Building Tomorrow’s Elite Teams Redefining Performance and Collaboration

[Music] well good afternoon ladies and gentlemen um uh I have to say what a what a pleasure it is to be on the panel um uh and I guess we stand between you and having a beverage or whatever you're going to do um uh this evening so uh we'll get right right to it but what a fantastic start uh I guess and now we're in the middle of Abu Dhabi Finance week um there's an amazing amount of energy here um uh an amazing um uh group of people um and this panel um is representative of the diversity uh that's in this uh Auditorium uh and around Abu Dhabi Finance week and so it's a real pleasure um I have the honor uh I guess of of discussing uh building tomorrow's Elite teams with an incredibly talented group and I have the challenge of doing that in 25 minutes so uh we won't spend much time on backgrounds we'll kick in Brian it turns out it's only 18 minutes now so yeah so I have a bigger challenge but the the UAE is a very unique place in the world in terms of entrepreneurial Spirit um uh and in leading the world now in many of its initiatives as you've seen uh already here um so uh um not least amongst the challenges of keeping that title I think is obtaining um uh and maintaining and training people um uh and so that's what we're going to turn to today um and I'm going to first turn to Iman aladi um and Iman you are the group human capital strategy and organizational Effectiveness senior vice president at Abby National Oil Company adock um one of the world's leading companies and absolutely critical to the infrastructure here in the UAE you're handling 45,000 employees um uh so let me just ask you um uh what are the key characteristics that you're looking for um uh to Define an elite team uh in this changing work environment that we have today okay good afternoon and it's a great a pleasure to be here to discuss such an important topic so there are many characteristic as you said in such an environment that is in rabid changes however I try to summarize it in four or five and I think from the experience we had in edn specifically transformation for the last decade number one comes is the you have to be very adaptable the agility to embrace changes and embrace and Clarity and certainty especially an environment where everywhere in the sectors whether in energy sectors other sectors facing the same challenges we we deal with unknown our people and our talent needs to be very well prepared for future and that's require them to be very agile and be very self-driven and when it comes to the self management as well in addition I think the most important one people are most moving now to care about how the culture look like how you Embrace cultures we saw a lot of talent that is well known however couldn't embrace the culture they are working on and very diverse culture in ATN we have 120 nationalities all around the world and having the right culture to really Foster this skills and use this skills right place is one of the key success that we had in in the industry itself of course the Gen and the innovation technology being updated with with the right skills and the future skills is quite important it's quite challenging for us being in the size of 45,000 and a heavy National company our monetization is 60% while we still have a lot of diverse Workforce however that's required us to keep upskilling our people and that take me to the last point where we think the continuous learning is the key important uh Initiative for us to really prepare the next generation Our GCO Dr Sultan jabber always say our key priority is actually to have our sustainable National skills available for at Noam for the Abu Dhabi in general so we put a lot of emphasis to make sure that we are upskilling our people we put a lot of emphasis make sure that they are equipped with the latest skill possible for us to ensure that they are performance driven very good thank you and Iman is a great example of Emir leadership um uh really and and very happy that uh that you've joined us here today um I'm going to turn now to some Venture Capital um uh so we have uh Andy and theer uh here today and and chances are all of you will have interacted with a company um uh that these gentlemen um have kicked off um over the course of the week uh I would say if not even the course of a day so Andy I'm going to turn um uh to you first um uh from your experience as a venture and investor uh tell us about the various types uh uh of venture back company leaders that you've encountered great so uh just first of all I'm excited to be here you know I this morning I reflected that UAE I've traveled to this country more than any other country on Earth in the last 10 years and I thought something before that was Singapore before that was China and then before that was New York uh maybe this is some sort of leading or lagging indicator uh uh as Brian mentioned I'm an early stage venture capitalist uh so my job is actually to interview people they interview Founders right so our firm has been in business for 30 years and I've been doing this for 20 years we have a portfolio of about a thousand companies we're very early so out of the Thousand I have invested in a hundred of them and I probably interviewed 10,000 Founders in my 20 years so I got lots of data and I found out this successful founder CEOs uh into this kind of 2 by two Matrix so if you kind of bear with me so you have the uh The People's Choice CEO and then you have the herob ball CEO okay you know why hero ball means herob ball means like Michael Jordan or Steph Curry they score 50 points a game and they just score right you have that kind of CEO that's the Elon Musk of the world and then you have the People's Choice that's sort of a more team oriented they build a big group of people they divide and conquer Brian Armstrong of um coinbase so both of our portfolio companies uh and then y AIS you have the founder CEOs and the professional CEOs so the founder CEOs Robin Lee for instance of Buu um which we also SE it just like those other two um and then you have the professional CEOs uh Tim Cook of Apple unfortunately we didn't see that one but so you can kind of get a sense so the idea is doesn't matter who you are what type you better be the best of your category fantastic um uh and that's some good Lessons Learned we can unpack that I think Amir I'm want to turn to you now I you're the co-founder of is it kotu is that c yeah um kotou stands for champions of the underdog I absolutely love um uh that name um but what do you and and your team consider I guess in in leadership of companies nowadays yeah look um obviously we're Regional fund we invest at the core of our thesis is really people first uh generalist strategy but we focus on people and in the Middle East I mean we're still at the early Innings of an ecosystem and what that means is a lot of the founders that we back uh 80% of them tend to be firsttime Founders and that's exciting because they're kind of you're kind of at the at the mercy or you're you're kind of at the influence of their rate of growth but uh but if if I had to put it down to one let's say three things but one character trade that we see consistently and what we look for in our Founders it's it's um have they encountered an overcome adversity at their early years so we are we believe that the you know from ages three to 18 90% of the person's character is formed at that age and so what we tend to do with our Founders in the process is we have deep conversations about their childhood I know it sounds like a therapy session but really it's a really deep connected session where you understand you know what were what was their upbringing like when did they start making independent decisions were they competitive growth going up or were they bullied did they travel a lot where were they in the sibling hierarchy why did they choose their degree or their University right all of these signals show their sort of experience or life experience and the ones that overcome adversity tend to be uh ready to take on being a Founder because you know things are very uncertain in the early years and you really have to go through walls consistently to succeed and so through those generally those convers ation we have with Founders we kind of tend to get a sign of their character then the two other traits that we think about is you know how much uh depth and Clarity do they have around what they're trying to do so we ask the question why a lot and through asking why we try and determine have they really gone deep around the problem they're solving how attached and obsessed are they about what they're doing and then Clarity comes in the form of how simple and clearly do they explain what they do the ones who do it really simply have done it so many times that they're able to take something really complex and simplify it that that shows up when they talk to investors that shows up when they talk to Future hires and you know customers so in general I I mean there's so many other things to talk about when you talk about Founders but consistently those are the three uh patterns that we think determine uh the chances of success and because we're like I said firsttime Founders mainly I think uh we have to Anchor around that signal a lot more than you know their track record fantastic and I was trying to answer those questions as you spouted them out so well come secret those are tra secret Secrets yesr um uh we're turn now to Richard HS um uh and Richard's working here um with a a global risk management compliance team um uh and leading a number of digital transformation uh uh projects um and helping institutions fight Financial crime and fraud um and that's a critical role I think for us uh going into the digital future um but Richard what are the the emerging roles and competencies that you foresee as becoming essential um really to to organizations in prioritizing digital transformation and Innovation I work predominantly with the financial industry and and from my observation um I think you will agree the financial industry and Technology are at the an inflection point at the moment where where digital transformation and and and Innovation are no longer optional Concepts it's it's there are imperatives and that shift necessitates a profound change in how organizations think about uh Talent the future Workshop needs to align with with with with emerging Technologies the digital transformation datadriven decision making and the demand for for for for those competencies so um bearing in keeping that in mind um I can think of of of of data scientists and data analysts that that that are playing a pivotal role in in datadriven or data enabled realtime decision making um the professor before us mentioned that everybody spoke about AI today and um AI um specialists in machine learning uh uh Engineers that are able to to build the technology that that that will um enable anything from from fraud detection to to to to personalized customer experiences are are really important for organizations to have at their disposal um at the moment cyber Security Experts with the development of Technology uh cyber risk is always a reality um a digital transformation strategies um strategist are are are really really important to bridge the gap between business strategy and the technology that will execute that business strategy um ensuring a seamless integration of the technology in The Wider organization and then uh lastly in terms of roles um I think experien uh designers um are really important because the technology need to deliver what what what the customer want nobody goes to a shop to please the shopkeeper um the if if if you do develop technology and I see that often where where where good really good technology gets developed and once it's developed um the people that developed it are looking for a problem to solve with the technology so those experienced designers are are pivotal to make sure that the investment in the technology um gives them the return on the investment that that they invit from from the start and then lastly uh Brian I I think in if if you think about how uh uh organizations need to develop this talent I think upskilling and reskilling programs are really important especially in the senior leadership of of of organizations making senior leaders more um acceptable for Change and I'm getting them to think a little bit more algorithmic than what might be the case now um it's important uh to foster a culture of innovation uh uh uh it's important to have flexible career paths um and inclusive leadership development one of the core principles of of successful digitalization is to get rid of of of organizational silos yeah um and and uh you get rid of those silos if if if if you provide the the people that that support your organization flexible career paths and then I I I lastly uh I mean um it's important for organizations to proactively identify these roles and and and and to cultivate these skills proactively um make sure that the digital culture and theal capabilities of of your Workforce align with your with your digital and Technology strategy before you embark on on the journey yeah absolutely um uh and Iman I'm going to come back to you again with 45,000 employees you know that uh um how are metrics you know in terms of performance and uh uh um um just day-to-day um uh life I guess how how is that changing over time so we realize the necessity to change from the traditional performance Matrix to something more related to productivity of people and to measure productivity this is one of the most trickiest thing you can ever do yes because you need to deal with people when it comes to even their experience index their satisfaction index in the organization they're learning outcome and return of investment so what we started to really shift to a more of uh strategy that's related to people experience measure uh culture measures uh satisfaction levels measure wellbeing activities more than just getting a set of Target and meet the target exceed the Target and to be honest with you we still evolving in this stage because we realize that you have to deal with a lot of generation within the workforce and the upcoming generation is more complex when it comes to the motivational for than the previous generations so the the future of our performance is more about really how much of productivity you are bringing in whether you are working in the office you are working and remotely new strategies with work flexibility has been introduced and that's come with own challenges to really measure that we are getting the best outcome of our people but we can feel comfortable that we can see the productivity is going up every year uh and we also working hard to make sure that we still evolving this further and further by adapting the highest technology possible and getting the people educated that this technology here to really help them to improve the processes and the work not to replace them and by today we actually uh have 40% of our previous jobs that was very administrative by its nature replaced by technology and that free up a lot of our skills for the future growth that we anticipate fantastic um and as we're getting close to the wall uh uh here I'm going to uh um uh use the same question um uh for the three three gentlemen I guess what are the emerging trends that you see impacting kind of teamwork I guess in collab collaboration in in uh organizations and what advice um uh in a very quick sense would you give to this audience I'll just say very quick very quickly I think it's a Ai and remote work and both both of those uh would both could help but if not managed correctly or overused it could really hurt that you know human to human interaction where I see a lot of creativity um comes from yeah I think that's uh that's great advice and it's AI is not software you know that uh um changing organizations is more air yeah look I I I tend to agree with that I think AI is really shaping the way we're going to work together um we in the region have a distributed Workforce in general UAE tends to be the most diverse and Saudi and Egypt tend to be very local and so if you're building for the region you kind of have to make benefits from the three different markets so you have like engineering Talent situated in Egypt markets in Saudi and youe has a lot of the senior most experienced people from all over the world migrating towards it so thinking about that would be interesting if you're looking at the Middle East fantastic I I think while technology and digital transformation is c centralizing a lot of the the processes and capabilities in organizations doing away with organizational silos at an operational level um the workforce is becoming more and more decentralized um not only by remote work but physically working in different locations on the on the same project and I I think a good digital culture in organizations as well as the effective use of technology that makes that that enables that that collaboration is is is um is is really important if if if you want to use the the technology to to its best effect fantastic well please join me um and thanking uh a great panel um uh here today and very much appreciate your time and thank you all for [Music] what