r
out with qt
“Maybe six years from
now you will come back
and sit at the same
table and tell me ‘you
were right’ or ‘you were
wrong’ (about Heart of
Doha project)... We can
only guess and predict
based on the facts and
information we have
now.”
Glassy buildings to ‘manager’ syndrome
What Qatar
needs to do diffe rently
112 Qatar Today novemBER 09
efreshingly candid, and not in the
habit of sugar-coating harsh truths,
Issa Al Mohannadi refuses to
hide behind cultural comforts and
stereotypes.
He sees in people, the struggle
to keep up with the socio-economic development
of the nation, and says the pressure on nationals
to be ‘managers’ is unhealthy for the individual
and the country.
Over a cup of strong coffee with Qatar Today
Managing Editor Vani Saraswathi, the CEO
of Dohaland matches the caffeine kick drop for
drop, with his strong and untraditional opinions.
Armed with a degree in natural gas engineer-
ing (from Texas A&M, Kingsville) Al Mohan-
nadi thought he had found his niche on the tech-
nical side at RasGas, till a fateful combination of
quick career growth; a natural knack to manage
people and projects with ease; and not to men-
tion societal pressure to become a ‘manager’,
found him donning a different role.
Though reluctant initially to shift from techni-
cal to the management side, over the years he has
held a variety of leadership positions, primarily
in oil and gas and real estate sectors. Now as the
Chief Executive Officer for DOHALAND (a
subsidiary of Qatar Foundation) and the Found-
er and Chair of Qatar Green Building Council
(QGBC), he says he wears his engineer’s hat only
when technical counselling and discussions are
required.
‘Sustainability’ is the word of the
day. Do you think in wealthy, af-
fluent countries like Qatar, this be-
comes more of a challenge?
Yes. Definitely. But things may change in the
next few years, and it may change in favour of
sustainability. I strongly believe we could put
a lot of effort into creating awareness. We need
to stress that wealth comes with responsibility
too. Then we need to go beyond awareness. The
“And I don’t like glassy
buildings... in this region.
I like it in Europe, but not in
Doha. It’s out of context here.”
out with qt
concept of sustainability should be embedded
within curricula at schools. The next generation
will hopefully grow not only reading about sus-
tainability, but make it part of their everyday life
and action.
Equally important, we need to work with regu-
lators to enforce a few sustainability aspects –
hopefully you will see some of the Green Build-
ing Council requirements becoming a part of the
mandatory regulations.
Personally, when did your interest
in eco-conservation begin?
I’ve been interested in it since my schooling
days, but serious work started with the idea of
‘Heart of Doha’ project some three years ago.
One of the aspirations of HH Sheikha Mozah bint
Nasser Al Missned was to build green and mini-
mise the impact on the environment. When we
were putting together the master plan for Heart
of Doha, we started deliberating on what ‘green’
meant. It triggered a lot of thoughts – then we ar-
rived upon the idea of establishing a Qatar Green
Building Council (QGBC) here.
Everything just fell in place; all work-
ing towards achieving Vision 2030,
which has sustainability as one of the key
components. QGBC will be a vehicle that will
facilitate our journey towards that. The focus is
also on bigger picture of sustainability, not green
buildings alone.
‘Sustainability’ could mean anything – it
could be revenue, green, development. Qatar
wants to be a sustainable economy by 2030, and
if you don’t plant the seeds now, it’s not going to
be possible. We need more people to be aware of
how to protect the environment, and give them
options so they can choose the method that suits
them best.
The building boom started at least
eight years ago. A lot has already
come up. What goes through your
novemBER 09 Qatar Today 113
 out with qt
mind when you see what’s al-
ready built?
I feel sad at times. The question in my
mind is: Was it done properly? I am not
claiming I would do it right. Yet, when I
see how some parts of the city has been
planned, it does upset me. The mistakes
are obvious, you don’t have to be an ex-
pert to identify it. No public amenities, no
parking, no walkways.
And I don’t like glassy buildings... in
this region. I like it in Europe, but not in
Doha. It’s out of context here.
That’s a personal opinion, but what
makes me sad more than the buildings it-
self is how poorly the areas surrounding it
have been planned. When you go wrong
with a building, it can still be corrected;
but when you plan the streets wrong, the
setbacks wrong, it’s difficult to rectify. I
am not saying this is true of the entire city,
but you have to admit that we have got it
wrong in some parts of the city. That’s the
other thing that bothers me; we have to
own up to our mistakes.
This is a role that the media and the
public have to play – in raising their
voices in times of concern. If we blindly
accept everything or keep silent, things
will go real bad.. Though we have good
visionary leadership at the top , we need a
second, third and fourth layers of leader-
ship that will translate this into action. If
we get this right, a lot of our problems
will go away.
Talking of leaderships, for you
how easy has the transition
been from the technical side to
what you do now?
Before my current role, I was involved
in project management for the last sev-
en-eight years which was a leadership
position.
If you peel away all the other leader-
ship skills, the core of good leadership is
how well you interact and motivate oth-
ers working with and under you. That is
something I like doing and am good at
too. I wear my engineering hat when I
need to counsel or give direction to my
team. But normally it is the leadership hat
that I enjoy wearing.
Can you learn management
114 Qatar Today novemBER 09
Issa Al Mohannadi is also
the Board Member of Turner
International Middle East
Qatar, Board Member of Qatar
Leadership Academy and Vice
President of Al Thakhiera
Youth Centre.
and leadership from a book?
Leadership? No, it cannot be learnt. If
you don’t have it within you, no book
will help you become one. There has to
be some innate leadership qualities within
the person. Books, education and training
can then help hone that. But you can’t
become a leader without that core under-
standing of humans. Not everyone can
be made into one (leader), though I am
aware that there are theories that state the
opposite. I am not convinced.
It’s like training 22 people for a foot-
ball team – all receiving identical train-
ing, under similar conditions etc. Only
three or four will shine and excel, the rest
will be average. You need to have the in-
nate talent already, to soak in the training
and reach a different level. That’s my take
on leadership too.
As a leader, who inspires you?
Outside of Qatar.
Quite a few really, but one person above all
else – (Mohandas Karamchand) Gandhi.
It’s incredible how he was able to achieve
his goal without an official role. He was not
the President of India. Yet, the British were
forced to negotiate with him.
To me that’s very strong leadership.
The style of Gandhi, how he forced the
colonialists to sit across the table and talk.
He had an entire nation behind him, and
the way he was able to lead them. To me
that’s very inspiring.
Stephen Covey is another man who in-
spires me. I learn a lot from his books.
Then business people like Jack Welch,
GE CEO and Steve Jobs of Apple.
The last names you mentioned
are not traditional leaders
really...
You need to keep in mind there is no one
‘kind’ of leader.
They each create a style...Take exam-
ples from the old economy, then during
the period of industrialisation, to post
World War economies, to globalisation
– each era had its own assumption of
how leaders should behave. The global
economy – which is what we lived in till
a year ago, there was a different take on
leadership.
What we live in now still defies a defini-
tion – that will come two years down the
line when there is a better understanding of
what happened. But the current situation re-
quires a radically different leadership style
and thinking. The meltdown, among other
things, has proven many leadership theories
wrong.
One thing is clear, though. Leadership
is all about innovation, thinking on your
feet – it’s an art, not a science. You asked
how I adapted from fact-oriented reason-
ing, precision and scientific thinking of an
engineer to that of a leader. That’s how.
Then how does one make the
right moves, to get it right?
As a leader, you are merely predicting
an action or a reaction. You get it right
by how well you understand people.
You need to constantly reinvent your-
self, within your organisation, the way
you look at things; you have to be able
to take a call on what’s best at a certain
point of time. You may evaluate some-
one’s decision three years down the line,
and say it would have been better if it
had been done differently. Hindsight is
after all 20/20, but the important thing
is the situation when the decision was
Quick Takes
Qatar in 10 years...
Development/Infrastructure: Hope
they get it right. We need to take
serious action on how we do things.
Society: That we don’t lose our iden-
tity. That we be known as an educat-
ed and open minded society, without
losing the core values.
The most satisfactory
assignment in my life:
Career-wise, I have been lucky in
getting challenging tasks. The shift
from technical to management po-
sition was a turning point. But Do-
haland is probably by far the most
interesting assignment so far.
The person who has made me
what I am:
My mother, and my wife
A clićhe I dislike:
People using ‘I’ all the time. ‘I’ did
this, ‘I’ did that... I don’t like to hear
it. I prefer ‘We’.
Places I like to visit:
Anywhere with my family. Prefer-
ably places where nature is rich, with
camping opportunities.
taken, based on the information available.
Maybe six years from now you will come
back and sit in the same place and tell me
‘you were right about the Heart of Doha
project’ or ‘you were wrong, you should
not have gone ahead with it’. We can only
guess and predict based on the facts and
information we have now.
You are a role model on how
to use education as a platform
to reinvent yourself and go
ahead. You think there is a lot
of pressure on Qatari young-
sters to all be ‘leaders’ and
‘managers’, whereas there are
so many other critical roles, at
different levels.
Yes, everyone wants to be a manager.
That’s a cultural problem, and will
change with the changes in education and
the corresponding opportunities that have
come up.
Traditionally, the thought is, if you
are not a ‘manager’ after a certain time
served on the job, you are a failure. That
is totally wrong. You cannot expect ev-
eryone to be a manager or a leader. A sus-
tainable society needs to have the citizens
employed in different disciplines and
at different levels. We are a society that
has some gaps. Vision 2030 cannot be
achieved without people being more open
about employment possibilities, and be-
ing more accepting of the fact that maybe
for the next 15 years you will continue to
be a technical person; not everyone is go-
ing to be a manager.
Let me be frank. I did not wish to be
a manager at one point. I was hoping to
continue what I was doing, because I
loved what I did as an engineer, as a tech-
nical person. The turning point in my ca-
reer was when I was ‘forced’ to accept a
leadership role. Everybody looked at me
as an oddity – ‘who on earth will reject
being promoted to a senior managerial
position?’ I told them I was one of them. I
liked what I was doing. That’s the whole
point isn’t it? If you like what you are do-
ing, you can be innovative. You will be
happy.Having said that, I ended up enjoy-
ing the new role too. However, young-
sters need to realise that if you do things
because of pressure placed by the society
out with qt
or your family or anyone; or if you are
stressed because others think that if you
are not a manager you are a failure, then
the problem is with them, not with you.
There are various skills we can develop;
management is only of the many.
But why this obsession?
This obsession with being a manager has
been handed down the generations since
the time we were a British protectorate.
Managers were viewed as the one with
power, the one who made the decisions,
he was English, and everyone respected
him. So our forefathers thought if you are
of any worth or need to have power, you
have to be a manager. But somehow, we
did not see the worth or the power of the
technician (for instance), and handed that
thinking down over generations.
Without people being effective and
good at all the levels below, the manager
counts to nought. Little credence is given
to the people who build the foundation of
an organisation, the ones who make ‘Mr
Leader’ look good. It’s not about being
good alone, you have to create leaders at
levels below you who in turn will inspire
and motivate.
What would you do differently
to reach out to the youngsters
now?
I cannot adapt the style or principles of
the leader who inspired me 20 years ago;
to reach out to the Qatari youngsters to-
day, I have to think differently – their in-
fluences are dramatically different from
what was prevalent a decade ago.
Each generation – X, Y or whatever
else we have now – has a unique char-
acter. It’s about speed of information and
living, about instant gratification, online
presence – you have to understand what
drives them to inspire them. Accord-
ingly, we have to provide opportunities
that will interest them, unlike some de-
cades ago where people were happy be-
ing part of a factory line, doing routine
monotonous jobs every day. The fact that
we create machines to take care of these
jobs reflects this generation’s reluctance
to accept those jobs. Youngsters are now
looking for something that challenges
their mind.
novemBER 09 Qatar Today 115
 out with qt
How would you make your or-
ganisation an attractive place
to work in? Not merely be-
cause it’s a big local name or
has important connections, but
because they see an opportu-
nity for career development, or
due a dynamic work culture.
Soon we will be launching a scheme en-
compassing not only what you’ve men-
tioned, but much more. We are looking
at leaving behind cultural stereotypes. If
you join us (DOHALAND) thinking in
four years you want to be a manager, then
you are in the wrong company. But if you
have a career plan, and what you want
to achieve in four years is not merely a
‘title’ but a growth plan, then we will give
you the right environment. We will not
promise you titles. And my advice is not
to go to those who promise you that. Who
knows in what position that company will
be in, and God knows if they will even
exist in five years. Don’t bank your career
based on promises on your positioning in
the company. Look for a company that
tells you that in five years we will help
you build a,b,c skills.
I understand that traditionally, things
are done differently – promises-based ca-
reer development. I feel that is the wrong
approach. I was no different either, when I
started off. But I’ve learnt that things can
and must be done better. You can demand
a road map, but not on what titles, when;
the road map should talk about skills that
you need to develop. Then we should
leave you to find your way. Say normally
it take two years to develop an accoun-
tant, but if you are able to achieve that in
six months, you should be allowed to.
But with how things work, how
much mobility will there actu-
ally be?
For our (or any) company to be sustain-
able, we will have to ensure that we don’t
‘jail’ our employees or force them to stay
on. I personally believe, if we help you
develop your skills and then you want
to go outside and market yourself, it’s
fine. We won’t stop you. You will leave
DOHALAND and you will probably go
to another company in the country; you
are still serving the community. Even if
116 Qatar Today novemBER 09
you go to another country, it’s then about
a global community. That is sustainability.
We will invest in you, in your training and
development. We will also take back all
we can from you, from your time with us.
You will be productively employed. You
gain some, you give some. And if you
reach a point where you feel you need to
move on, that’s okay. Regardless of posi-
tions, we will help you become market-
able in whatever career you have chosen.
You don’t fear a large employ-
ee turnover?
We need to understand that an organisa-
tion that challenges its employees will
not have much attrition. If you are leav-
ing the organisation it’s because it is not
providing you with what you want, or be-
cause you are unhappy about something.
Either way, you must leave. When your
organisation is innovative and progres-
sive, and the people working for you are
part of those values, they will stay. If not,
you automatically go. Creating the right
“It’s incredible how he
(Gandhi) was able to
achieve his goal without
an official role. Yet, the
British were forced to
negotiate with him. That’s
inspiring leadership.”
culture at the workplace is a key issue. In
any case, attrition is not a bad thing. Ev-
ery few years you need to weed out those
who don’t match your organisation’s
values. You need to be concerned only if
your attrition is beyond acceptable indus-
try standards. 2-3 percent is probably a
cleaning process.
And this holds good for Nation-
als alone or...?
I believe in mixing your team. And people
hate me for this. With just one nationality,
innovation will not flourish. To achieve
that ‘wow’ factor, you need different
minds and ideas coming in with different
reference points. The local minds will add
local flavour, and we need to be cautious
out with qt
about maintaining our identity.
What about your life or job do
you love the most?
You can always do things better, and there
are things I would do better now. Having
said that, a continuous improvement cy-
cle is always built into my mind. Building
something from nothing is fascinating.
There is an image in your mind, a vision –
you can describe the details, it’s that clear.
Others may not be able to see that. There
is no better feeling than to actually realise
that vision.
And what is it that you wish
you could change?
I cannot put in words the frustrations I feel
at times. I feel emotionally down when I
see how Qatar has everything, and yet we
are not one of the leading nations – why
are we not a country that excels in what
it does; why don’t we learn from others’
mistakes, instead of repeating it? If I am
to describe what I see around me, it’s that
we are reinventing the wheel, and actu-
ally doing it wrong! When something has
been developed by a certain country or
by people somewhere, instead of con-
tinuing from what they’ve achieved or
taking to a different level the concepts
they’ve initiated, we start from scratch.
We make most of the mistakes the
other country or people have commit-
ted... that saddens me. Let’s leave ego
behind. Let’s contact these people and
tell them, ‘good you did this and know
what, we are going to take those initia-
tives and escalate it to another level’.
The other thing that bothers me is that
the Arab contribution to humanity has
been so minimal in recent times. We
hardly find ‘experts’ from our region,
even on subjects that we ideally should
know more about.
Why aren’t we the experts on deserts
or camels? Why aren’t we being sought
out to provide solutions and insights on
issues connected to this? Why aren’t we
being asked how best to treat natural
gas? What about solar energy – why
aren’t we the experts on that?
This is unfortunate, and we need to
ask ourselves why we are not contribut-
ing to the world in general n
novemBER 09 Qatar Today 117