Why Your Student Organization Fails to Move Forward
For some university students, the summer months mean handing off the organizations they've been a part of to the new incoming executive team. This year, I had the pleasure of doing so, with a twist.
As someone who's been involved with student clubs and organizations since their undergraduate days, I recognized that the summer plays an increasing importantly role in strategic planning. It's about the only time in the year where student leaders can spend some time thinking about long-term goals. In my experience, the transitions aim to prepare incoming execs of how to repeat a successful year or how to make events better, rather than consider how to adapt to changes the organization can expect in the future, which may include cancelling previous events.
A month ago, I wanted to change that as I handed off my Process and Quality Improvement role at the IMAGINE Clinic.
The IMAGINE team is a relatively large one compared to most other undergraduate student organizations. You can figure that turning over such a large team is going to have it's challenges. Previous executive transition meetings included a power-point presentation and some time to connect outgoing and incoming executive members. What's I found lacking here is engagement of these executive members in a productive manner. I wanted to re-shape how transition meetings can be done and came upon Liberating Structures; a movement dedicated to fully involving your team to shape the future.
I had the opportunity to lead a few activities using Liberating Structures with the new IMAGINE team at their executive transition meeting and here's what I learned:
1. Any one can do it!
This was the first time I had led activities based around the use of Liberating Structures. I didn't quite follow the guides word-for-word but had adapted them to suit my needs for this transition meeting. But I kept each activity's principles in mind as I planned each one. By the end of the meeting, I had observed each and every member of the executive team contributing.
2. Connects different departments and roles efficiently
When designing the activities, I intentionally paired up certain roles so they got to know each other in the organization. It was my hope that these initial and brief interactions set the stage for future collaboration. One of the pieces of feedback I got demonstrated that the individual had a much better idea of how each role contributing to the success of IMAGINE.
3. Time flies
I think many, if not all, of us have been though an activity where the clock seems to tick and tick and the end never in sight. It definitely wasn't the case during this meeting. The activities kept everyone on their feet, with ideas and thoughts being shared left and right and before I knew, the meeting was at a close. My only regret was being unable to participate in the full experience as I spent most of it leading the activities.
I hope you'll consider using Liberating Structures at one of your next meetings. It's a simple yet powerful way to connect within your team.
Feel free to reach out to me if you'd like to talk about how to implement them!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmondchiu-rph/
As someone who's been involved with student clubs and organizations since their undergraduate days, I recognized that the summer plays an increasing importantly role in strategic planning. It's about the only time in the year where student leaders can spend some time thinking about long-term goals. In my experience, the transitions aim to prepare incoming execs of how to repeat a successful year or how to make events better, rather than consider how to adapt to changes the organization can expect in the future, which may include cancelling previous events.
A month ago, I wanted to change that as I handed off my Process and Quality Improvement role at the IMAGINE Clinic.
The IMAGINE team is a relatively large one compared to most other undergraduate student organizations. You can figure that turning over such a large team is going to have it's challenges. Previous executive transition meetings included a power-point presentation and some time to connect outgoing and incoming executive members. What's I found lacking here is engagement of these executive members in a productive manner. I wanted to re-shape how transition meetings can be done and came upon Liberating Structures; a movement dedicated to fully involving your team to shape the future.
I had the opportunity to lead a few activities using Liberating Structures with the new IMAGINE team at their executive transition meeting and here's what I learned:
1. Any one can do it!
This was the first time I had led activities based around the use of Liberating Structures. I didn't quite follow the guides word-for-word but had adapted them to suit my needs for this transition meeting. But I kept each activity's principles in mind as I planned each one. By the end of the meeting, I had observed each and every member of the executive team contributing.
2. Connects different departments and roles efficiently
When designing the activities, I intentionally paired up certain roles so they got to know each other in the organization. It was my hope that these initial and brief interactions set the stage for future collaboration. One of the pieces of feedback I got demonstrated that the individual had a much better idea of how each role contributing to the success of IMAGINE.
3. Time flies
I think many, if not all, of us have been though an activity where the clock seems to tick and tick and the end never in sight. It definitely wasn't the case during this meeting. The activities kept everyone on their feet, with ideas and thoughts being shared left and right and before I knew, the meeting was at a close. My only regret was being unable to participate in the full experience as I spent most of it leading the activities.
I hope you'll consider using Liberating Structures at one of your next meetings. It's a simple yet powerful way to connect within your team.
Feel free to reach out to me if you'd like to talk about how to implement them!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmondchiu-rph/
Hi Edmond - very interesting piece you've written. The "handing off" that you speak of is also closely related to the issue of succession planning. Often times, whether it is a student body/organization or even a corporate environment, people often pay little to no attention to the issue of leadership and what happens when there is a leadership void. I run an online pharmacy news publication called RxSocial - if you would be interested in writing/publishing some of your content on our site I would welcome that as we try to incorporate student content as much as possible. The benefits to you is that our site is read by pharmacists across Canada through an affiliate partner called Relief Buddy (a mobile application that allows pharmacists to post/accept relief shifts). Anyhow, my name is Deena and if you are interested then send me an email to info@rxsocial.ca. Cheers.
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