Practical Student Leadership in Campus Organizations

Transition season is on. This is my attempt to contribute to that transition when another school year enters and so with it, the new set of students who, despite all the demands and pressure, chose to throw their hat in the ring.

The following are 5 things I’ve learned in my experience as a student engaged in student governance and leadership in college. These are statements of experiences and general ideas which hope would provide some meaningful help for the next generation of movers in our out of student organizations.

So let us begin.

1. HAVE VERY CLEAR GOALS FROM THE START. This is the most important thing and the first you must secure. Knowing what you want to achieve – exactly what you want to achieve. As we already know, it is the goal that will rally the people and the rest falls into place. However the challenge now common to most organizations is how these goals are articulated and mapped out.

Questions rise such as; does this resonate to the needs of the times? Are these realistic goals? Are these strategic? These are legitimate questions that student leaders must face and answer even before they officially take office. The common denominator of the answer should be the measurability of the goal. From the beginning, establish measurable goals and success indicators to know how you are fairing. Having a lofty vision reduced into manageable and actionable chucks of measurable indicators of success makes the whole work more grounded and realistic. This is a more reliable basis for measuring your productivity than by subjectively surveying the impression of your leadership. Just imagine, by the end of the semester you can objectively grade your performance by just dividing the number of achieved goals over all the goals for the semester. Here are some tips on setting very clear goals:

            1. Do stakeholders consultation first

2. Treat planning as a project in itself which means INVEST on it.

3. Make the whole process public.

4. Post the output in a visible place in the office.

From my archive, this is an example of an action plan layout:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48730184/New-CSG-Strategic-Planning

2. ORGANIZE STRUCTURES AND SYSTEMS TO SECURE THE GOALS. Once the goals are measurably articulated and agreed upon by all stakeholders, the logical next step is its execution. Project implementation is one bulk of work that student leaders should see more as a work of science. Emphasis has consistently been given to the individual leadership qualities of project players as the key determining factor which would spell the difference between a successful project from a lousy one. Though this is very important, it is also equally important that organizational leaders should also give emphasis on the structural influences that also affect the quality of the implementation. That is why structures and systems should be designed to better facilitate the implementation of outputs.

How does this spell out in actual actionable terms? First, give emphasis on personal and group autonomy. Research has revealed that the best incentive for cognitive work (which is substantially the work students leaders do) to be more productive is autonomy – a sense of ownership and space for personal initiative. Let committee leaders form their own working group with little interference as to who they select. Give them the targets and let the means to achieve it be their creative playground. Also give emphasis to support groups. These are groups who never engage in the implementation but support the implementers. These are the food committee, the finance committee, and other logistical support group. By having these groups, front line implementers just have to focus on the implementation itself. Let the information dissemination and other incidental work be done by these groups.

3. APPLY THE PARETO PRINCIPLE. There is an old-aged principle which holds that 80% of occurrences or outputs come from 20% of the causes. This is also called the 80-20 rule or the vital few rule. This principle can be best applied when we chart what or who are the 20% of an organization – the people – the assets – the resources.  This is most fitting when we understand that our limited resources limit our reach hence strategic targeting and positioning of our efforts can maximize the impact of our limited resources. Let us now translate this into actual student organizational work. For example if you are in the work of information dissemination, you do not seriously have the resources to fully blast information to every single student. What is rational is to create a database of roughly 20% of your constituency who you think is the most “connected or influential” students. Once they are given the information, they naturally spread it themselves. Also in terms of systems, by identifying bottle necks in project implementation and evaluation flow and by simply tweaking at the margin; this would result to greater efficiency. What does that mean? By identifying unnecessary signatures and creating a one stop rack where all project papers can be physically monitored can be of great help in tracking progress.

Also, this is where core teams also come into importance. This is so since the bulk of the team normally experience what economists call the diminishing marginal utility. As the time passes, bit by bit people disengage from the organization for several reasons we have no control of. Given this fact, it is essential to identify the 20% most committed teammates that will become the influencers and leaders of the organization. Identify these from the very start and hold this together. This spells success or failure.

4. BUILD TRUST. In view of the students or the general constituency, it is vital that trust be established. Without it, projects or services simply fade into infectivity and no one seems to appreciate the effort. Trust is earned and this can be done when the leadership truly focuses on accountability and transparency. Simply put, the students trust their leaders if they know they are doing the right thing. The first step here is the structure in which they can know what the leadership is doing and channels in which they can hold the leadership accountable. Here are some concrete initiatives that can build trust.   

1.       Monthly expense report to the public

2.       Monthly Presidential public report (be it infographic posted online)

3.        Minutes of the meeting online publication

4.        Absent officers are posted online and reason for their absence with picture and contact detail.

5. BUILD PARTNERHSIPS. Synergy increases the impact of your efforts. Early on, start scouting for possible partnerships for the projects you wish to implement based on your concrete and measurable goals. One example I can share is how a university-wide tutorial can bring about greater participation. Recognizing that the most capable and direct implementers of a tutorial program are the co-curricular organization, the central government proposed to do all marketing work and it also created an incentive plan for all tutors such as freebies and snacks plus an added incentive for scholars by having the tutorials credited as part of their service duty. With this simple umbrella scheme, the university-wide tutorials produced one the greater turnout in its history.  The simple recognition of who can best implement and provide proper incentives that will benefit all brings about greater impact.

This is not necessarily a check list. This is my simple attempt to capsulate into 5 general ideas the things I have learned in my student organizational leadership experience in college. This is intended to give a general framework of thinking which is grounded on the belief that developing leadership qualities are not enough; these traits should be transformed into a system that breeds other leaders which eventually will strengthen the entire organization. The idea of creating structures that influence output and behaviour is already a well-established science. The challenge really is how even in our formative years in college, we get to have a grasp of its significance and apply it in our immediate circle of influence and that does not necessarily only mean our organization – it may also mean our lifestyle.