Big changes are made of small changes

Every year the whole management board in all AIESEC countries and entities changes. This is so usual fact for us that we can forget that is actually behind that.

It’s a huge change, especially in national level where you are dealing with lot of legal responsibilities and working with great variety of stakeholders in a professional level.

The better the preparation from the last team the more effective the new team will be. Besides the transition you need all the outputs, documents with learning points about different events and periods of time, mind maps with responsibilities, examples of different documents to understand the past, agendas and preparation materials, budgets, project concepts etc. All these need to be organized in a logical order, of course and you need to do the same for the next team (if you care that your achievements are not lost, of course).

From MCP perspective the beginning also means a lot of legal issues that you need to take care of. During first months you need to visit numerous institutions to register and re-register people – bank, insurance office, mobile company, lawyer, Business Registry, Migration Office (if dealing with foreign MC members).

The knowledge you got from your predecessor is great, but it’s not enough to really understand the situation in details. So you need to meet personally as many stakeholders as possible to first introduce yourself, then discuss the past and more importantly – develop ideas for the future. By „stakeholders“ I mean our strategically important partners, umbrella organisations, funds who are supporting us, other co-operation partners.

Through these meetings a lot of extra value is developed both for AIESEC (and for yourself personally, as you will get a great network of people), very often new project ideas or innovation inside of current projects pop up. A random example from June when me and Inga had a meeting with Tehnopol, a business incubator and innovation centre. Their proposal was to start organizing more Klapid eest! events in company rooms and if needed drive people with special Klapid eest! buses to the spot. Currently we are developing the idea into new Klapid eest! dimension – practical entrepreneurship (more about that in the future). Also they are offering opportunities to promote our exchange program to the companies in their building.

If in companies people usually change one by one and you rarely meet a situation where the whole management (or whatever else) team changes at a time – then in AIESEC it’s quite a unique opportunity to practice working in a team where no-one has an advantage compared to others, everyone is new. Building the team culture and identity in the beginning is the foundation for the whole year. If you get some not healthy habits in the beginning and don’t ground your work on some universal principles you might lose a lot of energy later.

In MC we put a lot of effort on our first team days to understand what each of us wants from this year and especially from this team and coming from that developed the rules we all are following now, vision that drives us and values we feel connected by. All in all it has formed a culture in the team and has given us needed structure to work efficiently and not to put too much effort in trying to figure out what is the framework we are all acting in.

All in all I have to say that in MC you need all the past experiences you have. My years in EB and especially as LCP are showing their real results now. Among other things you need to know how to lead a team, prepare and run effective meetings, present AIESEC, be skilled in networking, manage your time, communicate with different types of people, see the big picture and be able to act strategically.

So all the big changes are made by small changes, the ones you make every day and that doesn't seem so be very big at the first sight. But after putting them together you end up with greater personality, unique skills, bigger network and stronger organization.

PS: Thank you for great AIESEC birthday! We enjoyed every minute of it!