Dohaland For Qatar Today

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“Maybe six years from now you will come back and sit at the same table and tell me ‘you were right’ or ‘you were wrong’ (about Heart of Doha project)... We can only guess and predict based on the facts and information we have now.”

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efreshingly candid, and not in the habit of sugar-coating harsh truths, Issa Al Mohannadi refuses to hide behind cultural comforts and stereotypes. He sees in people, the struggle to keep up with the socio-economic development of the nation, and says the pressure on nationals to be ‘managers’ is unhealthy for the individual and the country. Over a cup of strong coffee with Qatar Today Managing Editor Vani Saraswathi, the CEO of Dohaland matches the caffeine kick drop for drop, with his strong and untraditional opinions. Armed with a degree in natural gas engineering (from Texas A&M, Kingsville) Al Mohannadi thought he had found his niche on the technical side at RasGas, till a fateful combination of quick career growth; a natural knack to manage people and projects with ease; and not to mention societal pressure to become a ‘manager’, found him donning a different role. Though reluctant initially to shift from technical to the management side, over the years he has held a variety of leadership positions, primarily in oil and gas and real estate sectors. Now as the Chief Executive Officer for DOHALAND (a subsidiary of Qatar Foundation) and the Founder and Chair of Qatar Green Building Council (QGBC), he says he wears his engineer’s hat only when technical counselling and discussions are required.

‘Sustainability’ is the word of the day. Do you think in wealthy, affluent countries like Qatar, this becomes more of a challenge?

Yes. Definitely. But things may change in the next few years, and it may change in favour of sustainability. I strongly believe we could put a lot of effort into creating awareness. We need to stress that wealth comes with responsibility too. Then we need to go beyond awareness. The

concept of sustainability should be embedded within curricula at schools. The next generation will hopefully grow not only reading about sustainability, but make it part of their everyday life and action. Equally important, we need to work with regulators to enforce a few sustainability aspects – hopefully you will see some of the Green Building Council requirements becoming a part of the mandatory regulations.

Personally, when did your interest in eco-conservation begin?

I’ve been interested in it since my schooling days, but serious work started with the idea of ‘Heart of Doha’ project some three years ago. One of the aspirations of HH Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned was to build green and minimise the impact on the environment. When we were putting together the master plan for Heart of Doha, we started deliberating on what ‘green’ meant. It triggered a lot of thoughts – then we arrived upon the idea of establishing a Qatar Green Building Council (QGBC) here. Everything just fell in place; all working towards achieving Vision 2030, which has sustainability as one of the key components. QGBC will be a vehicle that will facilitate our journey towards that. The focus is also on bigger picture of sustainability, not green buildings alone. ‘Sustainability’ could mean anything – it could be revenue, green, development. Qatar wants to be a sustainable economy by 2030, and if you don’t plant the seeds now, it’s not going to be possible. We need more people to be aware of how to protect the environment, and give them options so they can choose the method that suits them best.

The building boom started at least eight years ago. A lot has already come up. What goes through your

Glassy buildings to ‘manager’ syndrome

What Qatar needs to do diffe rently

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“And I don’t like glassy buildings... in this region. I like it in Europe, but not in Doha. It’s out of context here.”

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mind when you see what’s already built?

I feel sad at times. The question in my mind is: Was it done properly? I am not claiming I would do it right. Yet, when I see how some parts of the city has been planned, it does upset me. The mistakes are obvious, you don’t have to be an expert to identify it. No public amenities, no parking, no walkways. And I don’t like glassy buildings... in this region. I like it in Europe, but not in Doha. It’s out of context here. That’s a personal opinion, but what makes me sad more than the buildings itself is how poorly the areas surrounding it have been planned. When you go wrong with a building, it can still be corrected; but when you plan the streets wrong, the setbacks wrong, it’s difficult to rectify. I am not saying this is true of the entire city, but you have to admit that we have got it wrong in some parts of the city. That’s the other thing that bothers me; we have to own up to our mistakes. This is a role that the media and the public have to play – in raising their voices in times of concern. If we blindly accept everything or keep silent, things will go real bad.. Though we have good visionary leadership at the top , we need a second, third and fourth layers of leadership that will translate this into action. If we get this right, a lot of our problems will go away.

Talking of leaderships, for you how easy has the transition been from the technical side to what you do now?

Before my current role, I was involved in project management for the last seven-eight years which was a leadership position. If you peel away all the other leadership skills, the core of good leadership is how well you interact and motivate others working with and under you. That is something I like doing and am good at too. I wear my engineering hat when I need to counsel or give direction to my team. But normally it is the leadership hat that I enjoy wearing.

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ing, precision and scientific thinking of an engineer to that of a leader. That’s how.

Then how does one make the right moves, to get it right?

Issa Al Mohannadi is also the Board Member of Turner International Middle East Qatar, Board Member of Qatar Leadership Academy and Vice President of Al Thakhiera Youth Centre.

and leadership from a book?

Leadership? No, it cannot be learnt. If you don’t have it within you, no book will help you become one. There has to be some innate leadership qualities within the person. Books, education and training can then help hone that. But you can’t become a leader without that core understanding of humans. Not everyone can be made into one (leader), though I am aware that there are theories that state the opposite. I am not convinced. It’s like training 22 people for a football team – all receiving identical training, under similar conditions etc. Only three or four will shine and excel, the rest will be average. You need to have the innate talent already, to soak in the training and reach a different level. That’s my take on leadership too.

As a leader, who inspires you? Outside of Qatar.

Quite a few really, but one person above all else – (Mohandas Karamchand) Gandhi. It’s incredible how he was able to achieve his goal without an official role. He was not

the President of India. Yet, the British were forced to negotiate with him. To me that’s very strong leadership. The style of Gandhi, how he forced the colonialists to sit across the table and talk. He had an entire nation behind him, and the way he was able to lead them. To me that’s very inspiring. Stephen Covey is another man who inspires me. I learn a lot from his books. Then business people like Jack Welch, GE CEO and Steve Jobs of Apple.

The last names you mentioned are not traditional leaders really...

You need to keep in mind there is no one ‘kind’ of leader. They each create a style...Take examples from the old economy, then during the period of industrialisation, to post World War economies, to globalisation – each era had its own assumption of how leaders should behave. The global economy – which is what we lived in till a year ago, there was a different take on leadership. What we live in now still defies a definition – that will come two years down the line when there is a better understanding of what happened. But the current situation requires a radically different leadership style and thinking. The meltdown, among other things, has proven many leadership theories wrong. One thing is clear, though. Leadership is all about innovation, thinking on your feet – it’s an art, not a science. You asked how I adapted from fact-oriented reason-

As a leader, you are merely predicting an action or a reaction. You get it right by how well you understand people. You need to constantly reinvent yourself, within your organisation, the way you look at things; you have to be able to take a call on what’s best at a certain point of time. You may evaluate someone’s decision three years down the line, and say it would have been better if it had been done differently. Hindsight is after all 20/20, but the important thing is the situation when the decision was

Quick Takes Qatar in 10 years...

Development/Infrastructure: Hope they get it right. We need to take serious action on how we do things. Society: That we don’t lose our identity. That we be known as an educated and open minded society, without losing the core values.

The most satisfactory assignment in my life:

Career-wise, I have been lucky in getting challenging tasks. The shift from technical to management position was a turning point. But Dohaland is probably by far the most interesting assignment so far.

The person who has made me what I am: My mother, and my wife

A clićhe I dislike:

People using ‘I’ all the time. ‘I’ did this, ‘I’ did that... I don’t like to hear it. I prefer ‘We’.

Places I like to visit:

Anywhere with my family. Preferably places where nature is rich, with camping opportunities.

taken, based on the information available. Maybe six years from now you will come back and sit in the same place and tell me ‘you were right about the Heart of Doha project’ or ‘you were wrong, you should not have gone ahead with it’. We can only guess and predict based on the facts and information we have now.

You are a role model on how to use education as a platform to reinvent yourself and go ahead. You think there is a lot of pressure on Qatari youngsters to all be ‘leaders’ and ‘managers’, whereas there are so many other critical roles, at different levels.

Yes, everyone wants to be a manager. That’s a cultural problem, and will change with the changes in education and the corresponding opportunities that have come up. Traditionally, the thought is, if you are not a ‘manager’ after a certain time served on the job, you are a failure. That is totally wrong. You cannot expect everyone to be a manager or a leader. A sustainable society needs to have the citizens employed in different disciplines and at different levels. We are a society that has some gaps. Vision 2030 cannot be achieved without people being more open about employment possibilities, and being more accepting of the fact that maybe for the next 15 years you will continue to be a technical person; not everyone is going to be a manager. Let me be frank. I did not wish to be a manager at one point. I was hoping to continue what I was doing, because I loved what I did as an engineer, as a technical person. The turning point in my career was when I was ‘forced’ to accept a leadership role. Everybody looked at me as an oddity – ‘who on earth will reject being promoted to a senior managerial position?’ I told them I was one of them. I liked what I was doing. That’s the whole point isn’t it? If you like what you are doing, you can be innovative. You will be happy.Having said that, I ended up enjoying the new role too. However, youngsters need to realise that if you do things because of pressure placed by the society

or your family or anyone; or if you are stressed because others think that if you are not a manager you are a failure, then the problem is with them, not with you. There are various skills we can develop; management is only of the many.

But why this obsession?

This obsession with being a manager has been handed down the generations since the time we were a British protectorate. Managers were viewed as the one with power, the one who made the decisions, he was English, and everyone respected him. So our forefathers thought if you are of any worth or need to have power, you have to be a manager. But somehow, we did not see the worth or the power of the technician (for instance), and handed that thinking down over generations. Without people being effective and good at all the levels below, the manager counts to nought. Little credence is given to the people who build the foundation of an organisation, the ones who make ‘Mr Leader’ look good. It’s not about being good alone, you have to create leaders at levels below you who in turn will inspire and motivate.

What would you do differently to reach out to the youngsters now?

I cannot adapt the style or principles of the leader who inspired me 20 years ago; to reach out to the Qatari youngsters today, I have to think differently – their influences are dramatically different from what was prevalent a decade ago. Each generation – X, Y or whatever else we have now – has a unique character. It’s about speed of information and living, about instant gratification, online presence – you have to understand what drives them to inspire them. Accordingly, we have to provide opportunities that will interest them, unlike some decades ago where people were happy being part of a factory line, doing routine monotonous jobs every day. The fact that we create machines to take care of these jobs reflects this generation’s reluctance to accept those jobs. Youngsters are now looking for something that challenges their mind. novemBER 09

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out with qt How would you make your organisation an attractive place to work in? Not merely because it’s a big local name or has important connections, but because they see an opportunity for career development, or due a dynamic work culture. Soon we will be launching a scheme encompassing not only what you’ve mentioned, but much more. We are looking at leaving behind cultural stereotypes. If you join us (DOHALAND) thinking in four years you want to be a manager, then you are in the wrong company. But if you have a career plan, and what you want to achieve in four years is not merely a ‘title’ but a growth plan, then we will give you the right environment. We will not promise you titles. And my advice is not to go to those who promise you that. Who knows in what position that company will be in, and God knows if they will even exist in five years. Don’t bank your career based on promises on your positioning in the company. Look for a company that tells you that in five years we will help you build a,b,c skills. I understand that traditionally, things are done differently – promises-based career development. I feel that is the wrong approach. I was no different either, when I started off. But I’ve learnt that things can and must be done better. You can demand a road map, but not on what titles, when; the road map should talk about skills that you need to develop. Then we should leave you to find your way. Say normally it take two years to develop an accountant, but if you are able to achieve that in six months, you should be allowed to.

But with how things work, how much mobility will there actually be?

For our (or any) company to be sustainable, we will have to ensure that we don’t ‘jail’ our employees or force them to stay on. I personally believe, if we help you develop your skills and then you want to go outside and market yourself, it’s fine. We won’t stop you. You will leave DOHALAND and you will probably go to another company in the country; you are still serving the community. Even if 116 Qatar Today novemBER 09

out with qt you go to another country, it’s then about a global community. That is sustainability. We will invest in you, in your training and development. We will also take back all we can from you, from your time with us. You will be productively employed. You gain some, you give some. And if you reach a point where you feel you need to move on, that’s okay. Regardless of positions, we will help you become marketable in whatever career you have chosen.

You don’t fear a large employee turnover?

We need to understand that an organisation that challenges its employees will not have much attrition. If you are leaving the organisation it’s because it is not providing you with what you want, or because you are unhappy about something. Either way, you must leave. When your organisation is innovative and progressive, and the people working for you are part of those values, they will stay. If not, you automatically go. Creating the right

“It’s incredible how he (Gandhi) was able to achieve his goal without an official role. Yet, the British were forced to negotiate with him. That’s inspiring leadership.”

culture at the workplace is a key issue. In any case, attrition is not a bad thing. Every few years you need to weed out those who don’t match your organisation’s values. You need to be concerned only if your attrition is beyond acceptable industry standards. 2-3 percent is probably a cleaning process.

And this holds good for Nationals alone or...?

I believe in mixing your team. And people hate me for this. With just one nationality, innovation will not flourish. To achieve that ‘wow’ factor, you need different minds and ideas coming in with different reference points. The local minds will add local flavour, and we need to be cautious

about maintaining our identity.

What about your life or job do you love the most?

You can always do things better, and there are things I would do better now. Having said that, a continuous improvement cycle is always built into my mind. Building something from nothing is fascinating. There is an image in your mind, a vision – you can describe the details, it’s that clear. Others may not be able to see that. There is no better feeling than to actually realise that vision.

And what is it that you wish you could change?

I cannot put in words the frustrations I feel at times. I feel emotionally down when I see how Qatar has everything, and yet we are not one of the leading nations – why are we not a country that excels in what it does; why don’t we learn from others’ mistakes, instead of repeating it? If I am to describe what I see around me, it’s that we are reinventing the wheel, and actually doing it wrong! When something has been developed by a certain country or by people somewhere, instead of continuing from what they’ve achieved or taking to a different level the concepts they’ve initiated, we start from scratch. We make most of the mistakes the other country or people have committed... that saddens me. Let’s leave ego behind. Let’s contact these people and tell them, ‘good you did this and know what, we are going to take those initiatives and escalate it to another level’. The other thing that bothers me is that the Arab contribution to humanity has been so minimal in recent times. We hardly find ‘experts’ from our region, even on subjects that we ideally should know more about. Why aren’t we the experts on deserts or camels? Why aren’t we being sought out to provide solutions and insights on issues connected to this? Why aren’t we being asked how best to treat natural gas? What about solar energy – why aren’t we the experts on that? This is unfortunate, and we need to ask ourselves why we are not contributing to the world in general n novemBER 09

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