In 2015, the Tilt-Up Concrete Association Board of Directors made the decision to dissolve all standing committees. This is not uncommon. Many boards employ a zero-based committee structure where each year begins with a clean committee slate. The goal is to avoid stagnation and stay flexible and future-oriented, while also increasing the frequency in which new leadership opportunities arise. Instead of working to populate an outdated matrix of committees, the TCA has opted to work more informally in small groups around specific tasks or goals. Their work has been short and result-oriented.

To better communicate these opportunities, the TCA maintains a fluid set of what we are calling Categories of Engagement (COE). Each COE listed below represents a subject or topic around which activity can be organized. The purpose of these COE is to stimulate conversation, facilitate collaboration, and gather feedback. While each COE will have TCA staff assigned to them to keep the ball rolling, they will be somewhat unstructured in order to avoid meaningless meetings and death by committee. The products of these groups are not pre-programmed. They are meant to stimulate self-organized subcategories or task groups in support of new projects and new ideas. COE subcategories are charged with identifying new leaders, and they are free to focus on adding industry and member value over process bureaucracy.

JOIN AN EXISTING CATEGORY OF ENGAGEMENT

If one of the active COE are of interest to you, visit the corresponding webpage and familiarize yourself with the work they are doing. If you would like to get involved, use the link to the form found on that page to express interest and share your contact information. A member of the group’s leadership will be in touch to bring you up to speed. If for some reason the group is full, no worries. Check out some of the other groups, wait for another to form, or propose a new category of engagement yourself!

Some groups benefit from broad participation, others from involvement of a smaller selection of subject-matter experts. Either way, group size is critical to the productivity of the effort. For each COE, TCA staff and group leadership will work together to establish and maintain the ideal number of participants.

PROPOSE A NEW CATEGORY OF ENGAGEMENT

Something missing? If there is a subject you are passionate about or a project you have in mind for the industry, let us know. Use the form at tilt-up.org/engagement to communicate your idea and the role you are willing to play in its execution. TCA leaders will review your submittal and, if it is accepted, help you build a team to go after it. Proposals should be specific in nature and of limited scope and duration.

Learn more at tilt-up.org/engagement.