Why Student Leadership Lacks Strategic Thinking

University Student's All Study, No Co-curricular Mentality limits their experience in managing real life problems ultimate limits their strategic thinking abilities.

A lot of student organizations lack strategic thinking skills. The proof, the same issues have been going on for ages and no improvement can be seen. If the students don't see any improvement, it's enough for me to say you are not making any improvements. Imagine if you are a leader in a business, in politics or in public services. Remember the problems when you were a leader in university? You will face them again. What makes you can handle them better this time in the future? But I don't blame it all on the student organizations, because they are not taught to equip themselves with managerial skills. Here are some reasons this situations prevail:

Unnecessary Politics In Student Leadership

Political ideologies has no place in student politics. Students just want our food affordable, clean and healthy. Our college safe to live in and our toilets clean. Anything else is irrelevant. You can read a more detailed discussion here. Malaysia has a bad culture of politicizing everything. And when that happens, the 'talkers' will always talk too much BS about the problem, but NOTHING about the solution; which is what strategic thinking is. Creating strategies, Solving problems. This bad habit is then picked up by the young generation. Shame on you politicians.

Lack of Education Syllabus

Student Leadership are best to be headed by experienced students and is not a place to 'learn'. By design or by negligence, these organizations do not have a structured education plan. Every time you see a student club's performance fluctuate it is because of the club's leadership. This fluctuation is a sign of an absence in the club's initiative to continuously develop leaders. No education plan means no platform for students to develop their leadership skills which include strategic thinking skills.

Lack of Foresight

Strategic thinking is basically the ability to foresee problems and formulate strategies to solve them. However, not all student leader can anticipate problem well. This comes with experience in doing challenging projects. But many students love doing lame and easy projects. You can read my classification of such students, here. Also, some student leaders are not sincere, they are just power hungry, want to show off, want to get close to ministers and etc. So 'strategic thinking' for the student clubs is not their priority, but 'strategic thinking' for themselves, yes la.

At the end of the day, student leaders must focus on developing their managerial skills. Their 'talking' skills is perfect already. I see a lot of students are confused what are the role of student leadership and also they are too focused on the politics and not the solutions. Read here, where I shoot a few people, give your comments, ok?

Be.You.

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Malaysia Leadership Development Seminar 2009 (MyLDS'09)

I'll be facilitating for a AIESEC's national level conference in UUM. Come and join me! I think all student leaders should come and see a different approach to student leadership...



Malaysia Leadership Development Seminar (MyLDS) is a national conference held annually by AIESEC in Malaysia. This year, Malaysia will be held in Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM). Gathering 500 youths mainly from AIESEC local chapters in Malaysia, expansion LCs and AIESECers from all around the world participate in MyLDS 2009.This most anticipated national conference – Malaysia Leadership Development Seminar 2009 will expose youth to its intense learning experience, social networking, leadership skill enhancement and thus leading them to become potential leaders of tomorrow.Malaysia Leadership Development Seminar 2009 will be held on 6th - 11th December 2009. A not-to-be missed of 6-days-5-nights event is awaiting for young leaders to color the journey of self discovery and explore their hidden potentials!
The CLOSING DATE for registration is on 20th NOVEMBER 2009! Register now!
INFORMATION :

Date: 6th - 11th December 2009
Opening date for registration : 8th Oct 2009
Closing date for registration : 20th Nov 2009, 2359 hour (GMT +8)
Conference Fee: RM 120 (not included transportation and Pre-MyLDS)
Due date for payment: 23rd Nov 2009 (Those who fail to pay by 23rd Nov will be fined RM 20)
For more information, please visit http://www.aiesecuum.org/MyLDS09.htm or contact:

Wei Mun

Organizing Committee President of MyLDS'09

Mobile: +60(12)539 7739

Email: lauweimun@gmail.com

Also visit our facebook at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=129806647234

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Facebook Manners And You

You all are using facebook right? Well, it's time to learn some good manners in using it! I'm not saying my manners are good though ;)



Be.You.

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Why strategic thinking is important?

Strategic thinking is a must for every student leader, especially to those who are ambitious in becoming politicians. Why are there so many crappy politicians today? Because when they were student leaders, they have no one to teach them strategic thinking.

Thinking Long-Term

I see a lot president of student clubs never plan long term or even worse they never care about the future consequences of his or her actions. A typical example is human resource issues. Every year, a college student committee would be having many projects. Most of it requires people with multimedia & graphical skills. A long term thinking student committee president would utilize the colleges's already existing Graphics & Multimedia Club to recruit and train its members to become a pool of students skilled in graphics & multimedia. The reality is the club is a dead club with no activities and members, and every year the student projects faces constraints of man power skilled in graphics. I know that there will be problems regardless of what happens but...

Life Is About Using the Best Way of Using What You Have

In business you would learn the term Return on Investment (ROI) it shows how much you would get back for each dollar you invested in something. Although in the student club context you would not need to face such things, but you would also still face constraints especially time and manpower, because the biggest limitations in life is time & knowledge. Strategic thinking starts with knowing what you want and understanding your constraints. Constraints are everywhere but achievers manage those constraints. How? By...

Aligning All Your Efforts

Like I said, constraints are everywhere. Strategic thinking forces us to think of a way of using our resources effectively and efficiently. Planning is the first step. Without planning you wouldn't know where to allocate your resources. The result would be poor coordination, a lot of last minute jobs which no one wants. Plan and align every action to your ultimate goal. Plan it in small steps. If you cannot do sudden large chunks of work, make it smaller, simpler and at a consistently interval points in time. Identify redundant work or work that can easily be duplicated. By doing all this you wouldn't waste on doing things that's not important. No wasting equals having more of the things you need to reach your objective.

Be You.

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4 things you MUST do in unversity

Behind every opportunity is a person. People make miracles happen. It doesn't happen by themselves. Find people who can help each other to achieve our goals in life. You can start by joining student clubs. Even to find work, knowing a few people is necessary. More friends, equals more knowledge can be shared in between of you. But for that to happen, you need to learn how to communicate well. Again, you can learn this in GOOD student organization. In university co-curricular, your strategy MUST be quality over quantity!

Thx Brandon,

Be.You.

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