Making it happen

The last few days I have been dealing with the Norwegian Directorate for Immigration.

Working in an organization that is changing people's lives by sending them across borders, laws, and barriers set up by a world which is determined on hindering people's chances to build their own life - their own world - is one cool experience. I remember at IPM, one of the most popular ideas for AIESEC to achieve, was an "AIESEC Visa", which [I guess kind of like a Red Cross Visa, or a Diplomatic Visa] would bypass the ridicule of the real world.

Yeah, sure we would all like that... But while dreaming about that we are still dealing with the real world down here on planet earth.

So the Norwegian Directorate for Immigration... UDI

I feel sincerely sorry for the employees of an organization which is basically meant to deal with people as case files and, while having no political power of their own, are obliged to take all the worst kind of negative c*** from everyone else (including me) who obviously don't feel they are doing a good job.

Understaffed, underappreciated, underfunded, lack of ability to attract and retain top talent.

Dealing with everything from Asylum seekers (Europe's and Norway's perhaps most delicate case politically), to students, to specialists, to work immigrants, to family reunions, to war criminals to au-pairs. Relying on Embassies cooperation, when Embassies aren't obliged to listen to UDI at all, as they fall under different jurisdiction (Foreign Department). For sure, being UDI is no easy job. In fact, they are doomed to be disliked.

I feel sincerely sorry for those working there.

But sometimes, frustration bursts out. Waiting for 4 months for cases to be treated is a test of patience. Experiencing that for the second time in the space of 6 months entire cases are lost inside their system, without any explanation or understanding - well. It's a test of civility.

Where is the political will in Europe as a whole to do something about the elephant in the room? About talking about immirgation, foreigners, asylum seekers, our civilization, our culture, our age-problem in sensible terms? Where is our defense of human individual rights? Where is our respect for humanity?

Freedom?

For now: Please UDI - handle our case quickly.

Killing enthusiasm

Today I came with loads of enthusiasm in a general area of work. My concrete strategy, once I presented it to some colleagues, clearly had some obvious flaws, which were duly pointed out to me.

The effect of this was double.

• Firstly I started looking at the strategy in specific, and my rational 30% took the input and looked at how it could be improved.
• However, my emotional 30% also lost quite a bit of enthusiasm for the are in general as a result of this input.

I am using myself as an example of a more general concept. When someone presents their concrete idea for a general area, we are quick to criticise it and shoot it down. Sometimes with very good reasons as well. But by doing this we often throw out the baby with the bath-water.

Now, how do we balance our "desire to help through criticism" with the general desire of not killing the enthusiasm of the person we are "helping"? Should we sometimes put our rational mind aside and enthusiastically support a strategy we perhaps are not convinced by, simply because we trust that the enthusiasm of our colleague will get the project their anyway?

Communicating on different levels

These last few days I have gained some more insights into communication.

One of the insights is that we often identify communication as a cause for problems, when in fact it is more of a consequence. Often the issue at hand has more to do with an understanding of what you are talking about, or more generally, where you are standing.

Communication suffers as a consequence of the lack of understanding on where each person is coming from. While being a consequence, communication can also serve as a solution to the problem. But not by communicating better, by using better channels or clearer messages etc. Rather, by communicating about the actual issue at hand - which is the fact that each person is coming from completely different perspectives and why that is.

In terms of personal development I really would like to develop the ability to use communication as a tool for achieving this kind of connection. The ability to level with people and have them levelling with you.

10 ways for a leader not to get isolated from reality

taken from this blog

1. Be an outstanding listener.
Listening is one of the most, if not THE most, important leadership skills. Unfortunately, it’s often one of the most lacking. Learn to “listen between the lines” and pick up on subtle hints that your employees are trying to tell you something.

2. Shadowing.
You don’t have to go undercover to experience life on the front lines. I knew a VP that spent 4 hours each month in a call center next to a customer service rep listening to customer calls. He not only learned the frustration that a rep goes through dealing with an outdated CRM, he learned what customers were complaining about. If you manage sales reps, then go out on “ride-alongs” on a regular basis. Listen and observe - don't give advice and try to fix every issue.

3. Have regular 1on1s with your employees.
Is your reaction “Duh-uh” to this suggestion? Do you think sounds too obvious? Try asking a random group of employees if their managers have regular 1on1s with them. I do, and I’m no longer shocked at what I hear.

4. Town halls.
If you’re a really big cheese, informal breakfast gatherings, fireside chats, and town hall meetings can help. Just make sure you’re listening more than you’re talking.

5. Surveys.
Again, please don’t dismiss the obvious and assume all companies do employee surveys. I could write another blog post called “101 excuses for not doing an employee survey”. There’s only ONE good reason not to survey employees on a regular basis: if you’re not going to do anything about the results.

6. Break out of your office.
It’s easy to become a prisoner in your own ivory tower or even your own office. If you have employees in multiple locations, then get out and visit each location at least once per year. I knew a VP that had a map of the world on his wall, and put a pin in every location he visited each year. You don’t need to have employees scattered around the world to break out. I’ve seen managers (myself included) become isolated from employees that are just located on a different floor in the same building.

7. Leverage technology.
Use email, blogs, IM, social networking, and other digital communication tools to establish a “virtual open door” policy. In some companies, it can be career suicide to email the CEO. In other companies, it’s a regular practice that’s rewarded.

8. Eat with employees.
There are these rooms called “break rooms”, and “company cafeterias”, where regular employees go to sit with co-workers and grab a bite to eat. Give them a try – but don’t just sit by yourself or with other managers.

9. Establish a culture of candor.
This one’s easier said than done - certainly not as easy as eating in the breakroom. It’s about making it OK to challenge authority and speak up. If you’re not a CEO, you may not be able to change your company’s culture, but you sure can establish your own sub-culture.

10. Get regular feedback.
The research says that leaders who regularly ask for feedback are rated higher than leaders that don’t. Asking for feedback isn’t a sign of insecurity or weakness – it’s a sign on strength and confidence. Every leader should do a 360 assessment every couple years.

Strategic thinking or trying things out?

“The best explorers are the worst navigators.”

Being simple

We had teamdays the past weekend.

It was an emotional rollercoaster ride and perhaps the strongest team experience I have had. I think our collective leadership took a huge leap forward as well.

Now I feel happy, calm and committed. Happy about myself, my choices, my team, my life. Calm about our dedication, about our path about our year. And committed for the next 3 months like never before.

It's good to be an MCVP in the Big Bang Team.

Expect the best in people

Having spent close to 9 months on the Executive Board of AIESEC Norway, certain things have dawned on me gradually, and others again slam your face on Monday morning.

This job is God damn hard. Very, very tough. Make no mistake about it. In fact, I think it is much tougher than I ever imagined, despite believing in advance that it would be very difficult. In the end, it is not the daily grind, the lack of money or any other resources, the LC's.. In the end it's the fact that trying to move a mountain is quite simply a very tough task.

The hopes and dreams with which we started our term have long been reduced to more "realistic" ambitions. We are focusing on what matters, and not on what doesn't.

One of the toughest part of the job has been the balance between changing an organizational culture through hardcore management, and trying to change it through emotional leadership. The first we have done consistently. The second, not so much. Part of that is due to negativity on our part - my part. Focusing on the problems leads only to problem land. When there are so many problems, it is easy to bury yourself in them - easy to overlook what's working. At the same time, we sometimes praise even small insignificant things with the negative consequence that sub performance becomes a norm.

How to set expectations of excellence that people live up to with joy in their heart?

The path goes on...

Are we stuck in High-School

Just a copy and paste from Seth Godin's much famed blog:

"I posted this eight years ago (!) but a reader asked for an encore.

...are we stuck in High School?

I had two brushes with higher education this week.

The first was at a speech I gave in New York. There were several Harvard Business School students there, invited because of their interest in marketing and exceptional promise (that's what I was told... I think they came because they had heard that Maury Rubin would make a great lunch!).

Anyway, they asked for my advice in finding marketing jobs. When I shared my views (go to a small company, work for the CEO, get a job where you actually get to make mistakes and do something) one woman professed to agree with me, but then explained, "But those companies don't interview on campus."

Those companies don't interview on campus. Hmmm. She has just spent $100,000 in cash and another $150,000 in opportunity cost to get an MBA, but...

The second occurred today at Yale. As I drove through the amazingly beautiful campus, I passed the center for Asian Studies. It reminded me of my days as an undergrad (at a lesser school, natch), browsing through the catalog, realizing I could learn whatever I wanted. That not only could I take classes but I could start a business, organize a protest movement, live in a garret off campus, whatever. It was a tremendous gift, this ability to choose.

Yet most of my classmates refused to choose. Instead, they treated college like an extension of high school. They took the most mainstream courses, did the minimum amount they needed to get an A, tried not to get into "trouble" with the professor or face the uncertainty of the unknowable. They were the ones who spent six hours a day in the library, reading their textbooks.

The best part of college is that you could become whatever you wanted to become, but most people just do what they think they must.

Is this a metaphor? Sure. But it's a worthwhile one. You have more freedom at work than you think (hey, you're reading this on company time!) but most people do nothing with that freedom but try to get an A.

Do you work with people who are still in high school? Job seekers only willing to interview with the folks who come on campus? Executives who are trying to make their boss happy above all else? It's pretty clear that the thing that's wrong with this system is high school, not the rest of the world.

Cut class. Take a seminar on french literature. Interview off campus. Safe is risky."

Some thoughts...

Expectation setting: Don't expect a coherent blogpost!

International President's Meeting

Yesterday I came back from AIESEC International President's Meeting (IPM), which took place in Tunisia. It was a very emotional and empowering experience, as I had the opportunity to meet all the current and all the elect national leaders of AIESEC around the world. That amounts to around 200 people, scattered across the planet. Truly a global network of high-potential youth leaders.

Being in any leadership role can be a lonely and troubling experience for anyone. What made IPM very special is that being put together with around 100 people (leaders elected to take over from the summer onwards) makes you feel safe. All of a sudden you are not at all alone anymore. There are loads of people who are amazingly smart, dedicated, passionate and talented, who feel just as scared and confused as you. That is nice. Together with them anything can be shared, anything can be accomplished, and the openness is incredible.

AIESEC as a social enterprise

A thought that started occupying me quite a bit was the idea of AIESEC's business model and what we are. A session at IPM, which pointed out the obvious, but which still was very good, was about the bottom line for an MCP-CEO. Basically any company has 3 concepts which it needs to understand and develop to succeed. 1. It has a product. 2. It has customers. 3. It has HR to deliver.

In AIESEC Product=Customer=HR, as our members are our product through their AIESEC Experiences, they are also the main customer and they are the one's providing it from an HR perspective.

This led me into the thinking that in reality AIESEC is not a student organization at all. I mean, it happens to be that the "product=customer=HR" are students, but that is not really relevant in terms of description of the organization. In fact, we are not so much an organization as we are a business. So what kind of business are we? In my opinion AIESEC is really a Social Enterprise. With this I mean that we are run like a business but that our bottom line has a social purpose. The only difference from a regular business is that the bottom line is not money in the end, but that money is only a temporary means to achieve the social impact. Like any social enterprise, start-up and operational cash for the projects in which we are involved is crucial for our success and survival, however.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_enterprise

So what's the "point" in making a difference between a social enterprise and a student run organization? The difference is that enterprises have a very clear purpose and a clear strategy to get there. Student run organizations usually don't. AIESEC, unfortunately, often doesn't. Basically the only thing that makes us a student organization is that the actual people working AND we want to impact in AIESEC are current students and graduates. This is defined because we see these as the people in the world that we can really impact to achieve our social purpose - developing leaders for positive impact.

What are key points which makes it differ from a student organization?

Economic:

• continuous activity of the production and/or sale of goods and services (rather than predominantly advisory or grant-giving functions)
• a high level of autonomy: social enterprises are created voluntarily by groups of citizens and are managed by them, and not directly or indirectly by public authorities or private companies, even if they may benefit from grants and donations. Their shareholders have the right to participate ('voice') and to leave the organisation ('exit').
• a significant economic risk: the financial viability of social enterprises depends on the efforts of their members, who have the responsibility of ensuring adequate financial resources, unlike most public institutions.
• social enterprises' activities require a minimum number of paid workers, although, like traditional non-profit organisations, social enterprises may combine financial and non-financial resources, voluntary and paid work

Social:

• an explicit aim of community benefit: one of the principal aims of social enterprises is to serve the community or a specific group of people. To the same end, they also promote a sense of social responsibility at local level
• citizen initiative: social enterprises are the result of collective dynamics involving people belonging to a community or to a group that shares a certain need or aim. They must maintain this dimension in one form or another
• decision making not based on capital ownership: this generally means the principle of 'one member, one vote', or at least a voting power not based on capital shares. Although capital owners in social enterprises play an important role, decision-making rights are shared with other shareholders
• participatory character, involving those affected by the activity: the users of social enterprises' services are represented and participate in their structures. In many cases one of the objectives is to strengthen democracy at local level through economic activit
• limited distribution of profit: social enterprises include organisations that totally prohibit profit distribution as well as organisations such as co-operatives, which may distribute their profit only to a limited degree, thus avoiding profit maximising behaviour

This should radically change how we run our organization. F. ex. the way we look at membership needs to be redefined. Now, we talk in theory about high quality attraction and selection, but in reality this can vary significantly. "Membership" is easy, to be an in-kind compensated employee is entirely different. "Leadership" to run a student organization is one thing, entrepreneurship to run a social enterprise is something else. "Impact" starts having a clearer meaning as well. Social Enterprises don't settle for "still a little bit of crap in my local community".