Confusion and the revolution

There is a major confusion dominating a lot of people in Egypt about the consequences of the revolution so far.
Some people are mentally and emotionally so challenged and shocked from the disturbing news everyday which exceeded their capacity to assess and comprehend the situation.
Some of them started to wonder about the value of what's going on and if that what they really wanted.
I consider that all that expected and predicted mental and emotional shock which could happen to many persons if they lost the concentration on the long term objectives.
WE shouldn't let all the short term consequences to affect our morale and believing in the revolution.
We should continue the road to the end to gain the fruits and to reward the painful sacrifices of hundreds of martyrs.
I met some people who are questioning things which were supposed to be a common sense and written on the wall conclusions like the sins of Mubarak and if he really deserves what happened or no and worthy of the martyrs and even if the people are ready for the self-ruling and the democracy.
We must focus on the long term objectives.
We must continue in the painful but rewarding road to the end to gain eventually the fruits.
Fruits which were irrigated with our blood and tears.

Kuwait and Indonesia and the common sin

I received my assignment in Kuwait after three wonderful years in Indonesia. The first notice I've observed was the shear amount of SUV's for a small country.
The justification was stated simply everywhere that they need powerful car A/C's so that's why they have SUV's and of course the very cheap gas.
Gas here is cheaper than water!!
What a justification for consuming a finite resources.

In spite of the so many differences between Kuwait and Indonesia, they certainly share this sin, the wasting of their hydrocarbon resources.

Timeboxing

I'm using the "timeboxing" method to manage my time since two months now. The impact on my productivity was good and it is improving by the time.
I was always suffering from the distractions coming from the surrounding workplace which was giving me a negative feeling of the passing non-productive time.
The timeboxing has managed to control that.

What is timeboxing?
It is simply a method to assign time for each single tasks and to focus only on the task in hand till you finish it and block any other distractions. Do one task per time.
Secondly you need to record the time of each task.
Since the majority of my work is front of my Computer, I used Excel for the timeboxing. I used (NOW) function in two adjacent for each task. When I start the task I copy the value of (NOW) to set the start time and leave the other. The difference between both will measure the consumed duration. When I finish I paste the value of the finish time and this gives me the duration of this task and the start and finish time.
Sometimes I set a planned time for the task to compare between it and the actual consumed time.
This has improved my focus on the task in hand and improved my productivity and most importantly the quality of what I'm doing.
The another value was the precise logging of my tasks along the business day.
The sense and awareness of time is fully awaken as well.
It was near to perfect way to control the time and block the distractions and it has given me the sense of achievement.
What I'm doing now in the Excel spreadsheet, is writing a note of what could be done to speed up the productivity of the process in the next time. Next time I refer to this note to shorten the consumed time in the same process.
For instance, I found that thinking during the morning commuting about my business emails is saving a lot of time.
I emphasized and stressed the practice of this way to shorten the time of my business emails writing. And son on for the other tasks by getting some ideas after doing them to improve the quality and reduce the consumed time.
I found also based on the observation of my timeboxing that the thinking beforehand about my business day and the required decisions and actions should be taken is reducing significantly the hesitation and the further discussions and reducing my spontaneous actions and decisions to more planned and well calculated.

Effective mentoring

No doubts that mentoring could have a profound impact on the business if it would be implemented effectively.
I noticed that mentoring is poorly practiced in my company. It takes a long time to streamline the new hires fully into the business.
Definitely there is a better practices of implementing the effective mentoring which can speed up the streamlining and the full engagement of the new hires and the mid-careers into the business.
Mentoring should be an essential responsibility for each experienced employee and he should be fully committed to it and shouldn't be handled as a sideline tasks which can be compromised.
Whenever we implement the mentoring, it becomes totally subjective process which is up to the level of commitment of the individual and it is not following a systematic and standard approach to ensure its effectiveness.

My manager was complaining from the poor knowledge and reliability of the local staff. I told him that happened basically because of the poor mentoring you have in this business unit. They can't work independently and they should be closely mentored and gradually delegated in the different assignment. Specific development objectives and Training and development plan should be in place.

Effective Mentoring should be well rewarded and appreciated to encourage the experienced employees to contribute and invest their effort and time in this process.

For instance, if the objective of the employee X to work as independent team lead after two years then the mentor should ensure that he is following the appropriate career and development path to achieve this goal and the employee should be informed about this midterm objective to fully adopt it and consent to it.

What we are doing is simply throwing the new hires into the ocean and who will swim will continue and who will sink will be abandoned. This is definitely the worst way of developing the people and the organization. Learning through the very hard and most stupid and primitive way.

As a process it should be continuously improved by the measuring of its success criteria like the time span and the progress and the number of mentee.

Distance learning and web conferencing and captured expertise could speed up the process and free it from the constraint of the number of experienced mentors in many locations.

Mentoring should be core process in each organization and business unit as it was always for the small workshops where the carpenter was mentoring the new green hire and gradually delegating to him the different assignments and that how was the knowledge transferred from generation to another.

Outsourcing and a window of hope

As a corporate employee, I have to, as thousands in the company, to prepare my expense reports whether they are business, medical or benefits expenses. Last time I did that, I had to collect all my receipts and stick them to be scanned and sent to our financial auditors. I had to record them in the website with their corresponding costs.
This process has taken a full business day. Multiply this time and effort by tens of times per year and thousands of employees and you will figure out the humongous time wasted in non business productive time.
Following that, I thought - as usual - about alternatives to ease this bottleneck.
I always believe that the bottlenecks in the business environment should be addressed seriously by intelligent solution to maximize the productivity and the revenue per head.
The simple question pop-up in my head, was simply why shouldn't we outsource this simple mechanical task to any contract clerk to do it and he or she will not mind to take peanuts to do that to have a job instead of nothing. Isn't better than wasting a full power employee with this non productive tasks and time.
No doubts that expense reporting is an essential procedure for any organization to monitor its reimbursables, however it is definitely not productive process and it doesn't contribute to the production.
Two solutions could address this bottleneck in the productivity, the business intelligence and the outsourcing.
I will elaborate more on that in the next blog.

The full capacity of my mind

I strongly believe that I'm still using very tiny portion of mind. Certainly, I'm not get the maximum potential of it.
I need to improve the utilization of it and exercise the full operation of it continuously. It is all about thinking more and more and and more efficient thinking.
It is all about operating my mind.
I started to closely observe how I'm using my mind in my daily life activities.
It is very useful process to evaluate the efficiency of my mind during my daily activities.
The amount of creative and innovative ideas and the logical and mathematical processes.
The level of processing.
for instance, the conversation is representing a major activity in my daily personal and professional activities, however my mental activity is mainly the spontaneous reaction with so much processing. It is a point of concern where I need to increase the thinking while talking and leverage the level of my speech.
Another crucial point, the negative influences from the surroundings where the surrounding people or the environment sometimes represent a depressing and discouraging ambiance.
I should resist this negative influence and free my mind.
It is my current interest and challenge, how I can unlock the full potential of mind and reflect that on the quality of my life.

Diversity is additional value to the community

Diversity is definitely additional strength to the communities. The monotonous pattern is in the contrary side where it represents the disability of the community to accept the others and accept new ideas or people or thoughts. It is a mental disability.
Accepting the others and protecting their believes is empowering the self-confidence of the community. Otherwise, the community or the individual will be so fragile and can not stand any wave of change.
Talent and the contribution in the society what should measure the citizenship and not the ethnicity or the religions or the believes.
Each person has the full freedom to believe in whatever he wants but everybody believes in the common values of the whole community.

Discrimination

I despise from the bottom of my heart any sort of discrimination whether it is based on racial, ethnic, gender, religion, or identity. Any form of discrimination is representing the most primitive act of our behavior.
One of the shameful disgrace that the humanity is still struggling to accept the equality between the different races, and nationalities and religions.
Accepting the others regardless to their colors and believes are still far from being a global well established concept or moreover practice.
Recently in Egypt we have faced renewed sectarian clashes where the rejection of the mutually living and sharing with the "other" was the main norm.
The society which can not endorse all its factions and sectors is a weak society and it's not capable to accept the differences. It is a major weakness point.
Everybody talks about establishing the state of law and justice but when it comes to practice our basic and primitive bias are surfacing and the principles are compromised.

Toppling the regime was easier than toppling our taboo legacy differences and we need to conquer our narrow minded rejection of the others and endorse it under the shared interest and the mutual respect of life and rights.

I can tell about dozens and dozens of situation where I've seen the discrimination is still essential component of our daily life.
I've experienced it in the workplace where the nationalities belonging to the developed countries are treated different from the unlucky nationalities who are belonging to the developing countries.
I was standing in the visa queue in one of the Arabian gulf states airport and I was requested to leave it and join another queue because of my passport identity.
I spent three hours in the airport to pass the entry gates!!.
When I shared this painful experience with my western colleagues I knew they was instructed to be queued in separate lane dedicated for the western countries.

Add to that how the Asian maids are treated and house servants and the black Africans . the list will be so long if you want to point to the discrimination situations.

Unfortunately the discrimination is still deeply rooted in our cultural system and our mindset.

I consider it very primitive and very stupid to judge and stereotype the people based on the most baseless and non-sensible categorization system the humanity has ever used.

In my perspective the most negative impact of this ugly practice is the losses of a real added value to the community and to the society by aliening them and losing the social peace and creating unhealthy hatred environment.
This has destroyed and damaged a lot of communities.

If you want to measure how civilized the community, then measure their level of discrimination.

Strauss Kahn

Attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment. Those are the allegations against Strauss Kahn.
Regardless to the conspiracy theories and the media footage, I was impressed with this incident.
Arresting IMF chief accused with attempted rape of hotel servant is not common event.
This is how I perceived the incident. African migrant working as a hotel servant and was harassed and even attacked by a president ranked profile.
This case would remain as a theoretical case in the majority of the current world.
In USA, the justice system acted in a full unbiased way and they arrested him a normal accused person.
Applying the law blindly on the person no matter his position is the real justice people are striving to get.
No political consideration and no emotional consideration and no other consideration.
In my country they would cover up the situation as an unquestioned normal practice.
It is very satisfying to leave in the state of the law where law is the only superior power.
I I'm american I would feel proud with this justice system.
Now in Egypt these questions are raised and people are divided to emotional who wants to put some exceptions here and there for the previous rulers and the other side wants to implement the law literally as is.

Forums and the expertise capture and knowledge exchange

I discovered recently the value of another type of knowledge share and communication form on the internet. It is the forums where group of people who share the same specific interest and would like to exchange the thoughts, knowledge and ideas about it.
I was transferred recently from Indonesia to Kuwait and this will require a new effort in the settlement like housing, schooling, geographical locations, etc..
I found out that there are couple of forums websites where people who are sharing the same interest could exchange the knowledge and the best practices about it.
For instance, the best schools and the first hand experience about the neighborhoods.
You can simply post the question as a new discussion and whoever knows any relevant answer may share it.
This form of networking the common interest persons is very effective and applicable on each single subject in the world.
The value of the published knowledge content in this forums can be increased further by the effective search tools and the categorization to capture the shared knowledge and the expertise.

Concerns about my career

To put it in a simple terms, I don't enjoy my work now and I'm not excited about it.
I can't move progressively forward. It's still moving but not progressively forward. I partially contributed to this situation but taking some of the poor decisions and declining valuable opportunities.
I should think more and revise my career principles and bases and career ambitions and goals.

I feel sometimes that I've the potential to achieve more and bring my career to the next levels but my attitudes and my decisions and capping me with solid career ceiling.
I strongly believe that my combination of creativity, experiences and skills set can be developed to higher altitudes rather than being trapped and boxed in day to day basic tasks.

Cloud is the unlimited flexibility

Cloud is gradually invading my personal and work related interests. A lot of my data and files are stored on the cloud. This has eased my life and gave me more flexibility and mobility. For instance, Recently, I've to write a report and share it with my client and I was off-site. I used my Google account and create the activity report on Google Docs spreadsheet and the textual report on Google Docs Word. Task was achieved using the available PC whatever it includes MS Office or no where all I needed is web browser.
Regarding my personal files, all my photos now are stored on the cloud. I would claim they are stored in more secured way rather than keeping them on my hard disk. I've more than 2000 photos on the cloud and accessible wherever I go to restore the good memories of my family.
I was working on a major project also to scan my paper photos and to upload them so I can have the all photographic record in a digital form and stored on the cloud.
some of my personal files also are stored on the cloud.
My video files are also stored on the cloud.
Some of my Office documents are stored but I'm working on organizing and storing the rest of them in organized and secured way.

Egyptian revolution of Jan 25 from Egyptian perspective - 6 (Turkey as the role model)

Revolutionary wave is still striking the Arabian shores heavily and reached finally to Syria.
The new order in the region is still foggy and people usually are over-worrying about uncertainty as they are reacting in this situation.
There are external and internal worries that freedom and democracy waves may lead to theocratic hostile dictatorship or half dictatorship as - thought by some observers - happened in Iran and Palestinian territories.
Turkey is surly the key role model in the region where the ruling party managed to create harmony between the Islamic roots and the modern democratic state.
Egyptian are welling for that as Tunisia and the other Arabian countries.

Egyptian revolution of Jan 25 from Egyptian perspective - 5 (Leadership)

We managed to change Ahmed Shafiq who was appointed my Mubarak in the last cabinet as the prime minister. In general, the man has a reputable professional career but his loyalty was questionable because of his long service under the dictator.
The question arises now is what kind of leaders and the qualities which will qualify these leaders.

In the past era, our leaders were gods or semi-gods. They were above the accountability and the responsibility.
They were regarded as the super duper heroes who have miraculous power and the people supposed to be so dependent on them and people should feel so grateful to those leaders because they accepted to take this heavy burden.
Those super heroes were acting as inspired prophets who are above human mistakes.

On the other hand, Those leaders were turning to giant monsters by the going time with the absolute power in their hand and the people were dwarfing by the time.

We don't want this ugly kind of inspired heroes anymore.


We want technocrat or ultra-specialist who are managing the resources to achieve the people's will.
We don't want super strong leaders but intelligent and well experienced and knowledgeable leaders.

We want chief executive for the country who is taking the mandate from the shareholders of the country who are the citizens.

Egyptian revolution of Jan 25 from Egyptian perspective - 4 (Democracy Entrenching)

Democracy is an evolving process which should be continuously improved and empowered in the community and in the state establishments.
Entrenching deeply the democracy in the different establishments of the community and the state should be evolving process to be sustained and improved.
By the time, it will become well established practice and well respected by the different community members and the process will become the attitude and the behavior of people.
This process gradually will dominate the political and social life of the communities and the qualification of the leadership and the decision making process will be based on this majority and consensus and individual contribution in the changing process.

Egyptian revolution of Jan 25 from Egyptian perspective - 3 (crowd wisdom)

The consensus, the majority, the crowd has proven in the Egyptian revolution that they are more wise and more effective than the intellectual elite.
This perception about the crowd that they are mass of ignorants was totally incorrect.
The layman and the average person has made their mind and reached to very mature and wise conclusions about the major causes when the intellectual elite were still in their loop of discussions about this cases and causes.
Let them continue in their byzantine discussions and the people will effective do the changes on the ground.

Egyptian revolution of Jan 25 from Egyptian perspective - 2 (unaccomplished mission yet)

Mission is unaccomplished yet. This is the status of the Egyptian revolution up to now.
It is still too early to celebrate the victory of the Egyptian revolution. Ousting Mubarak was just the first objective toward achieving the free and democratic state.
The head of the corrupted regime was down but his regime is still there and they still have hopes to restore the old regime in a new form and a new brand.
The reform process is still in progress and the military is showing progress however it is not up to the required speed and expectation of the people after decades of hopeless situation.
The full adoption and endorsement of the revolution demands should be achieved without further hesitation.
The power instruments of the old regime should be dissolved immediately like the state security and the old guards.
Restoring normalcy shouldn't be by claiming that we achieved the revolution objectives.
We are still far from the finish line and marathon running should continue till we reach it.

Egyptian revolution of Jan 25 from Egyptian perspective - 1 (Astonishment)

20 years ago I had a conversation with one of the intellectual activists about the possibility of the change in Egypt. I was in the high school at that time and he was belonging to the Muslim brotherhood. He told me that the Egyptian people are not revolutionary by their nature and for hundreds or even thousands of years they never protested to the level of revolution magnitude on the ruler. so how we will change the community? He said gradually and smoothly from the bottom to top.
Look what happened? full scale uprise and thousands marched the streets and demanded the ousting of Mubarak.

Yes it was totally unpredictable and unplanned.

Each time I see those clips on Youtube showing the demonstrations of January 25 revolution in Egypt and see those thousands in the different cities and the millions gathering in the Tahrir square I receive the same astonishment and amazement.
It is as the ground was cracked and new bread of millions of Egyptians emerged out of it to achieve the change and to defend of the other living Egyptians who couldn't do it for decades and decades.
In my perspective Jan 25 was the most important key milestone date exposing the drastic change happened in the Egyptian attitude and the Egyptian personality.
Don't ever underestimate the power of the people to do the change.

Rights are not gifted

Rights are not gifted.Rights are taken. This statement is valid in politics, in life, ..etc..

Appeal to the American people

Arabian countries are not just oil tank to fuel your SUV’s.
Arabian countires have as well living people who are looking forward for degnified life, freedom, and the right of self-determination.

Your oil demand is sucked from our blood.
Remember that when you enjoy driving in the weekends.

Ensuring the stability by supporting logistically and morally these dictatorship means only the backing of the oppression.
So please cut the life line from these dictatorships starting with Mubarak's dictatorship.

If you don’t want to support the revolutionary movements for freedom emerging in the Arabian countries then at least cut your life line from the dictatorships.

World is better without saddam Hussein and also without the all Arabic dictatorships.

If you spent 4000 ceased American soldiers to oust the dictator Saddam Hussein because he was threatening your interests and seeking a better world without him, you have the chance now to support the nations who are striving for the same goals by cutting your life line and your supplies.

Our ambitions are legitimate
We want to move ahead from the tribal structure dominating our nations to the establishment structure ruling the modern states.
We want to change our countries from the police state to the establishment state.

These dictatorships even with their brutal police instruments are fragile and we can oust them by ourselves although their brutal and merciless regimes.

As well said by the Turkish prime minister democracy doesn’t mean heading to radicalism but democracy could mean as well stability but based on real foundation not based on oppression.