I wrote most of the below in response to this post by Nisha, but I realized I wasn't quite done with the topic and wanted to expand on it some more. So, here goes:
Nisha points out that despite the fact that the experience AIESECers in the U.S. is different from that of people in the rest of the world, it is still a worthwhile experience that has affected hundreds of people. But to me, this only highlights the incredible power of the AIESEC Experience: even stepped on, oppressed, and downtrodden as it is in the U.S., there are thousands of members who have felt their lives impacted by the power of the organization.
But my experience has also shown me that there are hundreds of members who aren't getting that experience--ones who aren't benefiting from AIESEC in anything resembling the way you and I and most of the people who read this have. It's apparent from conversations with newer members who told me the conference they paid over $400 for was worthless, from the feedback I've heard from AIESECers abroad who received interns from the U.S. with no preparation or understanding of the organisation (and summarily would hesitate to take another American trainee), and from the poor trainees coming to the U.S. without any sort of support network because the leadership of AIESEC U.S. chose to follow the course it has. These people are fed up, and they are leaving, and in many cases they are telling all their friends to not make the same mistake.
The fact of the matter is that yes, some people are still managing to fight their way to get an amazing AIESEC experience. But there is no question in my mind that throughout my involvement in AIESEC U.S. I've had to fight to stay motivated, to stay involved, to find new opportunities to apply my skills and talents. The most heart-breaking thing for me about my experience in the U.S. is the utter lack of meaningful involvement opportunities for members as more and more work gets centralized in the hands of fewer and fewer people. I've had conversations with many who, thanks to the lack of leadership development in the U.S., felt like they no longer had anywhere to go in AIESEC, and nothing to accomplish.
My experience with other AIESEC nations has made two things painfully apparent:
1. There is a better way to do AIESEC than what exists in the U.S. That revolves around following the AIESEC Way, and truly becoming the platform for young people to discover and develop their potential.
Saying that the market in the U.S. makes such a mission impractical is utter crap--the mission is powerful and impactful to the right target audience, and developing 10 future leaders is better than sending 100 people to have a summer vacation in Brazil or Egypt (like every other program). The countries that follow the international mission certainly have problems of their own, but most importantly they have engaged members who are actively benefiting from their involvement in AIESEC because their organizations are focused on serving members, not "customers" (students we send abroad; companies who take trainees).
2. The major positive impact on my life has been made at the local and international levels of the organization. When I think back to my most impactful experiences within AIESEC, these are the international conferences, my meetings with AIESECers from abroad that I wouldn't have been able to have otherwise, my traineeship, etc, etc, etc.
These are also the shared experiences I have had with my first team (the Fearsome Foursome + Friends), the members I've seen taking their first steps in AIESEC and going on to accomplish awesome things, the conversations I've had and the connections I've made.
Certainly, I value the network I've built on the national level as well, but that has largely been facilitated without the help of the national structure, and most of my interaction on the national level has been a history of negatives and demotivational events. Indeed, I would say that all of my (not insignificant) involvement on the national level has been a net negative for both my sanity and my AIESEC productivity.
So the point of the action that the LCPs have taken is not about power. The point is that we could be doing much more to provide AIESEC experiences if we weren't getting our hands chained together by either conscious decisions or incompetence at every step of the way. The point is that we haven't been able to do what we felt was necessary in order to participate in an AIESEC we could believe in. The point is fixing the problem of having an AIESEC U.S. that holds us back instead of encouraging us to do more, to get more involved, to continue to move forward. The point is to make sure that the AIESEC Experiences we have had, the ones that have been cut short, filled with frustration, and that we have had to fight tooth and nail to pull out of the entrails of a rotting organization, pale before what the members who follow us will have.
And that ability, to give people the AIESEC experiences they deserve, is one worth fighting for.
Labels: revolution
¶ 07:49 4 Comments Links to this post
Labels: the end
¶ 01:57 0 Comments Links to this post
I keep getting inexplicable comments about how I should update my blog, despite the fact that I've actually been doing so in some way or another fairly regularly. So, I thought I'd state my current online "strategy" a little more clearly, rather than just expecting people to read what's written to the right of this blog.
My web presence can be summarized as follows:
- This blog: Used for musings on AIESEC structure and other, more AIESECy topics. Not really about my general life.
- elepsis.org: My personal website, and a tumblelog of sorts (aside from the fact that I can never resist at least a little commentary). If you want to know what's going on in my life, what my experiences in Kazakhstan are like, and all that fun stuff, that's the place to follow. I realize that's inconvenient for those of you who just keep up with people's blogs by checking the list on nomadlife.org, but sorry -- it's better for me. :p
- A bunch of other sites and services, that you can learn about here. I'd love to have some more friends at all of these.
So, just so you know, I *am* updating my blog. You're just not reading the right one. ;)
¶ 00:24 2 Comments Links to this post
I start work Monday, at which point I will have internet access regularly. That's also the point at which I will write something more thorough, I think.
Meanwhile, tomorrow I will get to go watch the elections for AIESEC Almaty. They have 14 applicants for seven roles, and the whole election process is scheduled to take place from 9:30 a.m. until 7 p.m.! Holy crap, eh?
Finally, I saw on Shanky's blog that he has been mugged quite badly. Keep him in your thoughts. ¶ 06:18 4 Comments Links to this post
I found myself unexpectedly quoted recently in a rather fascinating discussion our oft-admired Madison kids were having. The specific problem facing Madison at present is one I suspect we are a ways from encountering ourselves at GT, but many of the underlying issues are ones that apply universally. So I'm going to muse for a bit.
Many of the Madison kids who expressed concern over the growth strategy noted, with justified alarm, that many of the new members said they didn't feel integrated and that a sense of community was being lost. The natural assumption, based upon the principle of biggest change, is seemingly to say "Well, we grew much more last semester than we're used to, and the growth is what caused the lack of integration."
I'm not sure I buy that, though. At GT we've sadly had continuing trouble with integrating our members and with retaining quality people over long periods of time. This is tremendously worrying for me personally and for us as an LC. Now, compared to Madison, it can certainly be said that our model for recruitment was different and the bar for membership much lower; as such a higher rate of attrition was to be expected. But nonetheless, looking at our core active membership we can pretty much point to 4-5 members per recruitment class who hang around for over a year of involvement.
At our Leadership Team Retreat, we at one point went around and asked the new members what the moment that made AIESEC click for them, and that drew them into the organization was. Virtually all of them said it hadn't happened yet, and that they started taking on leadership roles because they felt like if only they did a little more that life-changing experience that we all know so well would strike them like a bolt of lightning. These members, who joined just a semester ago and who (one would think) we were paying particular attention to, didn't feel integrated. And that's with a recruitment that brought in (after a very casual screening) roughly 25 people. Already we've only kept about 10 of those.
What I'm getting at is that member engagement isn't necessarily a problem of growth. Rather, it is one of whether the systems that you put in place, whether that be coaching or anything else, are functioning correctly. And while rapid growth could be one way those systems might break down, it isn't the only one. God knows our oft-overhauled coaching system has broken down about eight different ways now.
From conversations with other members I respect and admire, it appears to me that the key to a member's integration is two-fold:
- Creating binding personal ties to one or more individuals. While the sense of community in an LC as a whole is a tremendously valuable factor that must be preserved to the maximum extent that it is possible, in the end what keeps people coming back and doing work is their bonds within smaller groups. It is small groups of people who do the greatest things. The purpose of the overall LC being the creation of an atmosphere rather than a community, as someone mentioned, is certainly different, but not necessarily wrong.
- Giving people a sense of purpose. Members must see that the time they put in and work they do are worthwhile both in the sense that they grow from it personally and in that they are helping to achieve AIESEC's mission (or 'what we do,' if you will...).
The central question for an LC's growth, then, is whether the LC can grow while still providing those two core aspects of integration. This is where the questions raised by the esteemed Mr. Lichtenheld come in, and the question becomes, what sort of systems must you create to ensure that both of these happen? Certain aspects of an LC's functionality become significantly more difficult; key principles like flatness and consensus-based decision making must be re-evaluated.
But ultimately it comes down to whether you can provide every member with those two facets to catalyze their AIESEC Experience. If you do not, you cannot, and perhaps should not, retain them.
This is the cycle that Madison appears to have overcome successfully in the past; this is the cycle that we at GT are still working to break out of. We've decided to take in 27 members this semester. Let's get it done.
P.S. Dear Madison: the fact that you are even able to have a conversation of this type, with a diversity of inputs and experiences this extensive, is pretty mindblowing. Props, and I can't wait till we're there ourselves.
Labels: aiesec, analysis, madison, member engagement, props
¶ 14:48 0 Comments Links to this post
Came across a cute ad on some blog today. I thought it was touching/amusing, and it led me to a quite fascinating site that collects high-quality advertisements from around the world. I wonder what advertisements for a particular culture say about that group--I imagine this could easily be instructive, particularly for us as AIESECers. The most striking thing? The extent to which most ads, even those targeted at drastically different markets than my own, are instantly and universally understandable. Globalization at its finest.
More ads here. ¶ 15:52 0 Comments Links to this post
