HRH Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and therefore the son of King Salman, announced “Vision 2030” on 25 April 2016 – an ambitious plan for economic and social development within the Kingdom.
The Vision is split into three sections addressing social, economic, and administrative themes. Of the 33 individual headings within the Vision, 14 affect the Saudi economy, 11 with social issues, and 8 with a spread of administrative themes. The Vision also describes 13 government programs that are initiated to implement the Vision.
The vision sets numerous benchmarks for fulfillment that are supported by international indicators. For example: “Raise our ranking within the Government Effectiveness Index from 80 to 20”; “Raise our global ranking within the Logistics Performance Index from 49 to 25 and make sure the Kingdom may be a regional leader”; “Rise from our current position of 25 to the highest 10 countries within the Global Competitiveness Index”.
To accomplish this Vision Saudi needs more leaders. Consistent with Professor William Scott-Jackson, Oxford Consulting Group states that Saudi will need 1.9m leaders to realize Saudi Vision 2030. With a population of around 15m employable Saudis, this may be a challenge in terms of pure numbers, including skills.
However, while I agree leadership skills are critical, I feel it’s easy to overlook the importance of having the ability to ‘manage’ and obtain things done. I might place the maximum amount of importance on this as ‘leadership’. I feel what is going to differentiate Saudi businesses are going to be those with Chief Executives who can urge things done. Of course, leadership plays its part therein but in doing that, we should always not overlook management ability when recruiting and developing future leaders.
Saudi leaders got to understand how their business works, particularly the profit drivers, and have a specific skill in helping their teams to unblock problems. Aspects of the Kingdom’s culture can make this challenging – especially family dynamics and respect for elders.
Professor Scott-Jackson said that:
“There are two exemplary situations during which young males and females are often fast-tracked [in Saudi] and sometimes do an excellent job. The primary is that the royalty itself and therefore the second is that the family firms where young successors are trained from birth within the obligations and skills needed to steer. Additionally, Saudi (and the Gulf in general) features a unique leadership style which, in some ways, has advantages over the simplest practice western style taught on courses today.”
Saudi Leadership style highlights the potential weaknesses as ‘task and project deadline management’ and ‘tough decisions and difficult conversations’.
The first, project deadline management, comes back to the purpose of making things happen – and is one of the foremost critical skills to make sure success within the Kingdom. The second point – taking tough decisions and having difficult conversations. during a period of change, an honest leader may need to ask loyal and hard-working people to go away, because they are doing not have the proper skills for the work to be done. this is often tough for any leader but it’s an issue of ensuring the proper people do the proper jobs which the organization is ‘fit for purpose’.
How else do leaders get to be developed?
Everyone needs a qualification like from the Chartered Management Institute, Project Management Institute and to start out leading young. Nowadays, these institute certifications are important for youth, to travel on the right path which helps to achieve Saudi Vision 2030.
Many of the leaders also talked about learning the fundamentals in their family businesses from a young age and dealing with their high. They felt it stood them in great stead – but they talked more about doing and learning than leading once they were young.
Developing Saudi leaders of the longer term may be a big topic and that I decided to expand on many of the ideas from our leaders alongside our thoughts in future blogs. I might welcome other ideas and experiences on this important topic.
