As some of you might know, I’m co-authoring a book with my dear friend Nadim Issa on Financial Freedom that is due to be published soon.
The book is really focused on the MENA region and has been written in a way to provide insights, techniques, suggestions and ways to reach financial freedom taking into consideration the financial systems, banking system, legal structure, and culture in the MENA region.
I’m just going to share the “Preface” of the book below as a small teaser about the book, stay tuned as I will announce when it is officially launched.
Preface
Financial freedom is an aspiration to many, if not most, individuals around the globe, yet achieving it can be rather tricky, and challenging, and needs a lot of hard work, particularly in the MENA region. This book, written by two co-authors, Afif Tabsh and Nadim Issa, aims to provide readers with practical insights, information, and real-life examples of how to gain financial freedom in the MENA region.
The idea for this book came during the authors’ morning walks in Istanbul as they discussed ways to optimize their financial status after losing most of their savings and investments in Lebanon’s financial crisis. They realized that their experiences and observations of what is happening across the region could benefit many others in the MENA region. Their discussions and brainstorming sessions culminated in a new framework for the book, which will serve as a toolkit for anyone seeking financial freedom in the MENA region.
Throughout the following chapters, readers will learn how to gain financial freedom in the MENA region, focusing on the unique challenges and opportunities specific to the region. However, lessons learned, facts, and knowledge apply to everyone wherever they live, especially in third-world countries or developing countries. This differentiation is because many techniques, resources, options, policies, and regulations in countries like the US, UK, Canada, and most European countries do not apply in the rest of the world. Thus the authors focused on making this financial freedom book MENA-Centric in its approach rather than Western/US-Centric like most of the books and resources available on this topic.
The book covers various stages of life, from university to retirement and beyond, providing practical insights and advice for novice investors, entrepreneurs, and anyone with an ambition to succeed in the region. The word success in this book refers to people’s financial freedom and not their business success, career development, and impact on the community or any other metric.
The importance of this book at this point in time lies in the fact that despite the challenges that the world is witnessing, from hyperinflation to recessions and world health crises like covid19, the MENA region continues to show impressive growth, with many countries enjoying at least a 3% year-on-year GDP growth. This growth is fueled by significant government investments in infrastructure and high demographic development of more than 2% per year. With this in mind, the authors believe that anyone in the MENA region can achieve financial freedom with the proper knowledge, mindset, and resources that this book aims to provide.
With over 35 years of combined experience, Afif and Nadim offer a wealth of knowledge and practical insights that will help readers achieve their financial goals. They have tailored their advice to the unique challenges and opportunities of the MENA region, making this book an essential resource for anyone looking to gain financial freedom in this region.
The authors hope this book inspires, informs, and motivates you to achieve financial freedom in the MENA region. Enjoy and benefit from it!
I hope 2023 is treating you well and that it brings you a lot of health, wealth, and happiness! 😀
2022, just like its predecessors, has brought with it a plethora of challenges and hits on all of us. Challenges like changes in market needs, pricing schizophrenia, logistics limitations, fluctuating global situation, and last but not least, for me, a great loss on the personal level, have made this year a tough one to handle, to say the least. Nevertheless, at times pushing against the current, and other times riding it, alongside amazing, family, friends, partners and team members, has made it an outstanding year in terms of growth and expansion and the plans ahead are even more ambitious, so I would like to share with you some updates from my end on RPS MENA, JPC Ltd, RainMakers, and the Youssef Tabsh Foundation among other things I’m currently part of.
I have a lot to say to be honest, but I will try to keep it brief, insightful, and hopefully inspire you to be optimistic and to think of growth despite everything going on in the local, regional, and global arena.
Growth and success from my perspective are not accidental but intentional. They are a deliberate effort being put day-in and day-out by all those involved. Everyone ought to be doing all they can to keep on learning, testing things, trying new ideas, being hopeful in times of despair, daring to dream of things that do not exist yet, planning for 5 and 10 years ahead when we sometimes feel we can not anticipate what is going to happen next month, and yet putting everything we have into action to make things work. Do they always work? Definitely not always from the first time! We do mistakes; we might feel we’re failing or that things are not going as planned, but building feedback loops, rapidly adapting, and pushing forward is definitely bound to make things work in the end in the given context and resources.
Here are some highlights from my end for 2022.
RPS MENA
As many of you already know, it has already been 5 years since RPS MENA, a research, consulting, and training firm headquartered in Beirut, was founded by my sister Ghina and myself and expanded to another office in Istanbul over a year ago. Over the past 5 years, we have been primarily focused on serving the development sector (NGOs, INGOs, UN, WorldBank, IFC, CSOs, Networks, Coalitions..), though we have had a fair share of private sector clients across industries and partnered/supported service providers and other organizations that work with them.
In 2022 we are glad to say that we’ve had yet another record-breaking year with more projects, more consultants engaged, more clients served, more consulting days put, more training days delivered, and more research projects implemented than any of the previous years. With that, we’ve expanded our team with 2 new team members and many more consultants and experts that we work with on a project basis, and we are now serving more countries than ever before, including Iraq, UAE, KSA, and Turkey.
Despite all the economic, social, and financial challenges impacting Lebanon, Turkey, and the region, we have invested in our steady growth, building internal infrastructure and proper systems, and most importantly in having on board the right team members and partners that we can build with and grow with for many years to come.
JPC Ltd is a peace-building and conflict transformation firm established in late 2022 in Cyprus by Jean-Paul and me, to serve the EMEA region. Though it was established just a few months ago, we have already attracted a considerable amount of talent to join our Talent Roster, we have applied to several new projects, met with potential clients, recruited a new team member to help us in Coordinating Projects, and we believe 2023 is going to be an eventful and exciting year.
As part of our knowledge-sharing ethos, we are organizing a free webinar, on February February 7, at 6:30 pm Beirut time, titled “Transforming Conflict: A Systemic Approach”. We would love it if you join us and if you know others who might be interested in the field of Peace Building, Conflict Analysis, Conflict Transformation, and the like, then this is definitely for them.
Rain Makers supports organizations (NGOs and others) to improve their opportunity identification, donor mapping, proposal success rates, and developing fundraising strategies and partnership-building capabilities with a participatory approach.
It is legally incorporated late 2022 in Istanbul, Turkey, serving all EMEA region, and is the brainchild of my friend Antoun Andrea and I, as a spin-off of services we used to offer separately through our different vehicles. Thus we decided to join forces, synergize and build something that can positively impact so many lives by helping organizations identify more grants, tenders, bids, and funding opportunities while we can also support them in developing those proposals to help them grow.
We did a soft launch in the last two months and are happy to say that we already got more than a handful of clients and partners that we are serving and the list is growing steadily.
If you are interested to know more, and see how we can help you fundraise, identify more opportunities, write better proposals, map donors and the like…then I invite you to register for our official Launching Webinar, taking place on February 15 at 11:00 am Beirut Time.
Last but not least, it has been a year since my father, Dr. Youssef Tabsh, passed away, and thus a year since we established the Youssef Tabsh Foundation. The Foundation focuses mostly on the causes that he used to be a passionate advocate and supporter of including Social Justice, Medical & Health Services Accessibility to All, and Pan-Arab Collaboration in education, culture, business, and economy among other avenues.
Accordingly, throughout the first year of its establishment, we focused on building its internal policies, procedures, governance, volunteer manuals, developing a way forward, strategy, and some high-level initiatives. In parallel to that, we kept his legacy of philanthropic giving under the three pillars mentioned above to various individuals, families, and organizations in need.
This year, we launched the Youssef Tabsh Foundation Financial Sustainability & Fundraising Support program for Medical & Health NGOs targeting 20 NGOs in the Arab nation. We received a considerably bigger number of applications than we expected and thus ended up expanding our program to cater to 38 organizations, almost doubling our target from the kick-start.
The aim of the program is to empower those NGOs on the best practices in Fundraising, Proposal Writing, and Opportunity Identification and coach them to develop their fundraising strategies to become more financially sustainable. Our belief is that it is better to teach others how to fish, than to give them a fish, and thus helping those NGOs develop the needed capacities or enhance their existing capacities in one way or another, would make a substantially bigger impact than any monetary donation we can offer as a foundation.
The program kicked off in January and will continue till end of April 2023.
To learn more about the foundation, you can check its website, and you can also connect to our social media pages where we will be posting more about the NGOs we’re supporting and announcing new programs and initiatives throughout the year.
Since my brain cannot rest and there is always something I want to learn, things I still want to do, I’ll share a few thoughts about things I’m working on, or others that are to be launched/announced in due time.
Publishing my first book: A friend of mine, and I are currently co-authoring a book which I’m very excited about, and planning to base several educational, coaching, and support programs on it. The full announcement and details will follow in due time.
WAAAUB Turkey Chapter: As some might know, I’ve relocated to Istanbul almost 1.5 years ago with my family, and since then I helped establish the AUB’s Alumni Chapter in Turkey that I currently serve as VP. Since then, I’m happy to say that we have been quite active with events, both online and face-to-face, and now the community has grown to more than 60 members in just a year. It’s always good to connect with Alumni from our Alma Mater and hoping 2023 will be even business, more active and more engaging to all involved..
Training, Job Opportunities & Scholarships: For those who have known me since my days in Aie Serve, Global Shapers and other youth-led NGos, I constantly try to share opportunities for free or paid training opportunities, new job opportunities, and scholarships whenever I find them. I see the offers and demand are increasing and happy to say that through Whatsap Communities, we are able to do that at a scale and ease we could never have thought of before. Communities are growing in the thousands and opportunities are plenty. Mostly Lebanon-specific, which is much needed. So for those interested in sharing opportunities, or to receive, drop me a message to add you to the appropriate Whatsapp Community or direct you to the different Social Media Pages/groups. Just be specific about what you have in mind.
Wrapping it Up
With all the above, I cannot be thankful enough for God’s innumerable gifts and for everyone who has contributed to the success of any of the above, whether through direct or indirect involvement.
I feel blessed every day working and collaborating with individuals that are profoundly good-willed, ethical, and professional. All in all, it makes working enjoyable and smooth, and with a high level of trust that together, we can achieve great things.
As a way of giving back, if you have ideas about something you want to implement, a new project, new business, or new initiative and you do not know how to start or want to discuss it with someone, I’d be happy to support you. Drop me a message and we’ll agree on a common time to do a quick Zoom call to help you out.
In today’s world, and ever changing technology, strategies, processes, products, market trends and requirements, work is no longer linear and definitely requires organizations to be nimble and fast acting.In every office, there are tasks or things that need to be done, but that are not necessarily part of anyone’s job description. Sometimes it is some new technology, a new development, a new product or anything that the organization didn’t have or know how to deal with before.
With that in mind, companies and organizational leaders always looks internally for existing talent that they can depend on to put things together, from various functions and ability to deal with some ambiguity to charter the way forward.
In most organizations I’ve worked with, consulted or advised, there were always a few “Star players” some go-to team members that seem to know, do and are capable of things beyond their typical job description or role requires.
Those are people that might not officially have a title or a specific role, but that everyone around knows that they can go to them with a problem, challenge or situation to assist them.
They seem to have a special mindset of “can-do” and are eager and curious to learn and assist others.
Without people knowing, those people become extremely valued in their organizations and among their team, and they somehow manage to get the seat at the table whenever something strategic, new or challenging comes up.
Those are what I call Corporate Swiss Knives, a multi-talented, multi-faceted individuals who their organization depends on to get them through challenging times and unchartered territories.
Individuals who are Corporate Swiss Knives (CSKs) seem to have a power-mindset and techniques to shine within their organizations, build stronger rapport with others, and be the go-to person for problem solving, special projects and initiatives and gain the trust of the team both horizontally and vertically.
Over the years, I observed a lot of organizations and worked with 100s and even 1,000s of people trying to identify what makes individuals shine. Built on my consulting and training career, as well as my masters in Human Resources Management which I focused on Competency Models, along with my certification as a Psychometric Assessor, I’ve identified the characteristics, behaviours, mindset and skills that make CSKs.
It’s what I’d like to call the Secrets of Becoming a Corporate Swiss Knife. For that, I developed a short, intensive, self-paced, video based training in Arabic on “How to Become a Corporate Swiss Knife”.
The training is both afforadable and easy to comprehend by almost everyone as I made sure to keep things concise, practical and with clear exampls.
If you’re interested in becoming a Corporate Swiss Knife, and shine in your career and within your organization, I believe it is a good start to go through the course.
After that, I’m happy to have a more details discussion with you, your career aspirations, where you see yourself in life and how I can possibly assist you.
So go ahead, give it a shot and let me know your feedback.
I’ve successfully finished my Masters in Human Resources Management (MHRM) program at AUB. My focus was on Training and Development, thus I developed an NGO Leadership & Management Competency Model. It led to a tentative design of a training program that I will later develop to be offered to NGOs, possibly in partnership with some of the top universities in the region.
I did in-depth literature review on the topic of core competencies for Leadership & Management in NGOs in Lebanon and globally. Following the research, I organized 2 focus groups, bringing in the insights of experienced professionals in NGOs, Training and Development. Based on the findings, I published a survey to further verify the findings and have a wider input from a diverse background of individuals.
This mixed-methods research project resulted in a detailed analysis of competencies and training and development preferences for the target group. Here is a brief report of the findings: NGO Management Leadership Competency Model
Moreover, the above video is a 30min video of the defense I did on the project in front of the jury and here is the link of the article published on the Lebanese Development Network Website: LDN Article.
If you have any suggestions, questions or need any clarifications, don’t hesitate to let me know.
Building on that, I went for the exam and became a certified PMP. In the mean time, the trainer who gave me the course, who eventually became a close and trusted friend, introduced me to the Managing Partner of CMCS. Few months later, they offered me a job at CMCS as a Consultant and that’s when I transitioned from IT into Consultancy.
3 years later, I managed to grow and develop at CMCS to become the Operations Manager in addition to having had the pleasure of delivering training courses of all kinds related to Project Management and Business Analysis, training being something I enjoy passionately. I’ve also managed to earn 3 other certifications (CBAP, PBA, GPM-b) and pursue my masters in Human Resources Management (MHRM) at AUB with a focus on Competency Models and Training Development.
This summer, and out of the blue, I got contacted by the HR of one of the big 5 consultancy firms asking me if I’m interested in joining their team based on my achievements and my LinkedIn profile.
So I went through the selection process and I’m proud to say that I’ve been given an offer, which I took. Therefore, I submitted my resignation from CMCS and will be heading off to this firm by the end of August.
This means I’m ending a beautiful journey in a company I’ve grown to love and respect its team, its professionalism and its achievements. It’s a hard decision to leave something you are doing well at, but at the same time, sometimes one got to think numerous steps ahead.
In addition to that, I’m not only transitioning out of CMCS, but I’m also leaving the country, which is a major career and life-style change. It’s a leap of faith, and I surely hope it’ll pay off in terms of career growth, more challenges and opening new doors.
I’m proud to say, as of September 1, 2015, I’ll be having a managerial position in the Advisory and Consultancy team at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in their Riyadh Office!
As a final note, I want to thank everyone who supported me in this journey of growth and I’m glad to have met everyone I worked with, partnered with, volunteered with and given a training to anywhere around the globe!
With the proliferation of NGOs in Lebanon and around the world, there is a growing need to empower their staff and volunteers with the needed skills, knowledge and abilities (KSAs) or what is also known as competencies to do their role properly.
In parallel to that, there are hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent annually on training workshops and courses for NGOs. Yet most of them happen without a structured approach to assess the actual needs and gaps to design the appropriate training/coaching/mentoring programs that best fit their situation.
In this context, I’m proposing a full fledged study that incorporates literature review, focus groups, interviews and surveys to do an in-depth quantitative and qualitative analysis of the necessary competencies for individuals managing NGOs.
The aim is to do this study with a multi-stakeholder approach that involves not just the NGOs but also the donor agencies, training providers and academicians.
As a result of the study, an NGO Management Competency Model will be developed. Based on that competency model, potential capacity building programs (training courses, workshops, mentoring programs and coaching sessions) will be designed to cater to the different needs of organizations and their staff and volunteers.
The above concept is not uncommon in certain industries and professions like Human Resources and Project Management professions, so a similar approach will be adopted for the aforementioned initiative.
Let me know your thoughts on the above and if you feel you’re interested in playing a role in this study.
It’s been a long while since my last post, and I guess it’s about time I go back to it as I miss jotting down my ideas and research while sharing it with others to get their input. I’ll be presenting a series of posts related to community engagement, new business models, NGO management among other topics. So stay tuned!
For this post in specific, I’d like to talk about Community Engagement as a model for collaborative problem solving in any community.
To start with, by community, I mean any group of people sharing a common vision/goal and a location; living together, working together and who’s work and decisions might affect one another. It’s a mini-ecosystem within any organization, area, city or country. With my humble experience and research, I realized that most of the pressing issues in today’s world have solutions that are feasible within the present resources, skills sets, technology and systems. Yet what is missing is a collaborative mindset and a will to get things solved, together, as a community, for the greater benefit of the whole community rather than a small section of it.
In this context, by community engagement I mean bringing together all the stakeholders of any issue and working with them to find solutions. Yet the solutions should not only be feasible but also secure the buy in of all those involved, to really build that partnership among the community members towards an improved state of living.
Issues that can be tackled by community engagement can range from dysfunctional processes or procedures in a company, to unemployment in a region, to educational reform in a country, to political stalemates among nations. The point is, it is a mindset, a mode of engagement, that shifts the focus from individual benefits to a more communal, utilitarian benefit.
The research on community engagement is still rather limited, but it has been picking up support from academicians, non-profits, governmental institutions, consultants and social entrepreneurs. So I will definitely keep on digging deeper into this topic and how it applies to the local context in Lebanon in specific and the Arab nation at large.
Let me know your thoughts, ideas, questions and ways we can push forward and have some social experiments on it perhaps… 🙂
I’ve been CBAP certified for more than a year and a half now and I’ve recently earned my PBA certification as a participant in the pilot phase that PMI launched earlier this year. Thus I’m one of the first batch of certified PBA (less than 170 worldwide) and currently the only one in Lebanon with any of the 2 certifications.
In this context, I’d like to share with you some insights about the 2 certifications with a comparison to help you choose the right certification for you.
To start with, the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) has been around for more than 10 years and it works on the development, expansion and promotion of business analysis. While the Project Management Institute (PMI) has been around for more than 45 years and it works on the development, expansion and promotion of project management.
In this context, the 2 organizations are starting from a different perspective about Business Analysis, what it means, what it entails and the reason they developed their certification (IIBA’s CCBA and CBAP Vs PMI’s PBA).
For IIBA, business analysis is a full time job and has a more holistic vision about the role of a business analyst. For IIBA, the Business Analyst’s work is not limited to only projects, requirements management, communication and evaluation of the end result, but rather it takes more of an enterprise perspective and can even assist at the strategic level.
While PMI’s focus on business analysis is more of a hybrid role for the Project and Program Managers with a special focus on proper requirements elicitation/collection, analysis, scope design, mapping, tracking and communication of those requirements with the appropriate stakeholders. In this context, PMI’s perspective on Business Analysis is more of a Project and Program based work rather than Operational or Enterprise related work. This does make sense as PMI is concerned mostly with the success of project and programs rather than in starting a new profession by itself.
Therefore, both certification will not be contradicting but rather can complement each other in some places while they have completely different audience in other cases.
Below is a set of comparative bullet points.
CBAP:
IIBA has been developing the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge over several years and are now in the 2nd edition of the BABOK with the 3rd due on April 2015.
CBAP training and certification will cover numerous details, tools and techniques for those aiming for a career in business/solution/enterprise analysis.
CBAP already has its name and is well respected among Business Analysis professionals.
CBAP fits in excellently for people working in Consultancy, IT, Telecom, Hard and Software Development.
For full time BA’s, CBAP provides a more comprehensive set of knowledge than it’s PMI’s counterpart.
PBA:
PMI has recently acquired 2 companies that have a wealth of knowledge about requirements management, project and product design, assessments and the like.
PMI has a very big marketing department with massive outreach, global partners, training providers and a global network of chapters.
PBA is more focused on Business Analysis work within Project and Program Management, with a special focus on requirements management, scope management and communication.
Professionals certified by PMI (ACP, CAPM, PMP, PgMP, PfMP) will find it more natural and smooth to earn the PBA as it is aligned with PMI’s framework. For hybrid PM-BA work, it’s sufficient as the PM will not necessarily need all the info presented by IIBA.
I hope that helps and if you have any questions or suggestions, don’t hesitate to let me know.
I’ve found that there are 3 key elements that can help you choose the career that will allow you to be happy and productive to reach your career resonance. However, I would like to start by explaining what I mean by resonance. According to HyperPhysics, resonance in physics and sound systems refers to the natural frequency of vibration, determined by the physical parameters of the vibrating object, at which it reaches peak vibratory performance (2000).
Now let me explain how resonance applies our careers by elaborating on the 3 key elements.
Aptitude
This is our capacity to adequately perform a specific type of work. It is influenced by our thoughts and preferences (pragmatic or creative, multi-functioning or single functioning, numeric or wordy, extrovert or introvert…etc). So, the first critical step is to know our self which could actually be done by taking psychometric tests like Myers-Briggs, Jung Typology, MBTI and others. In conclusion, knowing our personal aptitude will help us identify what makes us tick hence our “natural frequency of vibration”.
Type of Work
This element is about knowing what type of tasks we enjoy. A job usually contains numerous types of tasks, not all of them which are pleasant. Thus, it’s important to know which type of tasks we really enjoy: is it dealing with people,developing content, building mathematical models, or doing research? Once we are able to actually list the type of tasks that we enjoy then we’d probably have narrowed down the type of jobs that we’ll apply to. Therefore, knowing our preferences in terms of type of work will allow us to choose the type of work that is in tune with our personal aptitude.
Work Environment
Last but not least is the work environment: the actual place you’re working in. Some of us enjoy a 9 to 5 job, others prefer a more flexible schedule. Some people prefer to work in big teams, others prefer small groups. Some prefer to work in a well-structured big company, while others prefer a more dynamic and less bureaucratic small company. All those play a major factor in making us comfortable to do the type of work we like to do.
Knowing the type of work environment that suits us allows us to really pinpoint the places we prefer to work in and thus complete the chain of “Career Resonance”.
So as an example, here is my own breakdown of the 3 elements:
Personal Aptitude
Type of work
Work Environment
Multi-tasking person
Extrovert
Night Owl
Pragmatic
Fast paced
Hyper focused
High emotional intelligence
Bad Memory
Un-interested in routine/mundane tasks
Challenge Seeker
Researching & writing
Setting strategies and plans & follow up on their implementation
Training
Consulting
Mentoring
Coordinating numerous team members and tasks
Individual work if it requires focus and a fast pace
Teamwork when it is about ongoing tasks/responsibilities
Prefer small teams and minimal bureaucracy
Friendly/family like work environment where professionalism isn’t about rigidity
Flexible work schedule, with possibility of work-at-home over-night
So as you can see, using the above 3 elements to find the right career for me in the right work environment is definitely a challenge.However, I’m already in a workplace that fulfills quite a lot of the above; thus I’m being able to achieve much more than in my previous job , Also, despite all the challenges and risks that I had to take to start achieving my career resonance, it was absolutely worth it!
The same applies to you.So, go ahead and define your preferences and needsand make your choice to leap towards your career resonance.
I was asked by some of my friends to compile related articles together in an accessible way. Thus, I’m posting this as a simple compilation of relevant articles under the theme of “Management & Personal Development”.
Check the links below of the aforementioned articles:
Afif's 