 Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the session on leadership 4.0 which I'm sure we're all looking forward to having be defined for us today. My name is Sadia Zahidi. I head the forum center for the new economy in society and I'm a managing director here at the forum. Very excited to have you here. Welcome also on the first day of the annual meeting of new champions. I'm gonna start with a little bit of a question for the audience before introducing our speakers. So we know that we're in the midst of an era of unprecedented globalization, unprecedented technological change. We know that we're dealing with major crisis such as climate change. We know we're dealing with major social inequalities around the world. How many of you feel you are well equipped in terms of your leadership skills to deal with the challenges to come in the next five years? If you feel well equipped in terms of your leadership skills raise your hands. A few people shyly raising their hands. Hopefully when we walk out of here in half an hour we'll know just a little bit more about how to manage the changes that are coming up. Learning from the experiences thus far of two fantastic leaders who are joining us. Alan Tejas is the chief executive officer of the ADECA group based in Switzerland and minister Al-Falasi is the minister of state for higher education and advanced skills of the United Arab Emirates. Welcome to both of you. This will be a slightly different session than usual at the forum so I'm going to pose them their first two questions but after that they're going to be asking each other questions and carrying on the conversation spontaneously. So the first question is for minister Falasi which is on can you describe a formative experience in your past that has helped prepare you to become a leader in this new era of globalization. And for you Alan what is one concrete step you have taken to reshape the vision and values of your organization to meet the twin challenges of the fourth industrial revolution and globalization 4.0. With that over to you thank you. I'm glad you got the longer question. Can you hear me? Yes. So the first question about a formative experience that has helped me become a leader I think it's difficult to pinpoint one specific incident. I think it's a chain of experience that really helped develop you and build you up but maybe if I were to pick one of them I would say it was when I was first appointed the CEO of Masdar. Masdar is a renewable energy company based out of Abu Dhabi and it's not because it's my first leadership role but also because the company was very global. So 80% of the assets were global. We operate different solar and wind power plans from the UK to Spain to areas like Afghanistan and Central Asia. So it really expanded my leadership skills when it comes to managing a company that competes globally. The other aspect was it was a time where renewable energy was really transforming from being a heavily subsidized technology to becoming one that's commercially viable. So we actually witnessed the prices of solar and wind drop dramatically and to become a leader in that field you really have to go out of your way to think of unconventional ways. So as an example when it was subsidized and what was still a luxury we were just a developer and would contract a you know construction company to do the work. As it became more commercially viable the margins became very thin and we had to be very competitive so we had to roll up our sleeves and actually go into the supply chain and actually negotiate with the contractor, subcontractor and so forth. So that really helped me evolve from leading a traditional business that was you know working comfortably I should say to one that's being shifting quickly to bid into highly competitive sector. We managed to achieve the lowest price for solar globally in a bid in Dubai. We managed to compete globally as well. So I think that to me was a big shift. It's a great experience of managing international company where you have to go beyond your traditional way. Besides going down the supply chain and finding a solution to really lead as a company globally what we did was because the sector was evolving so fast and because we wanted to be ahead of the game we actually had an institute called Master Institute in collaboration with MIT. So when we bid we didn't bid on technologies available today we had become more creative by looking into the emerging ones and bid on something that's still not even ready in the markets. So leadership is not only about being able to squeeze a supply chain but it's also about being having an appetite for risk but in a controlled manner. So that's small change of bidding on projects with technology that is still not 100% available. So we'd use a current one available for phase one but for phase two we'd actually put a price that's not available today but we know it as far. So it really pushes the team on the R&D side, the team on the construction side to squeeze every penny. And lastly I think it was also managing a group of highly international people. We had different nationalities from different countries and that actually helped us get into different markets. We had people speaking at least 12 languages in the company. So again to me that experience in a nutshell really developed me. I think throughout my experience I've managed to develop leadership schools even from university as you develop but then that specific experience really stretched me a lot and after that I was appointed minister so I think it helped me be much more prepared for this role. Good morning to everybody and thank you for having this interest to be among with you and among with us. What have been the concrete steps I took regarding leadership and future leadership? The first things is that my wife and I got four children and I can tell you this is a type of interesting leadership and I remember an interview in 2002 when people were asking me okay leadership and so on. Now what is your glorious moment and I said in 2002 17 years ago it's when I'm able to learn something to my children because I think that children and now the million years the new generation they are so bright so intelligent so global that it is quite difficult as parent but also as leader to learn something to add value to them. So this was my and this is still my laboratory my lab because when I see how this young generation is acting developing and some I learn a lot. Now this was private now professionally we are doing three things in the company the first things we call this the leadership contract and so we have established a kind of document contract in which we have 10 rules and we have 34,000 people in 34,000 colleagues in in 60 countries and this one picture represents the way we want to lead and especially towards our customers towards our own employees or own staff and this has been a kind of guidance myself and my team we're willing to provide to everybody that's the way okay that's the way the way we see leadership now it's good to have the document but you need to assess the way you lead and for us we have chosen the so-called great place to work and grace great place to work which is which has been developed by a foundation in Denmark is assessing and giving you results how good or how bad your business environment in your company is and since since more than 10 years we are assessing all our countries in an independent way to see of how they feel in our company not only how they feel but also we benchmark our results with many companies if I take for example the global results there are 7500 multinational assessing according to the same methodology how people in these companies are feeling and 10 years long we have been working on this to make sure that people are feeling good in our company but also because nowadays it's there is a war of talent and if you want to attract the the young generations you need to become attractive as an employer you have to demonstrate a model leadership and I'm quite proud to say that's due to the work of everybody we are today the number two worldwide great place to work and for Europe we are number five this is the second and the second real action we have taken regarding leadership and the last but not least um indirectly we have created a co for one month action what is co for one month it's also regarding it is providing the young generation professional experience and it allows in 47 countries today it allows youngster to shadow or local co for one month or local co and they will do that for one month now if it is interesting for the youngsters it is very interesting for us because these 47 youngsters will spend one month with all local leader but for sure they will also reflect in the way we are leading the company so what we expect from them is also to feed us about how they see we are leading the company what can we what can we change and one of the 47 will shadow me for one month and I must say for me it's a very refreshing one month every year in October I have one youngster spending really nights and days with me traveling around the world participating to all kind of of meeting but after each meeting I'm I'm asking okay how do you reflect about the way we are we are doing things we are leading and so on and it is always for me a kind of learning expedition during one month with with this youngster interesting um you want me to start with the question I'm not you can do you can go ahead it was very interesting the way you were describing what has shaped your your first experience but if I understand well you were in the in the business community and now you have moved on in I would say the political community a political leadership and and my first question is okay what is the difference between business leadership and the four dot zero and and especially political leadership and how do you see your role as minister of education um what is your then your your appetite for risk you were discussing about your appetite for risk as a as a business leader but what is your appetite for risk as a minister so could you elaborate on this absolutely I think that's a great question if I were to compare as you mentioned leadership and the commercial so I think everybody knows what it takes you have a PNL you have to be profitable you have to grow you have to acquire the right talents so providing leadership was measurable tangible we hit our results two years ahead of time we were able to break the lowest prices in solar globally and we expanded quite big I think we almost increase our asset base by 60 in three years so achieving these clear goals was easy even when it comes to employee satisfaction we had a bigger tension we intentionally underpaid compared to our competitors because we wanted those that join us to come in for the mission not for the monetary value so it was very measurable when you come to government and I have to quote myself before coming to government I knew colleagues of mine who were down I was saying you know what they have it easy they don't have a PNL to hit I have targets quarterly so I wish I was in their place now I regret that for two reasons I think government is it's difficult to make to measure your impact especially when it's so used to monitoring yourself and readjusting and if you're a public listed company have a price that you can measure on a daily basis but with government how do you define success and specifically when it comes to education it's one of the hardest reform you can do because the outcome takes a long time if you do tax reform or any kind of reform you can actually see the impact almost immediately immigration reform but educational reform takes a very long time and secondly it's a very personal topic because you're touching the most precious thing that people really value and one thing I've noticed is that people are very opinionated when it comes to education everybody has an opinion on what needs to how things should be taught so that was a big shift for me to move into government but then we started working on I applied the commercial mindset to it and if we think through to elaborate on this what will be different in your country regarding the minister of high education of education in 10 or 15 years from now what will be different between you today and this person in 10 or 15 years from now so I'll tell you what maybe I can just give the audience a context the UAE is a very young country we're from 1971 we were late comers to education not even globally even within the region we're one of the latest countries to have formal education in fact when the federation was formed we were getting teachers from neighboring countries like Jordan Syria and Egypt so we're very late and now with the economy you're trying to leapfrog from a fairly illiterate community when the federation was formed only half the community was little basic literacy and now you're talking about you know advanced science about technology about architect as well so how can you as a minister of higher education ensure that you have the right talent supply to feed into this economy one of my biggest challenges is ensure how can I improve the quality of higher education when I depend on schools I depend on k-12 so I can't really improve a lot until they are ready so that was one of the reasons why when I was appointed the two ministers which were separate were actually combined so now they're under one umbrella okay and that actually made it easier to work together historically the UAE if you go to university because the education system was a bit weak and very young students when they graduated they were still lacking some area so we had a foundational year and the government was saying why do you have a foundational year you have to remove this so hard education was blaming k-12 saying you guys are graduating week students but they were blaming us saying you're graduating back teachers it was back and forth so with the merger we're solving it now the numbers are getting much less but let me go back to one of your questions which is the appetite for risk in government I think I'm lucky enough to be where I am because we have a big appetite for risk we have the first minister for artificial intelligence we have a government accelerators which is basically taking the concept of business accelerators into government you take let's say a big issue you define a subset and within 100 days you have to deliver so the appetite for risk in the government is actually higher we're actually adopting technologies like drones um driverless cars in terms of regulation the government is relaxing some laws to allow for these technologies to thrive so my appetite is higher uh given what we can do with the current regulatory framework but now let me ask you a question yeah yeah sure you talked about a leadership contract and you mentioned that it's a simple one pager it's the way that we define leadership and I think they have to sign up for it when you say we defined it who defines it is it the company is it a collective effort and if so do you keep redefining it with a constant change in evolution of leadership um and then a good question this one pager has been defined um based on on the work I have done uh with a senior leadership so mainly um let's say the top 15 people of the companies but then also embedding the the next two to 250 to 300 leaders but this is also leadership at the end of the day somebody has to be responsible and I'm the one responsible so you discuss but then you come to a document and I can tell you it was really like in the politics every word has been discussed because it should last long so when you define your your leadership it's not for the next 12 months it should be for several years um that that you define this and your leadership should also embrace the future should anticipate the future and that's what we have tried to do sure do you have a question for me should I ask you one more yeah sure I found it very fascinating what you've done with the young people joining the shadowing part and to be honest I was considering that but my question to you is is it a burden because you have to have someone with you sometimes would you want to screen what you're saying um does it add to your administrative things what you need to make sure that that person's on time and is it more of a burden or is an opportunity for it do you think if it's not imposed would you still go with it or not no I must say I'm extremely impressed by the young generation everybody is saying you have million years of difficult to manage and so on I must say we are seeing we are hiring wonderful people for sure this year we had 268 000 candidates 268 000 candidates in 47 countries and I can tell you in every country the last 10 are exceptional and and no it's not a burden it's really for me it's a it's a kind of oxygen or something different yeah refreshing uh because I'm really intrigued I'm curious how they they they are experiencing what we are doing and I'm also very impressed uh and that's also I think the leadership of the future I am impressed by by their purpose they are very purpose driven they want to have positive impact on the world there is no almost no single highly talented millionaires who is not saying I want to have impact in the world which is great but I think leadership is also for us to give them the opportunity the framework to have this impact in the world and uh okay especially with us we are employment work is is very very sensitive today and I've seen many of them joining us and taking the project to have a positive impact on the world would you say that millenia is taking impact had to some extent affected them negatively I've heard this from many CEOs saying we love millions we attract them the issue is they want to have a big impact today from day one but in order to have impact you have to go through you know a long iterative course of self-development of and do the boring stuff as well and the the feedback I've got to us I'll actually leave too soon because they can't see the impact yes how can you as a leader ensure that they stick on and they know that will be impactful they I think this is one of the challenge in this word and going forward because the young generation is not interested anymore to belong to a company they want to belong and and identify themselves to a to a purpose to a project and so it means if if what they are doing is not more aligned with their interest the expectations they are leaving now for a company but also for both of them it's complex because you need also time you need time to learn you need time to get experience and I think the challenge for us as a company is to to keep them interested so that they can stay and they can learn and so that they become resilient because they have also to to see that if they are always moving they don't build capabilities they need to have impact in the world and this process as leader of companies is quite a challenging one how do you attract the right talent how do you groom them how do you develop them what about your view then as a as a as a leader of a country how do you make sure that the next generation will develop the country will build a better world sure than than the previous one because this is also one of our big challenges to build a better world is not easy absolutely and also working in government is not the most attractive option if you are very smart individual they'd love to go either start their own company or join private sector so attracting young talent you have no choice but to inspire them so even with the my team you can ask the team with me they've joined me for the vision of what you're trying to achieve and also trying to give them enough space to do what they want so for example they might have four out of five KPIs that they need to deliver on but one is whatever they choose because if you don't give them the freedom to try and do something or come up with something that they actually like even though it's not related they actually can come back with very interesting ideas so it's two elements one is to always go back to the vision to the goal to inspire them and secondly is also to give them room to do whatever they want and I have I have what's up group with with with my employees and always constantly send clips or videos or articles that talk about such impact to remind them what we're doing because today even in government we look very we work very late hours we work over the weekend so sometimes to avoid burnout you have to also inspire people so I think that's the best way to do it inspiration number one and two enough freedom to do whatever they want with the amount of time that they have 20% of the time great no I will get on time leadership 4.0 is also interaction it's communication interaction perhaps we we can take a question from the room are the question in the room others have to ask him again or for me there is one question here thank you for those insights it was very inspirational my name is Darina I run a startup based in Switzerland we do monitoring systems for horses a bit different but my question will be our investors are always asking me what what is keeping you up at night to figure out what is the number one pain factor and also focus on the number one challenge if I may ask you what what would be regarding leadership and and leadership challenges what would be the number one thing that you feel being your your biggest challenge right now let me speak from experience I think the the most difficult thing with the leadership is not to acquire the skills required because these will be formed I think the most difficult thing is to stay humble when you're a leader because it's very easy when you become a CEO or a minister to be consumed with the position and and always to go back and continue learning so I was lucky enough to be moving between different sectors renewable energy investments and so forth the habit of constantly being in a self-learning mode always is helpful to become a leader so a staying humble and to continuous learning you never graduate I tell my employees getting a degree is the start of a journey it's not the end so these two to me are the most important ones for leadership first of all it's official I want to sleep seven hours per night this is more than leadership and this is public in my company so everybody knows that and I encourage everybody to sleep at least seven hours because it's it's important to be healthy and and they have been scientific study that if you want to avoid Alzheimer and so on you should sleep seven hours per night so I said don't expect from me if you send a presentation at 11 o'clock for a seven hours meeting on the next day that I've read it no and everybody knows that and I think it's a good rule I promote it because it's a vital workforce second fortunately I sleep well but yes there are short-term risk and and long-term risk which could awake me at night the midterm things are all about people and as a business leader you must make sure you have the right talent in your company and nowadays it's not easy it's not easy you are a startup or you are a big company I think we face the same issue how do you attract the right talent at the right moment and how do you groom them in the company because if you don't have the right talent you block your expansion you block your you don't realize your dream your vision and some so I think smaller big this is for me what is very important people talent having enough talent in the company second when you are in a business like ours we put at work every day two million people every day in and something can happen you know and it's called reputation risk and one of these two million people can do a bad thing at all customers and the next day we are in all the newspapers and it can endanger the company and this is something when you rely on so many countries so many people your risk exposure is huge and you must make sure that you have the best system in place the education in place to prevent that kind of risk but we are a human resources business and human being are sometimes unpredictable any other question about leadership we have one minute left either Sadia has one perhaps I think since we have about a minute left from the session we will need to try to bring this to a close I was told that I don't need to try to summarize everything on leadership 4.0 but there were a couple of comments that you brought up that were common to both of you curiosity and constant learning giving back to the next generation and ensuring that they have the frameworks that they need to lead the importance of rest and balance and of course purpose which was fundamental to what both of you were talking about please join me in thanking minister for lassie and thank you thank you