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.