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 Leading Globally
Presidential Call to Action presented to the House of Delegates at the 39th Biennial Convention, 14 November 2007, Baltimore, Md., USA.
I am both honored and humbled to stand before you as the 27th president of the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. This is such an exciting time for the honor society, and I look forward to both the challenges and the opportunities that will be a part of the next two years.
I have the opportunity to share the 2007-2009 presidential call with you. Every president has the privilege of identifying specific themes or initiatives which will serve as the priorities during the biennium. My presidential call will build upon the work begun by the Futures Advisory Council in the 2003-2005 biennium and completed this year. This work culminated in a document called Vision 2020.** I hope all of you had the opportunity, during this convention, to go to one of the Vision 2020 sessions to hear more about the organization’s goals for 2020 and the opportunities we will have over the next 13 years.
The theme for my presidential call is Leading Globally, and it will build upon several of the key elements suggested in Vision 2020. There are four key themes to my call:
The first theme in my presidential call is to be intentionally global. The honor society chartered its first chapters outside the United States twenty years ago, but we still have work to do to be a truly global organization. Currently, only about 4% of our active membership resides outside the United States. Truly global organizations typically have at least 16-20% of their membership residing outside their national borders.
It’s not just numbers which determine whether an organization is truly global. It’s having a global mindset so all society priorities and actions are viewed in a global context. Our mission certainly is global in scope; so being intentionally global only supports what we have already identified as an important part of our identity and goals.
Our efforts to become a truly global organization, however, have been incremental to date, and the time has come to be much more bold and intentional in our approach. In other words, the honor society must actively move beyond being a U.S. organization with international members. The Vision 2020 goal is to actively increase our membership living outside the United States by the year 2020. The action plan required to achieve this goal must begin immediately. It is my hope that we will see a 20% increase in the number of active members living outside the United States in the 2007-2009 biennium alone.
So what must happen to make this goal a reality? First, organizational principles and priorities must be established that are consistent with that of a truly global organization. In other words, every action we take and every initiative we launch must be looked at in terms of how it affects all our members worldwide. Some of the proposed bylaw changes we voted upon at this House of Delegates support these global organizational principles and priorities.
Secondly, we must form new partnerships and alliances with organizations and associations that have similar missions and goals. We already have productive partnerships and affiliations with organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Council of Nurses (ICN), but there is even more we can do to make these partnerships meaningful and productive.
For example, one partnership I hope the honor society will pursue in the coming biennium is a partnership with the United Nations. We could begin by applying for observer status with the ultimate goal of being an active participant, as a non-governmental entity, in decision making related to global health and nursing issues.
Third, we need to implement a phased governance and operations model for global infrastructure development. We need even more highly qualified, globally aware staff to meet the needs of a global constituency.
We also know that it is difficult to grow international membership from a single site organization, since members and volunteers may feel distanced from the association. We need to explore the development of a physical honor society presence in other countries, whether this means building additional sites or simply sharing office space with other entities. The board needs to prioritize where this development should occur first and our desired outcomes.
Fourth, we need to improve the ability of members to communicate and network in their own language and access honor society services and products without language barriers. We made a good start this past year by installing new software that allows users to access the honor society Web site in multiple languages. We need to continue this trends for all of our knowledge and leadership resources, as well as for the services we provide to members.
Fifth, we need to facilitate more opportunities for international travel, student and faculty exchanges and international residencies. Overwhelmingly, chapter members have told us they are interested in international service learning; they want to travel more, study in other countries and do professional exchanges. The honor society must continue to foster these types of global knowledge exchanges and networking opportunities.
The International Academic Nursing Alliance (IANA) may provide one venue for such global exchanges. IANA is a global, electronic community of nursing academicians who work together in sharing an extensive range of educational and research resources. I challenge every delegate here who is working in an academic setting to register and contribute to this database. Remember this database is only as good as the information that populates it. The process to contribute to the database is simple. Please go back to your schools and encourage them to register their exchanges, areas of expertise and areas of research so that IANA can become a vital resource for global knowledge exchange.
Sixth, we need to continue work on the development of a virtual chapter. Members have repeatedly said they want new and more flexible ways in which they can engage with this organization. The traditional chapter model does not work well for everyone. There are some bright, wonderful nursing students and exceptional nursing leaders who could contribute much to this organization if there were a means for them to do so. This does not mean lowering standards, it simply means finding additional ways for these nurses to join the organization and access our resources.
For example, I can foresee a day when chapters might organize around places of employment or where chapters might be formed around specialty clinical areas, rather than affiliating with an institution of higher education. Perhaps linking everyone to a school of nursing is not the best way to keep all members connected throughout their careers. A task force was appointed this fall to begin working on these issues, and I hope we will be able to announce the chartering of our first virtual chapter by the close of the 2007-2009 biennium.
In addition to be intentionally global, we need to work with members and chapters to help them decipher what being “intentionally global” really means. Focus groups and member surveys have overwhelmingly suggested that honor society members want this organization to be truly global and that they see it as essential to accomplishing our mission. They are open to suggestions as to how best to achieve the goal as an individual member or chapter.
To address this need, I have asked the headquarters staff to begin developing guidelines and programs directed at helping chapters develop a global mindset and to raise consciousness about global nursing and health care issues. Remember, being global and improving the health of the world’s people often begins by doing something in your own backyard, locally or regionally. Being global does not mean that your actions, energies and service can not be directed locally or nationally.
We also need to ensure that global health is one of our priorities for research and development. The honor society established global funding priorities during the past biennium, and members will be encouraged to pursue these topics as part of their research agendas. The honor society also needs to do more to facilitate the creation of global, multi-disciplinary nurse-led research teams. These ideas will be part of the charge to the Research and Scholarship Advisory Council in the coming biennium.
Finally, this organization needs to continue to be involved in global nursing issues through policy advocacy. The honor society has done this for some time, but I feel the contributions we have made the past few biennia in terms of developing position statements on global nursing migration and working with the WHO to develop international standards for nursing education have been especially meaningful. I am very pleased to announce that the honor society will co-sponsor an international conference on violence in the health care workplace with the International Labor Organization and ICN in 2008.
The second theme of my presidential call is building knowledge resources. I believe that the quantity and quality of knowledge resources within the honor society is our greatest strength, yet we all know that knowledge is not static. In fact, it is almost impossible in this technological age to stay current in anything. The honor society needs to explore how technology can be used to keep our knowledge resources cutting edge in terms of currency and breadth and how technology can help members share and access our knowledge resources.
The long term goal identified in Vision 2020 is for the honor society to be the premier knowledge repository in professional nursing by 2020. This is a realistic goal not only given the expertise of our membership in terms of research, leadership and scholarship in nursing, but the knowledge resources this organization already has access to. Becoming a knowledge repository will require both new technology and even more knowledge resources.
In looking at the technology goal, the honor society must continue its efforts to create a technology-enabled global network that allows users a real time, universal portal for access to our knowledge resources. The Virginia Henderson Library was visionary in its time, but we are talking much more. We need technology that allows stakeholders around the world to instantly access state of the art nursing knowledge and best practices that they can apply at the point of care.
In fact, why can’t the honor society create a knowledge repository that uses a process similar to that used by Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia? They call this peer production or open source modeling. In other words, we could create a knowledge repository where members could voluntarily share their collective wisdom and research findings electronically. Perhaps members would use the repository to share their publications, innovations and clinical practice success stories. The honor society’s role might be that of oversight to assure the knowledge included in the repository is current, accurate and that it reflects the high standards for knowledge development for which the honor society is known..
We also need to continue to expand our funding of research grants and scholarships. Thanks to the good work of the Sigma Theta Tau International Foundation for Nursing, the monies available for grants and scholarships increased 25% this past biennium. However, our goal should always be to try and do even better.
We also bear the responsibility to ensure that the monies collected are allocated in the best possible way. One of the tasks I will give the 2007-2009 Research and Scholarship Advisory Council, in conjunction with the foundation, is to take another look at the research grants and scholarships we provide to see whether the number of awards we give is appropriate and whether the amounts are adequate to accomplish the tasks recipients goals.
Finally, the honor society must continue to formalize pathways for the development of new communities of interest. The Chapter Community Building Advisory Council, under Karen Pehrson’s leadership, has been working on this for the past two biennia. Tthey have discovered that many honor society members want to self-organize according to areas of interest. For example, members interested in heart failure might choose to organize as a sub-group within the honor society to explore that interest and share their work.
In the 2005-2007 biennium, seven communities of interest were piloted within the honor society. One community was focused on developing clinical master's programs in two East African countries. Another was an academic-service partnership which sought to radically reform the way nursing and health care is delivered to people living with chronic illness. A third focused on helping members get published in peer-review journals.
These pilot communities are great examples of how honor society members may be able to create new links, and they are also examples of the opportunities these communities represent in terms of networking, building, sharing and developing our knowledge resources.
The third theme of my presidential call is developing leadership. There isn’t a nurse who does not need some level of leadership skill. Members, overwhelmingly, tell this organization that they want to further develop their leadership skills.
Like knowledge building, leadership development is not new for the honor society. The International Leadership Institute has long been a part of our organizational development. Currently, we have the Board Leadership Development Program, formerly known as Omada, for board level leadership development and the Mentored Leadership Program, formerly known as Chiron. We also have the Geriatric Nursing Leadership Academy and the Maternal-Child Nursing Leadership Academy, which is co-sponsored by the Johnson and Johnson Pediatric Institute. But we can do more!
There are 138,000 active members, and only a small fraction of members participate in these programs, partly because the breadth and depth of these programs does not meet the needs of all of our members..The honor society needs to develop more comprehensive leadership programs across the career span–from the staff nurse who wants to improve his or her personal leadership skills to the formal certification of a nurse manager to the skill development of the global health care leader.
Developing such a multi-level leadership development program has been the focus of the work done by the Leadership Advisory Council during the past biennium. I hope to act on their recommendations during the coming biennium and to explore expansion of the International Leadership Institute and its leadership training and certificate programs.
We will need to partner with other organizations dedicated to leadership development to make this a reality. Many wonderful programs already exist, and partnerships could do much to expand the leadership skills of nurses worldwide.
We also need to develop templates for formal mentoring programs at the chapter level. Many chapters have successful mentoring programs for new officers as well as new or transfer members. Other chapters have been less successful.. We need to identify best practices and provide a template for chapters to follow to create such programs.
The honor society must also craft more programs directed at keeping retired members and new members more fully engaged. This will be especially important in the coming decade, as like the nursing profession in general, many of our members are nearing retirement age. The priority needs of our retired members will likely be very different than those of our newest members.. Although I hope we can link the two age groups through networking and mentoring opportunities, we need to stay tuned to what both groups need and want so that this organization will continue to be meaningful and relevant to them.
In focus groups and surveys, young members have repeatedly told the honor society they will continue to be involved in this organization if we provide opportunities for them to be engaged in meaningful, purposeful service. Our young members should not have to wait a certain number of years to be elected to regional or international office or to serve in important positions within the organization. We need the vitality and fresh ideas that our youngest members provide, and I will work hard to assure that these young members will be represented at all levels of this organization during my tenure.
I also would like to announce that a Deans and Chief Nursing Officers Task Force was created this past summer to identify strategies for better merging the contributions of academe and service. Possible partnerships are already emerging that will help us make a meaningful difference in this ongoing leadership challenge.
To further develop our leadership resources, I am establishing a Membership Advisory Council (MAC) for the 2007-2009 biennium to examine the ongoing problems of retention and membership involvement at the chapter level. These are core issues in most chapters, and we need to direct more energy to addressing these problems.
The final theme for my presidential call is providing service. While I believe that recognizing nursing excellence is a very important part of who we are, I also believe that we should place more attention on our mission of helping others.
I feel the key to membership involvement may be service. Service is what brought many of us to nursing. I know that many members and chapters are actively involved in providing service locally, nationally and internationally. We need to do a better job of linking the service that is provided with the honor society as a key part of who we are. My goal is that the honor society will be more openly engaged in service projects which further our mission.
What should those service projects be? How can we best utilize the intellectual and social capital of our membership to make a difference in the health of the world’s people? These are important questions. One way I hope to answer them is by establishing a Service Advisory Council for the coming biennium. This group will be asked to explore the creation of an international service brand for this organization. For example, the Lions Club is known for providing eyeglasses to those who might not have access to them otherwise. Having such a brand would give direction to many members and chapters who want to know how to help. Perhaps a new service focus or goal should be established every biennium. These are all ideas the Service Advisory Council will be asked to explore.
I also think the honor society should be more visible in responding to national and international disasters. The honor society membership is composed of the leading scholars, researchers, leaders and clinicians in nursing in their membership. Who better to be there at the scene of a disaster and offer their expertise than our nurses?
One way we could do this is by partnering with the International Red Cross or other global entities to mobilize trained member volunteers who want to respond. Perhaps our role will be less overt, but I think there is a portion of our membership who would like to be more involved, and the honor society can do more to facilitate this.
The honor society could also establish a roster of nurse experts for consultation in natural and man-made disasters. This could be a part of the Volunteer Interest Profile, which we encourage all members to fill out to become more involved.
Finally, the honor society needs to develop further incentives at the chapter level for service contributions at the local, regional, national and international level. In other words, if service is meaningful and if chapters and members are actively working toward achieving the organization’s mission and vision, then those efforts should be valued and recognized.
I would encourage you to take some time and explore the honor society Web site to review some of the initiatives I have talked about such as IANA, the International Leadership Institute, the Best Practices page for chapters, existing service opportunities and the unique programs that are available for retired members. Also look at the Registry of Nursing Research database, the honor society’s position statements, the many publications available to you through Nursing Knowledge International and the giving opportunities available to you through the foundation to meet your personal philanthropic goals. Remember that there are a myriad of resources and opportunities available in this organization if you take the time to look for them.
In conclusion, I do believe that accomplishing the goals of Vision 2020, as well as my presidential call, are possible if we work together. The next two years will be filled with challenges and opportunities, but we are ready for what lies ahead. Please join with me in making Leading Globally a reality! |