MTAS Mustard for weeks ended 4-5-19 and 4-12-19

 

Good Morning MTAS,

Before I let another week get away from me, I wanted to spend a few minutes catching you up on things happening at MTAS.

I’ll start this time with celebrations. Over the last two weeks we had two work anniversaries. The first of the two just happened to be on April Fool’s Day, and also happened to be a 20 year anniversary (no joke!). Congratulations to Warren. The other celebrant was Rex on the tenth. Thanks guys for your long-term dedication and commitment to MTAS!

The first week of this month I attended the TCMA conference in Knoxville. One of the presentations was on work life balance. The speaker said the balance is a myth, and if you look at the numbers, it’s true. If you spend nine hours away from home at work, and eight hours sleeping, you don’t have nine hours left in the day to equate “balance.” Instead, he suggested that we should look for harmony. The two worlds co-exist within us and should not be fighting against each other. I liked this new way of looking at the subject and found it refreshing and enlightening. I just condensed an hour and a half presentation into a few sentences, but I hope you find the concept helpful.

While at the conference, I gave the MTAS update. I shared with the participants that MTAS celebrates its 70^th anniversary (today is actually THE day!), and that last year MTAS staff took in 2,443 hours of professional development, had 3,714 field visits, 51,146 contacts and 171,955 website visitors. I discussed in broad terms the budget, approximately $8.2 million of which roughly $6.4 million is spent on salaries and benefits. I concluded by talking about our future: the mission, vision and values, and the soon (very soon) to be released strategic plan for the next five years.

Last week I gave a presentation on parliamentary procedure to WestStar. It was an impressive group, and I’m still amazed at the hunger people have for education on the subject. I think I’m pretty nerdy from getting so excited about this stuff, but then I talk to others and realize I’m not alone. What a great day that was. I hope you’re able to find similar joys in your work. Later in the week I spoke to the UTK student chapter of ICMA. I was part of a panel discussion, and I talked about what I look for in resumes and interviews. The students were receptive and that made me excited too because students are our future and it was nice to see them engaged in what comes next for them (and us, because this is potentially a future candidate pool for us).

I hope that I represented you well as I spoke to these various groups. You are the reason that MTAS is so successful and I happily give you shout outs whenever I can. What you do is important, it matters, it makes a difference, and I appreciate your efforts.

Enjoy your abbreviated work week this week!
Margaret