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These are five key points I’d probably bring up, if a potential employer ever decides to ask me what I’ve learnt from being crazy enough to join so many Co-Curricular Activities (CCAs) during my university days. Of course, just the abridged (short) version! =)
1. The best ideas are nothing without effective implementation
In a valiant effort to burnish their credentials, impress students or simply due to the need to be different, many student leaders have succumbed to the need to come up with radical and fantastic ideas. This passion is commendable. But as a musician friend once quipped, passion without discipline is nothing. The best plans without proper execution will almost always fall through, or fall short of their intended objectives.
The failure to implement can be attributed to things like pride (refusal to listen to advice), lack of leadership continuity (hence resulting in best practices and valuable experiences being lost along the way), poor organisational structures, recruitment & development, poor processes, poor post-project follow ups, lack of proper time and resource management, trying to reinvent the wheel, or simply pure laziness to get down to doing it. Sometimes, all it really takes for something to succeed is to really, just do it consistently, do it well, and end it well.
More often than not, many of us gleefully throw up ideas and provide so many comments, but at the end of the day, remain unwilling to initiate or see them through to fruition.
2. Have ideals, but dose it with practicality
In a somewhat related point, the best ideas can be a bit too idealistic at times. Given the relatively short terms of office (normally one to two year terms) for student leaders here, one would need to make the compromises necessary to realise high ideals, or to discard certain ideals for expediency. For example, most organisations would require committed individuals to be in their leadership, hence posting stringent requirements for their election into office. But this principle itself would already be compromised if a student leader decides to renege on his/her commitment and say, decide to go for long-term overseas leave during his/her term of office. Would your organisation still accept this leader if he/she has had a track record of irresponsibility?
Always begin with the end in mind, a fellow (ex-) student leader once told me. Hold fast to what your organisation stands for, on why you signed up as a student leader in the first place (provided that the reasons for joining are good-intentioned in the first place). But as long as fundamental principles are not violated, be prepared for some flexibility with regard to the prevailing needs of the time. This in itself is a highly subjective and normative statement to make, but any organisation would first need to come up with a definitive vision and a set of objectives that remains relevant to the needs of the stakeholders they serve.
3. Where style meets substance
Unless you’re the involved in a Public Relations kind of co-curricular activity (CCA), or one that involved with many Business deals, where style is their substance (several of these kinds of CCAs do exist in NUS) – and I admit that is a generalized stereotype – while attention-grabbing at times, no number of marketing stunts or image-enhancing publicity exercises per se, is going to change people’s impressions of your organisation very much.
As long as the basic needs of students – academics, food, infrastructure, orientating our freshmen, and the like – are not met, or do not seem to be in the process of being taken care of, we probably won’t give two hoots about what your organisation does. The small numbers that do care will likely be discerning enough to see through the smoke and mirrors, and the “feel-good” campaigns of lucky draws, prizes, games, Rag float building etcetera. In fact, these measures can backfire, causing even more students to have negative views or remain apathetic at best.
Given the limited time, manpower and resource constraints that student leaders have for their terms of office, emphasis must be placed on what really matters to students. The promotion of style or identity building is important for creating awareness, but it must be backed up by strong core fundamentals of the organisation – among many others – by a functioning, far-sighted and motivated leadership and a sincere commitment to meeting and balancing the needs of your key stakeholders. And nope, I’m not talking about our corporate sponsors that some student organisations have become increasingly beholden to these days.
4. Give credit where and when it’s due
Our fine education system has placed much emphasis on the need to think critically. But sometimes, we tend to take the “critical” part a bit to far. Again, I generalize, but “reverse censorship” seems to be all the rage now – at least on social media. Saying anything positive or pro-establishment is frowned upon as a sin. Only if one can elaborate on the mistakes and flaws, it seems, is one deemed to have a mind of his/her own.
We often gripe, curse and swear if the shuttle buses are packed and blame the government when the weather is hot. But we fail to thank those working hard trying to improve the things that they can change, and to manage stakeholders’ expectations on the things that they can’t.
Sure, student leaders are volunteers and they must have the ethos of our Public Service! It’s all about serving the people/students! It’s about sacrificing without expecting anything in return! Well, let’s just say that trying to find someone truly altruistic is like trying to find a pro-PAP supporter on Temasek Review’s website. Everyone needs to gain something from their service experience – be it the intangible sense of achievement of making someone’s life better, or the tangible reward of accommodation points for staying in hall, for example. It is already increasingly difficult to attract good student leaders, and the lack of credit will only serve to discourage others from stepping forward.
Criticism can and should be encouraged – but it should build up, not tear down. Constructive suggestions should trump mere complaints, even if sometimes, leaders simply just keep doing things wrong. Credit and incentives must be given to support these leaders. Sometimes, a simple compliment, or small treats will do for smaller project committees; for the long term and larger scale initiatives, a more structured approach could include subsidised campus accommodation and development courses, among many other schemes. But this in itself warrants a separate article altogether.
5. Trust, but verify
Always believe that there is some good in everyone, but always be prepared to be disappointed at least some of the time. Sad, but true.
Everyone will fail you some how, some time. Disagreements will always arise. Politics and conflict are inevitable, with some organisations being more susceptible. Most Organisational Behaviour (OB) textbooks will tell you that some level of conflict is necessary for a healthy organisation to grow. But when this conflict grows to consume most of the organisation’s leadership’s waking hours, the real losers are the stakeholders. Sounds pretty obvious, but sometimes we tend to forget that.
Knowing whom to turn to during such conflicts can in itself, be a challenge. Not everyone provides the best help or advice for conflict resolution. In relation to point no. 4, some of us take pride in the ability to win arguments for the sake of doing so, while others may negatively reinforce the conflict by commenting without prior knowledge, experience, or background. Knowing whom to trust is indeed a tricky combination of the person’s track record, intentions, comfort level, quality of advice and reputation, among other things. If many people from different walks of life give similar testimonies about a particular person, they could either be all be mistaken, the person him/herself gravely misunderstood, or they could most probably be right. In most cases, I’d tend to believe the latter option, after at least trying to find some contrary viewpoints and seeking some verification.
On a side note, for conflict resolution, responsible confrontation, not avoidance or posting complaints up on Facebook or Twitter, works better. Postings on online media are always subject to misinterpretation, as I have experienced more than a few times.
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So to those who still care, and bother, about student life at all, there we have it. The broad learning points are probably quite generalizable to most organisations, which also means that they’ve been thought of before. No matter, anything said here comes from my past and current observations and experiences in the organisations that I’ve served in and with, in NUS. =)
1. The best ideas are nothing without effective implementation
In a valiant effort to burnish their credentials, impress students or simply due to the need to be different, many student leaders have succumbed to the need to come up with radical and fantastic ideas. This passion is commendable. But as a musician friend once quipped, passion without discipline is nothing. The best plans without proper execution will almost always fall through, or fall short of their intended objectives.
The failure to implement can be attributed to things like pride (refusal to listen to advice), lack of leadership continuity (hence resulting in best practices and valuable experiences being lost along the way), poor organisational structures, recruitment & development, poor processes, poor post-project follow ups, lack of proper time and resource management, trying to reinvent the wheel, or simply pure laziness to get down to doing it. Sometimes, all it really takes for something to succeed is to really, just do it consistently, do it well, and end it well.
More often than not, many of us gleefully throw up ideas and provide so many comments, but at the end of the day, remain unwilling to initiate or see them through to fruition.
2. Have ideals, but dose it with practicality
In a somewhat related point, the best ideas can be a bit too idealistic at times. Given the relatively short terms of office (normally one to two year terms) for student leaders here, one would need to make the compromises necessary to realise high ideals, or to discard certain ideals for expediency. For example, most organisations would require committed individuals to be in their leadership, hence posting stringent requirements for their election into office. But this principle itself would already be compromised if a student leader decides to renege on his/her commitment and say, decide to go for long-term overseas leave during his/her term of office. Would your organisation still accept this leader if he/she has had a track record of irresponsibility?
Always begin with the end in mind, a fellow (ex-) student leader once told me. Hold fast to what your organisation stands for, on why you signed up as a student leader in the first place (provided that the reasons for joining are good-intentioned in the first place). But as long as fundamental principles are not violated, be prepared for some flexibility with regard to the prevailing needs of the time. This in itself is a highly subjective and normative statement to make, but any organisation would first need to come up with a definitive vision and a set of objectives that remains relevant to the needs of the stakeholders they serve.
3. Where style meets substance
Unless you’re the involved in a Public Relations kind of co-curricular activity (CCA), or one that involved with many Business deals, where style is their substance (several of these kinds of CCAs do exist in NUS) – and I admit that is a generalized stereotype – while attention-grabbing at times, no number of marketing stunts or image-enhancing publicity exercises per se, is going to change people’s impressions of your organisation very much.
As long as the basic needs of students – academics, food, infrastructure, orientating our freshmen, and the like – are not met, or do not seem to be in the process of being taken care of, we probably won’t give two hoots about what your organisation does. The small numbers that do care will likely be discerning enough to see through the smoke and mirrors, and the “feel-good” campaigns of lucky draws, prizes, games, Rag float building etcetera. In fact, these measures can backfire, causing even more students to have negative views or remain apathetic at best.
Given the limited time, manpower and resource constraints that student leaders have for their terms of office, emphasis must be placed on what really matters to students. The promotion of style or identity building is important for creating awareness, but it must be backed up by strong core fundamentals of the organisation – among many others – by a functioning, far-sighted and motivated leadership and a sincere commitment to meeting and balancing the needs of your key stakeholders. And nope, I’m not talking about our corporate sponsors that some student organisations have become increasingly beholden to these days.
4. Give credit where and when it’s due
Our fine education system has placed much emphasis on the need to think critically. But sometimes, we tend to take the “critical” part a bit to far. Again, I generalize, but “reverse censorship” seems to be all the rage now – at least on social media. Saying anything positive or pro-establishment is frowned upon as a sin. Only if one can elaborate on the mistakes and flaws, it seems, is one deemed to have a mind of his/her own.
We often gripe, curse and swear if the shuttle buses are packed and blame the government when the weather is hot. But we fail to thank those working hard trying to improve the things that they can change, and to manage stakeholders’ expectations on the things that they can’t.
Sure, student leaders are volunteers and they must have the ethos of our Public Service! It’s all about serving the people/students! It’s about sacrificing without expecting anything in return! Well, let’s just say that trying to find someone truly altruistic is like trying to find a pro-PAP supporter on Temasek Review’s website. Everyone needs to gain something from their service experience – be it the intangible sense of achievement of making someone’s life better, or the tangible reward of accommodation points for staying in hall, for example. It is already increasingly difficult to attract good student leaders, and the lack of credit will only serve to discourage others from stepping forward.
Criticism can and should be encouraged – but it should build up, not tear down. Constructive suggestions should trump mere complaints, even if sometimes, leaders simply just keep doing things wrong. Credit and incentives must be given to support these leaders. Sometimes, a simple compliment, or small treats will do for smaller project committees; for the long term and larger scale initiatives, a more structured approach could include subsidised campus accommodation and development courses, among many other schemes. But this in itself warrants a separate article altogether.
5. Trust, but verify
Always believe that there is some good in everyone, but always be prepared to be disappointed at least some of the time. Sad, but true.
Everyone will fail you some how, some time. Disagreements will always arise. Politics and conflict are inevitable, with some organisations being more susceptible. Most Organisational Behaviour (OB) textbooks will tell you that some level of conflict is necessary for a healthy organisation to grow. But when this conflict grows to consume most of the organisation’s leadership’s waking hours, the real losers are the stakeholders. Sounds pretty obvious, but sometimes we tend to forget that.
Knowing whom to turn to during such conflicts can in itself, be a challenge. Not everyone provides the best help or advice for conflict resolution. In relation to point no. 4, some of us take pride in the ability to win arguments for the sake of doing so, while others may negatively reinforce the conflict by commenting without prior knowledge, experience, or background. Knowing whom to trust is indeed a tricky combination of the person’s track record, intentions, comfort level, quality of advice and reputation, among other things. If many people from different walks of life give similar testimonies about a particular person, they could either be all be mistaken, the person him/herself gravely misunderstood, or they could most probably be right. In most cases, I’d tend to believe the latter option, after at least trying to find some contrary viewpoints and seeking some verification.
On a side note, for conflict resolution, responsible confrontation, not avoidance or posting complaints up on Facebook or Twitter, works better. Postings on online media are always subject to misinterpretation, as I have experienced more than a few times.
-
So to those who still care, and bother, about student life at all, there we have it. The broad learning points are probably quite generalizable to most organisations, which also means that they’ve been thought of before. No matter, anything said here comes from my past and current observations and experiences in the organisations that I’ve served in and with, in NUS. =)
