• Home
• /
• Local business

Dubai’s Long-Term Outlook ‘Fantastic’

Gary Hamel, a renowned strategist, ranked as the ‘World’s most influential business thinker’ by the Wall Street Journal, said although Dubai would face some difficulties in the short-term, its medium term outlook looked quite satisfactory.

“With an excellent infrastructure in place, Dubai will continue to attract global talents, and I believe, the emirate’s long term outlook remains quite fantastic. But the government must cede some of its economic role to the private sector to encourage more business initiatives,” Hamel, told Khaleej Times on the sidelines of the Leaders in Dubai Business Forum at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre.

A big lesson the world has learnt from the current financial crisis is that incredible or abnormal growth in any economy cannot be sustainable, he said. “People have been collectively stupid in believing that the unprecedented scale of growth is sustainable. I call it collective myopia when businesses ignored the long-term growth aspect.”

Earlier on Monday, Hamel, speaking on “Reinventing the DNA of leadership and the end management,” said much of what was know as management was laid out in the early years of this century. “Today’s management and managers need to adapt to the changing economic and social landscape,” he said.

“Management is now seriously out of date. It is simply not up to the challenges that lie ahead and unless we can reinvent management every bit as dramatically as we’ve reinvented our products or our operating model, companies are not going to succeed in the years ahead,” he said.

Hamel argued that initiative, imagination and passion were the keys to competitive success in the “creative economy” of the 21^st century. “The goal is to create organisations that inspire employees to bring these critical capabilities to work each day.”

However, the main problem is old management practices that value obedience, diligence and conformance more highly than enthusiasm, ingenuity, and resourcefulness, he said.

“While the pace of technology has raced forward in recent decades, the evolution of management has slowed to a crawl. Yet the challenges that face organisations today can’t be surmounted with tradition-bound management practices that have their roots in the 19^th century,” he said.

Stressing the need for a management revolution, Hamel said a radical rethink about “how we lead, structure, and manage our institutions, both public and private was the need of the hour.”

Changing the fundamentals of management won’t be easy, but the organisations that win in this new century will be the ones that succeed at this challenge—that create tomorrow’s best management practices today, 
he said. Hamel, who is named as ‘the world’s leading expert on business strategy’ by Fortune Magazine, said For the last three years, he has also led the annual ranking in Executive Excellence Magazine’s most sought after speaker.

“The best leader knows how to make his followers actually feel power themselves, not merely acknowledge his power,” he added.

Speakers on the opening day of the two-day forum said that the prevailing global economic climate would force a positive change in working environments, with employees who uphold human values, define goals and recognise performance, standing to benefit in terms of employee retention and higher financial returns.

· —issacjohn@khalejtimes.com