The Power of Our Collective Strength and Commonality

With the 2017 ABC Financial Management Workshop wrapped up, we can reflect on what an exciting time it was! Houston is such a wonderful and vibrant city and even on the heels of Hurricane Harvey, you could feel the pulse of the city, whose residents won’t be deterred from their recovery. Through attending, we were able to assist in some small way by adding dollars to their economy. For that, we are grateful. 

One of the unique elements about this year’s workshop was were the joint sessions that allowed information technology (IT) and finance professionals to hear shared challenges and collaborate on solutions. At times, we lose sight of the interdependence we have on each other and this conference served as a pleasant reminder.

We learned: it is possible to be better negotiators, better ways exist to plan for the future, information security is everyone’s business, not just IT professionals, and that much can be learned from individuals like Kathye Brammann and Jim Tompkins who have excelled at the fast close and done some amazing things in automating manual processes. Many takeaways exist as we strive to be more effective for our organizations moving forward. 

We have a number of reasons to be grateful post-conference, from the knowledge that we all struggle with similar things – needing more time, resources, and dollars to make our organizations thrive, to the reassurance that we are part of a larger collective striving to serve our employees, management, boards and communities. The opportunity to learn from others who have strengths in areas that we do not and the chance to share our knowledge, experience, and expertise is one of the many benefits that a workshop like this has. However, the ultimate benefit is the chance to meet some amazing people and network with our peers who share similar goals. This reinforces that we are all stronger together than any single one of us is individually. 

As another workshop has drawn to a close and another year not too far behind, we know that the one constant for all of us is change, but we can learn to adapt from each other, seeing past our differences, focusing on our commonality, as we share and learn and grow together.

Kathye Brammann, Director,  Finance & Supply Management; Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center & April Cleaver, Controller; We Are Blood