I‘m writing this blog post to share three propositions that I think to be crucial and important to do by AIESEC International (the global leadership body of AIESEC) in the next period. My only motivation to publish these thoughts is my passion for this organization. Enjoy reading :)
3 urgent things AIESEC International (AI) needs to do:
1- Rethink your relationship with politics
I watched most of the IPM-Live sessions online on the IPM Website. Some of you may have noticed the picture of the man in the top center of the screen (See Screenshot).
The man in the picture is the current president of Tunisia. Constantly „reelected“ since 22 years and is not the kind of person that I‘ll be proud to to see associated with AIESEC. I am myself a Tunisian citizen, I lived in Tunisia for more than 15 years , so I really know what I‘m talking about.
I won‘t tell you more about what kind of leader this president is because I still have family there and they could get some serious troubles. Just visit the dedicated pages of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and you will understand the true nature of the political system in this country.
Apparently the IPM was under the high patronage of „his excellency“ as Aman (President of AIESEC International) called him during an interview to the national television and I really don‘t blame the Tunisian MC because I know how difficult the situation is and how things works inside this country.
But I‘m asking myself now: Could AIESEC cooperate with governments that violate human rights ? Do we actually have a statement that defines our relationship with such governments ? How should a PAI behave when he is invited to such countries ?
2- Communicate better with local entities while changing models and tools
Rumours says that AI is going to launch soon a new version of the Global Competency Model (GCM) with some new competencies and a new assessment tool (CAT).
If these rumours are true, this mean that AIESEC Germany wasted human and financial resources by allocating its talents from the last National Support Teams in implementing the current global competency model to the country‘s internal structures and processes.
I‘m sure that the guys at the Talent Management Unit (TMU) have done a wonderful job creating a new version of the Global Competency Model. But how could countries and local entities plan in mid/long-term and elaborate action plans and strategies if the tools and models they use change every one or two years ? Does AI expect the countries to invest yearly in updating their processes and documents with the newest version of the competency model ?
Educating and convincing Local Committees to use the Global Competency Model was a major issue during our term in the German Talent Management Support Team and the task was even more difficult because of the constant changes and updates (First major change was in 2007/08 by adding two new competencies and renaming some others).
It is very disappointing that no one contacted us to inform us about these upcoming changes or to explain the motivation behind them. We will read the news when it will be published on MyAIESEC.net and are expected to welcome and apply them. To cut with this blind dependency, some countries like The Netherlands have chosen to develop their own competency model and it‘s appropriate to ask ourselves too: Wouldn‘t it be better for AIESEC Germany to create our own competency model in cooperation with national partner companies ? This opportunity means also having a full customized competency model that fits to the specific needs of the country, having a total control over it‘s development and further enhancements and keeping the possibility to integrate it into a customer relationship management system (which MyAIESEC.net still do not offer and which is critical to every business‘s success)
I predicting that more countries will consider the idea of developing their own models and tools if the global management body of the organization continue not involving local entities in developing and updating models and tools that they are supposed to use and implement in their every days work.
3- Bring structure to the chaos in MyAIESEC.net
MyAIESEC.net is about three years old. Every day, dozens of new wikis are created and files uploaded to the system transforming it to a big chaos instead of a being a web based global learning environment.
The problem is that there is actually absolutely no instructions or recommendations from AI on how to name newly created wikis and uploaded wikis.
Every country and entity in the network have their own internal regulation, which is of course different from the regulations of other countries.
Every country and entity in the network have their own internal regulation, which is of course different from the regulations of other countries.
AIESEC in Germany tried to solve this problem since the migration form our old IT system to MyAIESEC.net by communicating that Files and Wikis names have to respect this pattern "COUNTRY - LC Name - Functional Team - Topic" (For example: "GERMANY - LC Hamburg - External Relations - Partners") and this is a good example that the network could follow. It actually don‘t matter that much if the German example is good or not; the most important thing is to have one unique naming regulation for everyone, and AI need to take action as soon as possible.
