Building on a Strong Foundation

Imagine you are a construction foreman. You and your team of employees have been assigned to work on a 100-story skyscraper. The building is already halfway completed. Your job is to take over for a while. You will assess the work that is completed, build 10 more floors, and then hand the work over to the next team in line.

In order for you to complete your work successfully, what would be important to you? In other words, how will you define success when the next team comes along to take over?

For me, it would first be important to know that all of the work completed below me was quality workmanship. If I am building the 51^st floor on top of 50 floors that were built poorly, it doesn’t really matter how great of a job I do. You can’t build a beautiful and reliable space on top of a bad foundation without a lot of extra work. I will be counting on the team that preceded me.

At the same time, I want to make sure that my work is just as accurate and trustworthy. I want the next team in line to know I did my job and they can rely on that fact. Construction of a skyscraper is no easy task. Everybody involved, start to finish, has to be at the top of his or her game.

I think about this analogy almost every spring when the planning for our annual print and mail industry conferences is well under way. Sure, I enjoy spending a few days with friends I have not seen in person for a while. I also enjoy visiting different parts of this remarkable country. Whether I will be attending ACUP+ with the beautiful, scenic views in Vancouver, Washington, or IPMA in historic Buffalo, New York, near the breathtaking Niagara Falls; whether I will be enjoying the food and hospitality of Austin, Texas, at the Inkjet Summit or taking in the nightlife of Las Vegas at Printing United; I am certain I will find myself wanting to make the most of every touristy minute I can make.

More importantly, though, conferences are about professional development. Networking and education opportunities exist to help us become better at our work. We learn from each other. We share our experiences and our knowledge.

Quality work matters to those who attend conferences. The people who attend not only want to be good at what they do, they want to be great. Their investment of time and money into attending is evidence to me that what they do is more than just a job. They believe in what they do, and they care about the organizations they support.

However, there is a third and often-overlooked component to conference attendance; this aspect of our professional development is typically something we do not think about, and it goes back to my skyscraper analogy.

When we attend conferences, we are actually fulfilling a larger, more important role. Our efforts toward excellence are actually honoring the work of those who have gone on before us. We are building on their work. Our coming together is an action of gratitude toward them and an expression of appreciation and respect. We demonstrate that we value our past when we invest in the present and the future.

We take seriously that our industry and our organizations depend upon us for a better tomorrow. Each generation of professionals is working towards a future success – a success where the past and the present, come together with purpose. It is a big picture kind of thing.

So, when you are attending a conference this year, attend for the education. Attend for the experience. Attend with the understanding that there is a master blueprint, and we are all part of something bigger.

“The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight,
but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow