IoBM alumnus Mr. Khalil Zafar delivered a talk on management to the students at the Institute of Business Management (IoBM). Mr. Zafar completed his MSc in Organizational Psychology and HRM in 2014. The session was held at the IoBM auditorium on Wednesday, October 28, 2020. It was organized by the Department of Management and HR amid the guidance of its HoD, Dr. Shagufta Ghauri. This session was attended by Dr. Muhammad Shujaat Mubarik, Associate Dean CBM, Dr. Shagufta Ghauri, Dr. Mirza Dilshad Baig, students, faculty, and staff. Mr. Khalil’s talk was based on his book, “Future of Work Simplified: Develop Futurists, Understand Tech Trends, Upskill Employees & Build an Agile Organization.”
During his talk, Mr. Khalil conducted an exercise on engagement and logical thinking, shared insights on baseline knowledge associated with the talk, and shared practical ideas on effective management practices. When talking about logical thinking development, he said that humans need a leader to look up, need to read texts to know what they have to do, and understand the workplace by comprehending how humans work.
He stressed that technology has been evolving through the decades and humans need to evolve along with it. According to Mr. Khalil, the millennials are the future leaders of the corporate world. He linked the current generation with the upcoming fifth industrial revolution where the humans and the machines will be collaborating more than ever before. It is the era when machines and an automated system will replace humans. In this regard, Mr. Khalil said that those having proficiency and expertise in collecting, studying, interpreting, and using data will be the most successful.
During the session, Mr. Khalil shared the video message that Dr. Corrie Block had exclusively recorded and sent for IoBM students. Dr. Corrie is a business strategist, executive coach, and an expert on organizations of the future. During his message, he shared that artificial intelligence will replace a lot of necessary operations in finance and tech but it is never going to replace the human experience. He advised students to pay attention to the human experience. He said, “We are humans, not resources.” Speaking about human resources he said that as long as a person is employed in a company, he/she is dedicating half of their waking life to the company. He said that employers need to make the lives of their employees a meaningful half of their lives that they spend with an organization.
Mr. Khalil also advised students to finetune their communication skills for it will enhance their image when they will interact with people. He also guided the students to learn about cultures to understand the values of various regions. Speaking about values, he urged students to develop such pertinent values as time management to be competitive in this ever-competitive system.
During his speech he shared four key points of success:
The session ended with a note of thanks from Dr. Muhammad Shujaat Mubarik, who thought that this session was indeed an informative one that imparted practical insights upon the students. Dr. Mubarik presented the memento to Mr. Khalil.