OES - Organizational Effectiveness Solutions
We spend about 70% of our waking lives at work, commuting to work or thinking about work. Such a huge investment and still, Canadians aren't satisfied at work. This is a place to share thoughts and ideas on how to improve workplaces. I want to hear from employees, business leaders and anyone who wants to learn about how to make work better.
My name is Mehdi Kajbaf, I am an enthusiastic blogger, professional facilitator and Schulich MBA Alumni.
My services include health and wellness training through my partnership with Shepell.FGI, (time management, productivity, stress), teamwork and leadership coaching, recruitment assistance through my partnership with Ascentii's cloud based solutions and a range of other personalized solutions to help improve the effectiveness of your organization. Please see my services for more details.
Feel free to submit a link or ask me a question. I'm also available on LinkedIn and Twitter via the links below.
Mehdi Kajbaf
There is a school of thought that is quickly gaining steam, which says the MBA is useless. I really enjoyed reading this particular article on the topic. Technology has enabled people all across the world, particularly with the ability to start up their own business. Apps, social media, blogs, online marketplaces and various other technologies have made it incredibly easy to create a business. Business is fast, sexy and accessible.
The MBA brand seems to defy that. When people think MBA, they think corporate, they think suits, they think Finance, HR and Marketing. Traditional. Corporate.
If that were all the MBA was about, it would truly seem to be a waste of time and money in this fast changing economy. As an MBA, I believe the education provides much more than a technical overview of business fundamentals. Heck, I don’t think I still understand the technical knowledge! The typical MBA student has very little in common with the MBA brand.
The MBA student is a mixed bag. There are certainly the traditional, corporate ladder climbers that are very much in line with the MBA brand, but they are the minority. There are many more students that entered the MBA looking for an escape from the corporate world. They were deeply disappointed with the direction of their careers and took a risk and felt like the MBA would be their ticket to a new, more exciting and interesting career. I was definitely one of those students.
I have an MBA and I couldn’t be less corporate. I shun the 9-5, I hate bureaucracy and despise middle-management. Frankly, most of us MBA’s do.
Lucky for me, I’ve been able to get out of that system and I am working really hard to create a life for myself, and hopefully hundreds of employees in the future, that are freed from that. I feel I that I couldn’t have done it without my MBA. I’m not saying you need an MBA to run a start-up or a consulting firm. It helped me though, more on the intangibles, I gained a lot of confidence in myself, and an understanding about what it takes to be successful.
I think it’s an absolute shame that many of my former classmates haven’t been able to turn the MBA experience into a more exciting career just yet. For many, it really was a waste and it wasn’t cheap.
I think it’s an indication that the branding associated with MBA students and the needs of exciting jobs are out of sync. The MBA has to stand for something different than simply corporate, because business isn’t the same anymore. Technology start-ups are sexy, smaller firms are where the innovation is happening and the entrepreneurial spirit is suffocated by traditional corporations.
MBA students are youthful (average age of 28), and youth are motivated by freedom, meaning, empowerment, challenge and to a lesser extent, money. Unfortunately, not the sort of things that come to mind when you think MBA.
Delivering Happiness - Everyday Happiness: Trading Time for Money isn’t Good Enough delivering happiness, book, happiness, delivering, at work, zappos, Tony Hsieh, business, corporate culture, entrepreneur
Very happy to be featured! Please check it out and give me feedback.
Guest blog by Sean Conrad.
Goal management is about more than just annually assigning goals and reviewing employee performance. It’s about getting every employee to use and develop their talents, skills and experience to help your organization meet its overarching goals.
I was recently having coffee with a former colleague of my mine, one that I hadn’t spoken to in about a year. I always love those meetings because suddenly you are re-capping your past year and as you listen to yourself speak you begin to realize either, A) I just wasted a year, or B) what a great year, this sounds really cool!
Whoever decided we work 5 days a week, from 9 to 5, then get 2 days off and go back at it again is a real jerk. We work way more than we don’t work, and we do it in a constrained, structured way that makes finding balance nearly impossible. I’ve been reflecting a lot on my life right now, and how much has changed from just a few years ago. I’m loving it because I am on my way to being freed of the dependency and comfort of a corporate job. First, let’s look at my life in 2010.
I’m a little late to the party, but I still thought it would be nice to recap 2012 with OES. I started this blog in the summer and it’s been a great source of learning, fun and success for me in 2012. I wanted to share a few of the posts that really took off and have become very special to me.
The most radical workplace in the world and 10 reasons why it’s worked for 30 years
My introduction to Semco and Ricardo Semler has provided the inspiration for me to start my own businesses and one day create an organization that can replicate the democratic, fun and energizing workplace at Semco.
Top 5 lessons I learned from my Schulich MBA.
This was my first post to go big, with thousands of hits. I received great feedback from colleagues, alumni and strangers which helped spur me to keep writing.
#1 reason executives fail to engage employees
I really enjoyed writing this post because it helped solidify and clarify how important values are in business. I first heard Simon Sinek’s speech on the power of WHY last Winter, and it really stuck with me. I now believe understanding and communicating our values and purpose is critical in business and personal success.
Disclaimer, Organizational Effectiveness Solutions is a Strategic Alliance Partner with Ascentii, so I am a little biased, but let me tell you why I’ve decided to join their team. Resumes are useless and antiquated, and Ascentii offers a disruptive technology that will revolutionize recruitment at a fraction of the cost.
Remember I wrote a post about why people love shopping at Cotsco a few months ago? I also discussed how with the Internet and communities like reddit, both good and bad corporate citizens have to answer. I just wanted to follow up, because in the past few weeks and particularly with Black Friday, there has been a lot of media on retailers in America.
The best evidence yet for demonstrating the importance of engagement to bottom line profits has just been released. Towers Watson has put out their 2012 Global Workforce Study and it will blow you away! Quick disclaimer, as I wrote in my previous post going over employee engagement fundamentals, the industry definitions of employee engagement differ from academic ones. Here they are really just talking about discretionary effort, but I still find the research astounding.
The two most important points are that engagement is extremely closely tied with financial and other types of success and that engagement without the tools and right environment (enablement) falls much shorter than engagement alone.
