Bill Taunton, FCSI

Dear Fellow Members,

 

Today I want to talk about the importance of communication and how the lack of good communication can affect the best ideas that we can generate. 

Yes indeed. In the last couple of months two great ideas generated at the World Wide level and by your America's Division Board of Trustees almost died, just because of miscommunication or misunderstandings between the parts involved.

a) We all saw a lot of e-mails generated by the World Wide Board of Trustees and the Education Foundation about a program that is under development to attract young talent into our industry. Fortunately, everybody involved in the issue was able to set aside their personal views and talk to each other on behalf of FCSI. The result was very positive and now everybody is working with a common perspective of the industry requirements. 

b) Another example of miscommunication came from an agreement that we were supposed to sign with SINDAL to become partners in the development of FCSI in Brazil. SINDAL misunderstood FCSI-TA's reason for further developing a Latin American Chapter and decided to cancel the signing of the contract - an event that was scheduled to take place during The FCSI-TA Symposium in Anaheim. Again in this case, we all sat together and talked through the issues and finally got to another positive result. I am happy to report that we are back on track to forge a partnership with SINDAL that will further develop FCSI presence in Brazil.

These two major issues could have ended in derailing huge efforts and big possibilities for our industry in general, and for FCSI in particular. Fortunately that did not happen.

For someone like me, whose native language is not English but the language in which we officially communicate to the membership, communication is extremely important as any misinterpretation could potentially create chaos and distrust. 

Every one of you, our members in The Americas, should understand that even when we might have different origins, cultures, opinions, religions, languages, etc., we still share something very important...our business and our industry, and we should preserve and protect it. 

In FCSI-TA we are in the initial steps of changing what for years was considered universal - the US way of doing business. Well, the reality is that within our continent, The Americas, we have several different cultures, languages, and ways of doing business; just like what our fellow members face in EAME or in AP every day, and we should be prepared to learn and grow from those differences.

When we respect each other's opinions, we will be able to say that we have finally been able to become a real worldwide organization, so let's keep this in mind as we move forward and remember again, the individual success of anyone by itself is nothing compared to the whole industry success.

Thank you all and best regards.

William Taunton, FCSI-TA - Chair

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FCSI Midwest Chapter Reception 2014