Tool profile is prepared and we are ready to recruit the first companies into a database—and the first 200 of them are going to be able to register to be listed at no cost for the first year.  However, we are struggling on finding the right interface so that channel partners will be able to update their profiles at will throughout the year.  We need security and compartmentalization to make that work and we are still working out the specifics.  So we hope that the program will launch in July and that by fall we will be able to offer searches to manufacturers who want to find compatible channel partners.

June 1, 2012

I haven't been here for a while.  We were overwhelmed by the attendance at our recent Industry Forum which blew by a 20-year old record attendance (also in Atlanta) by 25 attendees!  So I've been just a tad busy (tad is a technical term, used primarily in the south).  Now that this meeting is concluded, MCAA's staff is turning to some new ideas and returning to our standard programming to serve the members of the process control industry.  Within days we have published the annual Market Forecast of the Industry (prepared for us by Global Automation Research), the monthly bookings report (where over 85% of our manufacturer members contribute data) the quarterly bookings reports by product and by user industry.  Shortly we will begin collecting the data for the annual Compensation Report (this year with a Benefits section).  We are also working on rolling out a new monthly bookings report for channel partners--it has to be separate from our manufacturer's report because of the issues associated with double counting.  We're working to pull together the mechanics of the new Partner Search Tool which will help companies find partners to sell their products (and perhaps from the other direction to find new lines).  We're surveying members to determine support for grassroots lobbying on fixing the product approval process. There's more ... but my head is spinning and I need to get to work.

Last week I had a long posting; this one will be shorter and mostly just to say hello.  We had a bit of a staff shuffle here this past week.  Our former Administrative Assistant, Jennifer Knight, had some personal issues which resulted in her decision to resign her position.  That left a gaping hole in our small team effort at one of our busiest times of the year!  Fortunately, we found Stephanie Lamb who joined the staff this week and is already digging in to try to sort out some jumbled files. Please add lamb@measure.org to your company whitelist for emails!

Additionally, the server on which our website sits was attacked over the weekend and the site was down intermittently.  Our webmaster feels the problem has been solved and new safeguards in place to prevent future intrusions but that caused a few more headaches.

MCAA's first webinar of the year featured yours truly giving details of our Sales Training program which is online and self-paced and can result in Certification as a Measurement, Control & Automation Sales Professional (MCASP) or just a Certificate of Completion.  I was gratified to learn right after the presentation that 6 more inside salesmen will be enrolling from one channel partner company and others from both manufacturing and channel firms are ready to make similar moves.

This training program is one way that MCAA serves our industry in ways that other organizations simply cannot match.  Sure, there are other sales training programs.  And they are good sales training programs.  But they don't have any information for a salesman in our highly technical industry on the technologies or on the industries that we serve.  Having that knowledge gives those who take these courses through MCAA the edge.

I read a great book earlier this year—The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and I see that there are any number of points in the life of any organization when things can "tip" toward a change. I believe MCAA is poised at a tipping point for a lot of reasons. First just look at our staff, for many years it was just Teresa Sebring and myself and maybe a part-time Administrative Assistant to help with accounting or data entry. We made that position full time when we hired Christine Cottingham two years ago. With the growth of our fee-based programs, we needed someone to manage those processes so we promoted Christine to Revenue Services Administrator and hired Jennifer Knight as our Administrative Assistant. Jen handles all the accounting and all the data entry for the various bookings and benchmarking programs of MCAA. Mike Robertson, who had helped us develop the Sales Training program for Inside, Field and Sales Managers, accepted my offer to join the team full time as Membership Development Manager and Mike is knee deep in conversations with a LOT of companies who are interested in exploring membership in the Association.

And membership is another tipping point. We've hovered around 120 companies for a number of years now. With Mike's efforts, we have a bunch of new names on the list ... based on a very fast start for our Members Getting Members recruitment program. Just since January ... Brooks Instruments, Flowmaster, K-Patents, Talon Technical Sales, Thuemling Instrument Co. and VorTek Instruments.

Welcome to my Blog.  As you can see from the picture, I am not someone who's grown up in the computer age.  My first thought when I was told "you should do a blog" was that it might be clog dancing in a marsh (blogging).  I get "media"—I was an English major in school.  But I don't really get "Social Media."

But I do like the notion that I can talk directly to folks in the industry about what I am thinking and hearing about the marketplace, the players, the issues, the opportunities.  Mostly for the past 30 plus years I have stayed in the background: writing newsletters, planning meetings, working with the Board, balancing the books, creating new programs to serve the industry.  But I love to write so this opportunity appeals to me.