Introduction 

Welcome to episode 11 of the Enterprise Excellence Podcast. It is such a pleasure to have Dr Keivan Zokaei with me. Keivan is an expert in Business transformation, working within industries ranging from retail and manufacturing through to Financial services. Keivan co-authored the award winning book "Creating a Lean and Green Business System" which outlines the approaches taken by a number of our leading business to develop a culture of continuous improvement focused on achieving holistic outcomes for people, profit and the planet. 

Summary 

In this episode, Dr Keivan Zokaei describes growing up in warn torn Iran. His initial life forming experience was when, as a 12yr old, his teacher asked him to write an essay on happiness. This was confusing for Keivan at the time, considering the hardships he saw all around him. He found it to be much to his dislike and did not actually submit the assignment.  Little did he know that many years later, he found the connection to happiness, and acknowledges what his teacher was hoping for him to learn. 

Keivan believes that knowing your 'why' is key to happiness in life. Knowing your own personal why will help you to be happier, which will help others to be more happy, which will create a better world. And knowing your why as a company can be the sole reason that a transformation journey succeeds.

Quotes

13:14 min Organisations who successfully go on the transformation journey, they definitely know their why. That's for sure. And they know their why in a way that relates to each individual that is around there.

17:05 min I might start telling her "make your peace with the word happiness".

17:18 min It comes across a little bit as happy and chirpy, as cheerfulness. It's not about that of course. It's about being grounded and being connected, knowing yourself. In fact, the best exercise the gurus in the field of happiness tell you to do is meditate.

20:42 min The idea that you can marry capitalism with sustainability...the idea that you can fix the world as we have it today is based on capitalism. The idea that we can fix it is very powerful.

21:42 min So you've got a choice here to try to be a force for good and actually everything is eminently fixable, or you can just be a bit miserable about it and try to fight back.

25:02 min Companies have loads of very good ideas and there is no shortage of good tools and techniques for improvement. In fact, if anything we have way too much. There is no problem there. But how to systematically bring these things together.

25:26 min The 'how' is sometimes missing. In many many cases, it's missing and the reason it's missing is we don't know the 'why' we have got.

26:39 min So they know what are their personal values and timeless values and then they know their core purpose. What's their why. Why are they going on that journey?

30:01 min This also shows how much humans have the ability to adapt to the circumstances.

Links

Keivan’s Profile: linkedin.com/in/keivanzokaei

Websites:        enterprizeexcellence.com  (Company Website)

·       enterprizeexcellence.com/about/our-team/about-keivan-zokaei/ (Portfolio)

Email: [email protected]

Twitter:  Lea

To learn more about what we do, visit https://enterpriseexcellencegroup.com.au/
Thanks for your time, and thanks for helping to create a better future.