1) Implementing a culture of excellence requires setting high standards for recruitment and promotions to attract top talent. 2) A culture of excellence is led from the top and supported by expectations of high achievement, activity levels, and competence development for members. 3) Recognizing and celebrating high-performing members is important for retention, but standards and goals must not create a pressure environment that demotivates members.

1. How to implement a culture of excellence?
There are a few entry points to implementing a culture of excellence.
The first and perhaps most important one is RISA. Incorporate into your HR plans more specific
requirements and standards about who you want to recruit into your LCs, and create promotional
plans around getting them.
e.g. If I wanted the best 15 marketing students in my university, I would talk to the university
department/school, and sell them AIESEC, to have them endorse us and help us set up an event
or send personalised emails or letters to those top marketers and promote AIESEC to them!
Setting a culture of achievement, activity and brains is difficult but achievable with focus and
consistency. Culture is led from the top and supported through the expectations, processes and
"rules" of the LC.
• Keep your expectations high.
• Lead by example.
• Recognise and profile high achievers.
• Implement performance assessment processes.
• Have activity minimums or be goal-focused with members.
• Run high quality training sessions on competency development and
leadership/management.
It's important though, to make sure that along with things like performance assessment and
activity minimums, that the LC does not get disheartened or demotivated by a pressure
environment. That type of culture does NOT retain members!
We naturally want to be recognised when we do something we believe is of high quality, or a big
contribution.
Members who are recognised
Members who are recognised for their efforts stay connected with AIESEC because they know
they are making a contribution to something big, to the community. They know they are
developing themselves, they see themselves going far in AIESEC.
Members who are not recognised

2. Members who are not recognised struggle to see the impact they are making, they lose
confidence in their activities and often change what they are doing because they have not been
given the positive reinforcement that what they are doing is good and helpful!
It is important to always remember, that recognition should only be for things that deserve
to be recognised. If you go crazy recognising everything then the act of the recognition loses
its value and the effectiveness of it as a retention strategy dies.
What can we do for recognition?
There are so many ideas! Here's a few that I brainstormed:
• Introduce your team meetings with "brickbats and bouquets" - the good things and the
bad things that occur in the week
• Have a forum on AIESEC.net specifically for the recognition of member's big important
contributions
• Have an AIESECer of the week poster in your office, and each AIESECer of the week
gets their photo on the poster and a little explanation of what they did thats so great
• Use LCMs to congratulate members' on their great efforts and big contributions
• Get a permanent sugar-cubes wall for the purpose of writing messages to people when
they do something great
• Make space on your LC office whiteboard for the contributions worth recognising
• Incorporate a recognition section in your weekly LC emails or newsletters
• ...
What can you come up with? What have other members thought of?