EGEA Committees

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Re-engineering EGEAs COMMITTEES EGEA as Intuitive Organization

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Strategic Intuition

If only EGEA knew what EGEA knows Strategic Intuition: Strategic ideas at the center of strategy

In strategy, there are many methods to analyze your organization, your activities,

your position among other organizations, your competitors and current trends but

none of these methods tells you how to decide what strategy to adopt. There are

equally many techniques for strategic planning: how to lay out objectives, activities

and milestones to achieve your goals but none of these methods tells you how to seta goal in the first place. The missing link between strategic analysis and strategic

planning is the strategic idea.

There are three kinds of strategic ideas:

Strategic analysis: you study the situation you face Strategic intuition: you get a creative idea for what to do Strategic planning: you work out the details of how to do it

The distinction between doing a task and deciding which task to do consists the

notion of strategic intuition. Strategic intuition gives an idea for action, a strategy.

Strategic intuition seeks selectively past knowledge and experience, and lessons

learned to synthesize with new elements and new insights, in order to arrive to an

answer. Therefore, Strategic intuition relies on huge investments in lessons learned

and quick communication among all EGEA stakeholders.

Student-run organizations that truly want to build the capacity for strategicinnovation within the youth field cannot simply hope for a few good members to lead

the organization o their own initiative. They need to build an organizational intuition

systemthat can combine lessons learned and new information in creative and largely

qualitative ways and then produce forecasts for strategy formulation.

Many non-governmental organizations have attempted to change their organizational

structure to accelerate innovation and performance. But in doing so, they focused

mostly on generating new ideas and little on converting ideas to results. The result of

strategic intuition is always a synthesis of analysis and intuition that can be put intoaction - fast!


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Strategic Intuition and EGEA

In the field of student-run organizations, successful players are notnecessarily the organizations that start with the best plan, most resources orbiggest network. They are the ones that learn and adapt the quickest. Theessence of the learning challenge for EGEA is improving the organizationsability to predict the future performance and the performance of any newventures. To improve predictions, EGEA as intuitive organization mustsystematically resolve a handful of critical unknowns:

Who is our member? What is the value we offer to our members?

How do we deliver that value?

Strategic intuition entails seeking a set of rules that can reduce uncertainty,

risks and dysfunctions, sustain network growth, and lengthen the

organizations life span beyond that of average membership span. The

learning objective of organizational intuition is to refine the ability of

predicting organizational performance over time. Predictions always lie at the

heart of the learning process. The quality of predictions determines the

quality of strategies and strategic planning, and eventually determines the

quality of innovation and value added in EGEA.

Once produced, organizational predictions often fall victim of learning

misadventures: they are ignored, their significance is a matter of internal

manipulation, they are not updated with new information and they are not

properly and systematically analyzed together in order to identify meaningful

patterns and produce valuable insights for the organization.

The most original explanation of such learning incapacities is an

unwillingness to make a serious investment in (strategic) planning. MostBoards make plans hastily. The common arguments are either that short-term

and mid-term circumstances are generally manageable or that long-term

dynamic challenges are largely uncertain and unpredictable, so why bother

with planning? Another argument is that, due to Boards term limits,

executive time should be spent on doing rather than planning.

Such approaches overlook the significance of predictability and fail to realize

that planning leads to better predictions and performance. Predictions falling

short are not a performance failure but a valuable process of organizational

learning for EGEA, when testing new ideas and mechanisms. Current status


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Adaptation from Tim Powell, 1999 for EGEA

quo must not discourage us from experimenting with strategies and taking

risks. Also, planning can set the context for organizational learning. The

learning process in EGEA should be embedded into the planning process:

frequency in planning relates to frequency in learning.

For the context of EGEA, a student-run organization, short-term revisable

predictions can serve as an ongoing learning process for the Board and

Committees, and potential youth leaders (see the diagram on EGEAs

Organizational Intuition). By that, the learning cycle follows exactly the Boards

term and the planning cycle. Predictions, transformed into plans and thereby

into strategic experiments, are the essence of hands-on organizational

learning that EGEA can offer; activities organizing aside.

Strategic intuition and strategic innovation can redefine potential new

members, can redefine the delivered value to our members or can redesign

EGEAs end-to-end knowledge value chain architecture:

VALUE

ACTION

DECISION-MAKING

INTELLIGENCE

KNOWLEDGE

INFORMATION

DATA

A C Q U I R E

P R O C E S S

A N A L Y Z E

D I S S E M I N A T E

A P P L Y

T A K E

C R E A T E

LESSONS LEARNED INNOVATION ORGANIZATIONAL INTUITION NEW STRATEGY FOR EGEA NEW KNOWLEDGE LEARNING CYCLE TEAM BUILDING


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EGEA CommitteesThe Building Blocks of EGEA Intuition

EGEA as Intuitive Organization

Every organizationstudent associations included - can become more intuitive.

For this to happen, the leadership and stakeholders of the organization must recognize

that intuition operates best when the creative people within the organization have a

chance to recognize patterns that others cannot see. The ability to see new patterns is

greatly enhanced when the collective intelligence and experience of the organization

are tapped.

HOW TO create intuition within EGEA? The solution is not to "hire" people to

produce intuition. This requires creating and consistently maintaining a block of

internal knowledge in a fashion that allows key people within the Association, from

different EGEA functional areas (BoE, committees, groups, Alumni, entities), to

understand what is evolving elsewhere in the Association. EGEA Committees should

be in place to produce a reasonable forecast of the evolution of entities network&

activities, value, costs and competitive advantage.

The Five Building Blocks: The Road to Intuition

The fact that EGEA is not sufficiently innovative means that creative energies are

spent in an inefficient and probably expensive fashion, relying totally on individual

rather than organizational intuition.

This section intends to communicate a paradigm shift from individual learning

processes into collaborative learning and knowledge building, and provide a processof organizational knowledge creation through the EGEA Committee work. So far,

little attention has been drawn upon how EGEA teams acquire and build knowledge

together. Actually, the very idea of collective knowledge has been very new to

Western culture itself, where the focus was on the individual learner, and such

paradigms could be traced in Cultural Geography and tribal cultures, where

knowledge is produced collaboratively.

While the whole environment of knowledge may seem very abstract and theoretical,

yet, the great challenge of running a European student association of 2000+ members

is much more than a skill-based game. New ideas are the life-blood of an

organization. Without understanding how knowledge works, we have no idea how to


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truly support creativity and innovation within EGEA. Therefore, the following

process of organizational knowledge creation suggests a new orientation, much less

on amassing, indexing and cataloguing knowledge, and mainly towards probing how

knowledge serves us and EGEA. Intuition should be regarded as responsiveness to

EGEAs environment: quickly acquire, adapt or renew expertise, quickly bring onnew innovative activities and enhance EGEAs competitive advantage.

STRATEGY: EGEA as intuitive organization encourages teams of people to

understand each of the five building blocks and share them across EGEAs functional

boundaries (BoE, Committees, Alumni, Entities, and Informal Groups). This can be

accomplished organizationally by combining teams of Committee-functional experts

from neighboring areas to produce valuable forecasts for policy measures, as

presented schematically below. When EGEA really invests in a process to produce

such predictions, the results themselves can be insightful.

REENGINEERING: The proposed committee reengineering creates an

organizational structure relying on five building blocks, through which organizational

intuition is built. Hence, this proposal is not simply a structural reshuffling of

committee structure; it is both a cross-functional process redesign and a strategic

investment in a support infrastructure for EGEAs intuition.

Placing the five new Committees as the building blocks of an inverted pyramid, a

knowledge base starts emerging. Committees combine data to create information.

Information amongst neighboring committees, in turn, is combined, recombined and

assessed by teams of Committee-experts (seediagram below) to produce intermediate

forecasts,predictions about key aspects of EGEA. Meaningful relationships between

these predictions are key in creating insightful clusters of knowledge; then the

building of a knowledge base has begun. Discovering relationships between clusters

of information provides the stage where knowledge is created. This knowledge can

latter be utilized into strategic planning, and can ultimately produce insightful results.


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Network Mapping

The goal of combining the mapping of EGEAs network & activities with a good

description of EGEAs various member profiles (Human Resources) should be to

get a much better idea of how EGEAs network and EGEAs activities will evolve.

This new process should be assumed as something more than a growth forecast. At

its core must be a profile description of the segmentation of EGEAs membership,

a description of the logic that supports the scheme of segmentation, and a

prediction of how basic variables, within and outside EGEA, that determine each

segment size, will influence the growth of each segment over time.

Human Resources Value

The purpose of combining people who understand human resources capabilitiesand expectations and those who know about the potential for scientific value and

Adaptation from Boston Consulting Group, 2006.


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supportive enabling technologies (internet, geoinformatics, databases, etc) is to

forecast how human resources value will evolve. A successful fusion of those two

involves more than experiments with new methodological tools, scientific sessions

and databasesalthough these can be first steps. It requires a broad rethinking of

the values EGEA provides to its members and the way it approaches them. It canalso require significant investments in the infrastructure of members services and

support.

Science & Technology

Valorization and monetization of EGEAs scientific value, incorporation of cost-

effective technologies, technological innovation and an aggressive fundraising

strategy can be the prime determinants of EGEAs cost evolution. Innovative joint-

ventures of Geographic science and education, and Information Technology,

coordinated by EGEA Europe and partner organizations (e.g. Herodot), can

increase public awareness of Geography, especially when targeted to specific

audiences (primary/secondary/higher education). Such EGEA-endorsed projects

may deliver added scientific value and new financial resources for the Association.

EGEA can capitalize on the wealth of expertise scattered across the Association

through the creation and management of a centralized knowledge base, further

enhanced by horizontal value-creating knowledge sharing.

Fundraising

The Fundraising Committee can attain a key steering-committee role within EGEA

by being assigned with EGEAs Fundraising Strategy, EGEAs financial

management, effective budgeting and analysis of financial condition and financial

forecasting. Within the scope of this group fall EGEAs networking with the

corporate world, lobbying with prospective private sponsors, foundations and

fundraising partners, establishing student-corporate relations with leading

companies in the Geographic field, attract public funding, achieving economies ofscale by partnerships with other student organizations and negotiating financial

agreements. An aggressive fundraising strategy must be led by a dynamic

corporate identity and an EGEA branding, along with dexterity in legal

organizational issues.

Competitor Focus & External Relations

Within an increasingly competitive environment in European student associations,

the winners of the student associative business will be those that play hard. Youth


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organizations that play hard employ all of their resources and strategy to gain

advantage over other competing organizations. When they achieve competitive

advantage, they attract more members, boost their finances and reward their

members. Then they reinvest their gains into improving organizational

performance, enhance quality, expand their offerings to their members, andtransform their processes to strengthen their competitive advantage. Competitor

focus and creation and exploitation of own low-cost, competitive advantage to the

fullest must be seen as an obligation to all EGEA stakeholders by EGEAs

leadership.

A virtuous cycle of activity can be fully described with the farther mapping of

EGEAs external environment. Public relations with relevant actors in the

Geographic and youth field, press visibility, EGEA-Alumni relations, Alumni

mentoring, strategic alliances, partnership and project-based collaborations with

other youth organizations, effective use of EGEAs publications, building of anexternal communication strategy and lobbying, synthesize the portfolio of EGEAs

External Relations.


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Lessons Learned in EGEAFueling Committees with Data

Were they learned indeed?

Our EGEA experiences teach us important lessons. These lessons can benefit

us in understanding the variables of success and failure of our EGEA projects.

Do they?

Individually, do we really learn from these lessons?

Even if we learn some of these lessons, do we always share our key

lessons with others?

Even if we share our lessons with our entity members, are they shared

with the EGEA Association?

Even if some of these lessons are shared at higher level, does EGEA

Association and do most entities and projects really learn and apply

them?


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Lessons learned are an important set of information for youth organizations.

If EGEA exploited fully such lessons, the mistakes of one EGEA activity

usually would not be repeated by another, process improvement of EGEA

Association and its activities (planning, implementation, evaluation,fundraising, communication, etc) would be lean, EGEA activities would

usually be on time, within budget and would deliver quality outcomes. EGEA

member and organizers would be more satisfied and organizational intuition

would lead to better strategies and superior performance.

Instead, we often hear in EGEA:

Didnt we have this problem last year in the X congress?

I know Brian had encountered this problem on his project. I dont remember

any details.

I thought Xentity solved this problem long ago!

I really wish I have talked with you before I started this!

And some untold thoughts:

I could have told them it

wouldnt work.

I tried it in our congress.

There is nothing I can

learn from them.

I would like to share

what I know butwho would listen?

I know better

whats best

for my entity!

I will send them

a u2u and then

they will know

how to do it.

If I tell them

what I know,

their activity will

be better than

ours was.

If I share my mistakes

with them, they will

all think our activity

was a failure.

I wish I could talk

to someone who

has done this

before.

I havent any

time to

learn. Ourcongress

starts in

weeks.

Yes! But

our activity

is different.

No time to share myexperience/knowledge.

None in my

entity knows

how to do this. If

we ask, they will

think we are

stupid/incapable.

Not interested in

mistakes. I want to

hear about successes.


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The truth is that we often reflect on our individual experiences and usually

apply the lessons learned in our own EGEA projects. Some cohesive teams of

organizers share and incorporate their past experiences into their future

activities. Also, EGEA has attempted to facilitate cross-learning from various

organizers (training sessions, e-meetings of congress organizers, activitiesmanuals), open culture with the forum tools and technology and

communication through regional meetings and congress reports. But these

are exceptions!

Current EGEA culture is not inspiring for effective communication and cross-

team learning. The current EGEA forum capabilities and the absence of an

official Training Platform that can capitalize on lessons learned leads us

missing many organizational intuition opportunities. The current purpose

and structure of EGEA Committees cannot support and serve an

organizational intuition system that would enable lessons learned and best

practices to become the building blocks of EGEAs organizational knowledge.

Finally, EGEA Association and EGEA entities pay a high price for repeating

same mistakes and missing opportunities over time.

Current Practices

Committees discuss past projects experiences, propose improvementplans

Evaluation reports for regional congresses Manuals on organizing regional congress, exchange and small-scale

event

Meetings of regional congress organizers EGEA Forum & Forum feedback enabled for communication EGEA Board periodically makes some process improvements for

persistent problems (Fees, Waiting Lists, Funding, etc)

Problems with Current Practices

The significant invariability in current practices cannot provide valuable

information and consistent results for lessons learned:

For past EGEA activities and activity organizers that lessons learnedwere not collected in the first place, there are very few capabilities todo so retrospectively


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EGEA Committees do not collect and document systematically and instandardized form lessons learned, do not process case studies and do

not communicate them across the organization

Evaluation reports cannot act as lessons learned: they lack appropriatecategorization, context, problem statement and solution found

Lessons learned contained at the EGEA forum are not centralized, lackeasy access and navigation, cannot be always retrieved in useful form,

and lack sophisticated search capabilities

Any EGEA forum repositories (e.g. forum sections, download section,manuals, etc) grow in size and themes and cannot offer relevant results

Retrieving relevant information is time-consuming and not appealing,thus EGEA members resort to practices they are accustomed to so far

Recommendations for Leveraging EGEA knowledge

The following approach attempts to provide an action plan for capturinglessons learned within EGEAs context and transforming them into valuable

organizational knowledge for the benefit of the Association and its members:

Capture Lessons Store and Maintain Lessons Disseminate Lessons Incorporate Lessons into EGEA Association Use Lessons for Training Purposes

Key ideas adapted from Anil Midha, 2005.

In the following analysis, the key agent for translating lessons learned into

best practices and valuable insights are EGEA Committees.


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Capture Lessons

The value of a Lessons Learned Program within EGEA is a function of how

much experience the members are willing to contribute and how well Lessons

are documented.

On the first variable, we recommend four categories of contributions:

Every major activity that uses EGEAs brand should isolateorganizational problems and note key issues and observations, and

provide them to Committees in the form of report

Organizing teams should submit a final report identifying key issuesand knowledge they acquired that could be replicated in another

context

The EGEA Board (and possibly local entity boards) and the EGEACommittees should collect and analyze key organizational issues and

problems into an annual report that could serve as knowledge transfer

to successors

EGEA members participating in related non-EGEA activities,congresses or training events can provide an activity report with

valuable insights for contemplation

Capturing lessons in valuable ways demands consistency. Each report

submitted should record particularly what worked well and what did not.

With regards to indexing those reports, a proper template can be decided and

created by a cross-Committee task force. Some possible fields could be: project

name, project size, type (congress, exchange, training, BoE report etc), project

environment, issues and problems identified, methods for resolution,

solutions given, possible scenarios for future users and some keywords for

optimizing search.


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Store and Maintain Lessons

EGEA should own a single centralized password-protected web-based

Knowledge Repository, where a XML relational or object-oriented database, a

wiki or an online library will organize and save lessons according totopic/thematic maps. The online repository should enable customizable user

profiles, so that members can create their personal EGEA library with

bookmarked or saved Lessons and can share them with other members.

The online repository should also include a user-friendly authoring interface,

so that registered members can add or modify entries of lessons easily like

blogging, without any XML programming knowledge. The portal should also

be equipped with a sophisticated advanced search engine based on queries

and filters.

Disseminate Lessons

The Lessons Learned Program should be supported by an association-wide

Communication strategy. Insights prepared by Committees should be

disseminated across the organization through the EGEA forum, u2u tool andapplication, as well as through the European Geographer magazine. Special

editions should be forwarded to prospective Congress organizers or potential

organizing teams, and entity boards or contact persons. A cross-Committee

newsletter could communicate organizational knowledge.

Additionally, Lessons Learned presentations or discussions should become a

routine in (face-to-face or virtual) meetings and occupy a regular timeslot

therein. Congress reports should include them by default and all major EGEA

conferences should offer airtime to members interested in sharing their case

studies.

Communication of elaborated insights out of Lessons Learned brings valuable

information to potential organizers. It also increases the chance that a member

of the organizing team will actually apply a relevant lesson. Proper

dissemination can encourage past organizers to reflect on their experiences

and contribute to the knowledge pool. Lessons can form valuable discussion

points for the organizers hidden forums and can permit improvisation and

innovation in current knowledge.


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Incorporate Lessons into EGEA Association

The Board of Executives and the Committees should identify internal or

external lessons that can be incorporated in EGEAs organizational processes.

Problems that appear on entity-level or activities-level could be tracedassociation-wide and relevant solutions can be proposed. Influential lessons

can serve as pilot programs for EGEAs new ventures. Such lessons deliver a

valuable know-how and can contain uncertainty and risks when attempting

to lead new changes within EGEA.

Lessons learned could be used as positive feedback for the Association.

Lessons analysis could offer valuable insights on how various activities are

organized, how effectual project planning is, additional activities could add

up to EGEAs current, new workshop tools or methods or new technologies

can be suggested for further use, additional review on congresses quality can

be introduced, they can spark a new policy or official guidelines/rules of

conduct, our focus over various activities could change due to lessons effect,

and additional evaluation criteria could be considered.

Use Lessons for Training Purposes

As intuition is learning from experience, lessons learned and best practices

can be a valuable resource for EGEAs Training Platform. Lessons learned

sharing provides content for training sessions, invites group interaction and

can enable the use of various learning methods (individual or team learning,

case studies presentation, lectures, discussions). Informal peer scrutiny of

various case studies can augment the value of the learning process and can

offer real-life examples, instead of resorting to paradigms and metaphors.

Documents

EGEA Committees