Excellence Ecosystem

"You cannot change everyone around you but you can choose those who are around you."

Sometimes, we feel tired, our efforts are futile, and the world is just a bad place to be in. If you ever felt that way, it is because of the environment you are in not the WHOLE world. Jim Collins, Author of the best seller book “Good To Great” spoke of his method for people to find themelves by asking the following four questions:

1-     List all the things you are great at or can be great at?

2-     From the previous list, highlight the things that people will pay you to do.

3-     Then from the previous list, highlight the one you are most passionate about?

4-     Finally, choose whom you will work with or where you will do what you got from the final list.

You might be doing what you are great at and passionate about, and being paid to do it,  but you fail because you are in the wrong ecosystem. What to do if you are in a bad place varies depending on your authority level as you maybe be a decision maker, or influencer, or neither of both. The good thing is that motivation is contagious and if you start from your end you will definitely improve your environment but if you are certain that your environment will never change, then it is your responsibility to change your place even with a little loss.  It is your life, temporary losses are what stopping many people from winning big,and by that they lose themselves in the way.

Dream Big

"Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men"

Everyone has a dream and if he or she doesn’t. Your mission as a leader for others and leader of yourself is to make him, or her, or yourself have one and believe in achieving it. Dreams are good for people psychological health. Moreover, If they shall have dreams, they shall as well make their dreams big. The bigger the dream, the better the glory.

Everyone has the right to be successful in having and pursuing his dreams for it is basically humans necessity.

Creativity is a Joke II

Is a creative solution to a difficult problem nothing but a joke?

To get us started, consider the following joke: a group of armed robbers burst into a bank, line up customers and staff against the wall, and begin to take everything from them. Two of the bank’s accountants are among those waiting to be robbed. The first accountant suddenly gets something out of his pocket and put it in the other accountant's hand. The second accountant whispers, “What is this?” and The first accountant replied, “It’s the 100 bucks I owe you.

This is funny but it is also very smart and creative solution.

Jokes like these made me realize that creativity and humor have a lot of common. I now believe that a creative solution or let say break through is nothing but a physical joke. Both require a transition between two meanings by a connection point.

 To illustrate and prove my point, let take an example of each and analyze it:

 First the joke:

Sam walks into his boss’s office and say. “Sir, I’ll be straight with you, I know the economy isn’t great, but you know how smart and hard worker I am. In face, I currently have over three companies after me, and I would like to respectfully ask for a raise.”

After a few minutes of thinking the boss finally agrees to a 5% raise.

Sam happily gets up to leave. When his boss asked: “By the way” “which three companies are after you?” Sam said: Well they are “The electric company, Water Company, and Phone Company” are after me to pay their bills.

If you analyze the joke you notice that it starts with something we are all familiar with. Then, there is a buildup before the punch line is reached. The punch line is what makes us laugh and it is usually a connection with another meaning that was not unexpected.

The connection point in the last joke are the words "after me" which is subject to misinterpretation or right interpretation.

Now let's take a creative solution example:
The people who invented the food can opening method got their idea from somewhere completely unrelated, or at least seem unrelated.

 They imitated the "opening" of a banana

Here the connection point is the word “open”.
We have an unsolved problem: A can needs to be opened.
We know a seemingly unrelated solved problem: We know how to "open" a banana. Why not open the can like a banana. Problem is solved.

The English writer William Plomer once said “Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected".

One profound similarity is the environment: when you tell a joke you must consider the time, the place and the people hearing the joke. You would not tell a joke in a funeral, nor tell a stereotype joke to people affected by the stereotype. Also, a creative idea has its time, place, and people.

Consider the following, a company called "Design that Matter" knew that millions of children in the developing world die each year because they we are born in a place that lack new born incubators. Buying incubators from the market and shipping them there is not a feasible solution because they are very expensive and if it breaks there is no one who can fix it. In one particular area,  they asked a "connection" question? What do these people have in abundance? What have they solved already?
They noticed that there are many Toyota Forerunner everywhere and it seems that these people have the spare parts and the skills to maintain these cars running. So they designed incubators completely from that car spare parts. Problem is solved and millions of children are saved.

Einstein famously said that "a problem cannot be solved in the same mindset that created them". You know now what he meant. You have got to look for seemingly unrelated connection.

Consider how David's mother used what she knew to solve her son's challenge in the following joke:

 So David Is finally engaged, and is excited to show off his new bride:

 “Ma”, he said to his Mother, “I’m going to bring home three girls and I want you to guess which one is my fiancé.”

 Later, David walks in the door with three girls following behind him.

“It’s that one”, said his mother.

 without blinking an eye.

 David shouted “how in the world did you know it was her?”

She said: I just don’t like her.

David's mother knew that mother in law don't usually like their son’s wife so she picked the one she didn't like.

In conclusion humor and creativity have the same structure, environment and require a connection between two meanings. That's why I think they are just two faces of one coin.

On being a Toastmaster

The last time I attended a Toastmasters club meeting, a fellow toastmaster asked a question:

Why are we here in toastmasters? 

He then answered that we are here to improve our communication and leadership skills.

Since I am interested in philosophy and psychology, I thought his answer wasn’t sufficient. Despite that it is the right answer because that was what toastmasters program is intended to do.

Therefore, I will now tell you, why I go to toastmasters club meetings by answering another question: why do we do anything at all?

Twenty four hundred years ago Aristotle said:
"Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life; it is the whole aim and the end of human existence”.

Although people may pursue money, fame, social status and everything else, they do it because they believe that will make happy. Afterlife believers, including myself, believe that our aim is to obtain an eternal happiness, a type of happiness that transcends this life to the afterlife.

In the other hand, lack of happiness can lead people to lose their minds, commit crimes and end their own lives. Thus, your happiness is a serious matter and whether you know it or not, you are driving yourself crazy to put a smile on your face. Do you know how to obtain happiness or are merely stumbling on it every now and then?

A lot has been said about happiness, and you will hear it defined differently from different people. Some think that happiness is financial success but we have heard of some wealthy successful people end up using drugs, taking depression bills, or committing suicide.

Others believe that happiness is contentment and we hear them saying something like "happiness is not getting what you want, but wanting what you already have". This is Nonsense because there is a thin line between being content and being complacent and your complacency could stop you from becoming the person you want to be and when you are old, you will reflect sadly of what you could’ve been.

Me: OH Aristotle, it has been 2400 years and we don't seem like we are any closer to understand the purpose of life. Can you help us?

Aristotle: Yes my dear, Happiness is the perfection of human nature.

Me: Perfection of human nature: What does that even mean?

In my opinion, there is one person who had an excellent theory of human nature and thus knew happiness well to articulate Aristotle definition of happiness: that is the psychologist Abraham Maslow. Maslow said that inside each one of us, an essential biological inner natural that’s intrinsic, given, and in a certain limited sense unchangeable. He summarized his idea in a theory famously known as the hierarchy of needs.

As human beings there are five levels of needs that at every moment of time we are trying to fulfill one or more. At the bottom of this hierarchy there are our physiological needs: the need to breath, eat, drink, sleep and anything related to our bodies and they come as the highest priority for us to fulfill.

Then there are safety needs: where we seek employment, protection, and stability.

The next level is the social needs: where we begin to feel the need to belong, the need for friends, a lover, and a community.

The forth level is the need for self-respect and self-esteem: this level involves the need for the respect of others the need of status, fame, appreciation and recognition. This level also involves the need for self-respect by having feelings as confidence, sense of achievement, independence and freedom.

The final level of the hierarchy of needs is the level of self-actualization where we try to fulfill every potential to become our ultimate-self. This is our essential inner nature and perfecting it is what Aristotle thought of happiness.

We live in the age of the upper two levels: the level of self-esteem and self-actualization. Therefore, If we were starving to death, or in an unsafe environment, or we don’t belong to a community. We wouldn’t be in toastmasters and we would be fighting to get our highest priority needs.

We attend toastmasters meeting to get the respect of others and ourselves and to become the best we can be.

In conclusion, happiness is driving our lives like we drive our cars, taking us places and making us do what we do at every moment of time.

Creativity is a joke

Nowadays, whatever you read or look at, you would find the word creativity mentioned. I think that the word "creativity" is one of the most overused words out there to the extent that the word creativity has turned into a cliché just like "think outside the box" and "think different" have become. Everybody talks about creativity not only because it is an important topic but also because of human ego. Everybody wants to think of himself or herself as creative person including myself, Come on admit it, you do too.  Here I am jumping on the bandwagon and sharing my view on creativity.

So What’s the fuss all about?

The reason why creativity is important is because we live in the conceptual age as Daniel Pink calls this age in his great book "A Whole New Mind". It is no longer enough for a product to do the job. Therefore, mobile phones must be slick and neat; cars must be monster-like and hand made, and everything else needs creativity to be sold to people and to be sold to people it needs to touch or shock our senses. This is where creativity overlaps with humor. I believe that creative people must be funny or have a sense of humor. 

What do you think Einstein?

I think he agrees.

Why humor is part of creativity?

First, Read the following joke:

Two elderly men talking to each other, the first guy said moaning: Man, I am 83 years old, and my whole body hurt. How about you?

I feel great, I feel like I was just born.

The other guy furiously says: How #$%$# come?

The other guy says: I have no teeth, I have no hair and best of all, I just wet my pants. 

If you analyze the joke you can realize very quickly that it starts with something we are all familiar with otherwise we wouldn't be able to know what the funny part that's coming next is all about. Then, a buildup was given before a epiphany is reached with the punch line. The punch line is something that you didn’t expect and it has somewhat a connection with something totally new or forgotten. Now ponder the next philosophical question: If a funny joke is never heard, is it still funny? I don't know if an unheard joke is funny or not but a funny joke must be heard and laughed at. Finally, after the joke is heard many times it loses its humor and dies.

Now let’s examine creative thinking process, usually we would be working on an existing problem or a situation that needs improvement. We would mix and try different things until the “aha” moments comes and a connection is made. When a product or a solution is presented to people just like joke, you would get "That’s interesting" or "a smile" reaction. 

Another important similarity to consider is the product or the solution time, if iPad existed 20 years ago it would've been a complete failure because its time hadn't come. Also, a joke must be told in a right time and you mustn't tell a joke in a funeral  for example or else you will share the grave with the deceased.

So in a conclusion.. If you want to be creative you need to have a sense of humor and to have a sense of humor you must have a playful mind and look for connections where it is least expected.

We Wish You a Pleasant Plight

Few days ago I was watching a Youtube video of a young Saudi engineer who was addressing a distinguished audience at the lately established King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He spoke about his dream and gave an excellent heart-touching speech and to make it even better he used Martian Luther King's famous words "I have a dream". His dream, as a proud Saudi, is that Saudi Arabia be ahead of the world and leads it in technology, research, and science. As a Saudi my self, I admired that engineer ambition and determination to change the world starting from his own country.

As I write this topic though I am in Ad Dammam airport waiting for my domestic flight to Madinah which was scheduled to take off two hour earlier with no clue or a word from anyone from the authorities about how long we are going to wait and why the flight is delayed. (The flight was delayed for 6 hours and we had to cancel our trip)

This is just one of the nightmares many of us face and at this time I don't have ambitious dreams, I just want to wake up from this nightmare and all the other that keep repeating since as long as I can remember. The most repeating nightmare we see everyday is on the streets while we are driving along with reckless drivers endangering our lives and theirs. What's troubling about this is the fact that these incidents keeps repeating and this indicates trouble for the future of our country because these nightmares are the results of malfunction of the country system.


Before our dreams can come to reality, we must prevent our nightmares from coming to reality. To leave Nightmare Land and go to Dream Land, there are few facts that we need to confront:

WE ARE in Nightmare Land. This simple truth is overlooked by many people because they are too optimistic and want to skip all the hard work of building the right environment for change. I am not pessimistic about the future but I believe we must not see the glass half full nor half empty. We need to see it half full AND half empty because being truthful to ourselves is the starting point.

Every thing lies on Leadership leaders in every organization must exemplify true leadership. Leaders must cast the vision and lead to the vision, and work the vision. This fact is too critical because without a vision we are headed to nowhere and direction to somewhere worth going is more important than speed. Leaders must fully understand that they are leading the organization's most valuable asset, that is people. People is what make an organization what it is and it is the leaders' responsibility to make these people great for the organization to be great.

Greatness is not a destination greatness is a process, a way of life, that is being shared by the majority. We can't be great with few individuals wining the noble prize for instant. We can't be great with a single dead. We are only great by moving from good to better all the time. This process of continuous change is a huge challenge. It is flight that usually turn into a daunting plight but the latter state is what makes it worth traveling.

As a country and individuals we ought to start the journey to our greatness, our countries need everyone of us greatness for it to be great.


With that I leave you, not wishing you a "pleasant" plight.

The Enemy Within

After the eruption of the latest revolutions in the Middle East, the world has been witnessing the honorable and the disgraceful, the courageous and the vicious, the good and the evil. As human we can feel others' joy, but we feel their pain more. As I watched and read about the people who were killed, injured, and tortured during this critical time, all I could think about is why? What would spur a person to kill or harm another human being especially people who have a lot in common? Why overlook what bring them closer and scrutinize for differences that set them apart?

Differences lump people in different categories; person A is an Arab, person B is English, Person C is a Muslim, and so on. Differences are not the problem,the world would be so boring if we were all from the same sect, but the problem is how people with power exploit differences to commit perversions. Do people have a choice in these differences? For instance, I have no choice of being an Arab as well as many other descriptions related to me. Sadly, minorities all over the world are suffering from mistreatment, discrimination, and harm for nothing but they way they were born and raised.

Albeit that most of people are dualist, believing in a body and a soul, they certainly do not behave per that conviction. Viewing other human being as soul rather than physical body shall compel us to be fair and good with him or her regardless of color, language, origin, social standing, and all other traits. Even if we omit the argument of the soul, simple physical perspective of putting ourselves in others’ shoes and judging from that standpoint shall make the world a better place.

Understanding others' needs and feelings is humans' specialty that can make us more empathic and kind people. Some people tend to be very empathic to the extent of feeling animals' pain and decide to be veterinarians. But sympathy and understanding requires reaching out to “different” people and celebrate their differences therefore turning “hot buttons” into chuckling spots.

People who do evil deeds are sometime described as animals and that is really unfair to animals. Even the most voracious predators are not described as evil because their motives to kill matter unlike humans whose perversions are irrational. What could be a worst irrational example than discriminating against women for being women! Or black for being black!

Rationality is another human specialty and failing to use our mind rationally especially during crisis make humans worst than animals that instinctively lack the thinking capacity. This is why we do not condemned animals for killing other animals. Thus, Humans are by far more dangerous to themselves and to other creatures than any other threatening weapon or disease as Psychologies Carl Jung said “The only thing we have to fear on the planet is man”.

Finally, Although our desires and thinking might fail us, our good and sincere "proactive" emotions can save the world. We have to believe we are loving to give love when needed, believe we are kind to be kind when needed, believe we are forgiving to forgive when mistreated, and most importantly we have to believe in saving humanity a person at a time from the enemy within.