Our trip to Paradise: The ecstasy of imagination

As kids of the 1993 generation, I remember when we used to play “kitchen”, “firefighters”, “cow boys”, “husband-wife & kids” and all these games that were spurred by our imagination. I remember when we had no access to technology, and when watching a movie meant we were going to be the characters for the next couple of months. I was Ash from Pokemon, the father in the patriot; I discovered that my Nintendo could actually make me part of the Digimon world. It was all so beautiful. That stayed the case till 9^th grade. Then the games just leveled up. I won an Oscar, a Grammy and noble prize all in the walls of my room in front of my mirror and it was announced by my deodorant pack. That beautiful one million deodorant pack was always my companion when I imagined myself singing and reading my poetry aloud. Some-how and even though I was bombarded with all this new technology, I managed to keep my dreams till I graduated university. Once I started my career, social media (what I like to call imagination inhibitors) kicked in.

 

Last month, one of my partners in Mindfortinc (Ahmad) took us to see his house in a village in Lebanon called “Jeb Jeneen”. It was all greenery and farms. We walked around picking fruits from trees (apples) and isolating ourselves from social media. It was a great experience being able to connect with nature. Somehow I felt like every breeze of air was giving me back my soul again. I felt like young Yahya was back. Lucky for me we spent a night there eating the best food and breathing the real essence of oxygen. Days later, I had the chance to roommate with my roommate when I was back in University (also one of the partners at Mindfortinc “Hamed”). The conversations we had sounded like our old selves. We were dreaming again, we re-set our goals and somehow our vision of our future clarified. It dawned on me here that maybe social media has enough toxicity to overweigh its pros. Maybe we all need to take a step back from social media and isolate ourselves every now and then just to be in-touch with our 5 year old selves so we can remember the taste of imagination.

 

This brings me to a bigger concern. If our generation is starting to forget what imagination felt like, what about the generation that hasn’t tasted it in the first place? A generation that learned to play with ipads & iphones before they even learned talking. I think it is worthwhile to take a minute and think of how this impacts the future of business & the world. Would Thomas Edison have created the light bulb if there were no imagination? Would Steve jobs create the iphone
? Or Henry Ford create the car?

 

 

Enhancing Your Emailing Skillset: The Official Guide 101

You know when you meet all these people who are in the midst of their careers, telling you that you will not learn everything in business school. Well, one of the main things I learned when I first started my career is that business school will not prepare you for all the emails you will be sending back & forth. As you start your career, you will discover that it really is not about the content as I know most of you graduates are smart enough not to mess up content, but rather it is a matter of how you communicate something. For someone who’s been seasoned in an agency, I can tell you that it is okay to try and prove a point to a client and release your frustration as long as you communicate it properly & politely.

That saying “the client is always right” doesn’t always apply, sometimes the client pays for peanuts & asks for the stars. You not only need to know when to say no, but how to say it. When I first joined the PR field, I thought all I needed was the proper English. I turned out to be wrong & that was a tip that should have been narrated to me earlier when I first started business school. After a couple of years in practice, I have come to know all the “dos and don’ts”. This series will tackle all the frequent email mistakes with live examples & scenarios. I will try & cover every possible mistake done by new comers to the business field.

I will not go on & on, but I will give you the first tip in the emailing world. Sometime in the beginning of my career, one of my clients gave me a list of things to do, ON THE PHONE. So, I complied & did everything he asked for. Three weeks later, he calls my boss & he says I did the worst job ever because I missed tasks A, B & C, tasks that he never asked for. I told my boss about the conversation & guess what, I was blamed for not documenting it.  So let us say that you have a conversation with a client on the phone, no matter what it was (because I used to think that it is rude to document everything, it would look like you are calling your client a liar), you need to document it and the documentation template goes as follows:

 

Dear Erick,

Hope all is well.

As agreed in our phone call, we will be doing tasks:

-A

-B

-C

Kindly note that we need your prompt reply with XYZ so we can move forward with the event.

 

Thank you for your usual cooperation.

 

Best Regards,

 

Yahya Alfreh

The Art of Picking Professors

No matter what university you pick, everyone goes through the same hassle. The hassle of picking professors. As I was going through my university years I had my experiences with professors & picking them. So here is an unbiased perspective of some things I learned:

Don’t Listen to the voices around you

I was told by some friends that  finance professor X was the best & that I should avoid professor Y. To my surprise, professor X failed me & I repeated the course with professor Y getting a grade I didn’t expect. Moral of the story don’t listen to the voices around you & search harder than just student gossip.

Seek knowledge, not grades…

There are always professors that go by the book, who tell you what to study & facilitate the searching process therefore giving you grades. Avoid these professors as they will make you lazy in your search for knowledge & they won’t teach you the necessary out of the box skills that you will need in your jobs.

Instead,

Go out of your comfort zone !

Go for professors that won’t tell you what to study. Ones that will give you case studies every week while rotating you into different groups & have long open book exams. These professors will not give you the grades you want, but their lectures will be the ones that stick with you for life.

Go the extra mile

Visit professors in their visiting hours before you register for them, ask them about the curriculum, the assignments & what their program looks like. That should give you the proper insight on whether to pick them or not.

Experts Differ from Novices

Avoid business professors with no business experience in their bags & pure academia backgrounds. Business is a hands-on skill & can only be taught if you have your hands in it.

Expand your knowledge

Go for electives that you aren’t familiar with in both humanities & social sciences. Your business degree could be a tool to sustain the existence of a service or product that is out of your major. Always remember that the first creative idea in Apple computers was the calligraphy fonts in the typing program that was due to Steve Jobs dropping into calligraphy classes at his university.

Finally, remember that the money you put in your university is an investment in your future. It is your legitimate right to hand pick your professors & to make sure you’re attending classes aligned with your visualization of your future. Make sure you pick these professors for the right reasons. Grades will not give you the experiences and skill sets you will need in your business career. Don’t always get mad when you don’t get the classes you want, it could be a hidden blessing.

Why We Did It?

 

 

Dear reader,

 

 If you are reading this, then you are most probably a lost high school student hoping to go into a meaningful business school, a current student or a recent graduate from university who has just graduated & doesn’t know whether to find a job or to continue to masters. Well you have come to the right place.