Lets Get Radical!: A Grande Re-Opening

This blog was originally created with the idea that it would be a living testament to my experience in China. To document and preserve one young man's journey from America to China, and from adolescence to manhood. As Santana the Great might say, "Human AIESEC in the Flesh".

But times have changed. The journey has ended and, thus, the purpose for this experiment in web logging. As one door closes though, another one has opened. One road has merged with another, as a stream joins a river, to erect the super high-way of life. The path has always been there, it just took the events recounted here to lead me to it.

The last three days have been watershed in terms of my understanding of the challenges that we face as a local community, my understanding of how we are going to overcome them, and my role as the leader of this organization. Personally its been a roller coaster of discouragement, loss of confidence and purpose, a rekindling of faith and hope and ultimately a redemption, if in no one's eyes but my own.

The challenge: Our organization does not (yet) agree on the direction it will take to achieve its mission.

This was a difficult lesson to learn, and there is nothing to blame but my own false assumptions for the problems this caused over the past four days. And yet it has been an invaluable and well learned lesson in its own right.

The direction seems to have come down ultimately to a question of growth. And not how or when we should grow either - those types of conversations proved nearly impossible to have this weekend. The question is if we should grow. All other components of the discussion must inevitably stem from this initial query. There is no point in discussing how we should grow if we have not first determined that we should grow. Now, I feel a responsibility to state my position on the "if" in no uncertain terms:

Yes

Yes, we should grow our organization. Why? Because it is through growing our organization that we will strive towards achieving our mission. Is growing our organization the only way that we will grow our impact? No. But being a member of AIESEC, having a direct connection to the organization, and being directly changed by the experiences that AIESEC has to offer is the most effective, concrete and impactful way that we accomplish our mission. Without the "if" and "why", the "how" and "when" conversations become an exercise in futility. This was the one of the most difficult and important lessons that I've learned over the past few days, and the breakdowns at the LC retreat were in large part a result of this oversight.

Mea Culpa, friends

Reaching the Summit: We shall overcome this challenge.

Next in the book of revelations was how we can break down everything standing in our way (as an LC) and together, rebuild a vision that we can all work towards. We have all the necessary tools at our disposal. We have a mission, an end goal that our organization is continuously striving to achieve. We have an amazingly clear and well designed set of principles, to help us remember what makes us AIESEC and guides us ever towards the mission. With these in hand, the leaders (all leaders) of the organization should be able to talk through their visions for the organization, then talk through those with small groups of the general membership, then talk through those through with the LC as a whole. I firmly believe that we have the ability to do this in a way that will excite and empower people throughout the organization in a way AIESEC has never seen before.

Knowing your role

I must admit that over the last month or two I had really lost sight of what my role in the LC is, to every one's detriment. The events of the last few days have helped me to rediscover my purpose in the organization.

Some explanation is of course in order. At the winter conference, our LC received four awards recognizing our achievements in 2007: The Award for Recruiting and Preparing Individuals who are Successful in Running the Local Community, The Award for Achieving Stability, The Award for Creating Outstanding Opportunities for Impact, and above all else, The Leading Edge Award ("This LC is Leading the Pack").

At the conference, as with any conference, Madison AIESECers received a deluge of questions asking how we do it. My answer, which I still hold true today, is that we've created the type of environment where people feel ownership over the organization - its mission, its vision, and its goals. Without this consensual stake in the future of the organization, little else is possible.

The importance of this is impossible to overstate. And yet, I found the retreat generally lacking in this all important principle of the LC. Yesterday I received some of the most helpful and motivating feedback on my personal qualities that I may have ever received in my life. A common refrain was that while I wanted to create a climate that empowered people to own the conversation, I often let my own view, or agenda, over power the dialogue.

Now, being dismissal of feedback is a personal weakness that I have been trying hard to consciously correct, and I would hate for my re-discovery of my role in the LC to be interpreted as such. That being said, I think I've realized that the reason this disenfranchising environment persisted was because I tried too hard to cover my own views and opinions, which were still perceivable through such as my body language or other indicators, and thus gave the appearance that while I said I wanted this to be a conversation where everyone contributed their own ideas to the decision, I had actually already made up my mind and was trying to convince everyone of my agenda.

And thus, the discovery of my purpose. I serve the LC by being more than just a facilitator of conversations. Its my responsibility to look at AIESEC from a holistic point of view - locally, nationally and internationally. My role is to know the organization on each of these levels, and be able to guide each to the best possible outcome for my local community. Ultimately, its my job as LCP, and the job of every leader in the LC, to have a vision. An LCP without a vision is not a leader and is not capable of serving in their role effectively. As LCP I do have a vision (see above), which is built on my unique vantage point to see the organization from a local to an international level, and its my responsibility to share this with the individuals that I'm supposed to lead.

This certainly isn't to say that I hold all the pieces to the puzzle. Each person contributes something unique to the conversation and building the type of organization where everyone can bring this to the table is absolutely fundamental. But there is a piece of the puzzle that I do bring, and its my responsibility to bring that to table as well, gathering up all the pieces, building them together, and rallying people around it.

I feel I've finally found what our main challenge is as an organization, how we can overcome it, and the role that I was selected to play in it. The feelings of excitement, anticipation, passion and purpose rival the intensity of going on a traineeship.

I'm thanking my lucky stars for the good grace that has given me the opportunity to do two of the most life changing things I can imagine both inside and out of AIESEC, and for the outstanding individuals in the LC without whose support, and above all patience, naught would be possible.