Establishing a precedent for Mentoring, Nurturing & Benchmarking

by Faysal Khan on 2012-02-16

Kudos to Mr Fathi Hilal Buhazza, founder and chief executive officer of UAE based Maximus Air whose article titled ‘Internal rivalry in the UAE needs to end’ as posted by the Arabian Supply Chain.com website.

It goes totally to his credit that he is speaking his mind about unity and growth and the strength of ‘Collaborative effort’ which has been lacking in many areas of industry not just within the UAE but the GCC as a whole. If we were to take this concept in a wider context, I can just see the synergies forming in my mind. Not to put too fine a point on it, we in the GCC are far too obsessed with secrecy and lack of openness about our businesses than we have a right to be.

How for example, can we embrace the concepts of Mentoring, Nurturing, Benchmarking or other collaborative techniques wherein successful companies can share elements of their success with less fortunate ones in specific operational areas, thus imparting knowledge leading to better performance? But no. we seem to be of the mind-set that our success is our big secret and by sharing this, we would be taking away from our profits. Roughly speaking, I am not saying that if you make biscuits, you should give away the recipe but if your supply chains and distribution systems are successful, competent and punctual, would it be a crime to share this knowledge?

Another major issue we have is that we hate to admit we don’t know something. Come hell or high water, it appears as if it is a life threatening sin to be ignorant of a particular process. Outsourcing of Logistics in the region, as stated in earlier blogs is incredibly low for these reasons in particular.

Faysal Khan