Written By: Farah Ahmed
The final days of the summit are here…With very sad yet frenzy feelings, we present to you the end of a fantastic journey and a beginning for a new one filled with knowledge, energy, and progress. Come on, let’s explore the last days of the summit!
Under the title “Companies between Innovation & Development”, our Magazine’s founder was one of the guests of Day 26!
Mahmoud Mansi: HR expert and CEO of HR Revolution Middle East. He perceives COVID 19 as an opportunity that will incite businesses to enter the digital and automation transformation. Regarding encouraging my staff to innovate and engage consists of a short term plan, which is sustaining and preparing employees, and a long term plan, which is possessing an automation project or Robot Bots. Meanwhile, to make them motivated, businesses should focus on employee branding strategy, financial and emotional recognition, and rewards system linking it with the over-time working hours. Consequently, as an HR, he/she should endorse the way to impact the existing culture inside a company. Initially, there is a difference between multinational, medium-sized companies, and startups. So, besides the known areas of culture, there is ‘employee engagement’. Mahmoud tackled it from another side, which is the feeling that his/her talents and ideas have an impact on the decision-making process. This means that the employee is a strategic partner, and this is for Mahmoud is what construct a strong culture.
Ahmed Elshiaty: Training and Development Supervisor in WE and ICF certified coach. Despite the challenges that the Customer Service CS is facing in the meantime, there are some customers’ needs must be acknowledged; care and connection while adding quick reachability and show of empathy and understanding, to adjust them to match the circumstances. He also cited the importance of the existence of an updated digital platform presenting accurate information and self-help tools. Subsequently, Emotional Intelligence was brought up as a tool to support the employees; it starts by reflection with myself to understand in which level of change I stand, to self-awareness, transparency, and comprehend the different working circumstances the employees have at their homes.
Nabil El Hady: Learning and Organization Development Manager in La Poire. He tackled the scheme of business transformation to enhance the sales in 2 points: Ultimate Awareness (business/industry, political, economic, and social) and Reactive Plan composition throughout this uncertain complex time for business. He believes that now it’s not the time for transformation, as businesses are barely performing in this survival mode, yet transformation is exerted when you review your economy and manpower/workforce various capabilities. Accordingly, Nabil came up with a ‘CODE’ for Cultural Transformation; which is Conscious – Organized – Developed – Emotions/Energy.
Day 26 full panel: https://www.facebook.com/IGamify/videos/554518048569561/
From there, Day 27 was revolving around the question of “Are you searching to raise up with your Startup Personal Development” with 3 amusing professionals. Ahmad Aly El Dabaa the managing director at Ajax Business Solutions and Maha Hamdy an English instructor.
Maha, as being in the field for 3 years, the most common mistakes she witnesses are underestimating self-confidence and overestimating ego. Based on experience, she supposes that pronunciation always comes first before the accent, and self-study is the best method to develop your English. She gave some advice to enhance your English language:
1- Participate in a conversation club
2- Work on yourself and don’t depend completely on your instructor
3- Volunteer in the PR or the advertising sectors
Ahmad, as experienced storytelling in online videos, recommends to attract views you must utilize the 2 minutes storytelling efficiently in some steps:
1- Giving out a trailer
2- Ordinary world (characters introduction)
3- Inciting incident
4- Plot twist
5- Resolution/Reflection
Later, Dina Rashad joined the panel. As an interpreter for the news sector on Nile TV, she explained the difference between translation (written) and interpretation (orally) concerning time and job description. Dina sums up 2 qualities that must exist in any interpreter; quick intuitive and smart behavior. Speaking of interpreter challenges, she mentioned some of them, such as; when you don’t understand a sentence the speaker is saying, when the speaker is talking very quickly, different accent, broadcast error, a problem in your settings, and last but not least when the speaker is talking in a topic that is in contradiction with your ethics. In this case, as you are the echo for the speaker, you must be objective and never modify or change the translation to something that matches your beliefs.
Then the panel shifted to discussing the main question of the panel. Ahmad explained how new businesses or startups adopt the helicopter view; it involves looking at your business as a whole, not just the minute details, to survive during and after COVID 19. While the business carries on its feasibility study, it stumbles upon the ‘risk assessment’, unfortunately, a big percentage of startups ignore this point and therefore can’t guarantee their continuation in the market. Hence, a business owner should put various scenarios and measures regarding risk assessment, as well as building their strategy for the digital transformation.
Day 27 full panel: https://www.facebook.com/IGamify/videos/698062960737420/
Moamen hosted 3 graduates from FIFA Diploma in Sports Management to add some fun for the 28th day of the panel “The Future of Football after COVID19”. Diaa Salah the Business Development Manager Middle East & North Africa at Sportradar. Abdallah Shehata is an international sports lawyer and member of the International Association of Football Lawyers (AIAF). Khaled Refaat a Specialist at Sports Marketing, Sports Events, and Sports Tourism.
Let us lake a quick look at some of the questions they got…
What are the huge developments during COVID 19 in the legal sector in football?
Abdallah: For a starter, football has a legal and judicial system, and in recent years, we have witnessed the development and amendment of several regulations at the international level through FIFA. He then summarized the new FIFA guidelines, and the relation between the FIFA salary reduction criteria, the recommendation that the dispute resolution chamber looks at each dispute separately.
What is the impact of COVID 19 on sports in general and football in particular?
Diaa: All governments throughout the world preferred the safety of their players and their fans. So, speaking of football as an industry, they faced also challenges like the businesses; some leagues canceled, while others came back with totally different precautionary measures. Another challenge is the endurance of their revenues and their incomes, and thus a lot of negative consequences will occur from the commercial side, workers and players in the field, and broadcasting as well. The impact is extended to lowers tiers too.
What is the impact of clubs’ revenues through COVID 19?
Khaled: For the first time, the revenues from gates, sponsorships, broadcasting stopped altogether. It’s a precedent that FIFA allows the contract negations between the player or the coach and his club clubs about cost reduction. The sponsorship agreements facing problems after being influenced by the current conditions: they abstain from paying as there are no matches played (facing losses). Hence, it depends on the agreements in the contracts, and in the meantime, there are a couple of problems in the contracts. Nevertheless, the administrators’ role is very crucial to find solutions.
Later, the 3 experts discussed force majeure in football contracts development and improvement. Afterward, they tackled their expectations for Football and fans post-COVID 19. Diaa believes that still fans are a priority and essential for sports in general, and noticed their adaptation on E-sports/digital sports. While Khaled expects that the professional leagues will be the stronger to make good decisions and keep up from where they left. As for Abdallah, he anticipates the changes in the levels of regulations and drafting contracts.
Day 28 full panel: https://www.facebook.com/IGamify/videos/925744234521192/
For a moment when you hear the word ‘agile’, you just get confused and don’t understand what it has to do with business. Being close and close to the end, Moamen wanted to give you some insights on it under “Creating and Improving Agile Processes within a Team or a Company”. Fady Ismaeel aBusiness Consultant/ SAFe Program Consultant and Mahmoud Ghoz an Agile Coach and Trainer at VIDSCOLA dealt with several points throughout the panel:
- Experience with an ‘Agile Team’: based on Mahmoud’s previous acquaintance, was that organizations face the problem of wanting to work without clear business objectives. He says that you can promise for efficient conduction of work and to reach the market quickly, but you can’t promise to increase the productivity of employees. While Fady talked about a more personal perspective, for him agile is a mindset rather than a framework, so it’s better to create a network team.
- Challenges in a working environment wanting a change: one of the challenges that Fady tackled is companies prefer saturation, start to resist change. As for Mahmoud, it is all about communication; which also generates resistance from the people. He also tackled the necessity of having core working hours and self-organizing teams.
- Both tackled the importance of agility in teams from different perspectives and the change management process. Introducing something new is hard, so you need to take it slow and try to change the culture of the team itself towards a common value/goal of the company.
- Fady laid down a strategy to overcome stress, pressure, depression, and panic attacks during this period. He advises the manager to work on building trust and to ease stress and pressure using Servant Leadership philosophy. Agile practices generate confidence and build commitment to the team.
- Mahmoud specifies a set of things to convey for yourself an environment to be more productive. Inform when you are not available – communicate – get well dressed – invest to have a comfortable office – be clear about your working hours/don’t be accessible 24/7 – don’t take extra appointments for the sake of work-life balance – invest in communication tools and transfer physical tools into digital tools.
- A practical piece of advice for people working in the agility field: Fady’s is to invest in yourself to learn and be up-to-date. Mahmoud’s is continuous improvement in yourself, your team, your company, and the system you are working in. Also, get rid of the we-vs-them attitude.
Day 29 full panel: https://www.facebook.com/IGamify/videos/2576473702605678/
A sigh…we reached Day 30 with heavy hearts. It was a very unique session concluding many aims for the summit. “Managers Responsibilities during COVID19” presented Mariam Farag the head of Corporate Sustainability & Social Impact at MBC Group, and an award-winning advocate. Together with Amr Fawzi Hamed a business transformation consultant and a certified change manager.
Primarily, both agreed on the importance of storytelling on serval layers for people, especially youth, to accept changes in businesses and other fields. Hence, we are in front of 2 storytelling experts.
Mariam reflects her experience in managing stakeholders successfully, especially during COVID 19. She recounts creating an empower-hour to communicate virtually with the people and the audience. As that was on the external level, the internal challenge taking into account the presence of psychological and emotional management and communication for the team, upper management, and on a personal level. In the process of reaching my target audience and make my storytelling compelling and connected with them, having a young team is a must. Still having experts and consultants is indispensable. She states that youth are very smart, inceptive, and informed with the trends. Afterward, Mariam stresses on the fundamentality of youth development, demonstrating that all they need is a direction and a mentor. She advises organizations to give them a chance, like internships and jobs, and never keep a piece of useful information from them, in a nutshell, all they need is a real genuine sustainable support. On her part, the issue of Sustainable Development Goals came into the scope and the obligation for companies to build sustainable development programs and have venture capital for their own sake.
Amr gave details on several tricks with the (s)! He discussed the Change Management with 5Ws, being in a state of uncertainty and anxiety. What he follows in change management is the process of 4Ds (define, design, deploy, detect). Accordingly, to manage change dynamically, use the strategy of the 4Ds but start with the 5Ws. Currently, we are living a cultural shock, there’s a paradox accompanied with the conditions, so cultural transformation post-COVID 19 is not a luxury anymore, it is a necessity. There are cultural components to consider while searching for a cultural change inside the organization; you should be able to communicate efficiently, look at the long-term goals (reshape the future), and prepare the reformation process. Whilst doing so, you have to keep in mind that not all the people have the same capabilities, so don’t stress on those who don’t know how to do all of the above. Amr used the (s) again to manifest the cultural tools using the 4Cs; collaboration, control, competitiveness, and creativity, to look into shaping the origination’s new culture. He adds that it’s a bonus for the team and the business to be very agile and can build networks. He ends with the 3Rs in the crisis management process; which are readiness, response, and recovery.
Day 30 full panel: https://www.facebook.com/IGamify/videos/1306002646270311/
Wrapping up this virtual summit was incredible and a very special thank for Moamen Said the founder and CEO of I-Gamify, and the one who hosted the 30 days summit! We hope you have enjoyed it as much as we did, also for more related topics you can visit the page itself here on https://www.facebook.com/IGamify