Designing an Organization to Regenerate Itself

In 2017, I joined the Students Legislative Council of Telkom University for the first time. Coming from the executive side of student government, I had always felt that the council’s existence was far less visible than it should have been. Most students knew, at least broadly, what the Students Executive Board did. Far fewer knew that the Students Legislative Council existed, let alone understood what it was responsible for.

That was concerning for an organization whose members were supposed to represent roughly 27,000 students across the university. At the time, the council had fewer than 50 active members. The problem went deeper than simple awareness. Even when the council managed to recruit interns, there was no clear standard for what those interns should learn before becoming legislators themselves. Recruitment and regeneration were therefore closely connected problems. If students didn’t know the organization existed, they wouldn’t apply. If those who did apply weren’t properly prepared, the next generation would inherit many of the same problems again.

I had about six months before graduating, so I knew I couldn’t fix the whole system. Instead, I treated the work as a series of checkpoints. Whatever I managed to establish before graduation would count as progress.

Starting with Visibility

My first checkpoint was understanding why the organization had become so difficult to notice. The council operated across seven faculties, including School of Communication and Business and School of Creative Industries, yet its publications didn’t reflect the kind of communication I expected from a university organization. The visual design felt generic, the captions were rarely compelling, and much of the content looked like what could be found on almost any other student media account.

I already suspected that this contributed to the organization’s reputation, but I wanted to validate it. I discussed the issue with friends, other council members, and even the interns themselves. The pattern was consistent. Very few people were interested in following the organization, which meant fewer people knew what we did. That meant fewer people noticed when internship registration opened, which eventually meant fewer potential legislators. The cycle could sustain itself indefinitely.

My team and I therefore started changing how the organization communicated. The most visible change was the visual design. Instead of treating the organization’s identity as a fixed visual template, we developed a thematic template specifically for the current parliament and its period of service. The template gave each council its own visual character while still maintaining a recognizable identity for the organization. When the parliament’s term ended and a new council took over, the visual theme could change with it, allowing each generation to establish its own character without having to redefine the organization’s identity from scratch.

We also changed the tone. The organization had developed an image of being rigid and overly formal, so we introduced communication that felt more personal and closer to how students actually spoke with one another. The goal wasn’t to make the council look fashionable for its own sake. It was to make people interested enough to pay attention.

The response was visible through increased followers, comments, and shares. More importantly, recruitment interest increased the following year when I was already involved in human resources development. That gave me an indication that the strategy had reached beyond surface-level engagement.

From Content to Regeneration

Improving visibility only addressed the first part of the problem. Getting people interested was useful only if the organization could actually develop them afterward.

I established standards for how the media function should operate, covering visual templates, publishing tone, timing, and general content practices. The purpose wasn’t to make every future publication identical. It was to make sure that whoever took over the role had enough structure to know what they were doing.

The more significant change was cultural. We moved from publishing things incidentally to actively generating content. The media team no longer had to wait for something to happen before thinking about what to publish. There was a deliberate effort to maintain the organization’s presence and give students reasons to keep paying attention.

By the time I graduated, I had reached the second and third checkpoints. The rebranding had been implemented across our media and online presence, and the media standards had been established so the work could continue after I was gone. The regeneration problem itself, however, was still unresolved.

Designing the Missing Role

One semester after graduating with my bachelor’s degree, I returned to Telkom University for a Master of Management program. I also returned to the Students Legislative Council, this time as its first Vice Speaker of the House for HR Development. The position didn’t exist in the previous cycle. I had proposed it myself as part of a new organizational structure for the council.

There was a practical reason for doing so. The council had a recurring problem with inactive members, which could affect both participation and decision making. Someone needed to take responsibility for the people inside the organization while also developing the next generation. The new role gave me the authority to work on both.

Near the end of 2018, I wrote “Executive Legislator”, a book designed as learning material for the council’s regeneration process. I drew from my years of experience in student organizations as well as what I was learning in the Master of Management program. The book contains five chapters, with three incorporating exercises based on SAPADAPPA (Situation Appraisal, Problem Analysis, Decision Analysis, and Potential Problem Analysis), a method I learned during the same period.

The book became a basic curriculum for the council. Instead of expecting each new generation to figure out what a legislator should know, there was now a structured foundation for developing them. I also distributed copies to faculty-level legislative councils within Telkom University and to legislative councils at other universities. The goal was to make the material useful beyond my own organization and provide other student legislators with a practical foundation they could adapt to their own contexts.

Questioning What We Inherit

More than five years later, this experience remains one of the most valuable parts of my student life. The book is particularly meaningful because it turned an organizational problem into a tangible design artifact. I wasn’t simply documenting what the council did. I was creating something that could transfer experience and understanding to people who would come after me.

The council also changed the way I questioned inherited decisions. A legislative organization has a particular responsibility because it helps create and maintain the rules under which student government operates. That makes inherited decisions worth examining, especially when their original reasoning has been forgotten.

One of my questions in 2017 was why the council had only two leadership figures, a Speaker of the House and a Vice Speaker. There was no rule saying there could only be two. When I asked why it was structured that way, the answer was essentially that it was simply how things had always been done. That answer wasn’t enough for me. I eventually formulated a new strategic organizational structure for the following year. I didn’t originally intend to continue as a legislator, yet the organization invited me back. I ended up occupying the very position I had designed.

In an organization responsible for representing others and creating its own rules, tradition isn’t automatically justification. Decisions should remain open to examination, particularly when the reasoning behind them has been forgotten. For me, that became part of what organizational regeneration means. It isn’t only about teaching people how to perform an existing role. It is also about giving the next generation enough understanding to question, improve, and eventually redesign what they inherit.