If the previous six values are among the values of progress in general which must be firmly planted in a society's general cultural and educational environment as a prerequisite for that society's development, they are also among the most important values on which modern management concepts are based. Thus the five values addressed by his chapter should not be seen in isolation from the values of progress addressed earlier in the book, as the eleven values together constitute the conceptual framework governing work in the modern workplace.

A. Teamwork:

    In the course of the many years I spent working in an environment that was international in the real sense of the word, bringing together as it did thousands of people from different countries and with widely divergent cultural backgrounds, I had many occasions to see how the concept of teamwork is totally alien to most Egyptians. Unlike their colleagues from Asia, notably those from Japan or China, where the spirit of teamwork is particularly vibrant, or from other parts of the world, like Europe, which also has a tradition of teamwork, the majority of Egyptians I worked with found it extremely difficult to subsume their individuality in collective endeavours as members of a team. The ego issue often led to clashes, as each individual sought to ensure that he would get the credit for any success and others the blame for any failure. None was prepared to have his contribution regarded as just one component element in a collective endeavour. In hundreds of cases, this attitude led to crisis situations, with a disgruntled employee demanding that either he be taken off the team or that so and so be dropped – or else! This was in stark contrast to the attitude displayed by others belonging to different cultural backgrounds, such as the British, Asians and Germans with whom I worked, and only served to confirm how hard most Egyptians find it to put their egos aside and accept thanks for a job well done when they are not singled out for praise.

    Given that modern management sciences are based on a set of fundamental values, among the most important being teamwork, applying modern management techniques to large numbers of Egyptians is a difficult proposition – unless they happen to be working abroad, in which case they have no choice but to submit docilely to the prevailing system of work or lose their jobs. Many expatriate Egyptians succeed brilliantly in their chosen field of expertise. All too often, however, their individualistic streak takes over, and they attribute their success exclusively to their own innate talents, conveniently forgetting that these talents would not have flourished as they did had it not been for the healthy environment which imposed on them the modern values of work and brought out the best they had to offer.

    In this connection, I recall what a professor at the California Institute of Technology said to me at the end of 1999: "Ahmed Zeweil is, by any standards, a prodigious scientist.  But we should remember that seventeen people working in the same institute in which he works won Nobel prizes for their contributions to science. The moral to be drawn here is that the 'miracle of the system' is not only equal to but surpasses the 'miracle of the individual', although both must be present at the same time in order for the required result to be achieved." This view has been echoed by Ahmed Zeweil himself, who never tires of praising the 'team' without which he could not have achieved what he did. The Nobel laureate has also praised the 'working environment' in his Institute, which he says deserves much of the credit for his 1999 Chemistry Prize. But as members of a culture of individuals we tend to forget all aspects of the story and focus on the individual, because for over fifty centuries, from the time of the Pharaohs on, the Egyptian mind-set has been conditioned by the cult of the individual. The system has no place in our scheme of things, even though it is the primary engine for progress and human achievement. The only mechanisms by which this defect in our makeup can be cured are those referred to in earlier chapters of this book, namely, leadership (as a tool of development in the short term), and modern education (as a tool of development in the medium and long term).

    The word leadership here is not just a vague and abstract term, but denotes a modern manager formed in accordance with the requirements and culture of modern management sciences, which make every top executive responsible for managing work in his enterprise according to a system that groups employees into harmonious teams whose members complement one another, as opposed to the top executive who promotes individualism and factionalism by requiring each person in the establishment to owe allegiance to him personally. One of the most important tasks of a manager formed and trained according to the spirit, culture, requirements and techniques of modern management sciences is to foster a team spirit in his establishment. Unfortunately, most executives in our part of the world tend to promote a very different spirit in which employees are islands isolated from one another and in communication only with the employer. This is a source of personal power for the top man, but it comes at the expense of the collective good and does nothing to promote the spirit of teamwork that is one of the fundamental values of modern management science.

    The negative culture which prevails in our workplace derives in large part from the virtual absence of management education, in addition to the fact that most businesses are run by 'bosses' rather than by contemporary executive managers. It is further encouraged and conditioned by the culture of the Egyptian village, where for decades the 'omda', or village headman, has maintained his grip over village affairs by ensuring that the only channels of communication are between his constituents and himself. Any other pattern is frowned upon as a violation of the personal loyalty they owe to his person and a direct challenge to his authority. All these factors conspire against the adoption of the values of modern management, including the important role assigned by contemporary management sciences to the executive manager. Indeed, most people find it difficult to understand just what the function of an executive manager is. On the surface, he does not appear to do much but the truth is very different. An executive manager can be likened to an orchestra conductor who is required to ensure, at one and the same time, the high performance capability of each orchestra member taken separately, and the high quality of their collective performance as one team.

    Thus in the ten years I was responsible for projects worth billions of dollars, my days were not crowded with appointments and meetings and my desk was not covered in paperwork, even though I was handling a daily volume of work running into well over a hundred million dollars, while others who were running businesses and projects amounting to less than one percent of the volume and value of the projects for which I was responsible were drowning in meetings, paperwork and files. I believe this was because they spent much of their time doing work that should have been done by others. Because they believed neither in teamwork nor in delegating authority, they ended up spending three quarters of their time wading through mountains of unnecessary paperwork. Despite these strenuous efforts, however, the final results they achieved were at best mediocre and, more often than not, disgraceful.

    Disseminating a culture which values teamwork begins with the formation of a human cadre of contemporary executive managers who understand what being a boss entails in the modern sense of the word, not in its Pharaonic or medieval sense, when the top man was everything and his assistants nothing. Without an administrative revolution in this field, any attempts to reform the working environment in our country and make it more amenable to the notion of collective work and the spirit of teamwork are doomed to fail, because the heads of administrative organizations have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo so that they can continue to keep all the reins of authority in their hands and take full credit for whatever success is achieved.

    If the development of a high-caliber human cadre of executive managers capable of leading by example is an essential condition for development in the short term, what is required in the medium and long term is an educational revolution that will develop a strong work ethic in future generations, educate them in the importance of collective work and promote the spirit of teamwork at every stage of the educational process. Both targets must be achieved if we are ever to move from the culture of individualistic work inherited from Pharaonic times to the work culture prevailing today, in which teamwork is used as a mechanism to maximize output by drawing on the collective minds, abilities and experience of the members making up the team.

    Over two decades ago, I went to Switzerland to study the latest modern management techniques at the International Management Institute of Geneva University, the largest specialized institute of its kind in Europe. The experience was a culture shock, as I found myself having to adjust to a system of learning very different from the one I was used to. Indeed, at first I thought I had made a mistake in registering for the course, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that I had been misinformed about how good the Institute was. In the academic environment where I obtained my graduate and postgraduate degrees from an Egyptian university, the professor was the transmitter of knowledge and the students passive receivers. The situation was very different at the Institute, where the professor would begin each class by bringing up a particular theme or problem that was to be addressed by the students. These would then be divided into working groups and each sent off to a separate room. The groups were given a set time to study the problem, use the library for research and come up with a report representing the collective views of their members. All the members of the group contributed equally to the report and then chose one amongst themselves to present it on their behalf.

    It was a technique of teaching that at first filled me with dismay, and I wondered why we were spending so much to receive such a meager education. But over the following weeks and months, I gradually came to realize that it was in fact a highly sophisticated technique designed to develop leadership qualities and produce a human cadre capable of leading the world in every field. Contrary to the educational technique with which we are all too familiar, and which produces submissive followers trained to suppress their creative impulses while indulging their streak of destructive individualism, the technique employed at the Institute produced innovators and believers who displayed a highly developed esprit de corps. This educational environment is what produces the best elements in any working environment. After all, what is work but a continuation of the early stages of education? The workplace is where the final output of the educational system, the individual, eventually ends up, and his performance in the workplace is as negative or positive as the education he received.

    Accordingly, collective work or teamwork is a phenomenon linked to a society's cultural values, and some societies show a greater inclination for teamwork than others. Two of the leading examples are China and Japan. According to management and QM scientists, these societies show a marked propensity for teamwork. However, it is an acquired characteristic not a natural one, built up through their cumulative cultural experience. A yardstick that can be used to measure the extent to which a society has adopted the value of teamwork is the management techniques followed by that society's governmental and economic institutions. Another is the philosophy and technique of its educational system. The example set by the executive leaders in society can be instrumental in developing the spirit of teamwork. There is also a link between teamwork and the level of democracy in society. The greater the margin of democracy, the better the prospects of making teamwork an essential component of a society's work ethic. In an undemocratic society, the opportunity for advancement is restricted, and upward mobility in an organization is either slow or nonexistent. This does not create a favourable climate for the development of a team spirit.

    What we have here is a problem for which there is no one reason and no one cure, a multidimensional problem entailing a multilateral approach. As the German-born American political sociologist Herbert Marcuse pointed out thirty years ago, the theory of the unidimensionality of cause has collapsed in all spheres of human thinking.

B. Human Resources:

    If management is the nerve centre of success in all the institutions of advanced societies, the optimal use of human resources is the backbone on which the success or failure of management rests. Human resource sciences have branched out to cover many areas, such as employee recruitment, selection, and training, performance appraisal, human resources and organization, discovering leadership qualities and other areas related to one of the most important fields of modern management, namely, human resource management.

    Modern human resource sciences proceed from a number of fundamental premises, such as the belief that in every person on earth there exists a 'gap' between his actual performance and his potential performance, and that it is one of the main tasks of management to discover that gap and work to overcome it by placing an individual in the position best suited to his abilities, temperament and personality within the organizational structure on the one hand, and through constant training on the other.

    Another fundamental premise is that any individual belongs to one of two basic groups made up respectively of specialists and generalists. Both groups are equally important and both must be present in any successful and thriving organization.

    Yet another is the need to make a basic distinction between potential and performance. While standards and rates of performance can be raised, all that can be done in respect of potential is to discover whether or not it exists. One of the principal tasks of top management in modern organizations is to discover those with a high potential early on in order to elevate them to leading positions and to devise the required training programmes to hone their potential and imbue it with professionalism. Human resource sciences also attach a great deal of importance to the issue of motivation, whether in the material or moral sense.

    The role of the 'chief' in a modern establishment differs from his role in a traditional bureaucracy, where he concentrates most of the centralized power in his hands and, over the years, transforms his fellow workers into an army of followers. In enterprises applying the techniques of modern management science, which are based on delegation, he does not involve himself in the day to day workings of the enterprise, leaving himself free to focus on strategic planning. In a sense, his role is closer to that of an orchestra conductor than a military leader.

    While traditional bureaucracies create followers, modern management seeks to create a cadre of human resources whose members are believers in the mission and aims of the establishment in which they are working. The sense of identification with the work organization is reflected in the quality of the on-the-job performance of the true believer, who sees the job not simply as a duty but as a medium of self-expression and a source of personal gratification. In modern management terminology, this phenomenon is known as "ownership", i.e. ownership of the moral returns of success at work.

    In short, modern management does not regard human resources as machines but as the key to success or failure. As such, they are entitled to enjoy the benefits and glory of the success they were instrumental in achieving. According to this view, there is no more effective engine for the advancement and success of an organization than the people working in it. This view is not the prevailing one in underdeveloped societies, where little attention is paid to creating an environment that encourages people to work and give of their best. The opposite holds true in advanced societies, where the importance of the human element in moving the wheel of progress forward is widely recognized. The wealth of nations is not measured in terms of their natural resources or the riches they have amassed in the past but in the quality of their human resources. This asset is built up through a process of planning and meticulous application of systems designed to discover the best in people, develop their potentialities to the full, and provide them with motivation.

C. Delegation:

    Modern management science tries to utilize each person in the best possible way. To that end, it attaches great importance to discovering latent abilities, training and motivation, in the belief that enabling each individual to realize his full potential and allowing the free interplay of ideas is a source of enrichment not only for work but for life in general. Advanced societies discarded the model of centralized management applied for long decades in the work establishment, which some believe they imported from the military establishment, when experience proved that it hindered the development of individual potential. That is why delegation has become one of the most important instruments of successful management today. Delegation is a reflection of the values I mentioned earlier, which lead to transforming work groups from armies of followers to teams of believers and create an environment conducive to innovation and creativity.

    In a modern management system where top managers delegate their authority to others, the role of the manager can be likened to that of an orchestra leader who does not play each instrument himself but directs others to play their best as an ensemble. In some modern establishments, the degree of delegation is such that the manager appears to have no work at all. This is, of course, a fallacy, as he is responsible for strategic planning not for carrying out work that others can do as well as, and usually better than, he can. It would be safe to say that an establishment run according to all the values of modern management except for delegation is doomed to fail, because delegation is the translation of all these values into practice. However, delegation and training must go hand in hand: delegation without training cannot hope to succeed.

D. Marketing in the driver's seat:

    The difference between countries which achieved remarkable progress in the economic field (through manufacturing a product or providing a service then, at a later stage, through information technology) and those which spent billions on 'industrial arsenals' at the expense of real economic development is that the activities of the former were focused on the end product, i.e. on 'marketing', while the latter's activities were focused on the initial process, i.e. on 'production'. Modern management science recognizes that a production-driven approach can only lead to failure and bankruptcy, while an approach that is marketing-driven is the best guarantee of success and growth. The truth of this axiom is corroborated by the huge discrepancy between the economies of the East European countries (before the collapse of the eastern bloc in the nineteen eighties), which were production-driven, and those of western Europe, which are marketing-driven.

    If management is the secret for the success (or failure) of societies in general and economies in particular, marketing is the brains of management, in the sense that a successful management is one whose strategic thinking, business philosophy and internal mechanisms are marketing-driven.

    While the importance of marketing as an essential value for the successful management of any enterprise cannot be overstated, its own success is contingent on the adoption of other values of progress. One such value is universality of knowledge. There can be no successful marketing in a closed environment shut off from the outside world. How can anyone hope to successfully market anything on a wide scale if he does not know enough about his competitors, international markets, the demands of those markets and the cultures of the prospective buyers of his products or services? Another value that goes hand in hand with marketing is pluralism. How can we have one unique model for everything (the opposite of pluralism) and succeed in marketing, which is based on the highest objective of quality management science, which is to meet the expectations and satisfy the needs of the recipient of a product or service?

E. Absolute Belief in the Effectiveness of Management:

    Many are the truthful statements repeated by people without realizing their real meaning and significance. A statement one hears very often these days is that Egypt's main problem today is 'management'. Although this is absolutely true, any attempt to elicit an explanation from people who utter the statement with a great deal of assurance reveals that, more often than not, they have no clear idea what they are talking about and that, moreover, the word management means different things to different people.

    Still, even if they are not clear on the details, they are right in their diagnosis: the main problem in our lives in general and our economic life in particular is that the methods and techniques of modern management sciences and modern marketing sciences are virtually absent from government departments, the public sector, the private sector and all the service sectors.

    I have no doubt whatsoever that the eastern bloc, made up of the Soviet Union and its legion of followers, collapsed at the end of the nineteen eighties because of the absence of effective management in all sectors of the socialist world, particularly in the economic sector, where the absence of management led to a state of bankruptcy which brought the whole temple of socialism crashing down.

    If the collapse of the eastern bloc can be blamed in large part on poor economic management, much of the credit for the flourishing economies of the western world and the Asian tigers, which led to the growth of a prosperous and dynamic middle class, can be attributed to the application of modern and efficient management and marketing systems. It is worth noting in this connection that efficient management is capable not only of steering a country on the path of economic prosperity and allowing it to reap the positive social benefits that accrue, but also of dealing with crises and reversals. It was thanks only to sound management that the countries of Southeast Asia and, before them, Mexico, succeeded in overcoming their financial crises in record time, confounding the expectations of some of our pundits who were patting themselves on the back for having adopted a more cautious approach. The swift recovery of the Southeast Asian and Mexican economies proves that a country with a clear vision of where it is heading and which proceeds to implement that vision by means of a scientific methodological approach can, when exposed to a crisis situation that causes it to slip backwards on its chosen path, regain its footing as long as the methodology is still in place.

    Before going any further, it might be useful here to define exactly what success means when applied to an economic venture. This entails first clearing up a certain ambiguity which arises from the absence of any distinction in the Arabic language between the two notions of administration and management, both of which are translated as 'idara' in Arabic. In fact, the two notions are quite distinct in English. While administration means the set of rules governing work in the workplace, such as personnel regulations, working hours, disciplinary measures and the like, the word management denotes something altogether different. In essence, it is the mechanism by which an enterprise achieves its desired goals which are, specifically realizing given economic returns, parallel with a process of growth, by using the tools of modern marketing sciences.

    Thus the economic enterprises established in countries which adopted a system of centralized planning, the so-called command economies, could impress us with their massive size, machinery, equipment and huge workforce only if we look upon them from the perspective of administration. But however impressive these factors may be, they mean absolutely nothing from the viewpoint of modern management, where the only criterion for success is an enterprise's ability to deploy its resources, machinery and workforce efficiently to realize economic returns which must not be less than the interest accruing on bank deposits. 

    A project which does not yield a return on investment greater than the interest on bank deposits will inevitably reach a state of bankruptcy that renders it incapable of performing its economic and other functions, the most important of which is employment and the creation of new job opportunities.

    The pride with which some people continue to regard the huge enterprises which once dominated our economic landscape and which, because of the absence of effective management, failed to realize economic returns greater than the interest on bank deposits, is both strange and misplaced. What they are proud of in the final analysis is the money spent rather than the returns on expenditure, which were in most cases extremely modest and led to the failure of the entire experiment.

    Societies which confuse the notion of management in the sense we have explained and that of administration as the system of checks and balances governing the workplace should understand that, for all its importance, administration cannot be a vehicle for economic prosperity. The only way this can be achieved is through the application of the principles, techniques and procedures of modern management and marketing sciences.

    Management, like medicine or architecture, is a profession for which special skills and training are required. Like a doctor or architect, the modern manager chooses his career path on the basis of personal inclination and aptitude and then undergoes an extensive course of study and training. Promotion to a higher rung on the administrative ladder does not in and of itself create a modern executive manager capable of leading and planning in order to achieve the desired targets in terms of profitability and growth, while at the same time giving high priority to the development of the most important element in the success of any enterprise, its human resources.

    As anyone who has had the nightmarish experience of dealing  with our bureaucracy can testify, the concept of modern management is a totally alien one as far as all government departments are concerned. Unfortunately, this is equally true for the economic units of both the public and private sectors, which are run according to a bazaar mentality having nothing to do with the spirit and mechanisms of private economic institutions operated in accordance with the principles of modern management, human resources and marketing sciences. Scientists in these fields are well aware that the vast majority of private economic establishments in Egypt today are almost totally dependent on public relations rather than on management in the modern sense of the word. Operating as they do in a general climate in which public relations reign supreme, they have spared themselves the trouble of building modern institutional systems and recruiting efficient human elements capable of running them in accordance with the principles of sound management. On the one hand, building such a system is a costly business; on the other, simple minds cannot grasp its merits, especially in the context of a business culture that venerates public relations as a short cut to power and influence.

    Unless we create a general climate that is conducive to the  introduction of modern management practices in government departments, public sector units and the manufacturing and service establishments of the private sector, we cannot hope to attract a significant flow of direct foreign investments. Investors are wary of pouring money into an environment that does not allow them to function in accordance with the mechanisms and techniques of modern management, human resources and marketing sciences, and it is precisely the absence of those mechanisms that stands at the root of our deteriorating economic situation. True, we began to address the problem ten years ago, but we need to adopt a far more forceful approach if we are ever to transform the business environment in this country into an investor-friendly environment governed by the principles of modern management in all spheres of life.

    Until then, repeating the slogan "Egypt's main problem is management" without fully understanding the real significance and implications of this diagnosis will remain nothing more than a meaningless mantra.