Reflections after AIESEC storm...

Turbulent times have descended upon AIESEC Slovakia. Basically what happened is that the whole MC team decided to put mistrust on our MCP and at legislation meeting she has been officially suspended. Lot of words has been said about that, actually much more than it would be good to say. Therefore I am not going to go in details of what has actually happened, I would just like to share few thoughts, which came to my mind in connection with this issue...

What shall be the role of AIESEC in the life of an active AIESECer? Often we repeat a phrase "The more you give to AIESEC, the more AIESEC can give to you". There is an undeniable logic behing this, however now I think that I have seen a living example of the fact that the validity of this quote is limited to certain level. Behing this level person can stop to see beyond the AIESEC horizon and that is the beginning of the end. AIESEC is here (roughly said) to influence the society through people, which it develops. One can fully focus on the organisation and think that this is the best way, how he can contribute to it. But if we stop to see the world outside, how is it aligned with what AIESEC is about? And if one does not look at himself and his own life, how does AIESEC fulfill its role through this person. This reminds me of a joke, which says that fighting for peace is like f***ing for virginity... the same can be said about this way of doing AIESEC.The synergy between personal and organisational interests should not be distorted from any side. It is important that we emphasize the commitment to AIESEC, because it is more natural for people to think in an egoistic way, but we shall also be careful about the opposite situation.

How shall AIESEC in a particular country develop and change? It is a big challenge for us that the whole leadership structures renew every year and this definitely affects the continuity. Each term can have a different direction in their mind. But there is another issue: everybody wants to be recognized for his results and this makes everyone think about what number can we achieve by the end date of our term. Two different principles stand here in contradiction, each hiding a potential danger. The effort to achieve the highest possible results now brings the risk of forrgetting about sustainability and harming the starting position of our successors. The willingness to build foundations for the next years seems to be more meaningful, on the other hand it hides certain alibism - those, who start something, won't be the ones, who shall work out the results, those at the end are supposed to get results out of something they could not influence. Thinking about it over and over, again I have to come to a conclusion, which is one of my strongest learning points about AIESEC functioning, which I got from Slovakia: It is absolutely necessary not to divide our work in separate functional areas, but to think about the whole complex organisation. What in my opinion hurts the performance of AIESEC Slovakia is the fact, that many processes, structures and systems, which are tightly interconnected, are not reformed simultaneously, but independently. But as they influence each other, the whole organisation is still in the change phase and we never get to the consolidation, when we can finally harvest what we have sown. It is the same like with a team cycle, it is not possible to have some members of the team at storming phase, some at norming and some already at performing...