Sunday, July 22, 2012

Young man stop looking for faults – be constructive - A call to 'ARMS'



I was recently heavily involved in organizing a youth event. Trying to engage the youth in organizing this event was a mammoth task in itself. Whilst they all see the potential benefit of such an event, they are unwilling to take responsibility for taking charge and doing the necessary work to make the event a success, instead nitpicking faults. There is a huge gulf between an OK event and a successful event.

Our goal, when we organize something is for it to be a success in every sense of the word. If we failed in one or two of the expectations that’s OK but not for want of trying. It is important to put one’s best efforts into the planning and execution of the said event.

One issue I have found, that needs to be stressed, is that young people are very enthusiastic, but they are often not practical as they are more interested in achieving the objective, but have no idea of how much it takes to achieve it. This is usually due to the lack of practice in organizing such events. Unlike with older people who can listen to boring speeches for ages, young people are more likely to be bored if their attention is not constantly drawn and will even get up and leave with no regard to the speaker. We must be aware of that when we determine who should speak and for how long. I personally believe that no one should make a speech for more than 15 minutes as after that attention is drawn to other matters.

Getting back to the organization of the event, it is important to plan for every possible eventuality as Murphy’s Law works here as well and so one must be prepared and not get too flustered when things do not go according to the original plan. In our event, scheduled speakers did not turn up, so we had to make quick contingency plans due to it. During the course of the event we had to make hurried changes to the order of the speeches, to accommodate the busy schedules of the invitees, who neither come on schedule. Nor can we plan on how long they will speak for.

Whilst the event was judged by many as a success, under my standards of judging I would rate it OK. It is a good beginning, we must learn from it. We must have a post mortem, to prevent certain things happening in the future. It is important for young people to learn what a high standard means, as they may never have been exposed to an event of a greater quality and hence make that observation!

Let’s work hard without delay, to raise the bar, raise the quality of our young people to a standard where they are confident and able to do most things in life.

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