Institutions, in the broadest sense of the word, benefit from a common goal and direction in order to unify the motivation and effort that their members make on a daily basis. This is true for institutions of all kinds, whether non-profit, governmental or commercial in nature. Some authors even recommend that individuals or families should develop their own mission statements.
As human organisations, institutions naturally grow in complexity without necessarily growing in effectiveness. They require a constant effort to maintain unity and adapt to their changing circumstances. Developing a vision and mission statement, and sharing them with the members of the institution is therefore a means of making us check our motivations and actions and ensure that they are aligned with those of our institution. Values provide simple criteria for distinguishing between activities that belong or do not belong within the institution.
The new issue of Engineering & Technology (the IET's main member magazine) reminds us (on page 28) that the IET has a vision, a mission statement and a set of values. I believe that these are worth knowing about and would have been better placed on page 1.
Simply stating these things in an obscure magazine article represents a top-down or centre-out approach that seems highly appropriate in the case of the IET: we are members of an esteemed learned society that is governed on our behalf by the wisest members of our profession, who we have elected into their honorary positions. Those people have decided that the IET needed an explicit statement of its vision, mission and values, and they either wrote those statements themselves or authorised other people's ideas to go forward. They have given us a framework to assess our own contributions to our institution and profession.
According to E&T, the IET defines itself as follows:
Vision: Working to engineer a better world
Mission: To inspire, inform and influence the global engineering community, supporting technology and innovation to meet the needs of society
Values: Integrity, excellence, teamwork
So, what does this mean for the IET Tribology Network and its members? By the last count we have 545 network members from a total of 160,000 IET members. We have 43 members of the associated online community, of which a growing proportion are active engineers and scientists. We have an active committee of around six volunteers with part-time support from two IET staff members. To be blunt, we are far from significant to the IET globally.
Nevertheless, the IET Tribology Network deserves to exist and grow in stature because of the universal power of our theme. Tribology is the technology of physical interfaces in relative motion. It touches all aspects of engineering in such a profound way that it can be hard to perceive and recognise. Tribology is a part of so many engineers' roles yet it is rarely spoken of by name outside specialist circles.
Tribology has multidisciplinary value and deserves a strong voice in the IET as one of the few professional engineering institutions that actively bridges the unfortunate gaps that can exist between the electrical, mechanical and manufacturing domains.
It is easy to imagine that many of the remaining 159,500 IET members are "secret tribologists". Perhaps we could reach out to some those people in a way that benefits and motivates them.
I think it would be interesting to share the ideas of IET Tribology Network members on this.
How should we define us as an organisation? What should be our vision, mission and values? What activities should we undertake to embody and apply these abstract concepts in the real world?
Most of all, do you have the motivation to become an active member of this network and help to drive its activities in the direction that is important to you? What vision, mission and values would you like to represent here and how will you go about doing so?
Please sign up to the online network and register your thoughts below.