Don: I want to thank you, first of all, for the work you're doing with the Guidelines. It's been a valuable document and your efforts to update it are definitely needed. I've been wanting to respond to the ongoing thread, but things haven't slowed down at the university until today. My students in the piano design class are here taking their final so I have time to sit at the computer and catch up a bit. First I have to climb into the pulpit for a get-it-off-my-chest sermon. For those of you who dislike sermons, move on to the next paragraph. The term "bean counters" is not one I would choose to use. I must say that I think we need to be careful of how we think about our supervisors/directors/administrators, etc. I received my 25-years-of-service award this year so I've served under a number of different directors. Although there have been some glitches along the way, I respect what they have to do and the responsibilities they have. There have been times they've bailed me out on occasion. So with all due respect, the mentality from which the term "bean counters" springs, is counterproductive, even it it may have a ring of truth to it and even if there are some terrible people out there with power over our lives. So much for THAT lecture. I've always thought that the guidelines were primarily for technicians to help them organize their thinking to be able to make better presentations to the people that control the purse strings. I would suspect that very few administrators would take time to read the guidlines from cover to cover. Therefore we technicians need to pick and chose the things that will most impact a particular administrator to open his or her eyes to the needs we have. Where it is most valuable is for those institutions that realize they have a piano maintenance problem and go searching for a way to quantify how bad it is. That's when the Guidelines work the best. I've also thought the Guidelines were a bit heavy handed and self-serving. Guilt is a powerful tool, but it has limited effectiveness with administrators. Regardless of what we think about the bottom line, that remains one of the most powerful tools to work with or to work against. A document produced by piano service people demanding more money for piano service can be construed to be self serving without some outside rationale or support. Are there any business models out there that descibe equipment maintenance in terms of the cost of the item being maintained? For example, if a piece of equipment or tool costs $100,000 should an adminstrator try to budget 5% or 10% of that cost to maintain it? What about depreciation? How does that figure into knowing when to replace a piece of equipment? I'm no business major, but surely someone has thought about these things and we should try to develope ways to justify our own budget and salary using strict business models. If there's a conflict between good business practice and our guidelines, then we need to either justify the difference, or change the guidelines. We all know how important humidity control is to our work. I think we need to develope a way to describe how humidity control helps the bottom line. Without humidity control, tuning takes up the majority of our work time. With some humidity control we should be able to show how much time is saved which could be converted into time used for other tasks. Imagine what perfect humidity control would do for us! What percent of our workload would be given to tuning if the humidity was perfect year around? Something to think about. Figuring how humidity fits into our workload formula is important, but only as a guide to our thinking and not always as a way to describe how crucial humidity control is to our work. I think a variety of metaphors to fit a variety of experience would be as valuable as the number in our workload formula. Also (sorry this is becoming so long, must be an end-of-the-semester stress release) we need to define how we arrive at the base ratio of 60 pianos per technician. Several years ago I added up the hours I tuned, regulated, rebuilt as I had it documented in my schedule. I came up short of the total hours of a 40 hour work week, 48 weeks a year. It was like tuning 3 perfect thirds and ending far short of an octave. What had filled up my "work comma"? Some of that is obvious (teaching, computer work, enjoying colleagial conversations, etc.) One of the factors is "just being there." What is that worth ( monetarily and otherwise) to have a technician on call? What is the mentality of the institutions that have a don't-call-us-we'll-call-you attitude and won't spring for the money it takes to hire a staff technician? More importantly how can we change that attitude? It's akin to the sorry belief shared by many administrators that work at the university is a technician's gateway to the more lucrative private market. I applied for a position at another university once and had an adminstrator admit, "Oh, we won't be able to match your current salary but you'll get lots of outside work." I replied,"If I'm hired for 40 hours of work, I want my commitment to be to the university and be paid accordingly. If I take lots of outside work, my time and commitment is compromised and it will show up in my work." I think it was a revelation for the person interviewing me. I didn't take the job. Finally (yes, you're almost to the end) what is it worth to have a good responsible employee that takes care of things and that works well with faculty and staff? At meetings where administrators gather to compare notes and try to find ways to improve their separate departments, they talk about piano technicians and compare experiences. Peer status means something to administrators. When I first took the job here, there weren't all that many staff techncians at universities in the midwest. Now almost every major university has one or more. Making a case for more support can often be one of "keeping up with the ------ (fill in the blank with a peer university)." Getting accreditation may include more attention to instrument maintenance and so peer review becomes important. Sooooo, to make a long story short, there are other avenues to develope that might improve the Guidelines. I think our Guidelines might include a page that deals with short, succint, business related topics and suggested presentation options. I hope this hasn't been too longwinded. Richard West University of Nebraska Donald R McKechnie wrote: > List, > > As many of you know, the CAUT committee is charged with studying and revising > the CAUT Guidelines publication. We would like your help in determining what > needs to be added and what needs to be changed. For the most part, the > document stands very well as is but there are two primary issues that need to > be addressed. > > First, the addition of information regarding contract technicians has been on > the table for some time. Bill Shull from the CAUT committee is coordinating > this effort. Please e-mail him with your comments and suggestions. > (bdshull@aol.com) If anyone wants to start a dialog on this list that would be > just fine. > > The second issue is the Guidelines formula. There have been comments and > criticism about the formula. However, I do not remember seeing any changes > suggested. If anyone has ideas about changing the formula, please post on this > list or e-mail me. > > I have some thoughts that might get the ball rolling on the formula issue. One > of the criticisms' administrators will have is the Base component. No matter > how well the argument is made on having 60 as the Base, they will see that as > unrealistic. One solution would be to change the base number. On a computer > database, using the formula, one can easily change to whatever Base you want. > Going up to 100 is pushing the limit in my opinion. I have done this with the > inventory here at IC. The results show 4 technicians at Base 60 and 2 at > Base100. What about the remaining variables in the formula? Are they good or > in need of change? > > In my quest to have an assistant technician hired here at IC, I have used the > Guidelines as part of my justification. No success so far but I believe my > full argument does not get in the hands of the powers that be. That is another > story for another time. During the process of getting my justification ready > this year, I was in contact with Ken Eschete at Northwestern. He suggested I > use charts and/or graphs to get the point across that the school is losing > money by not hiring another technician. I did not have time to come up with > anything useful due to the deadline. > > Ken’s suggestion made me wonder if something like this could be incorporated > into the Guidelines. Having little experience in presenting information of > this style, it is going to be a bit challenging for me to come up with > something useful. Is it possible to add some sort of generic template to the > Guidelines that will bolster the effectiveness of the document? Any ideas > welcome. > > If there is anyone out there who does not have a clue on what I am talking > about, contact the PTG Home Office and order a copy of the Guidelines. Phone - > 816/753-7747, e-mail - ptg@ptg.org > > Don McKechnie > Ithaca College > dmckech@ithaca.edu
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