No matter what GUCians aspire to be after they graduate, whether they are engineers, pharmacists, business people or economists they would always need to enrich themselves with management related information. Since the university knows the importance of managerial skills in any profession, it decided to provide students with various related workshops. One of those workshops has just been recently conducted by the organizational change course, which is a course that is taught to the Strategic Management Major students as well as Human Resource Management Major students, of the Faculty of Management and Technology. The workshop was on how a change program is implemented in an organization, conducted by Mr. Hassan Helmy, VBO (Value Based Organization) Senior Program Manager, Strategic Management Department, Vodafone Egypt.

Vodafone saw that having common values is the most important thing in any organization. The VBO program made employees know their purpose, know why they exist and this certainly gives them a sense of self-worth. Employees develop a common understanding of how to do their job with maximum efficiency and with least unproductive conflicts possible. Most importantly employees learn how to work together; they develop a strong culture with shared values.

When employees share those values developed by the VBO Program of them, it leads to having a place where power is shared, a place where inspired leaders exist, creative teams and passionate people come together to deliberately create their own destiny, a place where everyone is valued, respected and developed and of course a place where rules and titles are secondary to serving the customer.

However, I haven't yet told you about those values I have been mentioning. The values that Mr. Helmy addressed are vital to any work environment because human beings have this social and outgoing nature about them, how many times have you heard about people leaving their jobs because it depresses them? People should wake up everyday wanting to go to their job, they should love what they do and if they are happy and satisfied, they would make everybody around them happy and satisfied.

One of the very crucial values is having harmony in the work place. Vodafone Egypt's slogan for that is "ma3a ba3deena mazzika"-which is all together we are in harmony, Vodafone implemented the same program in several other countries and although each country expressed it in a different way, they all wanted harmony. All employees agreed to respond to each other's needs and to be encouraging, motivating and enthusiastic. Employees also demanded feeling that joyful belongingness to the work place, they want to have fun, they want to be passionate and positive, they want to offer help and support to others.

In addition to that the employees came up with two very important values fairness and integrity; employees learned to only say what they are capable of doing and that they have to do what they said they would do. They learned how to be committed to the job, to put the interest of the business above all the other interests, they learned how to trust others, to delegate tasks and not do everything by themselves.

Ultimately, employees working in Vodafowne feel the freedom, they feel free because they know that they have a margin for mistake, they know they can try and it is okay if they fall but what's important is that they stand up again, after of course learning from their mistakes. They are free to think and be creative, they are free to create or rewrite rules they are using, and they feel free because there is no gap between the manager and the employee, all employees act one family that shares a common vision and purpose.

This workshop was impressive because it delivered to the students a sense of satisfaction, as they were able to relate theories and concepts; they already studied in the course. They felt a sense of how they can apply what they studied in any organization they might build or work at. And the benefits they gained from this workshop weren't confined to the information they listened to but also to the way in which it was conducted. Mr. Helmy held this workshop on a very high level of interaction; he even started the workshop by asking the students about what they wanted to hear from him. He wasn't rigid in the sequence of events but he was able, with the assistance of the questions of the students, to go over all the information without actually sticking to the slides. This is the best way to deliver information, rather than having it transferred in a vertical manner from the presenter to the attendees, it should be delivered in horizontally from and to everyone.

Student testimonials:

• “It was a very nice session. It was not formal and Mr. Hassan was straight to the pint. The session did not include much theories but rather real life examples and application.”
• “The speaker was interesting; he created a nice environment and answered all questions satisfactorily. I think the session was very beneficial and should be repeated more then once.”