Already quite a lot of times, people asked me curiously, what I am actually doing in the MC. What am I working on the entire year.
To give all people an overview the bloq is the right place to post more about it than my yearplan, that is by the way uploaded in the Austrian Community. Either people do not understand what stands behind the strategies and goals of my position or they never looked at it. Anyway I think it is the right time for describing the position of a Financer, that somehow always has to fight against this image of a boring job role.
In general the different positions in the MC do not differ so much on what everybody is working on. There are a lot of operational tasks to do, that unfortunately can hinder the important part of the job role a lot. In this regard Artur fights with visa issues and distribution of Marketing material, Alexis with recruitment calls and bringing closed minded people to conferences and Peter with fighting with Austrian burocracy and statutes and providing his picky team members with the right music.
The operational workload of the Financer is also a lot, but depends strongly on the way the financial management is organized, transferring money and collecting and controlling bills.
The other part, the more interesting one is the strategic development of our organisation. Every team member works on the improvement and new direction of different systems. Artur introducing the new partnership proposal, Alexis working on the competency model and Peter on Culture of Excellence.
When you look at my personal plan it is split into the sections routine tasks, new creation and MC stuff.
The routine tasks fall more under the operational tasks. But I would strongly deny that there is nothing to learn or that the tasks are not interesting. In the beginning of my term I tried to organize myself to create a tool that would allow me to always have Finance in Austria under control and would build the basis for decision taking. It happened quite often during this term that I was asked if we could invest money in LC visits and other travel costs, the new MC server or the conference payment for the National Support Body. Fast decisions have to be taken. The final responsible of the budget is the financer. But how much can you really trust your planned budget. Behind every income there is the risk, that the money cannot be raised or a partner will cancel the partnership, behind every cost is the risk that they increase because of price increases, higher conference costs or simply costs that we did not think about in the beginning of the term, when planning the budget. That means that with every decision taken it could have been the wrong one. Quite thrilling sometimes and I have to admit that there were times I was quite worried about a decision taken. In the end the Financer should of course strive for, that important projects can be realized and do not have to be given up because of the lack of financial resources.
I am quite satisfied with my job role, because I see for myself the freedom to strive forward issues and projects that I see as important for the organisation.
Without really having a clear picture I really wanted to work on the balanced scorecard or a similar steering tool for the organisation. This had been already something I was thinking about three years ago. Now also AI has taken up this method for their international planning. It had been a good feeling to be already in front at least with our thoughts. I am looking forward to see this tool developed by Reini in all LCs, and especially to see the benefit of it during NK2, when planning the next year.
The next thing that will be a highlight for me is to organize a task force for analysing the influences of the change of our corework for the different subsystem. In the beginning it was just meant for the financial area. Now we also want to use the moment to also analyse which level AIESEC in Austria has reached with the implementation of AIESEC XP. I am right now preparing the meetings, and I am very much looking forward to translate the outcomes into numbers and a financial long term plan for the next 5 years.
Besides these tasks I am a full member of the MC, even I am just half time, in the regard to I take part in conference development and decision taking. I was the conference manager for SOLUTION and the first contact person for two LCs. Decisions that have to be taken are discussed within the team and it is a great experience to work within a MC team, four people closely working together dedicating all their passion and enthusiasm for the organisation.
I would have never liked to miss this opportunity and I am looking forward to the next four months of our term.
