A Message From Your President

Jeff McHenry

                   

I am not an expert on advertising, but one of the “truths” that has been passed along to me by my marketing colleagues at Microsoft is that you need to repeat a message many, many times before people “get it.”  I have some first-hand empirical evidence of this:  Every time we pass a Subway my daughters exclaim “Eat Fresh,” and whenever we visit Macy’s my daughters declare “Way to Shop.”  (Sometimes they’ll reverse the slogans, just to see if I’m paying attention...but that probably says more about my parenting skills than it does about the effectiveness of repeated advertising.)  With that in mind, I’ve devoted each of my first three Message From Your President columns to an update on SIOP’s four strategic goals.  I’ve done this because I think it’s important for each of you, as members and stakeholders, to know where SIOP is headed.  It’s important so that you can find ways to jump in and contribute, if you’re excited about the SIOP vision.  It’s important so that you can voice your concerns and help us course-correct, if you feel that SIOP is off track.  And it’s important so that you can give an account of SIOP and I-O psychology the next time you have an opportunity to talk about our profession with a business leader, a government policy maker, an HR colleague, or an outstanding student who’s considering I-O as a career.

So, even though by nature I enjoy variety and creativity, I’m going to heed the advice of my marketing colleagues and once again devote most of this column to an update on our strategic goals and initiatives.  In my last column, I described some initiatives that we decided to launch in support of our four strategic goals during a strategic planning meeting this past September.  In this column, I tell you about early progress on those initiatives.  I hope that you’ll be impressed by the work that is already underway.  Even more important, I hope you’ll read something that will inspire you to get involved in one of the initiatives, if you’re not already.  I expect that you’ll continue to hear about these goals and initiatives in upcoming A Message From Your President columns by current President-Elect Lois Tetrick and incoming President-Elect Gary Latham, so that you begin to commit the goals to memory, as I have, even if they’re not quite as catchy as “Eat Fresh.”

Finally, I’d like to close with some personal thoughts about the past year and my service to SIOP, just because it gives me a chance to do a little creative musing and also because it’s one of the few perks that are allowed soon-to-be-ex-presidents as they prepare to leave office.

Strategic Planning: An Update on Initiatives

Our four SIOP strategic goals are:

• Visible and trusted authority on work-related psychology
• Advocate and champion of I-O psychology to policy makers
• Organization of choice of I-O professionals
• Model of integrated scientist–practitioner effectiveness that values research, practice, and education equally and seeks higher standards in all three areas

In the following paragraphs, I provide a brief description of some of the initiatives that have been launched in support of each goal.  This is not an exhaustive account of all the work that is underway, but I hope it gives you a sense for the direction we’re heading and the progress we’re making.

Visible and Trusted Authority on Work-Related Psychology

• We recognize that we need professional PR and marketing help.  We have established some preliminary PR goals for SIOP and are working on a request for information that will help us select a PR firm that can help us.  We also will get some advice from a group of MBA students at Tulane University who will study SIOP and provide us with recommendations on how we can market ourselves to key stakeholdhers more effectively.  Thanks to Adrienne Colella and Doug Reynolds for their great leadership.
• Our next President-Elect Gary Latham has begun discussions with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) about how we can help educate SHRM members about data-driven, empirically based HR practices.
• We have organized a media event for the upcoming SIOP conference in New York City.  Doug Reynolds and several others involved in the Visibility Committee and visibility work have identified a number of people who write on workplace issues to come and hear about research that will be presented at our conference.  We hope this leads to several stories that feature contributions I-O psychology is making to more productive and healthier workplaces.

Advocate and Champion of I-O Psychology to Policy Makers

• We have joined the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences, which helps lobby on behalf of funding for psychological research.  Dan Ilgen and Gilad Chen are our representatives on the Federation Board.  In addition, Leaetta Hough is the incoming president of the Foundation for the Advancement of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (FABBS), which helps promote better understanding of behavioral and psychological research to policy makers and key influentials.
• Thanks to the work of our APA Council Reps and many members involved in APA, we have been able to get several SIOP members placed on APA boards and committees where it’s critical for SIOP to have a voice.

Organization of Choice of I-O Professionals

• Beginning with our 2008 SIOP conference in San Francisco, we will shift to a 3-day format.  Steven Rogelberg chaired a committee that developed a great plan for an enhanced conference program that will help ensure that the conference continues to be a must-attend event for SIOP members.
• Mickey Quiñones and Donald Truxillo recently completed a draft proposal for establishing an institutional research board, which will help us track membership trends and better understand who our members are and how to address membership needs.
• We are taking several steps to use technology to provide a better member experience, including an online process that will help match volunteers to committees (Talya Bauer and Mickey Quiñones), an electronic newsletter for communicating time-critical information (Steve Ashworth), and an online SIOP Solutions that will enable members to keep track of progress on key initiatives and key dates in our SIOP calendar (Lisa Finkelstein and the SIOP Administrative Office).

Model of Integrated Scientist–Practitioner Effectiveness That Values Research, Practice and Education Equally and Seeks Higher Standards in All Three Areas

• We are set to launch a new journal, edited by Paul Sackett and modeled after the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, which will feature articles on topics of interest to all SIOP members and include commentaries by individuals who bring diverse perspectives (e.g., empirical research, professional practice, theory, public policy, ethics, etc.).  
• We are about to launch a project that will help define and clarify an “integrated science–practice model for I-O psychology.”  One outcome of this effort will be a set of behavioral guidelines for science–practice integration which can be used for a variety of purposes (e.g., training and education, professional recognition).

There are at least 40–50 additional big and small initiatives underway that are contributing directly to SIOP’s strategic goals.  Many of these are discussed at our SIOP Executive Committee meeting.  For more information, you can review our Executive Committee minutes on the SIOP Web site, www.siop.org/reportsandminutes/default.aspx.

Finally, I also wanted to note that Kurt Kraiger has formed a blue ribbon panel that will be making recommendations on how to better align the SIOP committee structure and governance with our mission and strategic plan.

If you have input or feedback on any of these initiatives, or if you want to get involved, please let Lois Tetrick (incoming president) or me know, or speak directly with the individuals I’ve mentioned in this article.  We need your help and support!

Some Final Musings

It’s been a wonderful, action-packed year for me as your SIOP president.  I’ve enjoyed every minute of it...except perhaps for 1 week when our CEO moved up the deadline on one of my big projects by 2 weeks, I was trying to complete last-minute preparations for a SIOP Executive Committee meeting, my three daughters needed to be shuttled between about 20 extracurricular events that were crammed into their calendars (all taking place in different parts of town, of course), and my wife took ill very suddenly and ended up in the hospital overnight.  That week was a little extreme!

I’ve had an opportunity to do talks about SIOP and I-O psychology at several universities and local I-O meetings this past year.  One of the questions I’m always asked is, “Why?  Why did you want to be SIOP president?”  What’s hard to capture here in writing is the questioners’ tone because I think the question they really wanted to ask was, “What in the world were you thinking when you agreed to do this?  Were you on drugs?  Did you have a screw loose that day?  Why would anyone volunteer for a job that pays so little and requires so much work?”

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of volunteer work.  Some of it has exhausted me, and some of it has energized me.  When I compare the two experiences, I find that I get energized when I am:

1. Working on issues that I care about.  If you’re working on issues that you care about, it doesn’t feel like work.  That’s how I feel about I-O psychology.  We make a difference in people’s lives. Through my service to SIOP, I have an opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives.

2. Doing work that has an impact.  Over the course of my life, I’ve spent a fair amount of time working on committees that had no empowerment to make things happen, and even a few where the chief objective of most committee members was hijacking committee agendas and meetings to help ensure that nothing could get done.  In SIOP, we get things done.  We decide to create new education and training guidelines...and it gets done.  We decide to launch a new journal and a new conference...and it gets done.  We decide to start a Foundation with a goal of a $1 million endowment...and it gets done.  I love that about SIOP!

3. Working with people whom I admire and enjoy.  Early in my career, I had the opportunity through SIOP service to work with numerous people who mentored me, both personally and professionally:  Milt Hakel, Elaine Pulakos, Rick Klimoski, Paul Sackett, Ben Schneider, Bill Macey, Katherine Klein, and Kevin Murphy, to name a few.  What an education I received, without paying a penny!  As I’ve grown grayer and continued to serve in SIOP, I’ve had the opportunity to interact with hundreds of other wonderful people who have made me wiser professionally, provided me with career and personal coaching, came to my aid in times of need, made me laugh when I needed it most, and shared their friendship.  My experience is the opposite of Groucho Marx’s: I am thrilled to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members!

SIOP is not the only organization that can provide this type of experience.  I know many of you are engaged in very meaningful volunteer work.  But if you do care deeply about I-O psychology, as I do, and you are looking for a rewarding place to invest your time and talents, I strongly encourage you to consider SIOP.  There are many opportunities to contribute, and you can make a huge difference...even if you’re not crazy enough to want to be SIOP president some day.