Beyond Performance 2.0, 2nd Edition

Chapter 6Act

How Do We Manage the Journey?

Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) is a multicountry conglomerate based in Dubai that owns and operates shopping malls, retail, and leisure establishments in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. When CEO, Alain Bejjani, took over, he realized virtually every sector in which MAF was operating was going through tremendous disruption. His goal was to “future-proof” the business, and as such he set out on a large-scale change effort that started with creating a “North Star” aspiration for the company.

In the Aspire stage of the journey, a broad leadership coalition started by looking 25 years out, and then translated an overall high-level vision of “creating great moments for everyone, every day” into a series of more tangible mid-term aspirations. For the first five years of the journey, three themes reigned supreme: improving customer experience, unleashing the power of digital and analytics, and world-class leadership and talent development (a reflection of their desire to create the “Leadership factory” health recipe).

During the Assess stage, a shortlist of skillsets that needed to be built was identified to enable the strategy: customer service, predictive analytics, and human capital management. Mindsets related to moving from an employee to an owner’s viewpoint, from a maximizing the sum of the parts to a 1 + 1 = 3 mentality, and a transactional to relational way of operating were uncovered as vital to health improvements.

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