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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 strategic
innovation 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
system that can combine lessons learned and new information in creative and largely
qualitative ways and then produce forecasts for strategy formulation.
Strategic intuition entails seeking a set of rules that can reduce uncertainty,
risks and dysfunctions, sustain network growth, and lengthen the
organization’s 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.
LE SSO NS L EAR NE D
I NNOV ATI O N
O RG ANIZ ATIO NAL I NT UI TIO N
NEW ST R ATE GY FO R EGEA
VALUE NEW K NO WLE DGE
LE AR NI NG CYC LE
T E AM B UIL D I NG
CREATE
AC TION
TAKE
DECISION -MAKING
APPLY
INTELLIGENCE
DISSEMINATE
KNOWLEDGE
ANALYZE
INFORMATION
PROCESS
DATA
ACQUIRE
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.
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
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 (see diagram 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.
Network Mapping
The goal of combining the mapping of EGEA’s network & activities with a good
description of EGEA’s various member profiles (Human Resources) should be to
get a much better idea of how EGEA’s network and EGEA’s 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 EGEA’s 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.
Fundraising
The Fundraising Committee can attain a key steering-committee role within EGEA
by being assigned with EGEA’s Fundraising Strategy, EGEA’s financial
management, effective budgeting and analysis of financial condition and financial
forecasting. Within the scope of this group fall EGEA’s 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 of
scale 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.
A virtuous cycle of activity can be fully described with the farther mapping of
EGEA’s 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 EGEA’s publications, building of an
external communication strategy and lobbying, synthesize the portfolio of EGEA’s
External Relations.
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?
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?
11 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 EGEA’s organizational knowledge.
Finally, EGEA Association and EGEA entities pay a high price for repeating
same mistakes and missing opportunities over time.
Current Practices
For past EGEA activities and activity organizers that lessons learned
were not collected in the first place, there are very few capabilities to
do so retrospectively
12 Lessons learned contained at the EGEA forum are not centralized, lack
easy access and navigation, cannot be always retrieved in useful form,
and lack sophisticated search capabilities
Capture Lessons
Disseminate Lessons
In the following analysis, the key agent for translating lessons learned into
best practices and valuable insights are EGEA Committees.
The EGEA Board (and possibly local entity boards) and the EGEA
Committees should collect and analyze key organizational issues and
problems into an annual report that could serve as knowledge transfer
to successors
14 bookmarked or saved Lessons and can share them with other members.
Disseminate Lessons
15 valuable know-how and can contain uncertainty and risks when attempting
to lead new changes within EGEA.