Conflicts

 

Few days ago I had some interesting discussions with Youngguards PR manager Ieva. First of all, I’d say she’s a really cool girl, but secondly – she’s a professional and really knows how to make the things. Wanna know why?

Well we were talking about personal issues mainly, but as for PR and PR together, our talk touched some communication issues as well. First of all, we again and again came up to conflicts rising up within the organization. As we all know, military services are getting more and more powerful here, sometimes I even think we are planning to start a war. They get quiet a high percentage of GDP, are supported in any way by government and even more, can spend millions on advertising. Sure all these lieutenants, captains and major’s become more and more puffed up by awareness of their mission (or in awareness of their power, who knows). Well that’s cool, until they have to serve the civil law, which, however, doesn’t happens too often. Indeed, when duty calls to serving civil rules, these guys (and girls) become unpredictable. Ieva has seen them messing up events without any reasons – just because they feel their rights being less important – and that’s, believe me, tragic for them.

Well, I wouldn’t care about grown-ups acting like annoyed kids and breaking their toy-cars, tanks, mass destroying weapons etc, until it doesn’t hurts innocent ones. Thus, what actually can ****** (censored) me up, is that sometimes… well, most of times, kids are those who suffer. It seems to be normal, if kids in a summer camp are living without warm food for a week, just because someone feels disrespected by civilians.

How to solve this? Well, when I was in Youngguards, everything went a bit different. We were cool and so were our supervisors. I’d personally say, that Ministry of Defence with all it’s officers ******** *** ***** (censored). But as for those who have to live with this, I could only suggest to take it as a new experience and encourage those around who feel upset. Heads up, it’s still whole life in front and by seeing their mistakes, you probably won’t make them further.

Cheers!

The 9th wave

At the very beginning only 150 young guards took their part in new-founded organization, then after first year the number raised up to 1500 and so remained for next few years. The 9th wave came up at 2003, when Young guards were overtaken by Ministry of Defense – during few months participants number raised up to 7500.

So the question is – why did it happen?

Was that a case of successful advertising?
Did all these young people became very patriotic?
Maybe it was just a new generation coming up, all about the same age, same interests?

Explanation is actually very simple – before overtaking Young Guards organization, Ministry of Defense was taking care for about 10 secondary schools offering “kind-of” military education. When changes came, young guards were joined with military education in secondary and primary school’s level by offering several free time education programs. And indeed, those already studying in these military directed schools, had to join young guards. These new-made young guards were main cause for 9th wave.

Why am I telling this to you? Well, mainly because this issue brought me up to an interesting topic – why do all these young man and specially those young ladies want to join the military. Or to make this thing more general – what does makes people act like they do. Understanding the basics of humans motivation became the biggest aim of my life.

After hours and hours spent on libraries, carrying around tonnes of books and encyclopedias I came up to some very basics of motivation – A.Maslows Hierarchy of needs, which gives an overall impression about humans behavior and agenda. Thus as this seemed to be too overall, I moved more in to search for something more developed and came up to the ERG theory by Clayton Alderfer. He divides all human needs in three groups – existence, relatedness and growth. Main difference between theories stands in movement of needs. While Maslow allows his humans just to climb up the hierarchy, Alderfer allows climbing up as well as returning to the very basics. Well, I won’t give you a short note into everything I read, it is already a bit boring. Theory, I based my research on, this time was none of above mentioned.

As my research subjects are under legal age yet, they do not have to worry about such things as basic needs, they have different motivations. David McClelland therefore has created something specially for me – on experience based theory of needs. He implements that by expanding our experience we explore more and more new needs. Some of us have a need of achievement, some suffer from a need of power, and another part has a great need for affiliation. If we could find out, which of these needs can be fulfilled in Youngguards organization, we would get an answer why do all these young people do it.

Indeed, if reading Youngguards homepage carefully, they give you loads of competitions, loads of challenges to achieve new heights. If doing great, you can become a leader of smaller or bigger group, become a spokesperson, or do a lot of other things which are actually empowering you. And over all there is communication with lots of people from Latvia as well as from similar youth organizations all over the Europe. This is not an advertisement, but still – seems this fast growing youth organization can fulfill all your needs, you just have to come up with ideas 🙂

When done with theory, my next step was to find some method, how to get their motivations out of these military oriented kids. After reading some similar researches I decided for panel discussions. Thus to be prepared for everything that could come up, I did some interviews with people involved in recruiting processes at Latvian National Armed Forces in advance. They gave me some great ideas about why grown-ups decides to join the military, and you won’t believe how similar is their motivation to one told me by kids.

After few interviews and some panel discussions, after comparison of opinions from those who are and those who are not involved in the organization, few pretty nice results came up. If someone’s deeply interested we can discuss results separately, but I could divide all these motivations in 4 major groups – example seen in family, willing to follow friends, interests in military service, and willingness to improve themselves in different ways.

Main conclusions (laziest readers might have started from here)

Teenagers motivation to participate in youth organization, military service or anything highly depends on their friends will. Most of teens doesn’t have their own personality established yet, so they often suffer (or benefit) from conformity. Those more involved in their friends communities are less able to make their own decisions. And sad to admit, but indeed – you can see some adults suffering from the same issue.

Biggest plus to every organization oriented on youth is the variety of activities offered. As more there will be different choices, as more there will be potential participants. As those not-yet-established personalities are looking for some way to develop themselves, they are less interested in very specific issues, but thrive to get a broader view.

Nevertheless communication with society gives a big input in development of organization. But that’s another story, another research which will come up soon.