Thursday 3 December 2009

My Mission

As Phil Clayton from NZ asked my goals and ideas for Aida (if I will be selected) I will publish my answer for You all too:


"Hello Phil,

Sorry my bad English but here is some of my ideas. 1st: What I think is that this is not my mission but this is our mission. And we all solve this together (I´m just an enabler and I may run this project but the ideas and input comes from the Aida members where all the credits goes as well). This way we may be capable to find more useful ideas as well as options which may work.

Intial plan what I have been thinking of is:
1. We have to solve our communication problem (about 80% of management is about the communications). I will not do it myself but I will try to help us to find a tiny team of specialists (IT guys, 2-3 specialists) who will suggest us a IT-plan. This team will be the one of the most important teams in Aida in the future, if I will be selected."

Explanation: currently there has not been an easy and straight communication route from a regular freediver to the top of the Aida power. This creates a "Ivory tower" situation pretty often and pretty easily a situation where people in power does not know what happens in the field and the people in the field does not know what happens at the top of the power. There is although people who enjoys to play their games with the given power but I´m unfortunatelly not among them. I also do not like that kind of games.

"2. We fix the board at the same time. The first mission for Aida board would be to find a goals for 2010 (plan, do, check, act). And this is again a task which we do together. At the same time EC and TC (which I see as a pillars of Aida) does that same. And these plans will be documented. These plans will be also combined and accepted in board and then published for Aida members when they are ready. We also need to prioritize these tasks."

Explanation: In messy situations there are always most urgent and vital tasks which has to be handled first. And these are the tasks which should be found and handled that the basic work can be done.
Why the Education and Technical committees may be the pillars of Aida? Simply because education creates the freedivers and then there may be also competitors. While the Competitors creates visibilty for our dicipline the education builds more freedivers. That simple.

"3. After we have been created some kind of more stable base to work on then we start to solve next problems like: outsourcing our book keeping (selected external party can make a review for our accounts at the same time) and we solve our voting system problems (we also listen our tech team and their thoughs before this decisions). These are the most urgent tasks what I see in the future. But like I mentioned: we have to decide the tasks together and solve these together by sharing a responsibility and by creating a new culture in the becoming years inside Aida."

Explanation: there has been some doubts about Aida money from some parties as well as there was recently speculations about our elections. Money is pretty often the basis of the great fights in a small scale as well as in big scale. By creating some visibility for this area this tension pretty often looses a bit. Voting is the basis of democracy. If there is no in common accepted and proper way to vote then there is no democracy, I´m afraid. Simple as that.

Even these are quite simple goals for any kind of organization to execute it is although in the multi lingual, multi culture, mutli etc etc is often pretty challenging. It always needs some amount of committed people to execute these kind of ambitious plans. And I will repeat myself: I´m not a person who is capable to make it, I´m just a person who is ready to make this happen with a help of You.

br,

- kimmo"


So feel free to ask me anything. As I say as a judge in the competitions where I´m in charge: "pls help me to help you". So I need your input that these things will be solved together. Past is gone so now it may be finally time to focus on the future and make it more sunny for us that we would have more time for the things why we originally started everything: to Freedive!

2 comments:

jome said...

Hi,

If I may put a word in for Kimmo.

If people are worried does he have the experience to run for a position like this, I would say he does.

It is true he hasn't been a member of the AIDA board previously. He has, however, been working "inside" AIDA for a very long time - as part of the DC (where he's also seen some of the uglier sides of our sport) and EC. He's also one of the most active judges and consequently knows most of the players in this game personally. He's also very social and good at networking, so he builds these connections fast. He knows how AIDA works and has been on the "inside" very actively and very long.

As for experience, he has very long history of being an active member and even leading associations (dating back to the 80's), some of these (like the Finnish Divers Federation) are bigger organizations than AIDA is currently. He's also a project manager by profession and very respected at that - he knows how to plan, lead and how to delegate. He has also experience running his own business. Heck, he's even served on an U.N peace core mission (not much to do with diving but establishes character I think)

Most importantly, he is a very peculiar person in the sense that has seems to have no ego, concept of "limited time" or personal agenda - he just likes diving, sees a problem and thinks "well if I don't pitch in, then I cannot whine about it" - so he pitches in. All he wants is to fix this problem and retire back to cozy diving days :) (or knowing him, propably find another, bigger problem to solve)

To my current knowledge, he is human, although I sometimes doubt it ;)

-Simo K

Kimmo Lahtinen said...

Huh, this kind of words may add a pretty much pressures for myself and for the work...If I will be selected. Only thing what was missing from that story was a little mention about Kryptonite, I guess :)