"Professionalism"
Speech for Founder’s Day 9 September 2004
Prepared by Ms Penne White, B.A, Dip.Ed., Vice-president International Dhamma Activities
Welcome to this auspicious occasion, Founder’s Day 9 September 2004.
Professionalism is one of our five styles, devised by our Founder Master John D. Hughes. The other styles are friendliness, practicality, cultural adaptability and scholarship. The five styles form the mandala of our Public Relations image.
The image and style of our Members has improved over the last two years enabling us to foster wide spread recognition of our Centre as one of the most professional performing World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB) Regional Centres.
Attendance by selected Members of our Centre to WFB conferences over the past decade have heightened their attention to the wealth that is required to fund such peak International events.
In recent years five of our Members have spent short periods of time as Buddhists Monks in Temples in Melbourne.
These overseas and local experiences have transformed and concentrated their minds into recognising the need to put into practice the style of Professionalism.
The seven attributes of a profession are a complex occupation, extensive training, licensing, professional organization, code of ethics and selflessness of Members of the profession.
We have been working towards the professionalism of our Members who drive our management systems for some time. This means each Member must become multi-skilled in his or her approach to our organisational requirements as stated in our aims and follow our sense of direction.
In practice, this means much merit making, and the will to do assorted tasks.
While it is necessary to be profitable and build assets in accordance with the materialistic models of business, we are becoming more and more aware that we need to change our indicators that measure work as output to prosper and manage an e-business information culture.
One indicator we devised about five years ago is broadly classed under the term "professionalism" which refers to the ratio of Members engaged in critical management decisions and actions that give more work as output and streamline the work as input.
Five years ago, one in twenty of our Members was engaged in critical management decision planning and actions of work as output, and one webmaster. The other 18 were engaged in work as input that was not seen in our publications. At one time, we ran an offset printer. Because we were not experts printing consumed too much time and expense. Now we print offsite by a professional printer because onsite printing of thousands of pages is not core business.
Today, one Member in two is involved in critical management decision planning and action and eight webmasters give work as output.
Six years ago, we had one website. In retrospect, we see that it was managed in a non-productive manner because of the delayed response time of work as input delayed adding new material as work as output with the webmaster offsite.
Our production of work as input has been streamlined.
The advantages of in-house webmasters to streamline work as input have been discovered. Today, we have six well managed websites with quick upload capability (generally within 24 hours) to give work as output. We have more Members in training who can operate our information technology systems soon and will be able to service our local area networks (LAN). We have expanded our LAN in part to WAN (Wide Area Network) because we place 70 percent of our key management information on our various websites. The other 30 percent of information is confidential.
Our Professionalism includes censorship that does not depend on a caste system, nor is it ageist, sexist, or racist.
We say our professionalism increases as we balance development by working closely with technical persons.
We do not mind becoming overtly dependent on overseas educational materials for study, but we aim to generate new education material of significance in Australia.
At present, apart from internal management reports, we publish about two significant papers per week as output.
We wish to raise our output to average four significant papers per week.
If we can achieve this objective we would be well content with the directions of our professionalism.
Wisdom means that our in-house shop keeping must display professionalism as an invariant quality in all e-mail and e-commerce activities and is much more profound than a mere in-house dictum that saves money. Our outer and inner activities must align.
It is this centralising concept that ensures that as all our knowledge and good practical techniques are delivered to an even wider international audience within a consistent image and style which are our five styles, it must be censored to be right. The five styles are professionalism, practicality, scholarship, cultural adaptability and friendliness.
Extensive and ongoing training is always necessary to stay abreast of the dynamic changes in the world. Ultimately, professional behaviour comes about because an individual feels an obligation to serve others fairly.
The satisfaction of helping others is one of the most important rewards of being professional.
We believe our methodology to be sound in accordance with Dhamma principles.
May we apply the five styles in all our activites.
May all beings be well and happy.
References
The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast for Sunday 28 October 2001, The topic of today’s broadcast is: Reviewing Professional Tasks, available at URL http://www.bdcublessings.net.au/radio195.html
The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast for 10 September 2000, Today’s Broadcast is called: Can learning be conferred?, available at URL http://www.bdcublessings.net.au/radio102.html
The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast for 9 July 2000, Self-funding: Our Eighth Objective, available at URL http://www.bdcublessings.net.au/radio93.html
Our File reference: LAN 2 I:/fdayprof