Al Futtaim Carillion
Large scale leadership development helps Al Futtaim Carillion tackle new challenges
Al Futtaim Carillion (AFC) and Carillion MENA (CM) are right in the middle of an unprecedented construction boom in the Middle East. Industry reports claim that planned projects together with those already under construction are estimated to be worth in the region of $1 trillion, making the Gulf region the biggest construction market in the world on a per capita basis.
AFC and CM’s own growth, mainly due to secured projects in the Gulf region, have and will continue to increase significantly over the next five years. In order to keep the various construction projects on track, AFC and CM needs to recruit between 800 and 1000 new staff each month. Recruitment on this scale, together with the need to get new staff up and running quickly and the business’s project growth plans, place enormous stress on the senior management team.
Acorn helped shift existing mindsets away from the ‘micromanagement’ of day to day tasks
Acorn Coaching & Development was asked to work with the 250 senior managers and develop a leadership programme that would help these managers think more strategically in accordance with the needs of business. This would mean changing existing mindsets away from the ‘micromanagement’ of day to day tasks that was taking up a disproportionate amount of their time.
Acorn designed a programme to help those in senior positions develop their leadership capabilities to set objectives, outline work standards and to provide team guidance. Managers also had to learn new ways to engage and develop those under their responsibility.
“We were stunned by the sheer scale of the work…”
Colin Dulson of Acorn Coaching & Development explains: “While we had extensive experience of the construction industry, we were stunned by the sheer scale of the work being completed by our client in Dubai and across the MENA region. The challenges they face in terms of people and day to day delivery are totally different from those faced when working in the UK and Europe.
“For example, because of the shortage of expertise in the region about 90% of the workforce comes from somewhere else in the world. This could be UK, Europe or the US. A large proportion comes from Asia with a lot of specialised engineering talent coming from India, all of which places cultural and language issues into the mix. The result is that many managers are drawn into the minutiae of work. This micromanagement means that staff are not being sufficiently developed or given the opportunity to reach their full potential – which inadvertently creates a glass ceiling for many workers.
“Another issue is the shortage of raw materials such as concrete across the region. This adds more stress and pressure as it needs tight ‘just in time’ project management skills to ration the scarce resources across all live construction sites.
“We aimed to encourage managers to connect their activities to future strategic plans of the business”
“The idea of the leadership programme was to encourage managers to connect their activities to the future strategic plans of the business and to give them the skills and capability to quickly develop the talent around them.”
Acorn has been working with AFC and CM in Dubai for a year and in that time has run a modular leadership programme for 110 of the 250 senior managers, with the remainder to be carried out by the end of 2008. Groups of 12 managers take part in the programme over six months. The modules include:
- Strategic alignment
- Leadership skills
- Coaching skills
- Personal development planning
Explains Colin Dulson: “The first thing we did was to organise a conference for all managers taking part in the programme. The aim of this event was to communicate with the target group and show them in detail how the programme would work. The conference approach was very successful and we’ll be running three more over the next 12 months.
“We’ve seen evidence of how managers are changing their attitudes…”
“The results of the programme are already beginning to show. We’ve seen evidence of how managers are changing their attitudes towards delegation and empowerment. New policies for safety, efficiency and quality have been developed and implemented with a great deal of success. Many policies, particularly those on safety, are taken for granted in the UK. However in this working environment some policies have to be initiated from scratch. For example there was no policy in place for entering and leaving confined spaces such as fuel tanks. This was identified by a senior manager and a new set of procedures were quickly put in place.
“Other examples centre on changing behaviours in the accommodation camps which are home to tens of thousands of construction workers. Managers identified a much higher than average sickness level among workers in the camps. Time was spent analysing and observing behaviours inside the camps which identified that the workers were drinking unsterilised water. So by changing the water supply, the manager was able to rectify the absenteeism virtually overnight.
“Another manager found that there were an enormous number of workers incapacitated with sprained ankles. Again, by visiting the camps and observing behaviour, he was able to identify that the problem occurred at the end of the working day when there was a stampede to get onto the first bus leaving the site back to the camp. This pandemonium meant that many workers were tripping and falling and becoming injured in the process. The key thing to identify was why this was happening. Further investigation showed that those who travelled back to the camp on later buses were unable to get any hot water or decent food. The necessary changes were made to the facilities at the camps and virtually overnight, they were able to eliminate such injuries.
“It was the change of mindset of the senior managers that enabled them to take a step back from the day to day work and make the necessary adjustments.”
“These anecdotes illustrate that by changing behaviours of the workforce, sickness and injury was dramatically reduced, which in turn reduced the previous levels of stress caused by a shortage of workers while managing deadline driven projects. It was the change of mindset of the senior managers that enabled them to take a step back from the day to day work and make the necessary adjustments.”
AFC currently employs 30,000 staff to service over £1bn of project work. One of the organisation’s key challenges is to grow the revenue while keeping staffing levels tightly controlled. This means ensuring senior managers learn to become more efficient with resources and use coaching skills to help their team members develop their full potential.
AFC’s work in the Gulf region looks as though it will continue to grow. However by identifying what the business needs from its senior managers early in the cycle, means it is ideally placed to take full advantage of the enormous business potential in the region.