My first semester's update

It has been a while I didn't post on this blog. A lot of things happened to me this past few months.

I joined a KAP (kot-à-projet) this semester. It was one of my long term goal when I joined university five years ago. The project is to animate once a week a group of handicapped people. I am really grateful that I have been able to join this project, not only because of the project, but also because I got the chance to get to know and live with really nice and interesting people. I am really excited about the next few months. It is going to be fun!

As you know I became Local Committee President of AIESEC Louvain-la-Neuve on July 1st. My main priority on this front was to put my lovely Local Committee on track and to work on developing it more sustainably. This first semester I focused a lot on the current leadership to make sure they will be ready to perform. Next semester will most probably quite busy with projects and conferences. The goal is to make sure that we have a knowledgeable and motivated Executive Board for next year.


I am a bit disappointed by my studies at the moment. Although it is quite interesting, I don't believe that the subjects that I studied this semester (mostly finance and accounting) will be as useful for me as I thought it would be. I believe next semester's subjects will be more suitable for me and for what I want to do in the future. We will see...


I am thinking of trying to have this semester weekly goal setting posted in my blog so that I can keep better track of what I will achieve and what I won't . Let's see how it goes...

Kisses,
Michael

Nice to be back home for the weekend

I am back home for this weekend. It was not really planned but I enjoy it anyway. It is always when you are away that you start thinking that your live back home is not that bad after all. 

I love the experience of living overseas. The learning experience is always more intense because people are different and people don't think the same way you do. This kind of experience is really life changing in many ways. I have the impression that I will travel a lot in the next few years, at least I would love to.

On the other hand, it is always nice to be back home, even for a few days. Being away from home always gives you an impression of being insecure because you never know how people will react on what you are doing, what you are saying, etc. I suppose this is why an experience abroad is always more tiring than being at home, and not only because you speak an other language.

People oriented versus Results oriented or Do it for fun or Do it for the money

When we start analyzing an organizational culture, we always end up with two different kinds of culture: a culture mainly focusing on people and a cuture mainly focusing on results. Great cultures are always focusing on both, meaning focusing on people so that they can generate great results for the common good of the organization as a whole.

AIESEC is in my view one of those organization and that is why I am still active in this network today. AIESEC gives you the opportunity to develop yourself so that you can contribute to the organization's goals. But we really need to be careful not to damage this balance in our focus on both people and results.

The day we start only focusing on people and on what they want we will end up becoming a student with no real purpose except pleasing our members. A typical kind of organization that only focus on pleasing people are drinking student clubs.

But, on the other hand, if we focus too much on results, either we will scare people that want to join because they won't feel capable of delivering those results or, if they are capable of delivering those results, they will start asking for money and AIESEC will be considered nothing more than a SME present on campus.

One of the motto in AIESEC is "work hard, play harder". I usually recognize a real AIESECer by the fact that for him or her working is always like playing and playing is always like working.

How about finding a nice tea bag in the sales materials that you receive?

Great idea coming from my SEC teammates this afternoon. They put a tea bag in every envelope that they send to our prospects with a written letter inviting them to enjoy a cup of tea while reading the documents that we sent it to them. I found it an awesome idea! Although I don't know if it is possible to implement this idea in Belgium as I don't know if tea is a quite popular drink in Belgian companies, I might give it a try. What do you think?

My second cultural shock in the UK

UK people eat ice cream with a mix of chocolate and mint! Beurk!!

My first AIESEC "cultural shock" in the UK

I am doing quite a lot of matching for AIESEC UK at the moment. I am still a bit surprised by the way they sell the Global Exchange Programme here. They focus a lot on the starting point (for them cold calling) and not so much on the end result (having interns coming to UK for their AIESEC internship). They/We planned to call 2000 companies this summer (which I think is quite ambicious compare to what we do in Belgium) but they only plan to raise 10 or 15 internships (which I think is quite unambicious compare to Belgium). Oh and I forgot to mention that we are (only) five in the team with me as a CEEDer to do this. All of them except one are on the picture with the AIESEC Warwick interns during an intern drink. Netheless to say we are working hard at the moment :-) I really hope we will get some results at the end of the day: my fingers are crossed...

The reborn of my blog: Second week of my LCP XP, first week of my SEC XP

Well I know it is not the first time I am trying to create a blog. My first experience with blogger.com was not the best: I was facing a lot of technical difficulties. I hope this time it will work fine: I have already noticed some good changes to the posting process...

Why creating a new blog now? Because I am (again) overseas and people back home are asking me to keep them updated about my CEED XP. I am currently doing a summer CEED in the AIESEC UK Summer Exchange Center. This center is basically handling the Exchange Area from UK LCs when the members are on holidays. More about my experience and the challenges I am facing here in my next posts.

For 15 days now, I have also been officially president of my Local Committee in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. I am really happy so far with my Executive Board members. We had our Local Planning Days at the end of June and I think I manage to make them quite excited about the year ahead. We will see how it will go but I am quite optimistic.

I am also quite impressed by the motivation coming from the future MC (National Office in AIESEC) in Belgium. They seem to be quite knowledgeable. I am looking forward to see the organization growing again this year.

If you can't wait to have more details about what I am going at the moment, feel free to post your questions on this blog (except if it is too personal of course :-))