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Come 'Leap' and 'Blog' with Us

Sometimes all it takes is a leap of faith.

In the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, our hero lndy comes to a point in a cave where he needs to quickly get to the other side of a ravine that's 100 ft across and has a sheer drop 100 ft straight down. The only way to get across that ravine is to make a leap of faith.

As he begins his 100-foot leap, he finds there is a bridge he can cross after all; it just wasn't perfectly clear until he made the jump. The bridge actually blended in with all the sharp jagged rocks. Before making the jump, he just knew it was going to work. He didn't know how, but he knew the outcome was going to be successful.

Take a look at your enterprise. Have you made your leap of faith with your team? Not just your engineering cohorts, but with IT, accounting, management, operations, and maintenance, to name a few? The year is off to a rocking start, and you and your team should be ready to roll.

A few years back, industry honchos talked about eliminating the islands of automation. At the same time, business managers also cut out the idea of one person working in a vacuum on a project.

In today's world, it is all about teamwork and understanding the greater goal: the company's success.

That goal is easy to talk about, and there should be no one in the organization that does not agree with it. The problems often occur, however, when the company tries to implement that goal.

Does everyone agree how to achieve success? Do you buy in to management's strategy? How should management deliver the goal?

If you look at Fortune magazine's top 100 companies to work for, management and workers alike talk about eliminating barriers between bosses and workers and have an open discussion on what the goals are and how they will get done.

Other companies not mentioned in the Fortune story prefer to manage change a different way. A directive comes down from above saying, "Here is what we are doing, and if you don't like it you can look for a new job."

Both styles are effective. Both end up with results. However, most people would agree team building is much more effective than forcing a directive down people's throats. The simple fact is, with a true team approach, there is greater buy-in.

But that team approach only works if there is buy in and excellent communication among all parties involved.

Along those lines, InTech is starting up a new form of communicating. We are launching our own blog. To the uninitiated, a blog is a Web site where, in this case, editors post entries on a regular basis and readers can respond. The term "blog" is short for "Weblog" or Web log.

We believe our blog is a way to get a quick look at industry issues and events, and offer insight and opinion on an immediate basis. You probably have seen some industry blogs already out there; some good, some not so good.

We won't get caught up in marketing hype, but rather, give insight into industry issues. And the great part is you get to talk back. This is one more way we are striving to make InTech and ISA a much closer community. When you get a moment, go to www.isa.org/intech/blog/ and share your thoughts.

So, it just goes to say, talk to me at ghale@isa.org, (919) 990-9275, or www. isa.org/intech/blog/.

By Gregory Hale, InTech, Editor

So, it just goes to say, talk to me at ghale@isa.org, (919) 990-9275, or www. isa.org/intech/blog/.

Copyright Instrument Society of America Feb 2006
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved