Coming to Dubai Part the Third

Part the Third
I arrived full of enthusiasm for teaching the best of Anglo-American business practice and combining it with the best of Arabic business practice and helping the country build something special. Four years on I know full well it’s not going to happen any time soon.
The way I got my job over here should explain a lot about how business works – the power the patriarch holds and the lack of planning in business.
I bid via an agency for work as an interim manager on a possible IPO. But I didn’t get it because I was deemed too expensive. But a couple of months later one of the Chairman’s flunkies phoned me and said he’d like to offer me a permanent job working for him directly. Pretty flattering when a gazillionaire phones and asks you to come work for him.
So I did. No proper job description or any real idea of what to do. A salary I would have seen as derisory 15 years earlier. But a Vision of what I wanted to try.
Fine by me as I like exciting. But I hadn’t appreciated (I can be very slow sometimes) that is how the whole company is run – on the Chairman’s whim. When I showed up the other members of the Executive team had no idea of who I was or what I was supposed to be doing and although visibly friendly it is not surprising it took me a while to get close to them!
For the first 2 years here we lived an executive expat lifestyle. I occasionally got to ‘substitute’ for the Chairman at events so was treated like royalty at the Dubai World Cup or the Carreras Concert held by DIFC for example.
But I didn’t do much work of substance. Projects would be cut off unfinished or ideas floated and abandoned or you would be sidetracked for some trivial perceived offence or comeback into favour and work 24/7 for two weeks and then drop the whole thing.
The European Expats used to say it was just Trophy Management and that every local bigwig has a cadre of high level Euro-Managers to parade out in public but Heaven forfend if they try to do anything. Hence the huge number of Europeans here of mediocre ability who have been here for ages and have grand titles but do nothing except drink, shop and play golf. It’s a nice lifestyle if your pride can stand it.
Mine couldn’t.