A MILE ahead
The irrepressible Dr. Mohamed Moustafa Mahmoud (aka "3M" to his many friends in business, government and academia) weaves a bracing mix of past and future and business insight into every 10-minute presentation. As I sat listening to 3M welcome a group of Saudi and regional business leaders from the likes of Al Baik, Turkish Airlines, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the MOBY Group to the latest "Meet The Leaders" forum at the Madinah headquarters of his Madinah Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship (MILE.org) last week, I learned not only about the roots of Islam in the 7th century A.D. — I also absorbed the full scope of his vision for leadership and economic growth in the Arab and Muslim worlds over the coming decades.
And what a sweeping vision it is, full of optimism for growth and wealth creation across a huge swath of North Africa, The Middle East and Asia. It’s not just about oil, of course. There are companies in Saudi Arabia and the region doing innovative work with saltwater irrigation, solar energy, logistics for FMCG (fast moving consumer goods), and much more. But 3M, with his Ph.D. from Wharton and stints in business and academia in North America and the Middle East, believes that businesses and governments from Indonesia to Morocco must address what he calls a "leadership deficit" before that vision can become reality.
"Many of our initiatives have been constrained by a lack of available business leaders who can take our new ideas and implement them on the ground," he says.
3M cites a Financial Times survey of the world’s top 100 business schools that lists more than half in the United States, a handful in Europe, a few others scattered elsewhere across the globe – and precisely zero in Arab and Muslim countries. Same story with mid-career executive education programs. There are also few corporate universities like those at Proctor and Gamble or Nestle’ in the West. And the companies in the region that do provide some kind of in-house training tend to offer it at the beginning or mid-level — there’s very little for senior executives.
So the corporations send their executives overseas to the top business schools, which sometimes feature case studies with little relevance to the needs of the Arab and Muslim worlds. Add to that the jet lag, the occasional visa problems, the networking and business contacts that don’t amount to much when the students return home, and even the allure of the top Western schools begins to fade.
So with advice from McKinsey and Co., 3M and his backers at the Jeddah-based Knowledge Economic City, the Savola conglomerate Group (a $ 4 billion Saudi conglomerate operating in 18 countries) and the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) launched MILE three years ago.
Every day over the course of each two-week program, a different marquee-name b-school professor delivers an eight-hour program to a group of 30+ high-level senior executive students from the Middle East and Asia. During recent programs in Madinah, Dr. Felix Oberholzer-Gee of the Harvard Business School led an overview of "Strategies for Profitable Growth." Professor Philip Moscoso from the IESE Business School in Madrid shared best practices for "Operational Excellence." Dr. Basil Mustapha of Oxford led the group through an overview of "Leadership Assessment and Development Competencies of Stars." Dr. Kamel Jedidi from Columbia Business School taught "Strategic Marketing Management." The content rivals that of any top-tier Executive MBA Education program anywhere around the globe.
I spent a week conducting media training and presentation skills coaching in small breakout sessions for the group, and heard nothing but praise for the program from the attendees.
"I was really surprised, because I’ve done this kind of leadership program many times in the United States and the UK and France, with large organizations like GE," said Anass Patel, CEO of the Paris-based Islamic finance company 570easi. "The mix of skills and cultures was really impactful. The participants bring not only their rich culture, but also very advanced technical skills."
Alrasheed Abdullah Alkibsy, director business development at Saudi Naghi Group (distributor for BMW & Range Rover in the Middle East), said: "It’s a journey. From the first day, I was really impressed by the reasoning behind MILE — the ‘regionality,’ the relevance of the case studies."
And this from Ali M. Sheneamer, deputy governor & COO of the SAGIA: "I’m impressed by the richness of the content and the relevance of the content to what we do. This will lead to improvements in the service we offer to investors and internally, how we become a more efficient organization."
But MILE itself is just the beginning. Surrounding the MILE headquarters on the outskirts of Madinah sits a 50 square kilometer construction site that will one day become the Madinah Knowledge Economic City. By the time the Cisco-wired smart city project is completed in the next decade, no fewer than 150,000 people will live and work here in a massive green mixed-use development complete with a high-speed rail link to the holy city of Mecca 210 miles to the south.
And therein lies the business and cultural genius of the idea. Madinah, where Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) spent the last years of his life, is an almost obligatory stop for every pilgrim. 3M noticed that after these pilgrims — many of them well-educated business owners and executives — finished their prayers and tours of the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah, they didn’t have much to do. So why not gather them together for networking and business education? Not only that, why not convince them to move their families and businesses to one of the most important and beloved sites in Islam? The leadership of the Madinah Knowledge Economic City is well on the way to achieving that right now, having signed commitments from numerous companies from Saudi and elsewhere in the region to buy establish offices, homes and administrative and manufacturing facilities on the site.
And the appeal reaches far beyond the Muslim and Arab worlds. On my last day at MILE, as I sipped cardamom-scented Saudi coffee and nibbled on Madinah dates with a Saudi business contact, I was struck by the simultaneous familiarity and exoticness of the scene. In his traditional white kafiyeh and thobe, my friend spoke of exactly the same goals, hopes and anxieties that I regularly express myself, and that I hear every day from executives from Washington DC to Hong Kong. How can I make more time for my family? How do I grow my business? I realized that we had a lot more in common than I thought, and that there are ample opportunities for mutual benefit. And that’s why I plan to return to Madinah soon.
— Bill Connor is principal, Oratorio Media and Presentation Training, Washington DC.
