“Where will I be in 10 years?”

powered by AIESEC Sydney - bringing leadership development to youth since 1948

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This is a question you as a student at a globally competitive university will probably ask yourself from time to time. Some of us find ourselves worrying about whether what we are doing will emotionally profit in the future.

That is okay.

Success is not built overnight on firm and reliable earth. It is built on soft and unstable ground that takes years of maintenance and additional support. To be successful means you must patiently improve and bring value to all your life’s aspects, as well as create value in others around you. Your road to success will be long and tiring, but improving these skills below will help make the journey a bit more easily enjoyable.

1) Self-awareness:
Knowing what you are capable of will give you an idea of who, what, where and when to efficiently place your precious time and effort. Knowing what you are not capable of will help you improve where needed. Using a twenty dollar bill to hammer a nail is not worth the effort if you can buy a hammer across the street. Efficiency is key.

2) Cultural awareness:
After university, the comfort of a spoon-fed community consisting of similar minded people will not easily exist. Sure, you can put forth the effort to find them, but that is not realistic for those of us with a limited amount of time. Instead, get to know different people. Be open, share stories, share hobbies, work together and most of all connect. Understanding and interacting with people from different lifestyles makes your journey to success vibrant with life and energy.

3) Effective communication.
What you say can either make you or break you. Your communication skills can affect the outcomes of major decisions. Misunderstanding can occur, and can leave both parties confused and irritated. Work on your communication skills by carefully wording what you say to be concise, comprehensible and diplomatic.

Keep these in mind. Success is not a paved road. It is rugged, even at its best, yet rewarding.
Your future is a never ending journey filled with challenges that should not be pushed away, but embraced with hope.

You’ve got this.

For more information about AIESEC Sydney, please visit us online.

Justin Pepito
Current student at the University of Sydney Business School

How can organisations best report and improve their performance?

Traditionally, reporting has been in the form of financial accounts and directors’ reports. More recently, many firms have reported their impact through separate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) documents. For many organisations, such as creative or social enterprises, the impact on their community or target beneficiaries requires even greater focus.

Measurement frameworks often result in complex and esoteric concepts or inappropriate consistency forced upon what is inevitably a complex picture. They also often forget the very humanity of the issues they are attempting to ‘measure’. Furthermore, reporting regimes are often forced upon an already stretched sector of the business community (often linked to grant and donor funding).

We have attempted to avoid these issues with the creation of our StrategicFrame at the University of Sydney Business School. This approach builds on over 2 years of research working with social and creative enterprises, environmental businesses, and other commercial operations. We have sought to bring the locus of understanding and measurement back to the enterprise and its beneficiaries. We explicitly privilege understanding by recognising the enterprise mission and the situation in which the enterprise operates (e.g. the beneficiaries and what needs to change). The StrategicFrame is an iterative process that can be simple or complex depending on your organisation’s needs, size, stage of development, and available time. The process of ‘measuring’ requires organisations do more than ‘count’, with the process including phases of understanding, measuring, reporting and reviewing. Each of these phases are organised by six key elements of focus.

The application of The StrategicFrame need not replace other tools in the impact measurement space. It is a framework for organising thinking around impact in a more holistic and strategic manner.

Author: Dr Richard Seymour
Senior Lecturer, Innovation and Enterprise Program Director, and Co-Director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship Research Group at the University of Sydney Business School