Egyptians in London

The UK is a very different place than Egypt. Cold, rainy, gloomy are contrasted to warmth, humid, and sunny when comparing the two countries. Considering how drastically divergent these two climates are from one another, its natural for an Egyptian to get nostalgic about home every now and then. Especially since Egypt's been in the news headlines for the past month or so, one can really feel home sick nowadays. An occasional walk down Edgware Road with the various Arab cafes and restaurants can alleviate this longing for Egypt every now and then, but its not just the same as being back home.

More than ever I have a yearning to return. It almost feels as if exile sometimes. Just as I hear snippets from family of friends back home about the vibrant nationalist scene and how everyone is out in the streets to serve Egypt, I feel like I'm missing out on all the action. The least I could do to reconnect with my motherland was to reach out to my compatriots here in London. Sherif, a good friend I met during the demonstrations in front of the Egyptian embassy, suggested that we initiate a University of London Egyptian Student Association.

We wanted to rally the support of students in the city to aid Egypt in whatever way we can. What was the one thing that would bring Egyptians together, we thought. It had to be something related to their national identity. When we thought long and hard about it, we realized that that "thing" that would be our magnificent history. With the British Museum (BM) right around the corner from where I lived and where Sherif does his research, we decided to gather as many Egyptian students from the University of London as we could. I contacted all of my Egyptian acquaintance, those from school, from the demonstrations, from random encounters, etc... I even broadcasted the message on various Egyptian student facebook pages. To my surprise, we had a decent turnout of about eight people on Saturday.

We met on the steps of the BM's main entrance and proceeded to the Egyptian section of the museum, by far the main attraction. Since it was the weekend, the museum was packed with tourists, but we seemed to be the only Egyptians there to relish our own history. As we entered, the Rosetta Stone stood upright with all its splendor. It was a bittersweet feeling seeing my history showcased in all its might in the BM. On the one hand, I despised the notion that these beautiful artifacts were looted, but on the other hand, I was honoured to see them represent my great nation to the many visitors that flooded the BM daily.

Sherif is an encyclopedia of Egyptian history. I have never seen an Egyptian so familiar with every aspect of his history. He gave us an excellent tour of the Egyptian section, explaining every detail on each of the pieces. Unlike most Egyptians, he had travelled extensively around Egypt to connect with his roots. He was also a prolific reader of Egyptology and knew how to decifer and prounounce certain words from the hieroglyphics on many of sculptures we looked at. My favorite part of this tour was the fact that Sherif would always show how relevant everything was to our daily lives in Egypt. We have inherited more heritage and culture from our ancient ancesstors than one could possibly imagine.

After the tour, we all dined at Hare and Tortoise in Brunswick Square. It was great being amongst Egyptians, sharing the latest news from the post-revolution period, and planning how we could play our share in the future of the revolution.

Today, I also had the opportunity to attend a fundraising dinner under the theme: Aid Egypt. The idea behind the event would be to gather as Egyptians in London, pay £25 for dinner (proceeds of which would fund medical supplies for those in need back home), listen to eye witness accounts of British Egyptians who were in Tahrir Square as it happened. It was quite inspirational seeing so many Egyptians show up to the event. I have never seen Egyptians so active and dedicated to make their country a better place. I really pray this optimism, commitment, and passion for Egypt is everlasting.

That's all for now. I agreed with some of my new friends that we'd meet next weekend to brainstorm some ideas of how we could lend a supporting hand to Egypt in the coming few months, so more on that later.

McKinsey & Middle East Consulting

I've always been under the impression that there could be a profession out there with a job description along the lines of: solving the world's problems. Well, I'm glad to say that I've signed up for it by deciding to be a consultant.

Today's talk by McKinsey's Herman De Bode confirmed all that I had in mind about what global management and strategy consulting is all about. De Bode has a stellar track record to say the least. He's a HBS MBA graduate and has been with McKinsey for 30 years or so, opening three global offices with the firm in Luxembourg, Antwerp, and Riyadh.



What does it take to be a consultant?

I'd been looking forward to his talk for a while, considering that it dealt with two things related to my career aspirations: consulting and the Middle East. So what is this consulting I want to get myself into? Well, as De Bode put it: its a profession that lies at the intersection of solving problems and having an impact. There are many ways to solve a problem, and it doesn't matter which solution you pick as long as it has the right impact. From what I gathered, having an impact means altering people's motives for the better. I'm passionate about making a difference in the Egypt and the Middle East. The only way to make that happen will be to create the energy and motivation required for decision makers to take risks. As a consultant, you put your expertise and problem solving skills by advising world leaders to take decisions while being frank about the advantages and disadvantages these decisions entail.


Consulting firms like Booz and McKinsey aren't just interested in growing shareholders' profits, but are really keen on delivering results that have an impact on their clients. Both consulting firms are modelled after the old American legal firms, i.e. they are partnerships owned by their partners. So instead of being assessed on how much money you could bring in, you're assessed on how helpful you are towards to colleagues and clients as a consultant. The other advantage of these global partnerships is that they can leverage their intellectual capital by calling up any consultant worldwide to come and work on a specific project, which allows top tier consultancies to bring the best of the firm to any client.

Another crucial element of successful consulting is to pinpoint the relevant issues of the country in which you are operating and tackling them. There's nothing more important in consulting that becoming a relevant player. Not only does this allow you to have influence on your clients, but it allows your work to have a visible impact.



Consulting in the Middle East

Next, De Bone delved into his consulting experience in the Middle East. He reaffirmed my view that the region is rapidly changing in terms of its politics, economics, and societies. It is a growing and dynamic region, as opposed to the mature societies of the West. For example, the population growth rate of Middle Eastern countries is three times that of the global population growth rate. Countries in the GCC are realizing that to sustain this growth, they need to invest in education. Currently, Saudi Arabia has 100,000 students studying abroad. Although this is excellent for its future generation, in essence the country is just outsourcing its higher education. To continue to cater to the growing demands of its young population, Saudi Arabia will need to create opportunities of employment and education. This is when consultancies come in.

De Bode recounted his experience working on a project for the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As a member of the G20 and with an aspiration to become of the top 10 financial hubs worldwide, Saudi Arabia has to make leaps to catch up with the world. By analyzing everything from its embassy's efficiencies to how to foster a more attractive business environment, McKinsey designed Saudi Arabia's strategy to improve its international image, attract foreign investment, and make the country more economically competitive.

So who are the main players in the Middle Eastern consulting scene? De Bone acknowledged that McKinsey and Booz were the two major competitors. Both firms take a very different approach to how they orient their practices. Booz benefits from its first-to-market approach having accessed the region before any other consultancy. As a result, Booz's consulting force is almost twice as large as that of McKinsey. Unlike McKinsey, Booz relies primarily on a consulting force recruited from the region. Based out of Beirut, Booz benefits from a worldly and well-educated recruitment base, spotting and recruiting intelligent, Arabic speaking consultants. To Booz's advantage, its predominant Lebanese corporate culture makes it flexible, pragmatic, and entrepreneurial, all of which have made it hugely successful. Having interviewed with both Booz and McKinsey, I felt the former was a better fit for me due to the aforementioned reasons.



So could consultancies solve all the world's problems?

According to De Bone, the wave of recent revolutions that has swept the Middle East is mainly due to economic reasons. High income inequality levels coupled with high unemployment rates among the youth have driven the future generation to the edge. He cited the Tunisian martyr who set himself on fire as an example of the hopeless amongst the Middle East's youth who have nothing to lose. Moreover, he mentioned that phenomena like Iran's 1979 Revolution and the Arab revolutions of 2011 are primarily due to economic, and not idealogical, culprits.

Countries like Egypt, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia can ensure stability by attracting foreign investment, which will create jobs, which will encourage education to upgrade workers' skills, which will in turn raise these countries' standards of living. Moreover, this FDI will connect these countries to the world, leading to an exchange of ideas, technology, and best practices that could potentially put Middle Eastern countries on par with their Western counterparts.

Hence, the crux of what consulting is all about is tapping into the opportunity to help governments and business to address their people's needs. Its about advising policy makers on how to improve the quality of their nation's education, how to make their business environment more investment-friendly, its about how to ensure an equitable distribution of wealth in society, its about job creation and efficient allocation of resources. A consultant's project aims at tackling each of these economic/societal problems.


Final words of wisdom

De Bone ended his talk with some gems of wisdom:

First, he advised us to change it up every now and then. In one's career, one must have a new horizon with new challenges to feel like he or she is developing. Don't be on a treadmill to nowhere, he advised. One should always seek new challenges to give it his or her best. In a word, he cited a quote, which ran something like this, "Those who are not busy being born, are busy dying." Hence, in order to progress in life, one most continually renew his or herself.

Second, always do what you want to do. Although it sounds cliche, if you're being told what to do and not enjoying it, you'll never be happy or successful doing it. Hence, its essential to choose a profession that motivates you to get out of bed each morning excited to go to work. Although this might seem difficult in today's mundane work environment, a catch to this advice is that you can always learn to love what you do in order to love what you're doing.

Third, at the heart of it all, consultants are serving the core needs of the societies in which they operate. When a student asked de Bode if working in Saudi Arabia was drastically different that in Europe, he replied that there is much more that is similar between the Middle East and the West that what is different. The fundamental underlying drivers, sensitivities, and needs may present themselves in different forms, but are essentially the same. I really appreciated his universal outlook, because when I look at the Arab Revolutions of 2011, it showed that all people value the same things, i.e. freedom, dignity, and justice. And the way I look at it, there is no way of achieving these universal values in the Middle East without addressing and solving the region's various socio-economic problems.

Lastly, the most important characteristics of a consultant are his respect for others and humility. Working with various clients and in different cultures require the consultant to show a genuine sense of concern to his client's problems. Not only must the consultant imbibe the client's problem, but he or she must show a deep sense of commitment to follow through with the client until the project's success.

Overall, it is always humbling and inspiring to sit and listen to someone like de Bode. Attending his talk was one of those God-sent moments that confirmed that what I want to do in life is worthwhile and fulfilling. I just hope and aspire that someday I can have as much of an impact as he had and gain as much wisdom.

London Business School

Having brought my camera to school this morning, I decided to talk a couple of photos of the main LBS campus to share on this blog:

Thomson Reuters & Canary Wharf

Trapped in between Canary Wharf's skyscrapers

London isn't much of a concrete jungle with sky scrappers shooting up right and left like New York, or so I thought! Today's visit to Thomson Reuters took me to me to Canary Wharf, London's business hub, which was more representative of the city's vibrant commercial scene. Hitherto, London didn't quite "wow" me like other big metropolises because most of its architecture was either traditional Victorian buildings or Amsterdam-like townhouses. The only exceptions were probably Piccadilly Circle, Oxford Street, or Leicester Square. Today, London proved me ignorant by revealing its Canary Wharf, which proved that London's hustle and bustle was just as intense as that of New York or Hong Kong.

The clocks in Canary Wharf

The Thomson Reuters visit took us through the history of the company from its 1800s techniques of carrying information to and fro different cities by flying pigeons to today's virtual transfer of information in a matter of nanoseconds. I truly admire the company's global scope of operations. With offices in 180 countries, Reuters has ears and eyes in every corner of the world to report the latest breaking news. One of the firm's senior managers gave us an example of how far Reuters is ahead of its competition. When the Lebanese-Israeli war of 2006 broke out, Reuters had 50 reporters who reported over 200 news stories in the first 2 hours of the war when other news agencies were still getting their reporters on planes to fly over to the Middle East.

Most of today's presentations focused on Reuters' merger with Thomson and how the two firms integrated their operations to make them the dominant player in the financial information sector. Reuters' platform puts the latest corporate news at the fingertips of investors, banks, and stock brokers. Reuters' main competitor is Bloomberg. These two players compete on such a niche market that requires such high start up capital and vast experience that the market barriers are quite high. Reuters' director revealed that the firm's next generation of technology would be computers that could read, interpret, and act on financial information in a fraction of the time it takes humans to so. In essence, humans could be considered obsolete in the future financial world.

My LBS colleagues in a Reuters meeting room

Although I acknowledge the importance of Reuters' financial services, what really brought me to the firm today was its journalistic excellence. Reuters is a pioneer in the media with its reporters putting their life on the line to reveal the truth. After the Egyptian Revolution, I have taken a particular interest in the power of news in shaping people's perceptions, ideas, and emotions towards certain events. I revere journalists for the ability to be in the right place at the right time to report the right information. For example, it was a Reuters reporter who was the first to report Howard Carter's discovery of King Tut's tomb in Egypt before other reporters could get their hand on the news. Who knows where this recent interest in journalism will lead, but I'm sure my passion for writing will linger on...

The river view in Canary Wharf

After the Reuters visit, I stuck around to discover Canary Wharf a bit. As a consequence, I ended up hitting the rush hour in the underground, which meant being crammed into the tube with a bunch of commuters back home, but it was all part of the London business lifestyle experience.

The Art of Flying with British Airways

Outside BA's Headquarters

Flying has become one of those unavoidable things in life. A couple of generations ago, it used to be perceived as a thrilling adventure into the skies, but today it could seem mundane with the hassle of having to wait in long cues to get security checked, delays to one's flight, and being trapped in a small seat for many hours. Today, during my second day of Business Immersion Week, I had the opportunity to see how a company like British Airways manages everything from its intricate flight and cargo operations to its customer relations and brand image.

Walking down BA's "Street"

At 7:45am, we boarded a coach to British Airways' headquarters near Heathrow Airport. Similar to the BBC's Media City, BA's HQ was another gigantic glass and steel structure that sprawled a huge compound. It amazed me how London's corporations created their own self-sustaining eco-systems that incorporated all of their operations under one roof. As we walked through the building's "Street" (what the employees call what seemed like a mile-long path that runs through their building), we say toys and structures meant to inspire BA's employees.

The wheels of a BA jet and a model of the extinct Concorde airplane

Our sessions for the day covered topics ranging from BA's revenue management operations, marketing and customer experience, to the airline industry's mergers and acquisitions. Although I could ramble on about everything that was presented to us today, I'll focus on one notion that particularly interested me about BA, i.e. the company's mission to position itself as its gateway to "British culture." With the 2012 London Olympics around the corner, BA wanted to make a leap ahead of its competition and capitalise on the world's largest sporting event. BA's Marketing Director admitted that BA had fallen behind competition, such as Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar Airways. To make a come back, BA wanted to leverage its "British" identity to make a come back.

So what is "British"? BA wanted to implant the notions of "cutting-edge design, fashionable style, superior quality, long heritage, etc..." amongst the other positive traits of British that come to the mind of its customers when they think of BA. To associate itself with positive British characteristics, BA would have to partner with big British brand names, such as Burberry, Paul Smith, etc... Also, it could utilise brand ambassadors, such as David Beckham to represent the company. In marketing, when customers associate BA's brand with positive aspects of British culture, they will be more inclined to buy a BA flight ticket because they'll in essence also be buying the "British experience" that goes along with that flight.

If there's one thing to take away from the BA visit its that there's more than meets the eye when considering a brand. Moreover, there's more than one can imagine that goes on behind the scenes when one boards a BA flight from point A to point B.

The Financial Capital of the World's Stock Exchange

The LSE Building in Paternoster Square

The second visit of today was to the London Stock Exchange (LSE). Now, to be frank, the LSE did not have have as much flavour as the BBC visit in the sense that I couldn't relate to it as much as I did with the former, but it was quite fascinating seeing how one single company shape the global economy. Yes, the LSE is a private company, not a government institution as is widely believed. It serves as an intermediary between investors who are seeking a return on investments and corporations who are seeking to raise capital to fund for their projects. As the liaison, the LSE provides a state of the art, cyber, secured, trading platform where stock brokers and jobbers meet to trade securities on behalf of their clients (i.e. the investor).

Another myth about the LSE that today's speaker dispelled that there is no actual trading floor with hundreds of men and women shouting like in the New York Stock Exchange. Instead, the LSE had a virtual trading floor, which meant that thousands of investors and traders could meet virtually from every corner of the world to place their "buy" and "sell" bids. Not only did this allow more efficiency by allowing traders to trade in real time, but was a more secure way of ensuring that no one can "beat the market" by illegally manipulating information.

Although I never took a particular interest in the Financial Services sector, I found this visit to be quite informative in that it revealed how capital markets function, why they are so important, and how they are one of the cornerstones of a robust economy.

In my opinion, the best thing about the visit was its central location in the heart of London, where I managed to take some more photos (unfortunately photography inside the LSE is strictly off limits).

Views of St. Paul's Cathedral from the LSE

The BBC: Great Britain's Source of Soft Power

The BBC's Mission Statement:

"Bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK."

If there's one thing that I took away from today's company visits during Business Immersion Week is that business forms the backbone of any successful organisation. I used to think that the BBC was merely the news channel and website I'd been addicted to for the past two weeks as I watched events unfold during the Egyptian Revolution, but it turned out to be much more.

During my visit to BBC Worldwide's headquarters today in West London, I was awed by the breadth of the corporation's scale of operations and evolution over time. From what was a merely a Radio station started in 1923, the BBC has grown into a 1.1 billion GBP business that covers everything from the latest world politics, business, and sports news headlines to bringing entertainment into every household.

This morning, I tubed my way to White City station to make my way to the BBC's Media City, which reminded me of Cairo's Smart Village, but in this case for just one company!

The BBC's Media City

I was so excited about my visit, they I came ready with my camera only to find out that photography was off limits. Likely, I managed to snap this quick shot of my classmates in the headquarter's building.

Colleagues from the MiM Program

As for our visit itself, it was mostly a series of talks by the corporation's different division heads. I respected the speakers' true conviction in their professions. Not only did they find their work entertaining, educational, and insightful, but they believed they were on a mission to enlighten the public with the truth. They believed that the "BBC brand" had much value in shaping the outlook of its program's viewers. In the same vein, they sought to tailor its various programs to viewers around the world. For example, when having a British, Australian, and American version of its most popular entertainment show, Top Gear, the BBC was capitalizing on the principle of market segmentation. Since we were a business school audience, most of their talk was about the corporate side of the BBC. At the end of the day, the only reason the corporation existed was because of the money it generated.

The BBC's TV Center

As I was more interested in the journalistic side of the business, I asked one of the BBC's editors about the corporation's recent coverage of the events in Egypt's uprising. I was under the opinion that the BBC was more impartial towards the whole event than other news agencies, such as Al Jazeera, which obviously supported the protests and at times even seemed to flare things. The editor's response seem to reaffirm my own views. He informed me that, as opposed to interviewing key governmental or opposition figures during the protests, the BBC focused on interviewing the protesters in Tahrir Square themselves because they were at the heart of the action. He also mentioned that the BBC's mission is always to keep a neutral approach, which is why I personally refer to their news, be it in English or Arabic.

Although the visit focused on the corporation's marketing and strategic operations, I was honestly more interested in the journalistic side of things. All in all, it was a true privilege seeing the inner workings of the UK's media powerhouse.

LBS Business Immersion Week

London's Business Skyline

I know I haven’t been writing much on this blog, but I’ve just been swamped with work ever since matriculating at LBS. Graduate school is a whole new level of academic intensity, but don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying every second of it.

What brings me back to this blog is because I’d like to report this upcoming week’s events. One of the reasons I choose LBS over Imperial was its innovative and synergetic educational approach. A key highlight of my program is coming up next week and I wanted to introduce my readers to it. Over the next couple of days, I’ll be participating in what LBS calls Business Immersion Week in which we get to connect the theory we’ve been studying in the classroom to the real business world. This is my opportunity to get to see how London, one of the top financial capitals of the world, conducts business on a day to day basis.

I have always been fascinated by how the Western World has advanced by leaps and bounds in the past century through the collective efforts of individuals that put Western economies at the forefront of the global arena. It was organizations, corporations, and societies in cities like London that defined the way international economics works. I hope this week will serve as an inspirational lesson for me to emulate such large scale organizations back in Egypt.

The organizations and institutions I’ve signed up to visit are truly at the top of their sector:

Monday

Tomorrow, I’m due to visit the headquarters of BBC Worldwide and the London Stock Exchange. I have always been an ardent follower of the former. Whether it’s the BBC News, Sports, or shows such as Lonely Planet, the BBC has always awed me by its international coverage and educational approach. Also, I’m particularly keen on visiting the BBC this week because I’ve been glued to their news coverage of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and, in my opinion, the BBC has always served as a professional source of truth.

As for the London Stock Exchange, it truly is a unique opportunity to visit the most international stock exchange in the world, hosting over 3,000 companies from over 70 countries. Finally, I’ll be able to see what I’ve been taking in my Finance and Financial Accounting courses in practice. Additionally, this is supposedly one of the oldest capital markets worldwide.

Tuesday

Next, I’ll be visiting the headquarters of British Airways and Thomson Reuters. Again, my choice of these two organizations is because they represent the unique prowess of Great Britain’s economic stature. I have frequently flown on BA and was always amazed at how such a corporation could manage such an international system of airline networks. Additionally, I’ve always been amazed at the inner workings of the airline industry, which is always in the headlines because of mergers, strikes, etc… Moreover, it will be the airline industry that defines our modern way of transportation.

Reuters on the other hand has truly played a pivotal role in defining our modern information age. The fact that they capture the news every second is truly phenomenal. The organization’s accounts of global events not only determines what the world hears, but how business and political leaders make crucial decisions based on the information Reuters feeds them. According to the firm, “Information is Power.”

Thursday

On Thursday, I’ll be attending a talk by Herman De Bode, the head of McKinsey & Company in Saudi Arabia. There are two reasons I signed up for this event.

1. McKinsey is regarded as the top consulting firm worldwide and is my future firm’s main competitor in the Middle East. I interviewed with McKinsey in London but unfortunately did not make the cut.

2. Saudi Arabia has relied heavily on consulting to advance its economy. Since I will be consulting in the Middle East next year, I think it’s crucial to hear from one of the sector’s leaders.

McKinsey, like Booz, serves as an advisor to the world’s leading businesses, governments, and organizations. Learning from one of the best consultants in the industry will definitely give me an insider’s perspective as to what I’ll be getting myself into next year.

That’s the overview of the week to come. I really hope it lives up to my expectations. Business Immersion Week is truly one of the reasons that bring me to London; i.e. to learn from the world’s leading institutions in my mission to modernise Egypt and situate it as one of the world’s most competitive countries.