Architect in telecom - Intelligent SME

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December 2012 - January 2013 Intelligent SME Meet the CEO Tariq: Who had the most impact in your formative years? Anything interesting or just a normal youth? Osman: When you grow up in a country like Lebanon and you see what happened in that country, you cannot remain the same person. All other things would be PR talks but certainly, when I was at the age of 15 and the civil war took place. Life started to change radically for me because it took me through a different journey than the one that I had planned. I would consider this a fundamental event in my transformation. Tariq: So how did it define you? Did it make you more bold or creative in your approach, because you left a war-torn country and you moved to France? And then you went to university. What were your emotions then? A visionary architect in telecom Intelligent SME got up close and personal with Osman Sultan, CEO, du, at the Emirates NBD Global Business Series. Here’s an excerpt of the interactive session* moderated by Tariq Qureishy, CEO, Vantage Holdings. Osman: I think it started with teaching me what one would call “crossing borders.” And that, in my life, has been something very important. It teaches one to start trying to understand the “other” especially during dramatic conditions. And this follows me, because every time I am in a business discussion or meeting with a team with different opinions, I develop this way of thinking: why is he thinking like this? Where is he coming from? Then I figure out how to bridge things. It can happen at the level of a discussion with two executives, but it can also happen at a more vital, or fundamental level. And this way of structuring things probably started when I was 15. Tariq: What are the disappointments in your early days, and if you lived your life again, what would you do differently? Osman: I come from a very conventional environment. My father is a banker, he worked in a bank all his life. My mother is a housewife and is very traditional. I was raised to think of things in a traditional way. And at that time probably, I was supposed to follow a path in terms of education, 20 * Get the full transcript at www.theintelligentsme.com
December 2012 - January 2013 Intelligent SME Meet the CEO and I thought of taking up philosophy or poetry, things that I am passionate about. And then the civil war happened. So I thought I had to become an engineer. I had what it took to become one as well. But at some point I realised that I would never work as an engineer. So I am an engineer by accident and that is what I consider a waste. I studied this without passion. Tariq: In terms of relationships and communication between parents and children, everything is changing and you are at the helm of this. What is your opinion? Osman: I want to give an example for this. My son Salim, when he was seven years old, was asking his mom the usual general knowledge questions that children ask. And his mom was busy with lot of other things, and all of a sudden I heard him say, “I will just discover it, I will just google it.” I believe, this is changing the scheme or pattern of learning, because when we were younger, we learn from the parent or from the teacher in school or from our mentors and professors. And authority is built on that. So, not only is this a paradigm shift in scheme of knowledge, this is the first time in the history of humanity, where the younger generation is more knowledgeable than the older one. And I believe in this. We need to embrace this new mindset. Tariq: You had a great opportunity when you were at France Telecom, and you joined Mobinil. What insights do you have for the people, especially the CEOs here, to take the bull by the horn when you do get a nice break? Osman: Actually, Mobinil was not an accident, as this time I was stubborn. When I was at France Telecom, we were preparing with experts on business planning, and back in 1997, these guys predicted that the number of users of mobile phones in a country like Egypt with a population of 80 million people, would be after 10 years of business planning, seven million people - a penetration rate of eight per cent. A brand is everything that a company breathes. I looked around me, even in Lebanon and Europe, where mobile phones were not really in use by everyone, and I was standing in the street and next to me there was nothing at the time. Suddenly a phone rings, and it wasn’t mine. This was in 1996, and there was this guy who was a shoe shiner, who opened a drawer in his supply box and took a phone and said “Hello.” So how can we make the relation between the ability to pay, or the purchasing power of the masses? So I came away realising that this is a phenomenon that will be prevalent everywhere. I said, “A mobile in the hand of everyone.” That phrase was the turning point for the mobile industry in the Middle East. That was probably one of the most accurate things on which I built an entire vision and I delivered on that. Tariq: What is your working style? Are you like Naguib Sawiris? Osman: Naguib Sawiris is a warrior. I’m not a warrior, I’m an architect. People have styles. Some people, the way they are, they’re all warriors. They go there, they want to win the battle. Sometimes, not having a battle is better than winning a battle. Very often, there are architects like me who sit and think of the system. Tariq: To take a quote from Dr. Marshall Goldsmith (who’s here), "what got you here, won’t get you there." Whatever you learnt in the past 25 years in Mobinil and France Telecom is probably not going to help you and get you into the future. Osman: I totally agree. Today I’m convinced that if we think even in the mindset of telecom in this digital space, we will lose. Tariq: That was my follow-up question because the telecom companies are being marginalised, basically becoming dumb pipes, and do you consider this a big threat? Osman: We need to think differently because our brands are at the risk of being more and more irrelevant. In European markets we can see brands that started 16-17 years ago, the phase of the internet that I call the knowledge phase. The search engines - Google, Yahoo - and we started to use the Internet like we go to the library. Then we began to use the Internet like we go to a shop and this is the transactional phase. Today we use the Internet like we go to a café. This mindset is making sites like Facebook that did not exist six to seven years ago relevant. They have changed history in the Arab world radically. So the process of changing history is also changing. Our generation knew of a world without mobiles and Internet. The new generation is born with both. I’m fascinated by this, and I consider myself so privileged because everyday I can discover something and learn something new. That’s really a blessing. Tariq: So you have Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter here, enjoying the profits and you’re providing the networks, the pipes. What action are you taking against this? Osman: I will tell them, quoting a beautiful sentence, what got you here, will not get you there. Because I believe that they will have to go in for a different business model. The business model will change like ours certainly will. We talk about the ICT companies, but everything is becoming digital. You asked me what needs to be changed. Let me ask all of you - did any of your children ever tell you that they wanted to go to the du store or the etisalat store? They will tell you about Magic Planet, or the Virgin Megastore. I call this the dentist syndrome. You go to these shops only if you have to. The 21
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