Why Great Student Enterprises don’t take Excuses for an Answer

Part 1: The different people you work and meet.

Contributed by BL

“Youth is wasted on the young.”
– George Bernard Shaw

Recently, I was invited to a marketing presentation by the student team who I mentored in the University. Usually, I will give them feedbacks and thoughts after the presentation. While walking along with them, I pointed out to one of my students that their potential rival student organizations are staging something that might jeopardize a project which they have been planning for a few months. To my surprise, my student told me that they are planning to drop it because there are not enough good people to make the whole project work. At first, I thought that it was because of examination stress that prompted such a reply. Contemplating over the comment, I came to a view that the student was disheartened and has resigned to the excuse that a student organization is incapable of doing a big project, perhaps because of a couple of personnel failures and incidents that came along the way.

“You cannot win the Premiere League with kids”

Many years ago, Alex Ferguson, a respected football manager who manages Manchester United, fielded a team of young players to play the Premiere League football competition. One of those young players who was on the team was David Beckham, which I think that most of you would know. Upon doing that, he was lambasted by the British press, particularly by a famous football writer, Alan Hansen, that this is an impossible strategy for a football manager in a famous club to do. So, in his column, Alan Hansen wrote this famous line, “You cannot win a football league with kids.” Strangely enough, this young team of football players brought Ferguson many trophies and made the team to win a Treble, i.e. three trophies from three different competitions in the same year.

I brought up this story for a good reason. In any university, all clubs and societies are run by a group of enthusiastic students. In most of these clubs, the activities are voluntary. Since it is a voluntary organization by default, any mistakes made by any member are excusable. For example, an important member of the committee can say, “I can’t help you with this because I have an examination.” Then you have people who signed up for a position and later dropped out because of committment issues.

So, it leads to people having a few general views of students:
(i) They are irresponsible and not accountable,
(ii) They cannot lead in strategic issues because they cannot get their basic act of execution together, and
(iii) they are not professional and hence we should not waste our time on them because they will fail later anyway.

That is not the worst part of the problem. The worst part of the problem is the weak institutional memory, i.e. even if you have a competent team in this year, you might not be able to field a competent team that allows the good team to transfer their vision and make the organization sustainable.

Honestly speaking, if the important committee member can tell you that they have no time to help in the team’s objectives, do you think that this person can make it later in life? I don’t think so. I remember a lesson that I learned in the Army. I was not ready to learn things in the Army because I felt that it was a waste of time every day of my life. Till one day, I met this good manager who was far less educated than I was, but he showed me something that even the most educated leaders cannot do: passion, committment and responsibility. He made an entire group of ill-motivated people to work and try out new ideas and made all of us love what we are doing. The most important thing he taught me is the following: if you are leading a group of people who are forced to do something by default, you cannot use that the motivation to lead them. You must know how you can make life better for them so that they will work hard for the good of the organization. It is like this, if you are not responsible, accountable and professional now, what makes you think that you are going to be when you go out to society to work? The same is for the group of the students who shirked their responsibilities and got away with their blatant excuses.

Here is my million dollar challenge to all student leaders. Imagine you can make all the people to work for you voluntarily, then when it comes to the day when you have the money to employ people to work for you, you can definitely turn it into a success, because to make great teams, it is not cash but passion and motivation. A good company succeeds because of a diverse, fast and responsible team. If they see the failure of their organization and not listen to the advice, they are bound to fail.

Students come in all shapes and sizes

Working with different student leaders gave me a good sense of how they operate. Here are a few types which I come to classify among students:

The Go-Getters: These people are the people who are driven and wants to acquire all the fame and glory as much as possible. Because they are so driven, they want to rise among the ranks quickly and they become impatient. If they see that there is no growth opportunities for them, they move to another organization where they become leaders. It’s good and bad for these people. To direct these people, you need to have projects where they can lead and you have to trust them to do a good job. The problem is trust and these people might make mistakes because of inexperience. The way is to guide them through the process and help them to be better. Most leaders become too impatient with them and do not give them a chance to prosper. Of course, the go-getters also need to learn to grow through the ranks. Sometimes to be a good leader is to be a good follower.

The Posers/The Hypocrites: They are possible go-getters, but once they acquire what they want, they become posers and do nothing. These are people who are go-getters and do not commit for the project. One of my students did exactly that. In order to achieve his objective to go overseas college, he took up a job and did not commit responsibility. He angered the rest of the organization by resigning from two projects which got him there in the first place. Of course, there are many students who spoke up passionately to me and wanted to send complaint emails to the selection committee. Of course, my advice for these passionate students who care more for the organization, “Don’t bother about this person anymore. If he or she has betrayed your trust, it will backfire on the person later. He has already lost his credibility here and what makes you think that such a person can succeed later?” You cannot manage these people, but you will learn from your mistakes and know when not to work with these people. This is life and if you learn it now, it makes it easier for you to deal with them later.