My Leadership journey the last 2 months (1/4)

My journey – leadership development in the Global Office

Six months – don’t they go by in a jiffy?

Today (written Tuesday 18^th Dec)  we had the second day of our AIESEC International Team days. 21 people, all together, for the first time in over two months. And suddenly we are off – to a million different directions, in our own reflections. My boss today retold what of course in theory I have heard before, but which resonated very strongly today. It is about the leadership journey and development that happens inside as a result of being put in difficult, challenging and uncomfortable situations on the outside. The theory is always there, but I guess like with any theory, sometimes it strikes more authentically than other times. Today it hit home with me. Like a home run in the last inning of World Series final.

We were sharing 3 moments each today, not of strategy or tactics, not of AIESEC or of exchange. 61 moments of our journeys during the last 8 weeks. 61 images of emotions. Of feeling great. Or awful. Hardship and friendship. Of success – and of failure. And of dealing with it all. Questions asked, and many not answered. I guess – it resonated a lot today. Suddenly I realised that in the last 2 months I have grown a lot. I have learnt a lot. I think I have learnt about things that I came to AI for – 20 months ago. Global Strategy of a head office. Perhaps it sounds superficial or strange, and I wouldn’t know how to describe it clearly yet – hopefully soon I will, but learning how a global association really works, somehow, and how to drive things. One year ago, I remember looking for external literature on the topic of global headquarter strategy, and except some academic dribble, could not really find anything useful. I guess that those that actually know something useful about this, are actually too busy doing the job and accomplishing something great, instead of writing academic thesis about it for a narrow audience.

It took me something like 14-18 months in my role on AI to start truly understanding and seeing some of these things – which I guess goes to show that a 2-year role is not just about “spending much more time in AIESEC and a huge commitment”, but actually about having the chance to learn something much more complex and profound than perhaps most other roles. In AIESEC we always talk about learning fast and delivering in one year. Personally, I think I am quite a fast learner and I have been delivering quite well from the start in my role. Certain understandings and realisations, however, are only appearing and crystalizing themselves now.

The last few weeks I have realized four things, which I think are quite universal actually, and not just “AIESEC” insights – although they came through that. Some of these insights might seem very obvious, I guess all insights are once they are insights, but my experience tells me they are not at all. I will make each of them a blogpost the next few days - as I don't want to overload the reader with all at once.

1. The first, which I wrote about in a post a few weeks ago is the “Embedded Why”.
2. The second is about importance of clarity of purpose of sub/specific products – not just overall organization.
3. The third is about how a quality product that is co-delivered between separate business units requires coordination both on the customer value side and on the organizational purpose side (don’t worry, I will try to explain).
4. And the fourth is about how the product of an organization itself has a specific impact on the people working on that product, because it has specific attributes – and that one needs to know the uniqueness of those connections (between the product and the people) to identify and build those people’s experiences. Everything else you can read about in a text book, and might actually be quite generic. Problem is – that depending on the product itself, it might be completely irrelevant (don’t worry again, I will try to explain)

For each of the four I will use the following pattern:

• What is it?
• An example from my own life (I will mostly stick to one specific completely non-AIESEC work experience, which I think is quite universal)
• Why it matters?
• AIESEC context

Happy reading! I would much appreciate your comments if you have any.

The “embedded Why”.

What is it?

I already tried to explain this in a previous non-elegant post. I guess, in the end, it’s simple. Actually, I think this is what many companies try to do through their “values”. But actually I don’t think that works unless the values are directly connected to the purpose of the product and the business itself. I mean, it is very straightforward. It just means that inside all your operational processes and actions on the ground level, there are key milestones, questions and hurdles related to the why of the organization itself, which directly connects action to purpose.  An simple example is to integrate customer feedback into daily operations themselves, and not separate them out as a different operation. Or to ask key check questions related to the purpose.

Example from my life (just skip if you don’t care)

I used to work for a security alarm company, in the customer complaints department. Now, the purpose of this company was usually not communicated so clearly anyway, but I always assumed it to be something around providing the feeling of safety and comfort. If that is the case, then a key point should have been in the customer complaints department to evaluate “how safe does the customer feel?”. Or for the sales department to evaluate – would we help this customer feel safer with this system (and I am not talking about scare-tactics here), just the simple question.

But what happened instead, on the sales, I guess, is that the customer segmentation for sure focused on “customers that might feel unsafe” – like elderly people or so – but that the process itself was not so focused on actually ensuring they felt safer, but rather on the conversion of the sale itself, whether they felt safer or not. The follow up, and upgrade system as well, very much linked to the same. The segmentation and strategy might be there, but it’s not embedded. So on one hand the organizational purpose is there, and probably stated at seminars and conferences in the company. On the other hand, it is not embedded.

Why it matters?

When the Why is embedded, organization purpose is clear to everyone, every day, without anyone having to ever really explain it. And it helps refine and improve the understanding of the Why on a daily level, at every level of the organization. It motivates everyone who is working in the organization to do more, to be better. When it is not embedded, the result is the opposite. The theoretical “why” can easily be forgotten – or worse – corrupted, at any level of the organization. Even one business unit can turn rotten and spread like a cancer throughout, or simply exist as non-performing.

The understanding of this why, and it’s value in the world and to the customer is naturally not refined on an everyday level, as it is not present every day. Therefore the organizational purpose is detached from the market it operates in, which means oblivion or irrelevance over time. Usually resulting in lack of sales and, eventually, closure. And thirdly, people will not really feel connected to the organization. Because even if the organizational why in theory is good, the daily operational why is missing, and therefore cynicism sets in. This leads to lack of retention etc.

AIESEC context (skip this if you aren’t so interested in those specifics):

In AIESEC it would mean that at the every process, at every team, EB and MC meeting, at every growth chart, at every strategic discussion, the question about “what type of leadership development experience are we trying to provide?” would appear. Alternatively, it would be an evaluation of that question – ie. “are we providing experience XYZ”.