President's Column
(October 2002)

Your October Assignment - VOTE

Once a year, every voting member of the IEEE has an opportunity to change the faces of those who lead our organizational units. Most don't take advantage of this power, leaving control in the hands of a few. If you're one of the voting few, you have power; I mean real power. Surprisingly, this power not only can change the IEEE for the short term, but the long term as well. How does this work?

If you haven't already voted this year, find your IEEE ballot and look at the various elected positions. You'll find that several of the positions have tenures lasting two years. To understand what this means as far as power within the IEEE, I'll provide an example.

Let's consider the position of "Region-Y Director-elect", where "Y" represents one of the 6 regions within the United States. The Region-Y Director-elect serves two years as Director-elect, two years as Director, and two years as Past-Director. This means that this person will have influence shaping the direction of Region Y for six years, plus two years each to serve on the boards of directors for the Regional Activities Board (RAB), IEEE-USA and the IEEE. In any institution, this is real power.

Now let's consider elected positions of one year each. These comprise the presidents-elect of the IEEE, IEEE-USA and the IEEE Standards Association, and the vice-president-elect of the Technical Activities Board (TAB). Though these individuals serve as an "elect" for only one year each, they also serve a year in the actual elected position and then a year as a "past-whatever." Thus, these individuals have a three-year period of influence. If you vote, you have an opportunity to exercise real power.

The minimum amount of long-term power comes with exercising your right to vote. This is what I will call hidden power. I'm not sure how this is exercised in each of the different organizational units, so I will discuss the positions that I know more about. The influence of the past-presidents of IEEE-USA continues for several years. The most obvious continuing power comes from membership on the IEEE-USA Nominations and Appointments (N&A) Committee. The current past-president of IEEE-USA (who is still on the IEEE-USA Board of Directors) simply serves as a member of the committee. The current past past-president of IEEE-USA (who is no longer on the IEEE-USA BOD) is the chair of the N & A Committee. Depending upon the particular individual, the past-president of IEEE-USA may actually exercise more influence on the direction of the IEEE as a past-president than he/she exercised while serving as president.

Even more interesting is that each of the individuals you vote for also have more "hidden" influence or power, which in turn means that you also have more influence or power when you vote. What is this additional power? Unless you know how the IEEE works, you may not know that IEEE members do not directly elect a high percentage of the various board positions. Instead, the members you elect elect these officers.

For instance, the IEEE-USA Assembly is comprised of IEEE-USA board members who are elected by U.S. IEEE members. These assembly members are the three presidents, Region 1-6 directors and the two members-at-large. The remaining officers of IEEE-USA are nominated by IEEE-USA's N & A Committee and elected by the IEEE-USA Assembly. Thus, this assembly elects IEEE-USA's four vice-presidents and secretary/treasurer.

Even though the past-presidents of IEEE-USA, as well as most of the other IEEE organizational units, have the influence described earlier, their influence is often not as significant as might be expected. This influence is greatly weakened by the fact that the IEEE-USA Assembly and board members are also able to make nominations from the floor immediately prior to approving the slate of nominees for your consideration. Either way, you have influence because you elect these people and also have the power to nominate others for consideration by all of the above.

I hope by now you have an understanding of some of the power and influence that the few voting members of the IEEE have. If you want to influence the direction of the IEEE, you absolutely must VOTE. If you want to have even more power, you might encourage others to VOTE. And if you want to maximize your power and influence, you might exercise the most rare power of all: suggest individual nominees for IEEE elected office.

So, as an IEEE voting member, you have the power to help shape the direction of your Institute for many years. So get out and vote.

Note to Editors: Please feel free to adapt this IEEE-USA President's Column for use in your local IEEE print and electronic publications. For more information, please contact Chris McManes at c.mcmanes@ieee.org.