Brussels, 30 September 2021

Board and staff reorganise roles and responsibilities

Following the death of its former President Richard Landl, the board has decided to take a step back from operational work and will in turn strengthen the role of Managing Director Georg Jürgens

The Board focuses on developing the mission, vision and strategy of ECSWE

Dur­ing its board and staff retreat in August 2021 in Jyväskylä, Fin­land, the roles of Board and staff were reor­gan­ised. Fol­low­ing the death of for­mer Pres­i­dent Richard Landl on 22 May 2022, the Board informed staff of its inten­tion to with­draw from its active involve­ment in the oper­a­tional work. Con­se­quent­ly, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Georg Jür­gens has com­mit­ted to take on fur­ther respon­si­bil­i­ties in dai­ly man­age­ment and coor­di­na­tion. The board sees its new role in defin­ing and devel­op­ing the vision, mis­sion and strate­gic direc­tion of the organ­i­sa­tion and will active­ly involve the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor in this process. To this end, the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor con­tin­ues to attend the reg­u­lar board calls, where­as from now on, oth­er team mem­bers will only attend select board meetings.

The Managing Director and his team jointly implement vision, mission and strategy

Sup­port­ed by his grow­ing team, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Georg Jür­gens will be tasked with ful­fill­ing ECSWE’s mis­sion and the imple­men­ta­tion of its strat­e­gy. In his chang­ing role, he will now become the cru­cial link between the Board and staff. Includ­ing him­self, the team con­sists of five peo­ple shar­ing the work­load of 2.5 full-time equiv­a­lents. While the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor and Office Assis­tant are based in Brus­sels, the oth­er col­leagues are work­ing from var­i­ous loca­tions in Bel­gium and Europe. Each of them is there­fore expect­ed to ful­fill their tasks with a high degree of auton­o­my and per­son­al responsibility.

Members want more networking, peer learning and sharing of best practices

An inter­est in more direct and more active involve­ment dur­ing Coun­cil meet­ings and through­out the year was expressed by the mem­bers. More infor­mal net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties were request­ed in order to bet­ter reflect each member’s diverse needs. Fur­ther­more, mem­bers request­ed to bet­ter pro­mote the exchange of good prac­tice and peer learn­ing. To this end, the Board and staff are cur­rent­ly explor­ing and test­ing more inter­ac­tive work­ing for­mats for Coun­cil meet­ings and conferences.

The Managing Director becomes the face of the organisation in Brussels

As the new Pres­i­dent Mar­gare­ta Van Raem­don­ck can­not take on an equal amount of exter­nal rep­re­sen­ta­tion tasks as her pre­de­ces­sor, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Georg Jür­gens will now become the face of the organ­i­sa­tion rep­re­sent­ing ECSWE towards EU insti­tu­tions in Brus­sels. He will also spend more work­ing time on cul­ti­vat­ing mean­ing­ful and last­ing rela­tion­ships with Euro­pean and inter­na­tion­al part­ner organ­i­sa­tions. To this end, he can rely on active sup­port from Advo­ca­cy Coor­di­na­tor Dora Šimunović, Ped­a­gog­i­cal Advi­sor Mar­tyn Raw­son and Project Coor­di­na­tor Már­ti Domokos.