Tommy Weir: success only the first hurdle – now UAE must build on Expo 2020 win

After winning the Expo 2020 bid, UAE leaders must prepare for the next phase of growth.

Moments after the celebrations were subsiding, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, warned every citizen and resident in the UAE: “Maintaining success is harder than achieving it”.

When I graduated with my master’s degree, this is the advice I received: “Be careful what you hope for, you might just get it”, echoing the hard work ahead.

This by no means implies anyone in the UAE would have regrets about winning the right to host Expo 2020. That advice says that achievement is often the beginning, rather than the finish line. Like graduation, the victory on November 27 presumably marks an achievement, but in reality it opens the door to prove what we are able to do — maintain success. We are at the beginning of the next phase of growth.

This begs the question: “What to do now?”

Some businesses grow just because the market is growing. They are like the boat in the harbour that rises because the tide comes in. If you take this approach, you may experience reciprocal growth, but as a business leader in the UAE this attitude is unacceptable.

Sheikh Mohammed says: “We have to keep working so that we can achieve and reach the future we want, we should not lay waiting for the future to come to us. We are the only ones capable of paving our path for the future.”

You must work even harder to deliver success in the nearly 2,500 days until Expo 2020.

The first course of action is to build the capability of your leaders and workforce for the coming growth. Your people are the driving force behind your future success. And however ready and good they are will determine what you are able to accomplish.

Sheikh Mohammed added: “The UAE’s status requires us to continue to work on developing our capabilities, raising our capacity.” He called for a new era of growth, a specific type of growth — people. We have a window of opportunity in the preparation for the next growth phase that we should not skip past. Preceding business growth comes capability growth. Entering into a growth phase deems it necessary for you to make your capability and capacity growth-ready.

Growth is not a linear concept. Rather it has two trajectories: the growth rate, which is what we commonly think of as growth and the growth position, which is what you attain after you have grown. When it comes to developing leadership capability, it is vitally important to consider the effect of the revised position as you grow.

Growth, and specifically, rapid growth means that your company will be different in the future, which is very near given the ambitions of most companies here. This difference means that what is required from the leaders will be different. When a business doubles in revenue, it is bigger and a bigger company means leaders need to lead differently.

In my experience advising companies in the midst of rapid growth, the recurring need for capability development is in the C-Suite (the corporate leaders — chief executive, chief financial officer and other senior executives) and at the director level. The reason is that the top management team who brought about the growth is usually still in place, but the company is bigger and now needs something different from its leaders. This transition from operational leadership to strategic leadership is a key development focus.

Rather than waiting for this to become problematic for you and needing to respond reactively, utilise this window of time to proactively build your company’s capability for the future. You can think of this time like training for a sports team before the season even starts. A great coach does not wait until deep in the season to train the team for the championship, he starts from the first practise. Your first days of practise to deliver in this phase of growth start today.

As we end this year in celebratory terms, we should make preparations for 2014 to be a new beginning of capability and capacity growth for the boom.

Tommy Weir is a leadership adviser, author of 10 Tips for Leading in the Middle East and other leadership writings and the founder of the Emerging Markets Leadership Center