Submitted by Mostafa Zommo on May 25, 2015 – 12:15pm

This blog was inspired by an encounter with a student, who spent the summer working with us, he asked me the following question about career growth and development; “What is the shortest route between me as a student and you as a Senior Executive, basically I want to know the fastest way to become an Assistant Deputy Minister/CIO!?; give me specific steps…”

While smiling and thinking to myself, I love these students and said good question, giving myself time to think… Drawing on the many years of working in the real world and school of hard knocks, I said I will share the steps that helped me; they will likely shorten your trip on the road ahead of your career growth and success. Keeping in mind success is a relative term, here is step one:

1. Become a learning machine – learn the business you are in, learn all you can about your organization, its mission, and what they are trying to accomplish [be crisp and laser focused in your learning about your section and projects], learn the environment [context] around you and learn as much as you can about the people you work with. But above all, learn about yourself, who you really are and what it is that you want that is in alignment with your inherent talent, values and personal mission. Self-awareness is least understood but most critical to success! Spend quality & honest time discovering yourself; you’re worth it.   Learning about yourself and of your organization will help gauge your alignment and engagement with your organization.  Give yourself a relative mark. Ten is when all of you is aligned to all of your organization, its management and its goals this is ideal career situation. Zero is when none of you is aligned to that of your organization; time for a new job 😉 I will expand on this in future blogs.Always take a learning posture, especially in the face of difficulty, adversity and conflict. When in conflict, don’t get mad, get facts; don’t be angry, be fair. As hard as that maybe, and it’s hard, put yourself in the other person shoes and learn their reasons; it’s the best you can do to resolve a conflict. When in doubt ask around, so that you may remove that doubt with more information. More than likely, you will learn that there are more than one right answer… But, finally and basically never graduate from learning! In the coming weeks, will share with you the other five steps that I shared with my students’ employees of what I called the Six Pack of Success… see you soon!

Submitted by Mostafa Zommo on May 1, 2015 – 11:11am

In my life I have had a few new beginnings. This latest one is triggered by the end of my career at the Federal Government of Canada igniting a new chapter of my life. Every new beginning comes with lessons learned, as a young teen, I joined my high school soccer team, and like all teens, I was excited about this adventure, I went at it with all my heart and soul. I attended every practice; I was in shape and ready! Then came the first unforgettable game, we wore our new uniform, all keen and revved up!   We fought hard, gave it all but the game ended way too soon and we lost 3-1. I thought it was the end of the world! All bruised, bloodied and dispirited, I was, lying down with the team dejected on the sideline, our coach came and rather than hitting us to the back of the head, he said: “I think you all did your best, thank you! Next practice is tomorrow, we’ll focus on how to work together as a team, one force! That’s all!”

When you are young the distance between feeling bad and feeling good is rather short. So walking home, I was delighted that our coach made us feel good so quickly, but I was anxious to get to the next day. “He was onto something,” I thought. Was he teaching us how to lose or how to win, are these two concepts intertwined and one drives the other? I was too young to figure that out. All I knew is that losing felt bad and winning felt good and that was the end of it.

The next day the coach did not get us on the field which was another surprise! He spent the day with us where we shared all sorts of stories about ourselves and he shared all sort of stories including how a wise Prophet taught his twelve children how to work together by asking them to come before him and each to bring two sticks, then asked each to break one of the sticks which they did easily then he asked them to combine the other sticks into one bundle and no one could come close to breaking them. This seemingly simplistic story served me well all my life and luckily helped me, early on; understand the power inherent in working together as one team.

This remarkable coach taught us in order to become one team, we need to know each other as much as possible, laugh and cry together, win and lose together, care about each other as human beings, and if we stand together, united no one can break us! What a fantastic lesson! We all seem to know, but for some reason we often isolate ourselves and work alone and carry the burden of the challenges that lay before us which require all of us to work together.

So as I leave the Feds, a new beginning, I come with this lesson intact and hopefully I will define everything I do by working with others, respecting others, and enjoy others. I think the way you interact with people will define the quality of your life, irrespective of what the interaction is. Whether it is business or leisure…buying or selling something, being served or serving someone … The bottom line is together no problem is too big.

When I was young I wanted to change the world and now I am a little older and a bit wiser, but I still want to change the world!  However, I realized that I can start by continuously improving myself and how to better work with others, because only when we work together, Christians, Moslems, Jews, and others, will we change the world for the better. There is no other option.

So my new journey will be about promoting these principles- no matter the conflict, reconciliation is always better than retribution and unity is always better than division and peace will always come with social justice, for all… Let’s make it a better world together, let’s make it a Poifect World for all.