MTAS Mustard for weeks ended 3-8 and 3-15 and 3-22-19

 

Good Afternoon MTAS,

A few weeks have passed since my last Mustard, and I apologize for the delay in my communication. A lot of fun and interesting things have happened during that time, so let me bring you up to speed.

The week of March 4, I travelled west. I visited with staff in the Nashville, Jackson, Martin and Memphis offices. The office in Memphis moved upstairs in the AgriCenter building, and if I hadn’t driven around the property, I wouldn’t have known I was in the same facility. The #3 suite is a nice office space and I thank the guys there for the grand tour of the new suite. The week of March 11, I attended an IPS leadership team meeting; I gave the MTAS overview at the IPS new employee orientation; and then I rounded out the week with the consultants in Cookeville. Then last week I attended the TML Legislative Conference in Nashville. What struck me about that conference was the number of people that came up to me to tell me what a great staff we have at MTAS. I couldn’t stop smiling, and that’s because of you and the great customer service you give. It gets noticed, and passed on to me. Thank you!

The UT family campaign has finished, and I want to give you a round of applause and a big high five for your efforts and a special thanks to Armintha for being our campaign champion.
MTAS had a 94% participation rate. To give you an idea of how grand this really is, the campus-wide average was 61.6% participation and the IPS average was 81%. If you read the IPS Catch Up that came out this morning, you’d have seen the percentages by agency and the donations by fund. I was so pleased to see that the newly created Employee Assistance Gift Fund brought in 44 donations, the largest number of any of the funds. THANK YOU for giving back to UT and to your fellow coworkers. Well done MTAS!

I’d also like to call out the birthdays and anniversaries that passed over the last three weeks. Michelle B. had a birthday on the 8^th and Frances celebrated another trip around the sun last Saturday. Happy birthday ladies! Also during this time, Richard had a work anniversary on the 17^th - yes, St. Patrick’s Day. I hope you had lots of good luck that day Richard!

I want to leave you with another thank you. I have read each and every work goal you wrote for calendar year 2019. I am truly impressed by the work you plan to accomplish in the year ahead (well, okay, it’s now truly nine months ahead – the first quarter ends this weekend). I appreciate you hearing (and listening) to me and my desire to see MTAS really stretch and reach for greatness. I was very impressed with your creativeness on ways to do your job with greater efficiency and effectiveness, and to better serve our customers. I am really looking forward to seeing you accomplish phenomenal things, and want you to let me know what I can do to help you get there.

If ever I had a theme to a Mustard, this would be the one, with THANK YOU. As the Roman philosopher, Seneca, is credited with saying: “The law of the pleasure in having done anything for another is, that the one almost immediately forgets having given, and the other remembers eternally having received.”

Please accept my gratitude,
Margaret