Tag Archives: Leadership

A letter from the CEO you should have had

August 11, 2017 By in HR, Leadership Cornerstone, Leadership Tags: , 1 Comment

CEOs have not valued their employees equal to the rest of their stakeholders.

Today I write the letter that your chief executive should have written to you. I’m assuming you are a man, but it is the same for a woman. Well, most of it, I won’t get into the issue of sexism as that would require whole volumes.

Dear Employee,

I would like to apologise to you. The past three years have been challenging, stressful and, quite frankly, confusing. It is a situation that I have never seen before, that no executive can be prepared for. This situation has created multiple dilemmas for me on how to manage the company. I have focused on profits, I have focused on the board, I have focused on shareholders, I have focused on suppliers, I have focused on clients. To my greatest shame I have not focused on you.

Did I start this letter with “Dear Employee”? I should have said “Dear Valued Employee”.

To apologise and to make amends I must first walk you through what I faced. In mid-2014 oil prices dropped fast. These things happen. It was a point of concern, but not much. All media reports and announcements from the relevant authorities pointed to a short-term price correction. Every indication was that the oil price would recover back to over US$100 per barrel within months. Continue reading →

Souq’s success reveals the kind of CEOs we need

April 25, 2017 By in Leadership, Management Tags: ,

Souq.com, a private entrepreneurial company, sold for more than Dh2 billion this year while in the same period at least two large listed companies, one with a sovereign wealth fund backing it, required Dh500 million to Dh1.5bn in new capital.

Understanding the difference between why an entrepreneurial company was so successful in a period when organisations previously perceived as successful now need huge amounts of capital injections and/or lay-offs is key to understanding the future of our economy.

I have been on both sides of the equation – an executive at Union National Bank, Shuaa and Credit Suisse Saudi Arabia as well as an independent investor and entrepreneur. Importantly, these are not two separate parts of my life, I have crossed back and forth several times.

I have spoken numerous times on how our social culture, which is non-confrontational, is unfortunately transferred to our business culture, leading to a large number of “yes” men.

Here is why this is not optimal. CBS News has an article that describes the institutionalised management environment that I have seen. The article uses as its basis a study by researchers from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and the University of Michigan, Set up for a Fall: The Insidious Effects of Flattery and Opinion Conformity toward Corporate Leaders, in Administrative Science Quarterly.

The study finds that chief executives “who have acquired positions of relatively high social status in the corporate elite tend to be attractive targets of flattery and opinion conformity from colleagues”, which can harm the company increasing the “CEOs’ overconfidence in their strategic judgment and leadership capability”, which results in a reduction in “the likelihood that CEOs will initiate needed strategic change in response to poor firm performance.” Importantly, the study found that this leads to a long-term continuation of the company’s bad performance.

The former British prime minister Tony Blair says it more succinctly: “The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.”

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Companies need to create the role of Entrepreneurial Leader

October 11, 2016 By in Management, Entrepreneurship Tags: , ,

Business is challenging. Being successful at business is extremely challenging. It takes a tremendous amount of time and energy to acquire new clients, retain existing clients, manage your team, manage your portfolio of projects and deliver the high-quality products and services that you need to remain competitive in the market.

Do you want an idea of how busy you are while running your existing business? How many unread emails do you have? Hundreds? Over a thousand? How old is the oldest email?

What about meetings? Excluding time reading and composing emails, what percentage of your day is taken up by meetings regarding existing business, for example, with clients or employees about existing products and services on offer? If you include travel time I have never even seen this percentage below 50 per cent and it is usually much higher, around the 75 per cent mark.

Now let’s get to the crux of this article. What percentage of the time do you spend learning, thinking or developing new business lines? What percentage of your resources are dedicated to evolving the business? I am talking about actual time and energy spent here, not wishful thinking. Is it 0 per cent? 1 per cent?

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Company grief: when a company falls in the economy, does it make a sound?

June 21, 2016 By in Corporate Turnaround Tags: , ,

There is a well-known model on the stages of human grief called the Kubler-Ross model. I believe it can be the basis for a form of company grief, a grief that we are seeing in a growing number of companies during these difficult times. In this article I describe the seven stages of company grief – ignorance, shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

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Dear Forbes: Dubai is more than alcohol and bikinis on the beach

July 3, 2015 By in Economy Tags: ,

A recent article in Forbes asks whether the Dubai government is entrepreneurial in nature and if so whether the government is more entrepreneurial than the people. These are important points to consider and are a frequent topic of conversation. Unfortunately the Forbes article got it wrong.

The article lists four points as to why the Dubai government is entrepreneurial. I will rebut each one and then make my argument as to what is happening.

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Tim Clark and Emirates Airlines get Proactive with a Three Pronged Counter-Attack

July 1, 2015 By in Leadership Tags: , ,

Emirates Airlines, headed by Tim Clark, are taking the role of a modern-day Rocky Balboa, climbing against all odds to the top of their business and getting attacked for it. Tim Clark’s proactive response is a relative first for a GCC company. As other regional companies grow globally they too will be faced with aging, inefficient behemoths that will try to spin doctor them out of their markets. These nascent GCC companies could learn a thing or two from Mr Clark and Emirates Airlines.

Wild unsubstantiated allegations against the GCC and playing to the xenophobic tendencies of certain groups are nothing new. What is completely new is the response. The modus operandi so far has been for the victims of such spin doctoring to meekly withdraw and try to protect their interests via back channels.

Tim Clark and Emirates decided to fight fire with fire and just as they have dominated the global long haul airline industry they look set to dominate this public debate.

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Leadership versus Management: Myth and Reality

April 21, 2015 By in Leadership, Management, Leadership Cornerstone Tags: ,

The “Leadership versus Management” debate has mushroomed, infesting every corner of the business media space. Sadly, the debate has devolved into a polarised view of leaders as empowering saints and managers as narcissistic hell-spawn. This is not only wrong, it is harmful.

Leadership and management are simply roles. Anyone in business who fills just one role and not the other will fail spectacularly. Not knowing when each role is appropriate will also stifle an executive’s career.

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The Importance of a Culture of Trust

April 7, 2015 By in Leadership, Management, Leadership Cornerstone Tags: , , 1 Comment

This blog recently talked about the importance of trust-based systems, as opposed to personal trust. This article continues investigating the role of trust in business with a focus on the importance of building a culture of trust.

The prime mistake made with respect to building a culture of trust in a business is believing that the aim is to have senior employees trust more junior employees. This is the complete opposite of what is needed, and the core reason that so many corporate cultures lack an element of trust.

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The Breeding and Nurturing of Ideas

February 3, 2015 By in Leadership, Leadership Cornerstone Tags: ,

I must own up to something. I am not a prolific writer. I get that compliment quite often by readers of my articles. But I do not produce 3 to 5 major ideas a week. I harvest them.

What do I mean when I say that I harvest my ideas? Nobody can come up with so many ideas on a consistent basis. My ideas did not form in the days before I wrote an article. They formed over the period of my professional career, and even before that. And when I needed them, either to do my job or to write an article, well there they were.

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Leadership ≠ Dictatorship

October 19, 2014 By in Leadership Tags: , ,

In an executive position that I previously held I was building out my team and the company had a policy of recruiting internally first. This policy appeals to me in principle in that it gives employees the chance to widen their skill set and reduces recruitment costs. In theory I should also have access to superior information on the employee, but as it turns out human nature and unethical behaviour circumvents that from happening. Continue reading →