August 1998 Charting a New Course As his retirement as executive director of INFORMS draws near, Randy Robinson reflects on his three-year tour and looks forward to the future By Peter Horner In July of 1995, following a successful 31-year professional career that included a five-year stint as manager of Decision Technologies and Operations Research at McDermott International, Inc., Randy Robinson was named the first executive director of INFORMS. During the past three years, Robinson guided the Institute through a critical phase notable for the merging of two separate offices and organizations, ORSA and TIMS, as well as the development of several new programs and journals. Robinson's involvement with the association dates back to 1974. He was particularly active during the merger, serving as the last president-elect of TIMS, as chair of the OR/MS Board and as president of the original INFORMS corporation. In January, Robinson announced that he would retire as executive director on Aug. 1, 1998, shortly after his 65th birthday. "The position of executive director — highly rewarding as it is — does not offer the chance to actually work in our field," Robinson said at the time of his announcement. "I am eager to do that once more." OR/MS Today editor Peter Horner interviewed Robinson in mid-July as the process to name his successor was drawing to a conclusion. (Robinson will remain on the job until the new executive director, who had not been named as of press time, is available.) During the interview, Robinson reflected back on his three-year tour of duty as executive director of INFORMS and looked ahead to the next phase in his life. While Robinson isn't sure exactly where his career will go from here, he's certain OR/MS will go along for the ride, just as it always has. As the founding executive director of INFORMS, you took over the reins at a critical time for the Institute following the merger of ORSA and TIMS. What were your top priorities? I think in many ways we were like a start-up company even though we were combining two societies that had been in operation since the early 1950s. The biggest thing on my mind — and I believe on the minds of the other members of the Executive Committee at that time — was making the merger a success. The merger had been consuming so much time of the councils of both ORSA and TIMS. So many years, so much work and psychic energy had gone into it and there was such a strong vote of support from the membership that it needed to succeed. I didn't know what problems were going to jump out at us in the beginning. I knew we had certain challenges to face such as combining the staffs of the two organizations from two different locations. We were doing away with duplication because you had two separate organizations, each of which was self-contained. We wanted to do it in a way that was workable and fair and considerate of the people involved. I think we achieved that pretty well. So my initial concern was to successfully combine the two formerly separate organizations and get through the start-up growing pains as quickly as possible so we could move ahead with the business of the profession. Such as... This was pretty well spelled out in the merger plans. One challenge was the need to address the lack of visibility and appreciation of the profession in the corporate world. Another was the need to address the oncoming era of electronic publishing. We're first and foremost a publisher of scientific journals. If the demand for our journals diminishes or disappears, the Society is going to diminish or disappear. It needs to innovate and adapt to new ways of doing business. As we surveyed the different activities that we were involved in, there were operational issues and challenges and problems and opportunities that needed to be clarified and addressed. One of the primary reasons given for the merger was the idea that it would boost membership by attracting kindred societies as well as other unattached professionals. Yet, three years later, membership remains stagnant and no outside societies have opted in. What happened? I am very disappointed about that. We have been talking quite a lot about it recently. I hope the Society will take it on as a top priority. I don't think there's anything fundamental that is holding us back; it's just a matter of adjusting what we are doing to facilitate the growth. From the beginning we hoped to grow by attracting people to our subdivisions. We made the subdivisions more attractive by giving them more freedom to conduct their activities and more representation on the Board. But that's only part of it. We have to reach out to different groups within the profession who are not aware of what the Society has to offer. We have to make the Society more attractive to professionals who believe it's not sufficiently helpful to them in its current form. We need to understand even better than we do now, sector by sector, what it is that we can do to attract people to join together in the common cause of the profession. We had four members of the Executive Committee (at the INFORMS office in Linthicum, Md.) yesterday, and we were talking about this very topic. We were speculating what the potential membership might be. Before the merger we talked about the number 80,000 as a membership target. That was not based on any study; it was just a feeling we had at the time. Yesterday the number we were talking about was 60,000. None of us are very happy with the 12,000 figure we have now. I think that is way below our potential. So how do you get from 12,000 to 60,000? You make membership growth a priority. I can give you some sweeping generalizations. First of all, we can do a better job of bringing what we have to offer to the attention of prospective members. Second, we need to have services and products that are sufficiently attractive to make people feel they not only want, but need, to join us. Creating a new service or a new product, however, is typically not something you just do in a month or two. It takes considerable effort over a period of time. For example, starting a new journal takes years. As you may know, we are working to launch a new one (Manufacturing and Service Operations Management) right now. We are trying to generate other things like a collection of case studies for teaching. A task force has put in a lot of work over a period of time to get that off the ground, but it's not quite there yet. It will be a wonderful service to the membership. Similarly, we realize our job placement program could be expanded greatly. Those are just some examples. How critical is growth to the long-term success of the Institute? Can it survive at its current membership level? Sure it can survive. Many societies stay at the same membership level for years. However, we would be much better off in terms of meeting the needs of the profession if we were somewhat bigger. We would have more clout and more revenue, and we could use both on behalf of the profession very advantageously. The clout would be useful, for example, in representing the interests of the profession to the outside world. More members usually means more revenue, not just from dues, but more journal subscriptions, more meeting revenue and so on. Additional revenue would enable us to hire staff members to help launch and maintain those initiatives I mentioned earlier. The Board and the active volunteers have all kinds of good things they would like to do, but there seems to be less volunteer time these days to get things done. That means you either don't do them or you hire staff to do them. I personally don't like going into the red in order to hire staff; I just don't think it's the way you do business. Unfortunately, because we don't have enough staff, some programs have had a tough time getting off the ground. There appears to be a trend in professional associations to move away from a heavy reliance on volunteers in favor of hired, professional staff. Care to comment? There is a limit on every volunteer's time. If you have a team of volunteers doing something and the amount of time available to the volunteers dries up because they are really pressed in their regular jobs, then things don't get done. The only alternative besides dropping the program is to have paid staff do it. That situation is seen in many scientific societies. On the other hand, we would view with regret the decline of volunteer participation for several reasons. Volunteers bring to the organization tremendous know-ledge and skills that we would be very, very hard pressed to match with paid staff. Dedicated volunteers also bring exceptional enthusiasm and energy, and, if we assessed the total hours of people time that go into INFORMS, my guess is that more than half comes from volunteers. The editors of our journals, our Board members, the committee chairs are all volunteers. If we had to pay for all of that knowledge and expertise, we would have to have much more revenue. I don't know of any professional society of our size that comes close to having it. Volunteers are notorious for holding meetings and dreaming up projects, but they stumble during the follow-through phase. Can volunteers really "just do it"? Yes. I can tell you from my personal experience as a volunteer and then from this perch later, there are many, many cases in INFORMS where volunteers are doing it and doing it well. The journal editors would be one example. Without them, we would not have journals. Another example close to my heart is the Edelman Prize competition. You'd be amazed at what goes into that from the volunteer community, year after year. They come with enthusiasm and have kept that competition at a high level over a long period of time. There are also many examples of strong partnerships between staff and their corresponding volunteer committee members that produce results. Take our public relations effort, for example. We have a very engaged committee that works well with our director of public relations. The director does most of the actual work — writing press releases, things like that — but the committee adds a huge amount in terms of ideas, insight and wisdom to the program. It's too bad that we don't have a staff partner for every committee. Shouldn't INFORMS be the most efficient organization in the world? After all, its membership is full of "Efficiency Einsteins" who make their living telling other organizations how to run their businesses better. Why don't we use those analytical tools to fix our own house? Well, this was on my personal agenda and I feel badly commenting on it because I'm reminded that I didn't have enough time to do anything about it. I still think it's a good idea, that is, applying our own methods and techniques within INFORMS. Of course, our methods and techniques are, by and large, quantitative and computer-based and they can't address every aspect of management. I don't think any of us would claim that what we do covers every management situation and topic. We should use the tools where they are useful and certainly there is interest in doing that, but it's a matter of priorities. We have a lot of other burning needs. To do OR/MS work, you need analysts and programmers and we don't have either on the staff. You can see the dilema. We could pursue some of that kind of work through student projects or with volunteers. But to pay for it on the open market would be very expensive. In your opinion, should your successor come from the ranks of the OR/MS profession, or should the person be more of a professional association manager type? My opinion is that at this stage, now that INFORMS has gone through the early ramp-up period, gotten through its growing pains and is really ready to move out, the executive director should be someone who primarily works with the staff and the offices, and with active volunteers. In my view, to do a decent job of that leaves you hardly any time for anything else. One way you could make time is to have two executive directors: one for in-house management and one to represent the profession to the outside world, but that's very expensive and probably not in the best interests of INFORMS. The next executive director should be able to take satisfaction and pleasure from all the different aspects of what is a full-time occupation: working with staff and volunteers. I recall that when you were hired, the Board specifically wanted someone from the OR/MS field who could represent the profession to the outside world. The thinking was the management aspects of the job would only consume part of your time. It didn't work out that way, did it? You're right. Internal management issues were supposed to take no more than 80 percent of my time, but the demands of the office kept bringing me back in. The only way I could keep up the outside work was to neglect the office and I couldn't do that. I just had to pull back. Nevertheless, we were able to firm up connections that we had in Washington, D.C., which can be carried on from here. We have representatives on the Conference Board of Mathematical Sciences. We are active with the American Association of Engineering Societies. We are active in the scientific community. We have liaisons to a large number of sister organizations. One outside area I did spent a lot of my time on was public relations. I'm gratified that our P.R. program is now on track and succeeding. I feel really good about it because I think public relations is one of the most important things that INFORMS can do for the profession. I'm talking about increasing the visibility of our profession and overcoming the lack of appreciation for the value of what our profession does. We have a great committee under the leadership of Gary Lilian and Dick Larson and an outstanding public relations director in Barry List. Barry hasn't been with us all that long, but he's been very productive during the time he's been here. What advice do you have for your successor? I love INFORMS. I love the profession. I would tell my successor, Please respect what you've got here and take us on to bigger and better things. I would hope that the person grows to love what we are and what we do as much as those who have been around for a while. That affection underlies almost every good thing that we do. We have spectacular contributions coming from our volunteers and members of the staff because they like the organization and they feel good about it. We need to keep that spirit alive. When you look back at the last three years, what are you most proud of? I felt a sense of satisfaction sitting in that meeting with the Executive Committee yesterday, looking around the room, and thinking about what we've got here and what we've achieved over the last three years. Things have gone relatively well. We've grown stronger as an organization, we're in good financial shape, we have nice facilities, we have a very good staff and hundreds of volunteers working on behalf of INFORMS. We've moved a long way forward from where we were in January 1995. Many people worked together to achieve this. I feel good about having played a part. Any regrets? There are so many things that we needed to get done, things we haven't finished or haven't started at all. In a way, I guess, it's a false regret. Still, I wish I could have found a way to work 80 or 100 hours a week to make more of it happen. I realize the executive director is in a pivotal position to make things happen. Certainly I did spend quite a bit of time, and I did it with love and enthusiasm. But, yes, my regret is I wish I could have found a way to go without sleep so I could have done more. As you prepare to leave the executive director post, are you optimistic about the future of INFORMS and the profession? I am very optimistic. Who knows what's going to happen to our profession, or the human race for that matter. So you have to have that caution. My personal judgment is that there are forces at work that are going to give us the potential to become a very important group of professionals in the years ahead — and not too many years ahead. I tried to spell that out in my brief article on OR in 2048 (OR/MS Today, April 1998). In the information age, somebody has to specialize in the development and presentation of really useful information. Doing that for management and decision-making applications is our core role. We are the people who were trained for it; that's where we should stake our claim. This is vital stuff, and it's going to become more and more vital. There's a big role for us, if we will take hold of it. What lessons have you personally learned from your experience as executive director? If I wasn't sufficiently humble before I took this job, I hope I am now. I found out that, like most people, I am less than perfect in many ways, which underscores for me the value of having several people work together on something as opposed to having one person go charging off on their own. I had notions about managing when I came in, notions that came from years and years in another setting that needed to be updated and refined. I'm convinced that the 1990s' view of management — with its emphasis on teamwork — is the right idea. The kind of thing that people like Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis have been talking about for years — showing more respect to individuals, giving people greater opportunity to take part in the organization, encouraging teamwork rather than destructive competition. Finally, what's next for Randy Robinson? I want to return to the OR/MS front line. I have a list of specific things I'm interested in, and I'm going to see what works and what doesn't. Right at the top of the list is writing a book. I say that knowing how many people talk about writing books and how many times it doesn't happen. The general topic will be OR/MS, but it's not a textbook. Also, I have various ideas for getting myself back into the world of OR/MS projects. I've done some teaching in the past, and I have an interest is doing that again somewhere down the trail. All of these things are very much connected to OR/MS. That's where my professional commitment has always been, and that's where I hope my life will always be. Table of Contents OR/MS Today Home Page OR/MS Today copyright © 1998 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved. Lionheart Publishing, Inc. 506 Roswell Street, Suite 220, Marietta, GA 30060, USA Phone: 770-431-0867 | Fax: 770-432-6969 E-mail: lpi@lionhrtpub.com URL: http://www.lionhrtpub.com Web Site © Copyright 1998 by Lionheart Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.