Selection
This'll be my first AIESEC-related introspective post... wooo.Anyway those of you that have been LCP will know that there are times when you get worried about shit. That's happened to me a few times this term, I've just refrained from writing about it, nothing major has hit me yet and I'm thankful for that. This is no exception, not a major issue, but I still wanted to record my thoughts on it.
We selected the LC on Friday and... tada... there are a total of 47 members, check em out on the LC Blog. First thing I wanted to mention is I had a ball on Friday. Pretty much most of the current AIESECers from Melbourne were there, not just the EB, and we had a long-ass meeting at Heidi's place where we laughed about lotsa stuff, munched on coronary-inducing amounts of junk food, called the selected and not-selected members and then packed it down to the nearest HK restaurant for some coronary-exacerbating food. Great day. Made me really feel how much the culture of our LC has changed since back in the day and it made me see how much I was responsible for that cultural shift, it felt good!
Also, the opportunity to develop the lives of all these new people definitely made me feel good. What made me feel bad was that feeling in my gut like "shit, if we have this many members, we better do a shitload of exchange". It was that old school feeling, y'know... cos I'm an old school AIESECer... 4 years in this biz-ness. I remember back in the day we used to slam LCs like UNSW for having dozens of seemingly "random" members who did fuck-all. I was one of those haters! I always used to say that I would not compromise a quality experience for each and every member and I would not compromise strong results for the LC just because I was scared to turn people away from AIESEC.
Then again, the members we have selected are all quality. We rejected around half of our applicants and we talked through the ones we selected at reasonable length. Also, the fact that there are a lot of members does not necessarily mean they have to be "random", nor does it mean that they won't get a quality experience or contribute to results. It all comes down to management at the end of the day and if our EB is not capable of managing this kind of expansion then, excuse me for bragging, no EB in the country is.
The other major factor in my decision to allow expansion is the fact that our deliverable in AIESEC is quality and quantity of AIESEC Experiences... and how can we increase the quantity of AIESEC Experiences if we are forever rooted at LC numbers of 15? We don't do random SNs any more, they all take responsibility... so how can we increase SN numbers without taking a large bitchslap in capacity if we don't increase the size of the LC?
Then there's the Project structure. Our decision to increase PBoXes from 1 to 2 is important if we are to ever transition to a viable LC structure based on PBoXes. But... the first PBoX is far from off-the-ground status... is it wise to introduce a second so soon? Does the country even have the capacity to support PBoXes at all when we have not really seen any success at LC or MC level?
So yes... there are issues, but it all comes down to the challenge. I mean... fuck all that motivational bullshit, I aint one for leadership cliches... but I think that it does apply reasonably well in this case. If we never try to do something big then we'll probably fall short of mediocre. If we don't try to achieve 2 PBoXes, a shitload of exchanges and 47 amazing AIESEC Experiences then why bother at all really. Pushin' the limits is what AIESEC should be doin'.
Besides, the realist in me is satisfied with the fact that proper management can see us through this year with success. They say prior planning prevents piss poor performance... which I have to agree with... and if you add performance management to that overly alliterative cliche then you have a decent-looking cocktail for success.
So yeah... if you see me stressed out this year its because I have 47 people to take care of. Word up on that.
Alex
posted by LX @ 3:38 AM
Comments: 3
