India experience - Week 1 - Mumbai

In which I arrive in this beautiful disaster* called India, get to know I got a servant and stare death in the face (or more like in the armpits).

I arrived in Mumbai Airport at around 23h. Waiting for my 60 kilos of bags to come, exchanging dollars to rupees and waiting in the wrong line for a cab that AIESEC should have arranged took approximately FOREVER, so I started roaming around the airport exit to see if someone from AIESEC was there to pick me up. The heavy air heat at post-midnight something impressed me. In fact, everything impressed me: the incredible amount of people waiting for other people in the airport at this time, the noise of the comings and goings and horns and hell raised by the old cabs, the craziness everywhere. I definitely was not in Norway anymore.

When I go around 2 or 3 times the airport exit without finding anyone holding a sign with my name, I decided that I would have to go on my own. But I was one of the (few?) blessed and the moment I am exiting among the, literary, hundreds of people waiting for others to arrive, someone says my name. This guy, Keenan, from AIESEC Mumbai recognized my AIESEC t-shirt. Ok, that was a relief. Other 2 AIESECers from Mumbai arrive and they give me to eat a candy (in just one bite). The thing tasted like eating anis (and if I am not mistaken, it was blue also) and I almost throw up.  I took approximately 30 minutes to chew it all. In the meanwhile, while I was with my mouth full of anis tasting crazy candy, we made small talk about who I was, what was going on, etc.

We went to a line to get a pre-paid cab. Pre-paid cab? Yes, no one trusts taxi drivers, so you go to the counter, say where you are going, pay, get a ticket and then find your driver to take you there. Clean.

When we finally found the cab, it was more or less like looking at a mobster car - after it has taken a heavy bullet hit. Only one of my bags fit in the trunk, the other one is also put in the trunk with a ROPE to keep it in place. I can only HOPE for the best. Oh man, India.

When we leave the airport, it is approximately 1h30. We drive to insanely heavy traffic streets (considering the time and that is Sunday). The 3 AIESECers tell me that Mumbai never sleeps. I think "yeah, we the amount of cars horning, I imagine no one really can sleep". Everything is novelty, even though I don't see much because it is dark. The taxi driver creates his own lanes. Rules are for the weak. The AIESECers are nice people. I like them. They went through a lot of effort to be late at night to pick me up and take me to where I should go.

We arrive at this place which would be my transition quarters (TQ). An apartment with 2 rooms with 2 beds each that TCS offers to the newly arrived for a couple of weeks. It was already 2h when I arrived at the TQ and I was greeted by Mr. Pruna (or Purna?), the Indian servant with a big smile and tentative English. He brings me cold water and call me Sir. I got shocked at first. Wow, he is serving me. After Norway, that is not a common thing at all.

Mr. Pruna demands remarks on his own: he was always there and basically fixed everything for us in the TQ. Every time I arrived from the office, the first thing was "Welcome, Sir" and the 2nd would be to bring me a full bottle of cold water. We spoke about some random stuff sometimes, more out of curiosity to understand where he was from, but mostly he would spoke with us like this:

- Breakfast, Sir?
- Yes, Pruna, at 7h30 tomorrow.
- Ok, Sir. Omelette, Sir?
- Omelette, yes.
- Ok. Toast, Sir?
- Yes. That is good.
- Yuis, Sir?
- What?
- Yuis, Sir? (More emphatically)
- Yuis? What is that?
Mr. Pruna would then mimic like drinking something from a glass. It should be really good, because he was always with this big smile on his face.
- Ah, yes, juice, yes, please.
- Ok, Sir.

And, of course, at breakfast he would ask us about what we want for dinner.

On the TQ, there was another AIESEC intern that had arrived one or two days before me, his name was Narcisse and he was from Ivory Coast. Me and Narcisse understood each other right away. He was one of those guys that you really like quite quickly. Me and Narcisse exchanged a few small talk and suddenly Mr. Pruna put a bed sheet on the floor and sit there. "Oh, no" I thought, "he sleeps on the floor - and there is an empty sofa just by the side where he is putting the bed sheet". Another shock. I took a shower and fell asleep in my (and Narcisse's) room, with the soft cover of the air-conditioning (which obviously the living room where mr. Pruna was sleeping, ON THE FLOOR, didn't have). I felt pity for the man.

Another shocking thing with Mr. Pruna is that he ate on the floor (using plates, yes, but on the floor). The thing is that since he is a servitor, he should not use the table (or the sofa), because it "pollutes". Crazy stuff, I just can't understand. But in the end, we made friends with him and he even sat on the table with us, proving that things are not so black and white.

Next day, me and Narcisse gear up for the first day at the office. We needed to get a rickshaw (or simply "auto")  to the Bolivari train station and from there get a local train to Churchgate. Easier said then done. Narcisse approaches one of the rickshaw drivers. He offers to take us to the train station for 40 rupees. Narcisse thinks it is too much, but goes in the polite approach, something like "It's too expensive. Can you do better?", noticing the soft approach would go nowhere, I stepped in and said "10". The guy said "11", I insisted on the "10", he agreed. We boarded the rickshaw and I noticed the driver smiled. I thought "hm, I think he ripped us off anyway". I was later informed by the locals that the lowest rickshaw drive is really "11". So maybe the guy just thought it was funny that such random people would be bargaining so hard.

The train station was a mix between fish market and dumpster. Too many people and no apparent way of figuring out which trains go where, we went for the asking approach. We were redirected here and there and finally we got to the platform where the train to Churchgate would arrive. When it did arrive, nothing can really translate the shock of seeing a crowded train, with no doors and with people ranging outside of it. This is the picture you see:

But it really does not translate the horror it is the first time you see it. And then you think "I have to ENTER this? I am going to die, that is it." People at the platform started to run to try to get inside the train. Everyone managed to get in (probably even before the train stopped to a complete halt), the exception being me and Narcisse. The men in the train (where, not exactly IN, since they were ranging at the doors) started shouting and making fun of us. Narcisse and I look to each other in despair and talk about tactics. A young Indian guy, out of pity, show us the place where the slow train goes. Typically less crowded, the slow train started in our station, so it would be possible to sit. We follow him to the platform and manage to sit. But the train anyway gets really crowded really quick and soon there are people ranging at the doors again.

The slow train takes around 2h to Churchgate (not so different than its counterpart, the "fast" train, that takes around 1h30min). You have no idea what is 2h in a crowded train full of sweaty people. Not people, men, because there are special wagons only for women. It was hell, I tell you. Every day, to and from the office, at the peak time. We were thankful when we managed to sit. But even though, that was not a great thing. Because it is so crowded, Indians have a very peculiar sense of personal space (or lack) , so it is very common to be squeezed with 4 people in a bench designed for 3 or to have someone gently sleeping and using you as a pillow. The smell was the worse, since after the 2nd time in the train, I got used with the amount of people and didn't mind the lack of space anymore. After the 4th time, I started to be able to read in the train (using the Amazon Kindle app in my Android). That was a very nice thing and more than one Indian approached me to ask about what was the phone about, what I was reading and such.  In the end of the week, I was able to enter and leave the train without it completely stopping. The civilized metro in Norway looked impossibly calm and was far away in my mind. Humans are so adaptable, I concluded.

The amount of adaptation (especially considering my gentleman ways learned in Norway) can be described in this (real) story:

Indians have allergy towards organization, in special in regards to queuing. Anyone attempting to queue will be faced with people cutting in front straight to the counter, people on the back breathing at half a centimeter of your neck and all this. On the train ticket counter, I was waiting for some time in the queue, I was the next customer after a man, when suddenly an old lady comes in front of me straight to the ticket window. I gently, but firmly, push her aside and point to the back of the line. She says something like "mahaba ragata jahlaputamadre", I answer in Portuguese "yeah, whatever, go to the end of the line". After I buy, she sneaks again and buy the ticket. But I was not the sucker. I was re-learning my Brazilian ways of fighting for survival.

I think what shocked me the most in Mumbai (and probably in all the little I know of India) is that poverty is absolutely everywhere. Not like most countries I know that had poverty concentrated somewhere and the rich neighborhoods looking very fancy and nice. No, in India, the fancy building is just by the side of a slum and trash is absolutely everywhere. A friend of mine is working in waste management in Delhi. Before coming to India, I thought this was cool. But after getting to know India and how much litter is everywhere, I just thought "wow, this guy is really making a difference. Waste management should be a top priority in this country".

Since I was in Mumbai only for some contract signing and other random stuff, I felt quite happy when I got my ticket to Chennai on the Friday. That is the city where I was going to live and Mumbai was just a transition. Since I was tired as hell of the trains and all the bla bla bla, I got very happy to go to Chennai, to my new home.

But that is another story...

* Beautiful disaster is what Pamela, my Mexican flatmate, calls India. She can say it with passion in her eyes.

Decision making paralysis in AIESEC Norway

This post will only make sense if you read the post about decision making paralysis.

When I was president of AIESEC Norway (…) we were not doing so good in our main types of sales: bring exchange students to work in companies and send Norwegian students to work abroad. Then we kind of intuitively narrowed the options for students to go on exchange – instead of promoting that they could go literally anywhere, at any point in time and to do all kinds of different jobs (which is true from the AIESEC product point of view), we started promoting around 5 specific countries, with a specific timeframe for the exchange and more or less set job (better defined, but not amazingly clear).

The result was that much more people made de decision and our numbers grew. Still there were a whole bunch of people that decided not to go on exchange, even after being accepted in the program. If I am not mistaken the number was quite high, like at least half of them, usually when they needed to pay and really decide  to go on exchange in definitive.

On the corporate sales we never managed to solve the problem, but I heard that today they are doing much better than before. Their approach? As I understand, they are specifying better the product (not anymore “any type of student, with any background, any time…” you get the picture). Now they are segmenting type of exchange (market expansion, IT, volunteer work, etc) and time (summer, winter…)

Both approaches clearly are tapping into the problems seen on the decision making paralysis post. And I think that both can be even better tailored to overcome even better the decision making paralysis. For example, giving even less choice to students in terms of job description and length of exchange (2 things that are more or less still very adaptable and susceptible to decision making paralysis due to too many good options).

When something is wrong, just do it harder (NOT)

When I was President of AIESEC Norway (my all time preferred starter phrase) and we were doing really dangerously bad financially, I pushed the team to go to sales. Every single person, including the ones who had no clue on how to do it and didn't want to learn also. After that, there was a lot more effort on the sales, but, the results kept the same: not good enough. A bunch of amateurs trying harder something that was already not working with the pros didn't work. (Who could guess that?)

When you read it, it sounds so obvious: who is idiot enough to push harder on something that is not working? Who believes that crushing the square shape into the circle hole is the answer? Well, most people, including myself, when the thing that is not working was/is the base for the business. Anyone sees the whole of the music industry pushing harder on something that is not working anymore?

After that we used a bit our heads and then decided to use more efforts into a product we were able to sell, but we needed to sell much more to make it more relevant to the business. Well, we did. And we did a hell of a good job doing it - so much that around 60% of our financial year profit came from it. Doing more of what was working actually helped more (again, who could guess that?)

Next time you solve a problem, check this out: do you need to solve that specific problem (lack of sales) or can you just solve the situation by using a different approach altogether (sell more of the product that is selling and leave untouched the product that is not selling)?

You can't microwave leaders, but companies are most certainly overcooking them

I read somewhere the phrase "you can't microwave leaders", the context was about companies' leadership development programs - a.k.a. a bunch of trainings and assignments to form company leaders. I agree, you can't microwave leaders, but I want to challenge that it takes "time" to build a leader.

It doesn't take "time" to build leaders. It takes "experience".

How so? Ok, here you go: how many times have you seen senior leaders, people who are in the company for 10, 20, 30 years, that cannot run a meeting? That doesn't know the basics about delegation? Team management? Coaching? I am not sure what you answered, but for sure I have seen more than it would be possible to believe it is by chance. So the only way I can see it is that it happens by design. Fear of change design. Risk aversion design. Control and command design. Lack of feedback design.

How come AIESEC can develop great leaders in 2-5 years and a company can't do it in 10? Is it
just me or there is something fundamentally wrong with that?

The answer is simple: experience. AIESEC has very little fear of failure (or has a lot of hope in individuals, who knows?) and there is a lot of room for trying and taking responsibility. Would you give the CEO role of a organization with 50.000 employees, present in 100 countries, founded in 1948 to someone with around 6 years experience in the organization (which also means 6 years of experience in any sort of job)? Well, AIESEC does, every single year. Yes, it changes it's CEO (and all the other thousands of leadership roles) annually. You learn, you move on - individuals and organization grow.

If you are in a company and you are in charge of the leadership development, all I ask you is to TRY to change this mindset. Don't think about leadership development as time bound, but experience bound. Experience takes time, of course, but time in itself doesn't build leaders. If you don't give your people the experience, they won't develop the skills.

Give people responsibility and freedom, they will surprise you positively around 80% of the time.

The secret Big Bang Team Days (a post that only the chosen ones will understand)

Well, I am not President anymore, but for them, I am always going to be "MCPiiiiiiiiiiii" (with Alex's drunk voice). Yesterday we used Skype Beta to all see each other, even though we are scattered in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Belgium and Romania, it felt just like our crazy days in the office. So here is a picture of our team days:

It just coincides with the closing of the books of our term, which made me get very happy for the effort we put in turning the organization around. Before our term, the year result was a loss of 1 million kroner. In our term, we had 111 thousand profit! Way to go my dear Big Bang (and, of course, some special individuals in the organization, to name a few: Hege, Halvard, Andreas, Elizabeth, Kjerstin, Andrea, Catherine, Ane, Tine, Christian and Jan Robert).

Sorry for the random post, but my team deserves it.

AIESEC alumnus knows the secret of life (and exchange)

If you ever been in AIESEC you know there is one phenomenon that is equal everywhere: when current AIESEC members meet the organization’s alumni, the alumnus almost always regard their period in AIESEC the best in the universe possible and giving the impression that the current AIESEC members don’t know what they are doing (and start giving advice – obviously not considering the current situation of the organization). It’s an illusion of the bright past, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that now that I am an alumnus, I can do the same!

So here are my hints for AIESEC, now that I am only an alumnus:

MyAIESEC.net – the massive intranet were 50.000 interact.

Outsource it´s collaboration tools – if you want to use it as a collaboration tool, do it right or not at all (because there are loads of collaboration alternatives for free online). Instead of trying to develop functions to collaborate, look at what is available in the market. 2 examples of collaboration online here and here.

External apps integration – what are you waiting to integrate it with Facebook, Twitter and all that? Geez, to have a networking function in myAIESEC.net is ridiculous. Get a grip, integrate with Facebook profiles. Ok, you can even make a Ning integration if you wish. The other way around would also be insanelly fun: open myaiesec.net statistics for external apps so users could remix and improve them as they see fit.

Beat the crap out of monster.com – make the exchange forms available to anyone to see (without the contact details and names when not logged in). Let companies search for student profiles to see if they find someone interesting. Let non-AIESEC students search for exchange opportunities and them to apply to AIESEC online to get those opportunities. Of course, for this to work there need to be a major revamp in the way that information is presented and searched. Talking about search…

Use Google search – stop that crappy search from hindering people to find what they want.

Customizable measures of success report – want to see exchange realized in terms, not in years? Impossible today. Want to check your committee’s exchange results 10 years ago? Nope. Come on, the data is there, you just need a good way to organize and present it.

Integrate with Google news (or whatever it´s called) – Present the latest mentions of AIESEC in the web automatically in myAIESEC.net. Can´t be so hard, can it?

Kill the alumni module – I know you put money on it (I helped to pay), but sunk cost will not come back. Make only an alumni Facebook or Ning integration and everyone will be happy.


AIESEC internal processes and stuff – how you run your business

HR business partnering – lots of companies do this: some people in HR are “partners” to certain managers. So they help the manager to implement HR processes. This has an interesting side effect: traditionally-aloof-to-business-performance-talent-management members will be inside a core work team, bringing them closer to how the business is really run without HR mambo jambo.

HiPo program (national) – High Potentials program. A series of stretch assignments for members that we believe have a great potential inside the organization to assume key positions. The national HR would take a co-responsibility in developing these people.

Let successful people talk to wanna-be successful – new leaders interviewing successful leaders in their own units and elsewhere. Connect the HiPos above to each other and to successful ex-HiPos. Create a network of success.

Forget balanced scorecard – as the main planning tool at least. You can use to access the organization if you wish. Almost no local committee needs the complexity of a balanced scorecard. Talking about complexity…

Make “simplicity” a value – that’s it, you know why.

Option to stop the spamming in the exchange promotion – user-centric, remember?


Strategies, focus, actions, whatever…

One blog to rule them all – a global blog that collects exchange, leadership and partner stories all over the world. Obviously can be customized to see only one kind of experience or only people from one country or in another country.

University partnership – there need to be a much much bigger focus in becoming closer to the university. In the future, the right move would be to include AIESEC as an extracurricular activity to get some study points and so on.

Sell university engagement – which organization can provide a fast access to students in 800 universities all around the world? NONE. But AIESEC could, if there was a system that other entities could sell certain kinds of access to certain universities. This is worth a fortune if it’s efficient and customizable enough, AIESEC.

65 years, start the plan now – Start the planning (and execution) of the 65 years of AIESEC now.

15 leadership lessons learned through AIESEC

In no particular order, the lessons I learned in my AIESEC experience:

1. It’s better to have no people than the wrong people – self-explanatory, but the thing is that when you don’t have anyone, at least you know you have a problem. When you have the wrong people, you fight to make them right and this generally fails.

2. Your team is a reflection of your behavior – when a team is down or up or anything, look at yourself as team leader. Inevitably you will be in the same state, so don’t get pissed off with them. Change yourself!

3. Get out of the throne and rush to the battle, your Majesty – it’s very pretty to say you are an strategic leader and sit in your office commanding the troops. Get out there and do stuff. Be present where the things are happening, because you can impact a lot by being an example in the battlefield, not in the board room.

4. People are different, accept and act accordingly – we all like to think we are unique, except when we want people to agree with us. Accept that people are different, they value different things and need to be treated not as you would like to be treated, but as they would like/need to be treated. Some people need pushing, some people need pulling, most people need both in different times.

5. Top down looks smart, but it’s dumb – top down approach is a nice temptation, but it will work much better if you can involve the bottom and middle (or parts of it) in the change. It’s dumb to come up with solutions that considers only the upper organization ‘s viewpoint, use multiple perspectives.

6. If middle management is not onboard, your boat won’t sail – leaders and managers that make things happen are a huge bottle neck for change (or the most awesome lever). What do you want them to be? Get them onboard early.

7. Make it simple, as simple as you can – complexity looks professional, but it’s just a lame way to solve problems. Look at Google, anyone knows how to use it because it’s damn simple.

8. You can’t build Rome in a day – change takes time. Plan accordingly – or conservatively.

9. Focus, focus, focus – you know you can’t build Rome in a day, but you also can’t build it all at the same time. So choose wisely what you want your organization to be doing and focus on it as hell with consistent behavior and messages that reinforce what you want to focus on.

10. Whole human-being is not a theory, is a fact – humans are not rational machines. There is at least 3 equal parts in humans: emotion, sensation and rational. Tap into those 3 human perspectives to lead effectively.

11. Adapt the job to the people, not the other way around – use people’s strengths when allocating responsibilities and don’t be trapped in functional job descriptions. In the end, the only thing that matters is to achieve the vision while making the mission happen. Complicated organization structures and systems should help you perform, not make it harder.

12. Accept reality and act upon it – it’s very easy to get trapped in an ideal world where things should be different. Accept what things really are and act as they are, not as they hypothetically should be.

13. Simple and visible plan – Simple plan, with clear and measurable goals, clear action, responsible and deadline. Make it visible also – we’ve put our plan and scoreboard on the wall, it was simple perfect.

14. Trust the team – if you heard hint number 1, you should have only quality people. Stretch their potential by giving them more and more trust and larger and larger responsibilities. You will be 80% of the time surprised positively.

15. Have a strong vision for direction and put all your efforts in it – and then use hint number 9: focus, focus, focus, while also taking an active decision to not focus on some things, important or urgent as they might be. If you need to do many things that are not on the vision or your vision is wrong/incomplete or your work is wrong.

I wouldn’t exchange my AIESEC experience for a full scholarship in London Business School

And that is 100% true. I wouldn’t exchange the experience I lived in AIESEC for anything, especially not a scholarship in any of the top ranked MBA schools in the world. This is no empty rhetoric - I had to leave attractive things to be in AIESEC. I left a career that was giving me a reasonable amount of money to get more involved in AIESEC and after I also left the business I created (and was starting to become profiting enough to put a smile on my face) to come to AIESEC Norway and get a more challenging experience.

How can this organization provide such a powerful learning experience?

It’s simple, it doesn’t use the principles practiced by most schools: instead of classrooms and teachers, AIESEC give you the opportunity to be an integral part of the business, from the very operational level to the highest leadership position. It is learn by doing. We have the opportunity to work towards ambitious goals, work alone and in teams, manage budgets, sell to students, companies, NGOs and government, solve problems, deal with crisis situations, create and execute and change process, well, basically ANYTHING that you can learn in practice in a business, we do in AIESEC. In real life. No simulation. We are out there creating value or going bankrupt.

The difference of AIESEC and a business? While in a business you would take at least 10-20 years to get to top leadership of an international organization present all around the globe, in AIESEC we do it in from the 1st year – after you learn the basics, you are pushed out of the warm nest to fly or die. How? In our 800 business units in 107 countries we change the whole leadership every year. Every single year, since 1948. Talk about learning fast, adapting and keep growing anyway. We have a saying in AIESEC that “you are never prepared to your current position. You are only prepared when you are leaving the position and going for something even more challenging”. It’s about swimming or sinking.

Example? I will summarize my own experience (ok, it’s a big summary, but it’s really only 1% of what happened):

April to November 2005 – member of AIESEC

I joined the local committee of AIESEC in Porto Alegre. I was terrible with people (I could only get things done by fighting people and threatening them). My first assignment was to explain what was AIESEC to a classroom with around 10 people. I barely knew what AIESEC was. I was so nervous I was shaking and my voice failed.

Part of the team that evaluated the students that applied to join AIESEC

At that time my local committee was in rags, there was a severe retention problem and lack of pipeline for leadership. Results were down. Randomness was everywhere. It was not pretty to see. I had 2 choices: quit as most of the people did or apply to local executive board to change that and make it happen. It was a hard decision, because if wanted to be executive board, I would have to quit my well paid job in advertising, because I couldn’t handle both. But I needed the money. What I did? I decided to apply (and I got selected to vice-president human resources of that local committee) and I also decided to open my own advertising agency with other 2 colleagues, so I could manage my own time.

Executive board selection - the people selected are pushed into the pool

December 2005 until December 2006 – first leadership role

Being executive board in AIESEC Porto Alegre (or, how we say it “@PA EB”) was my first intense team experience and probably the biggest leadership development leap I had. From a struggling local committee of 10 people, we raised AIESEC Porto Alegre to a performing LC of 60 members. In the end, we won the AIESEC-Phillips award of best local committee in Brazil. The best part is that AIESEC Porto Alegre became a sustainable local committee that today is much stronger than when we left and their results beat the crap out of our term. Well done, Porto Alegre!

The No Fluffiness executive board

AIESEC Porto Alegre, best local committee of Brazil in the year 2006

In this year my competencies had a jump: I learned a lot on results orientation, emotional intelligence, change management, building and managing a high performing team (I lead a 14 people team), focus, leading by example, coaching, training and facilitation (I was a trainer for around 100 people and I was not shaking anymore!), planning (we even used the balanced scorecard), expectation setting, well… I learned a lot. In this year I was not a common university student anymore, I knew how to get things done. During this period I also learned about finances and general management on my own advertising agency, but I can say that I much more learned in AIESEC and applied what I learned in my business than the other way around.

First time I was a trainer in a national conference

The very first team I lead

December 2006 until December 2007 – national leadership role

I got a glimpse of leadership in the previous year, I wanted more. So I applied to the amazingly fancy title of “National Strategy Leader – Brazilian People Development Framework” (or “NSL BPDF”, AIESEC has awesome titles, no?) which I translate to the non-AIESECers simply as National Learning Coordinator.

During this year as National Learning Coordinator I had basic 2 roles (each of them were 6 months):

1 – support all the AIESEC business units in Brazil to implement a development framework to increase the awesomeness of the experience lived in AIESEC

2 – lead a team responsible for creating talent management tatics and support the implementation of those in all Brazilian AIESEC business units.

And a 3rd role that was part of both roles above: design and deliver conferences/trainings. That’s where I spoke in trainings for around 600 people and I was completely fine with it. How much my comfort zone stretched.

The first national board team days

That's the amount of people I was training in national conferences

December 2007 – failing

In the end of my term as national learning coordinator, I had 2 obvious choices: 1) don’t take a new leadership role and leave the organization or go on exchange; 2) take a full-time leadership role as Vice-President in the AIESEC National Board.

I was convinced that I would take the 2nd option, but then the President of AIESEC in Brazil at the time (Mauricio, that also wrote an awesome post when he left AIESEC) asked me if I was interested for running for president of AIESEC in Brazil, not vice-president. The idea sincerely never stroke my mind until he talked to me. I gave it consideration and I decided to apply. I had faith in my skills that I could get the job done, even though it would be for sure a huge challenge. If I was elected as president of AIESEC in Brazil, I would have the role of delivering the biggest operational growth the organization ever had and also deliver the AIESEC International Congress, which is a more than 500.000 euros budget, at the same time.

3 people applied to be president of AIESEC in Brazil and none got elected. I don’t know why the others lost, but I know why I did: I was arrogant. I believed that my smarts and skills, allied to my logic would lead me to being elected. I forgot the most important lesson I learned in my first leadership experience: people don’t act/think like me, we are all different.

I learned a lot the value of emotional engagement in leadership, too bad it was late.

June 2008 until June 2009 – vice-president human resources in Norway, not exactly a fail, but feeling like a huge failure

After losing the election in Brazil, I decided I didn’t want to be a vice-president in Brazil – it wouldn’t be challenging enough for me, I had done so much in the talent management area nationally in my previous role that I wanted something different. So I decided to apply to vice-president human resources in another AIESEC country! Yes, because AIESEC is an open platform, if you are a member of AIESEC, you can apply to AIESEC anywhere in the world.

I made a list of all the countries that had open application for vice-president HR and the first earliest application deadlines were UK and Norway. I applied to both, got selected to Norway and then withdrew my application from UK. I was now a leader in the AIESEC Norway national board.

That was not an easy year and it made me learn as hell. Besides cultural shock of the country, I discovered that also the organization mentality was very different. AIESEC Norway was ill: severe cash flow problems, underperforming in every area, uncommitted members, huge retention rate problems, etc. It was not the strong AIESEC in Brazil that I had just left.

The 2008-2009 AIESEC Norway executive board

It was so hard (and our leadership was not exactly awesome) that by around January (half a year of our term) the team had a huge break down. With this I learned the importance of the right selection and also building the team early, because if you don’t build it, the team will build itself – without any control and the results might be bad, as they were.

Again in January I had another choice: leave AIESEC Norway, defeated, or rise up once again and apply to President of AIESEC Norway. I took the steeper route, applied to President. And I got selected – this time I didn’t forget the importance of emotional engagement in the vision. What I wanted for AIESEC Norway is to turn it to be AIESEC everyday. Generating the kind of experience that got me until here, every single day. At that point of time, it was only a bold statement. We were far away from it, poor AIESEC Norway.

On my president candidacy speech

Selected the 2009-2010 president of AIESEC Norway

June 2009 until June 2010 – The Big Bang Team, big success!

I am still a bit shy when people talk to me and mention that fact that I am a president. It somehow doesn’t feel right. But besides being uncomfortable with the title, I must say that I never had a better, more challenging and pleasant job than being the leader of AIESEC Norway (or, how we would say it here, AIESEC Norge daglig leder).

I was lucky to selected the most hardcore and resilient team I ever saw. We started also with cash flow problems (only 15.000 in the drift account and average monthly cost of around 100.000), people quitting, lack of performance, uninterested members, etc. In the first 6 months, I think it was the hardest time of my life so far. But my team was simply awesome, we were far far more than the sum of our individualities. We managed to use our strengths, be flexible, put ourselves together and change AIESEC Norway from down to up.

The first team days of the Big Bang team

The things that we did as a team:

•           Break the record of outgoing exchanges raises (previous year was 40+- and in our year was 70+-)
•           Break the 20 years performance record of 40-55 exchanges per term
•           Starting with 15.000 NOK in the drift account and finishing it with 350.000
•           Having operational profit! (thanks to a diversification of revenues and innovative products)
•           Had a major culture change in the organization (a problem that was there for 15-20 years). Today we only have performing members that are in AIESEC for the right reasons and working hard. (2 of the main things here were to fire the underperforming half of our membership and change the financial model.)
•           Had elected better executive boards elected than previous term
•      Exchange happening EVERYDAY (the dream came true!)

Our first national conference - in the DnB Nor Leadership Development Day

AIESEC Norway today is a different organization. Much better. Still with a long way to go to be strong, but we started it. The Big Bang Team name was prophetic - we were indeed the beginning for a new AIESEC Norway.

The first time I felt like leading a country - Fyru Fyru!

It was a pleasure to serve AIESEC Norway, but now it’s time to leave the stage to the new generation, because they also need to learn and take AIESEC to the next level. I know, looking to the new National Executive Board and the Local Committees Presidents that AIESEC Norway 2010-2011 will kick the ass of my Big Bang team in terms of results.

Most awesome team ever

Thanks you so much for my whole experience, I can only be grateful to AIESEC for all those years. They were the best in my life until now.

As musicians, we are very good leaders

Fyru! Fyru! The sound of achievement!

I am leaving AIESEC series

30^th of June 2010 is my last day in AIESEC (that is a bit more than 5 years in the organization). Since I decided to leave, lots of thoughts crossed my mind about this amazing organization that gave me experiences that changed me and my whole life.

But one post with everything I wanted to say about AIESEC would be impossibly long and unpractical to read in a screen (even if you had a fancy iPad), so I will make a series of post the coming days about it.

I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing about these 5 years of leadership development, challenge and peak experiences.

If you still don’t know what is AIESEC (which world do you live?), here is a brief about it:

What is AIESEC?

“AIESEC is amazing” was one of the best answers I heard in reply to this question. But I can say it in a more understandable way: AIESEC is a platform for youth leadership development. It offers young people the opportunity to be global citizens, to change the world, and to get experience and skills that matter today. AIESEC is quite large: present in over 107 countries and territories and with over 45,000 members, AIESEC is the world's largest student‐run organisation.

Our product:

It's what we call "the AIESEC experience", which is compromise of leadership opportunities inside the organization and professional exchange experiences.

What kind of exchange?

We offer students of higher education and recent graduates to go on professional exchanges that can be on 1) management/business, 2) engineering/IT/technical and 3) social development/NGOs/educational.

Education that prepares you for life

It's funny how every video about improving education could be in the end an advertising to join AIESEC. That's exactly what we are doing - for 62 years. I've been really lucky to join this organization.

You can see the determination in his eyes

That's the way a friend described someone she had just met. She was sure (just as I'm sure) that he's going places. Once the determination is in his eyes, the learning will take care of itself.

On the other hand, if I can see the fear in your eyes, then I'm not sure that learning alone will take care of the problem. No one can prove that the path you're on is risk free or guaranteed to work. Searching for more proof is futile. Searching for more determination makes more sense. (Seth Godin)

In loads of AIESECers you can see the determination in fact. And it's pretty. I would just enjoy that people would see it more often - the world sometimes seems a bit blind.

Or maybe just with fear in their own eyes.

Going to Estonia

I will be away until 16th of May. I am going to help AIESEC in Estonia to create their national year plan. See you around!

I love chairing conferences, can't wait to arrive in Tallin today!

And, completely unrelated, stay with an awesome and funny interview of Conan O'Brien @Google:

Companies declare: soft skills are more important than technical skills when hiring people

A recent Right Management study of close to nearly 900 senior leaders and Human Resource professionals revealed surprising insights into just what factors lead most frequently to on-the-job success. Respondents overwhelmingly pointed not to employees’ technical skills, expertise or experience, but to other, very different qualities: organizational culture and motivational fit, as well as savvy, appropriate interpersonal skills. For example, the number of respondents who felt that “organizational culture/motivational fit” contributes most to accelerated performance was more than 2 ½ times greater than those who pointed to “technical skills” or “relevant experience” as the most significant factor. (more on this on Great Leadership)

And these soft skills that are increasingly more important for employers are not taught in university . One more reason to join AIESEC if you are a student or to partner with AIESEC to access our pool of talented people.


Unfortunately for me, it looks like that Norwegian business are a bit late in this trend. But it will catch up for sure, so now it's the right time for students to catch up and learn how hard the soft skills are.

Prosjektdesign

Related to the post bellow, I have been involved in a project for a couple of days that already paid off supreme: I went yesterday to a get to know of the people involved in the project and it was in a school called Prosjektdesign, around the always trendy Grünnerloka. The school is not what you would imagine of a crowded school, but a house where 26 people divided in different teams. The purpose as I understand is to develop different leadership and management characteristics in the best way possible to develop: learning by doing - or, how they say, learning by burning. For those who know about Kaos Pilot, it is a similar concept.

But also very, very similar to AIESEC style, that's why I felt right at home. Almost one of them. The spirit and the sensation when you enter the house that hosts the organization is exactly the same feeling when you enter a bursting AIESEC local committee (or our dear national office): activity, fun, passion, friendship, work hard - in sum, a shiny place to be.

Besides the people from Prosjektdesign, I also met the other ones that are involved in the project and I couldn't have more fun: brilliant people. Including someone passionate about education that is currently doing something about it. I got very cool ideas for my future projects. I somehow was ignoring technology development in my "life school project".

I had tons of fun. I am very privileged that even after I leave AIESEC I will keep considering my job the best fun I could ever had. I am lucky.

How to get a job interview without a CV

I have been job hunting for some time now, since my term as President of AIESEC Norway is ending now in June 30th. In the best of Maslow's style, I was trying to get absolutely anything anywhere so I could survive, get some money and then try to find a place that is cool and a better position. I was practically a CV-sending-machine-gunner.


This didn't work well - or, well, putting in my own words: it failed supreme. I couldn't even get an interview. Are you serious? Do you know how much experience I have? How do you prefer a fresh graduate with no experience? I can't understand. 


Then in a spree of lucidity I decided to apply what I've learned in these 5 years of AIESEC and I decided to scrap all the sh*t out of the way and go only for the important stuff. I thought "to hell with it, if I am going to get rejected, I am going to get rejected by companies and jobs that I really wish to work!"


Then I sent 4 e-mails to 4 companies that I would love to work in - mostly because of the business they are in, such as leadership development, culture management consultancy and this sort of thing. The sort of thing that I am not only passionate for, but I am good at it - and, sincerely, I love it so much that I would pay people to work on this (if I had money, which is not exactly the case - or, putting in my own words: I am a serious candidate for the worst paid CEOs documentary). Ah, I forgot to mention: none of these companies had any job opening.


From the 4 e-mails sent, I received 3 answers in the same day asking me to have an interview, a lunch or anything. And one of these companies I didn't even send my CV, it was just a mail. 


What happened?


Here is the recipe (in order of importance - i.e. if you don't get the first, the 2nd will not help you):


#1 - Passion - I was not sending a job application, I was sending almost a love letter. I wanted to do it so much that I would do anything to contribute - I just want to be part of it and have fun. Just let me play with your toys! If you are not passionate for what you are applying for, you are just another guy. Passion is free and generates crazy commitment (like working until 22h for free just because you like it) - but no one can buy passion.


#2 - Add value first, then get valued - I just spoke from my heart that I was a talented guy wanting to contribute, even for free. This is quite obvious: I won't get any money anyway, I will be unemployed, so I can work even for free. It's much easier to get to know people that can give you a job when you are working and making the difference, than while sitting at home sending CVs. This paid off already: I met yesterday around 10 amazing people that was ultra-cool to work with.


#3 - Between big and agile, go for the agile - I know my mom would be proud of me if I worked in a huge well-known company. Good that I have self-perception enough to know that I am the one that I need to please, not my mom. Going to big companies you are just asking to be treated as a number from a boring HR person which has as the best tool to manage talent monetary incentives. Bypass the HR people, talk to the owners and CEOs of smaller and faster companies. They can smell talent and that's not a commodity largely available to smaller companies. If you have talent, stand out and talk to the boss.


And that was it. Of course most of these things you really cannot do if you are a fresh graduate that has no clue about your strengths, dreams and so on - but that's why you should join AIESEC and stand out, be Linchpin.


I am having fun as hell. Spring feelings supreme.


PS: hey, you got interested? Talk to me (sergio.schuler AT gmail.com) or check out my CV.

How to fire someone that is not performing according to the standards set?

In AIESEC Norway in the past months we had a drastic reduction of the amount of people recruited and a drastic increase in the amount of people that we had to "let go" because they didn't fit the performance standards we were looking for. And, yes, we are a volunteer organization. Volunteer? Yes. Firing people? Yes. We have a saying around here "you are volunteer to join and volunteer to leave. In between you work your ass-off". And I am proud of this and the people who made it happen - because it was not me who was on the frontline, firing people, it were the courageous leaders on the local level that had to have difficult conversations.

Lots of them asked me "but how do I fire someone?" And I had no clue how to do it, I just tried to support them as I could.

But this doesn't happen only in a volunteer organization, in "normal" companies that's the same dilemma, no MBA will ever teach you to fire someone, you will only learn when you actually do it in practice. And here is a copy paste of the article about it:

When I teach MBAs, we talk about firing people with the cold and academic clichés of "down-sizing," "right-sizing," "letting someone go." But have you ever fired someone? As a construction superintendent, this was a major part of my job. These terms are bloodless and fail to capture the true intensity and anguish that goes with looking someone in the eyes and telling him he's out of a job.

It wasn't until I had fired fifteen people in 12 months that I began to see things differently. One carpenter had made a costly mistake on a master bedroom porch; it was one of many costly mistakes. I caught a second carpenter finishing the last of his whiskey nip. The third had been coming in late and his effort on the job was weak. Some of the carpenters had complained when they were teamed up with him.

Within 15 minutes, all three were given their final paychecks and told to leave. And yet, despite my clear justification in making the moves, I was still filled with doubts. I invited one of my trusted carpenters, Benjamin, for a beer after work.

With a full mug in front of me, I poured out my feelings. "Benjamin, I don't know how many more times I can do this. I don't even know if I did the right thing."

"Andy, you had to do it. Those guys weren't carrying their weight."

"But now they're out of work. I can't help thinking about that."

Benjamin agreed, "Yup, that's true. Some people are out of work today. They're not getting a paycheck. But this is happening at other job sites around the state too. It's not your fault."

"So you mean I have no choice in the matter? No say? I'm simply carrying out what needs to be carried out?"

"Well, sort of."

"That doesn't make me feel better. I made the decision to fire these people. If I decided not to, they'd still be employed. I wonder if the other guys live in fear that I'm going to fire them?"

"Now wait a minute, Andy," cautioned Benjamin. "You're making it sound like your decisions were arbitrary. Were they?"

"No."

"Right, you made these decisions for a reason. Don't you think the guys that got fired know that? And," he paused, "Don't you think the guys that are still on the job know that too?"

"Yeah, I guess so. But I wonder what they see?"

"They see someone who's trying to hold a high standard of work. Stop thinking about the guys you fired and start thinking about the guys you still employ. They're the ones who deserve your attention."

Benjamin's lecture was a turning point, a watershed in my thinking about what I was doing and why. The pain of telling someone that he was fired would always be difficult, but the pain lingered less if I focused not on who left but on who stayed. My notions of building a crew took on new meaning. The idea of one stable and permanent crew was dispelled, replaced by the idea of a constantly evolving crew.

That's not to say that it stopped being painful to let someone go. And in fact, that pain should never go away. You're severing a relationship and creating hardship for someone. But you have to look at why you are doing it, how you are doing it, and what you are creating in the process.

In some cases, I learned that everyone knew a person had to go and they were waiting for me to do it. And by letting the person go, the people I left behind felt better about working for me. They saw that I had high standards and they were meeting them. They worked harder, with more pride, as long as I held the whole crew to the same high standard and did my job by weeding out those who didn't meet it.

The key here is building a culture of quality and pride. And I, as the leader, was responsible for establishing that culture both by deciding on its membership and also determining the rules of maintaining that membership. This goes far beyond the formal processes of recruiting and training. This puts the human face on a human process.

Making a newly hired/promoted to perform instantly

Organizations tend to believe that you can't get value for newly hired people. The concept is simple "they need to understand first how to get things done in the organization, then they can get it done". Even though this mentality is changing in AIESEC Norway, still some local committees have this attitude too, letting their newly recruited into "learning mode" for too long.

I have 2 good reasons for not doing this, but instead put the person in deep water from the first day:

#1 - training is overrated, no one can truly learn the work without practicing the work. Even though most organizations still put more money in theoretical learning than in anything else that should generate learning.

#2 - because Halvard Business Review said so. See part of the article bellow:

Case Study #1: Working within the first five minutes on the job

Michelle Pomorksi, started her job as a contract programmer at the software design and development company Menlo Innovations after an intensive hiring process. Within five minutes of walking into the office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Michelle was working on a project. This wasn't an "onboarding project" but a real one for clients. She was "tripled" (that's company lingo for teamed with two other people) and sent off to a client site to do interviews. Rather than observing, Michelle actively participated and was expected to contribute by asking questions.

Rich Sheridan, founder and CEO of Menlo, thinks he has created a unique process to get new people productive faster than at other software companies. Every new hire is immediately paired with a current employee to do design and development work, in what the company calls "paired programming." Pairs are switched every week so by the end of the first three weeks, a new person has three mentors to rely on for advice and help. Even better, after the initial three weeks, she is ready to mentor someone new. "The real power is in the pairing," Michelle says. "There isn't one day I've gone to work that I haven't learned and taught at least one thing."

The process is facilitated by an open work space: Menlo doesn't have offices, cubes or doors. Rich thinks his hiring and onboarding strategy gives him an advantage over competitors because he can seamlessly expand and contract his work force according to client demand. It also makes employees enjoy a task they might otherwise dread. He acknowledges that onboarding this way requires careful attention to how pairs are put together and a good deal of orchestration. But he does not see it as a loss to productivity. "I probably get four times as much work done with two people pairs than most people get with two individuals," he says.

Case Study #2: Start early and see the whole picture

Pat Lee, a top Marketing Director at Johnson & Johnson Asia, happily received a promotion to Vice President of Marketing. But, she was not fully prepared for the suddenness of the promotion and all that it entailed, including relocating to a different country. She immediately began planning the logistics of the move: deciding which town to live in, exploring job prospects for her spouse, investigating schools for her children. She expected to have all these details worked out in advance so that she could "hit the ground running" on her first day in the new job.

However, Joe, her HR business partner, urged her to begin the transition to the actual job before she made the move. He suggested she take a "transition risk assessment" to help her better understand the challenges she faced in the new role. This helped Pat to fully see the situation she was getting into and better understand herself. It uncovered several issues: she had never worked in another country before; she had never taken on a regional role; she had minimal understanding of how her company did business in other countries; and she had little knowledge of the people on her new staff, the office politics, and how things got done. She also didn't know what her new boss expected of her and what phase of operation her businesses were in — start-up, turnaround, downsizing, optimizing on-going, etc. She realized she needed to address these problems and so with Joe, developed a Transition Acceleration Plan and started working with a coach, who helped her by interviewing her boss, direct reports, and colleagues to get honest feedback about their expectations. Doug Soo Hoo, former Director of Learning and Development at J&J, explains that this intense process is "a good way to get out of 'sink or swim mode' and an investment in the company that also shows a caring for the success of the individual."

After three months on the job, Pat's boss and her peers gave her rave reviews on how quickly she had mastered the "ins and outs" of the new situation and taken actions to address them. One of her new reports said it was almost as if she had been in the division for years.

To read the full article, click here.

What I want to say with it? Simple: put your new executive board to work now and make sure that the new members joining are not expected to stay in "learning mode" for long time. Start working now!

What NGOs need to do to gain respect

They need to:

• Make an honest assessment of their core competencies, competitors and consumers so that they understand and can articulate where they fit in the marketplace -- and make a market play if they can deliver a competing service more effectively. The end goal is to solve problems, not get along, right?
  
• Take more risks in how they deliver solutions and how they fund them. The status quo is not enough, so think big and act accordingly.
  
• Say no to funders who demand new programs or changes to programs that detract from the organization's theory of change or core competencies.
  
• Diversify revenue streams so that they are not beholden to any one funder or funding stream.
  
• Demand that board members invest significant time and money in the organization, or get out.
  
• Fire under-performing staff. This is such a taboo in the sector, but with limited resources and mounting social problems to be addressed, do we really have time to invest in people who can't deliver?
  
• Be brutally honest with funders, board members, others about the true costs of running operations effectively and don't apologize for, or hide, administrative expenses
  
• Create a bold strategic plan that will drive the organization toward social impact and sustainability, not mediocrity.

From Change.org.

That's exactly what we have been trying to do in AIESEC Norway - and we are beginning to see the successes of it. I still love one of the quotes from one of our members "AIESEC is volunteer? Yes, volunteer to join, volunteer to leave, but while you are here you work your ass off".

Dreams coming true

As this is my 2nd year in the national board of AIESEC Norway, I remember that, in my first year, we had this dream of exchange happening every day in AIESEC Norway. Being it raise of a new internship, matching some exchange participants or realizing a new exchange with some exotic country.

Looking back today, after almost 2 years, I can say that this dream we are almost fulfilling today. Exchange became the central part of our organization. Innovation around it is begining to catch up, today all local committees are into constant EP recruitment and the DT TN project had it's first sell: 4 TNs sold in NHH! These changes are amazing. Thanks to a lot to the hard work from different people: members in teams, local and national executive boards. But not only hard work, also passion and, lots of times, personal sacrifice for the cause. We are AIESECers.

Is a good feeling to be part of all this change. We are far from over, but results are showing up and they will keep growing.

Let's go, AIESEC Norway! Let's raise as hell and match fast as the speed of light!

AIESEC Norway will change

Why? Because we are not afraid of it: