Board of Advisors and External Advisors

We made a distinction this year between Board of Advisor and External Advisor.

A Board of Advisor can take a term of 2 or 3 years once they have completed a term as external advisor.  This lets you know they are legit!  The commitments from BoA are expected attendance to quarterly meetings and participation in a mentorship program.

An External Advisor can be signed for any time length (under one year) to the end of the current Local Committee President's year.  They have optional attendance to the quarterly meetings, but serve as a strong touch point within the university, community or Alumni group.

Here are some documents to help with signing both: http://db.tt/WEDrdb0s

Adjust as necessary to your local reality!

Plan and Track

To update on the previous "living documents" post, here are two templates to support successful year planning and performance tracking.  http://db.tt/i43ixCrC

I prefer keeping a single soft copy of the year plan as an excel document, shared on dropbox with the rest of the team.  The formatting was just difficult to transfer to google documents.

The Performance Tracking document is a "must share" with everyone in your local committee.  Each member should feel ownership over the goals they are progressing towards.  Our talent management team is only measuring rewards and recognition from this performance document, so members will only be rewarded and recognized if they are keeping up with their own tracking.

Time Flies when you are Having Fun.

Okay! February filled up and flew by! I'm sure you will agree. Lesson learned, February is a peak month.

 I am heading to IberoAmerican Leadership Conference (ILC) in Santiago, Chile, next week so will be collecting ideas and drafting some posts to release near the end of March.

Go to International Conferences!

Yeah, it's a defining moment in your life.  The innovative part is removing barriers, creating incentives, overcoming academic and financial obstacles and leading by example.

Here is the link for the international conference newsletter: http://www.facebook.com/ICN.Pam.Livi?ref=ts

I am aware of a few going on and would recommend some I have been to.  There are a wide range that happen in March, including WENA LDS, AFROXLDS, APXLDS, ILC, EUROXPRO, and more.

Most Registration deadlines are the end of January.  Round two registration deadlines open soon.

Austria: http://www.facebook.com/wenalds2012
Morroco: http://www.facebook.com/MENAXLDS12
Chile: http://www.facebook.com/ILC2012
Athens http://www.facebook.com/Euroxpro2012
Mozambique: http://www.facebook.com/afroxlds2012
Japan: http://www.facebook.com/pages/AP-XLDS-2012/196901103733403

At our school, student levy funds are awarded to those who apply.  Laurier Arts students can use CICDA approval for receiving up to $800 to cover flights and conference fees: www.cicda.ca

Clever Dutch

Two dudes from the Netherlands, Chris van der Does and Oscar Santegoeds, pitched an awesome idea about our "Label".

How does a company who supports AIESEC promote us on their website?

If a company has an AIESEC Brand "Label" that is easy to understand, maybe their clients, customers, and other businesses will look us up. Maybe, companies will easily refer us to other companies. Maybe, we will become a first-choice partner as a result of our first-choice partners?

Check out this slide show:

http://db.tt/s67pKuw2

Build Intrigue into your Culture

What causes questions, inspiration, and a lasting memory?

Intrigue

Student's will join you and your cause when they are genuinely intrigued, not when they are force-fed information. It is your passion and story that inspires people to get involved.

I challenge you to never talk about GIP, GCDP, TL, TM, OCP, CR, TM, OGX, CEED, NLDC, IC, LCP when you talk to an interested student. Just give them a next step.

Talk about your story, talk about our organization Values, talk about positive impact. We are unique from every other opportunity available to student's at this point in their life, and they will learn that through experience, not an information session.

Less is More, Simple is Best. Vijay Chaitanya, former Presdent of AIESEC in Slovakia, is a global leader in intrigue, reach out to him if you can find him.

Extend the Reach of Classroom Presentations

Why should HR capacity limit the spread of the message? If you focus on members attending lectures to do classroom presentations, you may only find a single open ear. Why not empower professors to do your work for you?

Most student's have a prof who they get along with, so why not have AIESEC members send out a request to profs to put up a few slides during your recruitment period. It won't replace a passionate in class presentation, but it extends the reach and brand awareness you can develop dramatically.

Here is a recruitment slideshow we tried: http://db.tt/u6xiPFkJ

Living Documents

I attend a first year Introduction to Business management lecture as an Supplemental Instruction Learning Assistant. This week was focused on business planning. A key take-away is to not spend too much time planning and too little time doing. Also, a business plan is a living document, something that needs updating, adjusting, analysing.

To support your Strategic Plan, I highly encourage a weekly performance tracking document. Talent Management (HR) should be responsible for ensuring everyone is updating performance (because they reward and recognize goal achievement).

As a Local Committee President, don't forget that you have specific measurable goals to achieve, so remember to meet with your Board of Advisors, always look for places to create leadership opportunities, and promote promote promote conference opportunities.

This should give you a helping hand for weekly planning. Simply upload the sheets as necessary to a shared google document with your executive board.

http://db.tt/DKUCRDdq

You will never be accountable until you keep track of your weeks!

But seriously though... What's the Plan?

Strategic Planning

Have you ever made a year long delivery plan for managing up to 6 executives, 30 members, an approximately $10 000 budget and still be attending university? No easy task. But the overall plan becomes more clear when broken into stages.

We are given am "Excel Year Plan Template" that may quickly grey your hair http://db.tt/ULKfhnc6 if you are new to Strategic Planning.

Last year we learned that Strategic Planning will take longer than expected if you let it. We also learned that if you don't really care for your completed year plan, you likely won't care to follow or update it too closely throughout the year.

That is why I have stripped a template down to it's simplest aspect: Numbers.

Yes, numbers don't tell the story, so ensure that when planning ahead, your people can justify the initiatives to reach the goals. But numbers are easy to track when you make it routine.

(Our year runs January to January, not March to March, which is why our performance is measured over 3 semester terms, not 4 quarters, but you can easily convert this template back to quarters).

Here is a year plan template more closely focused on performance tracking: http://db.tt/wItZtTpY

Make sure your Team is making their own goals and justifying their ability to achieve them with initiatives. The responsibility of a President is to ensure that goals reflect vision.

No in depth comments today on how to conduct your SWOT Analysis, Local Focus Area Assessment or Vision development. Just keep in mind that 6 executives should be given some space to develop a vision statement, not told one directly.

Buy-in starts with agency.

What's the plan?

After a full year serving as a Local Committee President for AIESEC Laurier at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, I learned a few things about team management, self management and performance management.

Most lessons were learned by mistakes, trial and error or simply falling flat on your face. But consider a year in AIESEC to be a year on the playground... you will be spending a lot of time in the sandbox. So why not try something new, change the old and innovate through your obstacles.

Now that I am returning for a second year as president (some call me dunce...) I will likely make new mistakes, but also have some clever insight about overcoming old mistakes or approaching new problems. The blog is intended to provide some useful tools that I've tried or seen and to share them.

Curiosity is rewarded and feedback appreciated.