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Personal Information:

  Name: Ali Al-Sayegh

  Place of residence: Dubai

  Marital status: Married

 

Scientific Qualification:

  Bachelor of General administration and business administration.

 

Professional Experiences:

National Bank of Abu Dhabi (1981-1998)

  • Chief of the branch's credit department.
  • Chief of Operations Branch.
  • Director of Bur Dubai Branch.
  • Director of Fujairah branch.
  • East Coast District Director for managing each of the Fujairah / Kalba / Khorfakkan / Dibba branches.

Dubai Islamic Bank (2002-2014)

  • Commercial Director at the level of Dubai Islamic Bank.
  • Director of Collection and Bad Debt Department at Dubai Islamic Bank.
  • Assistant General Manager, Collection Management, covering all branches of Dubai Islamic Bank in all Emirates.
  • CEO and member of the Board of Directors of  Development at Dubai Islamic Bank.
  • Director of the main branch of Dubai Islamic Bank and branches in the Emirate of Dubai.

  He is currently employed by working in the private sector: -

  • CEO and Board Member of RKM Group.
  • Owner and Chairman of West Asia Management Consulting House - Founded in (1982).

 

Awards and honors

  • Dubai Award for Outstanding Performance (2013).
  • Dubai Islamic Bank Award for Outstanding Performance (2012).
  • Dubai Islamic Bank Award for Outstanding Performance (2011).
  • Honoring for the 15th anniversary of  service at Abu Dhabi National Bank.
  • Honoring by His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Member of the Supreme Council of the Federation and Ruler of Sharjah, on the occasion of 25 years in banking work at the Institute of Banking Studies in Sharjah.

 

Memberships and Committees

1- Member of the Culture and Science Forum.

2- Member of the Heritage Society

3- Member of Ashridge School of Management in London

 

Honors

 

  Books and Publications:

  • The return of Nawras
  • love Painting

 

We are used to starting our dialogue to review the course of the retirees from the beginning of the trip to the end, but 35 years of experience working in the governmental and private sectors make us look forward to exploring the results before going through the experience.. Can you show us some of your experiences during this trip?

 

In fact, I am delighted with such an opportunity that undoubtedly allows me to share the experience of 35 years of professional work with retired colleagues and the young generation that we are counting on to enhance the development process in the country. For 35 years, I started working as an intern at the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, promoting  to manage the eastern coast region at Abu Dhabi National Bank - Fujairah and a lot of departments and branches in Dubai Islamic Bank. I chaired the position of CEO and member of the board of directors of the (RAK) group and founding West Asia Consulting Services, and move between 11 positions, which many ideas and experiences crystallized to me that I would like to share them in terms of exchanging experiences and acquaintances.

It is understood that the job environment differs from the business environment, and therefore when some retirees or the insured wish to open a special project faces a major challenge that is the lack of familiarity with the market tools and this is normal because most of the experiences he acquired during his work are focused on the tasks related to the nature of the job. Therefore, the belief of some that the possibility of performing all the tasks required by private business without resorting to consulting firms to obtain specialized expertise sometimes leads to the failure of projects despite the good and sometimes new ideas.

 

Second: Some institutions are predominantly personal, while the ingredients for success in projects need an institutional system, and it is true that there may be several solutions to address this phenomenon, but some may be overlooked. For example, poor returns in several companies can be addressed by merging into a larger entity, which leads to the creation of greater production capacity.

 

There are variables that affect the success of projects, for example the establishment stage, where the company's budget is sometimes consumed in the process of establishing the office, team building, and others of the equipment and the project owner is not able to move to the next stages of his project. Hence, there are some solutions provided by consulting firms for the project owner to address such points, including hosting the company's head office and providing all the necessary for the start of the project within special contracts that include in sometimes preparing feasibility studies of the project in terms of choosing the place, the period of preparation, the type of activity sometimes and so on among other things that included a successful project start. From my point of view, resorting to experts is not a luxury but rather one of the most important ingredients for success for any project.

 

What is your understanding of the process of investing experiences?

Life is a big school where we learn continuously, and knowledge is a process that has no limits, and our awareness that we are in a journey of continuous education takes us to the importance of preserving the experiences and knowledge that we gained during this journey and developing and investing in it, but it is interesting that some tend to consider retirement as the end of this journey, and from a perspective Personally, I believe that retirement is one of the changes in our life process, just like any other stage, which is supposed to be the beginning of a new stage with a new thought .. For example, a person may not need more money that has become insured thanks to the retirement pension, some other sees volunteering work as a suitable field with the new change in his life.

 

Considering your experience in the field of self-employment, what are the tips that you would like to give to those wishing to break into this field?

 

Commercial work in general has requirements and conditions, in the general work the employee is part of the whole, but in the invested business, he is the whole,  and this whole must have important specifications including knowledge, specialization, in addition to financial solvency - the company's ability to meet its financial obligations and requirements, where Financial solvency is necessary to maintain the continuity of the workflow - it is good for a person to be able to harness his potential and all that he has learned in order to develop work, it is important not to be tempted and involved in a single pattern, both in the professional and practical life, but rather the person must search for what he lacks and develop himself to be ready for the new and what was not fit to receive because this era is characterized by rapid change in the nature of business and of exercise, and if a person did not have the necessary skills for this change, he will be lagged behind for the course of progress and lose many privileges.

 

May this idea be approximated by one of the forms that you believe provides practical evidence of what you reported?

 

Of course,  there is an important practical experience, which is the experience of the Dubai government and the accelerating with which the work of the government and its institutions evolves, and this is the result of the pioneering and creative thinking of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, may God preserve him. The world and us are witnesses such accelerating development of ideas and projects in the Emirate of Dubai, and this development requires people who are able to manufacture and keep pace with development at the same time, because if the wheel does not drive at the same speed some people will fall behind this path and may be a hindrance to it, and perhaps this is what we feel from making changes at the leadership level for some Institutions in Emirate of  Dubai to realize that this stage need for different thinking and management, so man must always be ready to change and develop himself and to look for what  lacks to keep pace with this change. This concept should extend to the idea of looking at the concept of retirement and considering it a stage that never sings the acquisition of science and knowledge, investment of experiences, and the acquisition of new ones.

 

From your experience, what is the rule in judging a project's success or failure?

 

There is a rule states that the market is the Judgment and customer is king (market is judgment and customer is king),  hence we must know that we do not have the change in the requirements of the market, because we are working  according to its terms and conditions. Since the market is in the UAE, for example, is an open competitive market, Therefore, the appropriate competitive skills and capabilities must be possessed. If the project owner or institution has 10% of these requirements for opening a project, it must acquire the remaining of the required expertise during course of work, but entering the market and convincing that the current potentialities and experiences are very sufficient will lead to the exit of the project from the competition space upon the first turn, so it is important to know the requirements of the market through feasibility studies and others to ensure competition in it on practical and correct bases.

 

In your opinion, what does any project need to succeed?

 

  Success needs humility, integrity and commitment to quality standards. If the investor can provide all that the market needs, he will find someone who shows all aspects of cooperation with him, and this requires extreme care in providing high-quality products, because the judgment as we have said above is up to the consumer, where opinion cannot be imposed that he needs, hence, the idea of humility comes, where the project owner must admit whether his products meet the consumer needs and market standards or whether they need to change and improvement, not the persistence of stubbornness, and exposure to loss after loss.

 

Why might the results come unexpectedly even though everything has been carefully studied and planned?

 

There is a difference between theory and practice. Knowledge, information and personal characteristics are all required in working with special projects, but the difference is in the matter of whether I can add to that or not . Am I able to absorb information and ideas and turn them into facts, and then we go back to stating that studying the market is necessary, because there are variables as we mentioned that it took place in an accelerated way. The world has become a small village, and many concepts of trade have changed with that. The commodity that used to take months to reach and store in its stores is now required and arrives within a few days and without the need for storage, after the series of  production and export of a commodity that passes through many operations, the commodity is directly transferred E from the manufacturer to the consumer merchant or the consumer directly, this change requires a new pattern of thinking towards the movement of the market, intense competition and monitoring the competing products so that the merchant can obtain better quality and sell at competitive prices.

 

By mentioning change of the thinking style .. What do you advise employees in all our departments and institutions when talking about private business?

 

The growth of ideas always comes naturally as a person aged, and when a person reaches the age of retirement, he also grows with some ideas towards retirement, and everyone looks at retirement from a concept of his own. This concept is formed with him through a series of intellectual building throughout the years of his life. If he always thinks positively about his life and has an optimistic view of his future, he will know what to do at this stage, and if his thinking is negative, his view of retirement will come in a negative way. In any case, the level of thinking will reflect on the psychological state of retirees. Therefore, it is important for a person to reinforce his view of life in general and that his thinking towards it to be positive. This positive thinking comes from the feeling and desire for self-realization and the existence of a goal one seeks to achieve. If the goals are great, the view on life is more positive, and it is true that the failures in Life may be more than successes, but in the end a person is required to seek rather than results, as long as he follows a sound approach in his life and continuously evaluates his performance, and he is keen to listen to others and their advice, and develops himself continuously. If he does not achieve anything mentioned then the least would have been fun every moment he spent and will go to any life or change, living with full conviction and happiness.

 

Could this mean that some people may pass through this life without offering anything to be mentioned with after their passing?

Making a model or adding value is one of the most important things that one should be keen on in this life, some work but not add the new in their workplace, and this may sometimes be due to clinging to the place or the chair, and I would like to go through some studies that say that the employee must change his work after four to five years of work because in this period he has added to the place and gained experience from him, and after that he has nothing new to offer or benefit from, and here I mention that I changed my job 11 times, and sometimes new jobs were created totally due to some proposals that contributed to the development of work in banks that I had the honor of with it, as the establishment of a new central entity for the bank in one of the Emirates where I was assigned to supervise the bank's branches in this emirate as a district manager, and all these suggestions contributed to a good move at the bank's level from a financial point of view, and I brought there a word of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid when he said "Whenever I get to the beginning, a new insight will come to me." Thus the employee must leave his mark, the difference will occur in the place, and then he will initiate other fingerprints in other places.

 

To whom do you owe credit for what you reached?

I owe a lot of the credit to my father. I would like to touch on an important matter which is that it is not possible to overlook the experience of generations and the experience of parents. Had it not been for their experience, we would not have reached as we are. I discovered when I went back to the period in which I was working alongside my father in commerce, applying all commercial principles even though he did not study these principles in any of the universities, or see what patterns came out of globalization, it was a natural trader, and therefore the experiences of parents and grandparents must be taken into account because it is one of the sources of learning from my point of view, as it was applied more than scientific and always the application is richer than theory.

 

What are the conditions for success as they appear to you from your experience?

Many has written about the conditions for success, but for myself, I see that there are three basic conditions for success, the first of which is the presence of a road map, because there can be no successful project without studying and a plan, and secondly, knowing the laws of the game, and here we must know the laws of the market with regard to the nature of activity, and there is sufficient fuel to continue the project in terms of resources, material and human capabilities etc.

 

 What thoughts did you think then changed over time?

I used to think that stability is the base of success, and for that I wrote a broad article in a local newspaper talking about the importance of stability in life as a basis for success, and after a while I went to Britain to study in one of the programs and the main title of the program was change, and I discovered during the program that there is nothing named stability in life, life is always changing and what one must know is how to manage this change in his favor and benefit from it, and for myself I have benefited a lot from this program, so I worked to bring about this change at all levels of my life, besides the job I started to establish my own business in the second year which joined the job and thankfully for Allah, I currently manage a company of 35 years old and has a private farm, where I learned through my work in a lot of important life things. Passing time, the consulting office has become a Moneybox of my experiences and the farm is the field where I invested all my thoughts.

 

 

So we are facing a multi-talented person .. What are the additional talents that you possess besides agriculture and consulting?

Life is a cumulative experience that adds to one another, and civilizations as well, based on each other, and every civilization benefits from the other, and there is nothing that starts from scratch, and in the Emirate of Dubai we can glimpse a model and evidence of that. Fifty years of experience made Dubai and made it a global brand (Brand), so experiences are an important factor and interest in developing them is more important, as well as discovering what are within the self of talents and capabilities, for example, I write poetry even though there is no relationship between consulting and poetry, but perhaps that comes from nature, agriculture and growing up, and if you discover something in yourself , you have to develop it or it will die inside you, so I sought  to develop each skill I discovered in myself, including the poetry.