Trust and Sense: Presidents' Meeting in Italy

I am back from the International Presidents’ Meeting in Italy.

More than 100 countries and territories where AIESEC is present sent their representative to (1) define the global priorities for the next year, (2) elect a new global leadership body, (3) agree on the global framework of operations (regulations) and (4) share their best practices.

It is by far the most challenging Congress I have attended.

Can you imagine how hard it is to run a global decision making process in the context of the global financial crisis?

If you read the Economist, you could summarize the Congress in the last two editions: “The return of economic nationalism” and “The bill that could break up Europe”, with the difference that we managed to arrive at a positive agreement.

The representatives arrived to Rome really focused on their country and their needs which made it hard for conversations to be productive. As the time past, the bonds built started to give results and we started to listen to each other and made decisions that supported our intentions.

Later on, the new Membership Fee Model –(this model determines the expenditure each country/territory generates to the global organization and considering the country/territory external and internal capacity, it defines their Membership Fee)- that encourages productivity and achievement of results stretched the organization since some of the European countries were not ready to take financial responsibility for their operations.

Fortunately, the Global Network understood that their markets have constrained and that the changes that we expected all of us to implement were bigger than planned. In the end, in order to move into a phase of efficiency and productivity, the Global Network stepped up to support each other and make sure that we end our meeting with the best engine to achieve the goals of 2009.

My reading of the Congress is we are aware that this is the moment to take a better competitive position by building strategic partnerships with organizations that we have considered competitors in the past.

I am very very excited about the future of AIESEC. We are moving into an era of innovation and creativity to make sure that our understanding of the market is translated through actions into a better competitive position, distribution of resources (talent and money) and leadership to make our organization more efficient and impactful.

None of this would have been achieved if two fundamental pillars of all conversations wouldn’t have been present: trust, which gives time to listen, and sense, which conquers bright minds.