Whether he's planning a wedding or restructuring a company, Zack Shahin believes that nothing is impossible. The Deyaar CEO tells Shalaka Paradkar that the secret to running a business is sticking to the basics.
The story of Zack Shahin's wedding is typical of the way he approaches every challenge thrown to him. He first met his future wife, Soha, at the inauguration of Houston's Lebanese Club in 1990.
Soha, a university student of Lebanese origin, was raised in Caracas, Venezuela. The attraction was instantaneous and Shahin wooed her with zest. His wedding proposal to her was a song he sung over the phone.
Soha could hardly resist his blend of aggression and charm. When it was time for her to return to Caracas, Shahin decided she would only leave the US as his wife.
With barely 10 days left for her departure, Shahin was determined they would marry - and his future mother-in-law thought he was plain crazy.
"I asked my mother-in-law (to be) why she objected. She said Soha was her youngest and she wanted a big fat Lebanese wedding for her baby. She thought that could only happen in Caracas, with plenty of planning and preparation," recalls Shahin.
"I just asked her to define the essentials of her kind of wedding. She wanted flowers, cakes, a beautiful bridal gown, fancy invitations and a wedding party for 200 people at least."
With a week to go, Shahin set about creating the big fat Lebanese wedding of his mother-in-law's dreams with
a zest that would put any bridezilla to shame. He first tackled the seamstress, telling her he needed the wedding dress in five days flat.
The seamstress protested, but she might as well have tried emptying the ocean with a thimble for all the good it did.
"When I (realised) that it was not impossible to stitch a gown in five days, then it was up to me, my negotiation skills, and the persuasive powers of greenbacks. We had
a wedding dress four days later."
So impeccable was his planning that the couple even had time for a wedding rehearsal. The only item that had to be struck off his mother-in-law's wish list were the wedding invites.
But Shahin and Soha tackled that one as well, driving around Houston for two days to personally invite guests for their wedding.
The charm offensive worked again and the Shahins had nearly 200 guests at their wedding, accompanied by the whole nine yards - singers, flowers, belly dancers, tiered cake et al.
'Impossible' is not in Shahin's vocabulary. The Lebanese-American CEO of Deyaar real estate applies the same back-to-basics philosophy in turning around ailing businesses that he did in organising his wedding.
After some spectacular success with colas and retail banking, Shahin is now tackling real estate. Since becoming CEO of Deyaar in 2004, he has transformed Deyaar - a business that was not exactly flourishing before - into a profitable, autonomous company with a unique business model.
At a time when most of the real estate market was focusing on development, Shahin took a course completely uncharted. He focused on building a business model that would make Deyaar a one-stop real estate service provider.
This meant nurturing expertise that cut across all segments of real estate - property management, development, trading and marketing.
When you listen to him tell the story, it sounds easy as pie. But that is quintessential Shahin: down-home wisdom tempered with grit and an obstinate refusal to acknowledge anything is impossible.
I
I like challenges. That's what keeps me going. Even if it's a high-level job and all I did was show up at work and do the same things every day, I would get bored. I might as well flip burgers for a living, it's the same level of job satisfaction.
I have heard a lot of people say how tough and challenging it is to grow up in the US when your roots are in the Middle East. But I have never had an issue. If you are easy going and good to people, they will respond likewise.
You cannot stay in Rome and only speak in Chinese - then you would have been better off staying in Beijing.
I have never faced this issue of acceptance, whether in the US or when I moved back to the Middle East.
One of the aspects of my upbringing that I take pride in is accepting others for what they are and being accepted by others in turn.
I always believe in going back to the basics. We tend to over-complicate our lives most of the time. At the end of the day, if you apply the basics to any problem, it works 99.9 per cent of the time.
We try to complicate things so we can analyse what we have complicated and then recommend what we can undo - and when we have done that we can feel good about what we have achieved. Got that? Just stick to the basics.
Me
Me and growing up in the US:
I was born in Beirut, but when I was 11, my parents migrated to the US on account of the civil war in Lebanon. We landed in Long Island, New York, and like most immigrants my first memory of the US was seeing the Statue of Liberty.
I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and later graduated from Ohio State University. We finally got (permanent residency) in the US in 1979. My older brother and sister continue to live in the US.
Being in America was initially tough. When we moved it was also the time of the Iran crisis. People would make fun of my name, calling me Izod or Ziod, because my original Lebanese name is Ziad. When I got my citizenship, I chose to change my name to Zack.
One of the biggest culture shocks for me was seeing an ATM for the first time.
I thought there was someone sitting inside the machine, handing out dollar bills. I was wide-eyed at the sights of New York City: the roads, the traffic and the skyscrapers.
When I turned 22, I went to Nevada to chase my dreams.
Like any young person who wants to make it big, I wanted it to be a quick process. I went gold mining, but it was just a mirage in the desert. At that age it did not make me much wiser. It was just a nice fun experience.
The first real job I had was when I joined a consumer retail goods company for a very short period of time and moved to their headquarters in Houston. I left shortly thereafter and joined PepsiCo as a key accounts manager in 1987. I stayed with PepsiCo for 13 years, moving to the Middle East in 1992.
Me and PepsiCo:
Coming into a new market like Houston, which I knew nothing about, was tough enough, but Pepsi was also trailing behind Coke and Dr Pepper.
In terms of structured trade - ie, retailing from supermarkets - Pepsi was a bit player. I took on the challenge to transform this market. Pepsi became the No 2 brand over some time, even a top seller in some chains.
My manager was very happy with my performance. I was given the launch of an isotonic drink, for which the test market was Houston.
My strategy to win Houston was all about relationships. At the end of the day, decisions are made by people not machines. We had to build Pepsi into a position of strength by efficiently servicing the managers of stores and outlets, showing them there was commitment and dedication.
Initially, the managers would keep setting impossible challenges for me, just to get me out of their hair. But if you believe in what you do, and you are committed to it, eventually people listen and come around to your way of thinking. But you have to believe first.
You have to own that belief and drive it, no one else is going to drive it for you. It could have been easy to be complacent about the fact that Pepsi was No 3 - to just sit back and relax - but one has to be self-motivated, with inner-drive.
I focused on meeting the outlet managers, who tested me in so many ways. I would be told to come on Sundays, come after store closing, come at 3 am because the store would be busy.
I would say, "No problem" and land up with my team. They tried these tactics to throw me off balance, then realised that I meant well for their business and their brand. I wasn't just pushing a product on to their shelves, I wanted to see it out of their door as well. That's how their business would grow - and mine as well.
Me and moving to the Gulf:
At PepsiCo, I went from being a key accounts manager to a regional manager in three years in the US and after that a new initiatives manager.
I was then appointed merchandising manager for PepsiCo for the GCC. I was sent to Dubai in 1992 and from there moved to Saudi, where I pioneered the concept of secondment (in which a company representative is appointed to run a franchise or business).
I was seconded to bottlers in Riyadh and places like Abha (south-western Saudi Arabia) where monkeys jumped on our roof at night. Since 1967, Coke had been banned in the Gulf and PepsiCo was the leader in the region.
However, once the boycott was lifted there were huge challenges for Pepsi. During Coke's period in exile, Pepsi bottled almost all soft drinks sold in the Gulf. As soon as Coke reappeared, Pepsi began facing tremendous distribution challenges, losing share and volume.
In all of these businesses we had organisational and distribution challenges. Pepsi was vulnerable and losing market volume and share. After I was seconded to the bottlers, we recorded double-digit growth in all three businesses.
However, all our franchises doubled their business in three years. We regained market share. Now PepsiCo has secondees throughout the Middle East. That was probably one of my greatest achievements. When I left PepsiCo in 2000, I was the youngest senior director worldwide, aged 36.
When I moved back to Dubai, I was almost a 'Mr Fix It'. I just wanted to do something bigger and better.
Me and banking:
I was approached to run the retail banking and distribution segment at Mashreqbank. At the time, I hated numbers, I could barely balance my own chequebook.
When I met the principals, I explained my previous job - consumer segmentation, package and channel segmentation, promotions - all the intricacies of the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry.
I was asked if I could apply this to banking.
I took on the challenge. Since I knew nothing about banking, for the first two weeks, I wore jeans and a baseball cap and went around all the branches as an observer.
Mashreqbank at the time had major room for improvement in its customer service, the retail banking was on a downward trend, and staff attrition rate was more than 40 per cent The brand was positioned as a very 'stiff' brand.
One of the first things I did was to change the brand colours to orange and blue. My thinking was that if it were a retail bank, it should be the McDonald's of banking, the Levi's of retail. We got rid of all the cold marble in the branches ... and made it a more cheerful place.
In retail banking, at a corporate level you need to look at the bank's risk chart, portfolio movement, yield and spread on the portfolio. But none of these things matter to the person who is facing the customer at the branch.
Those guys (in customer service) need to be told about what kind of interaction should happen with the customer, what a customer should experience when (he) walks into the bank. If (he) can offer a certain product, how (he) should profile the customer so it's an appropriate fit.
The customer's needs and lifestyle need to be understood.
But my bigger (concern) was internal. If you have staff who are not committed to their job and on the verge of leaving, they are not focused on service delivery. That's got to be fixed first.
The staff had to be provided with the right work environment. (After all,) I wouldn't want to work in a place where I was insecure, unhappy or want to leave. Now that's basic stuff. But people get it wrong all the time.
They say we have "staff satisfaction issues" so let's call a consultant from New York who will do a 300-question survey to tell you what you know already. You don't need consultants to tell you what's wrong with your people, you need them to tell you what's wrong with you!
At Mashreqbank, I succeeded in tripling the business income of the bank in three years. Staff satisfaction went up 70 per cent while staff turnover went down to 6 per cent.
While at Mashreqbank, I did a post-graduate degree in retail banking from the University of Wisconsin. Getting
a formal degree made a mental difference ... the more important part was the interaction with classmates.
When people share their real life experiences with you, coming from diverse places and cultures, it can be invaluable. I spent over four years in Mashreqbank, UAE and Qatar as vice-president, retail banking.
Me and Deyaar:
I was headhunted by Deyaar. In the first week there, I told my boss the easiest thing would be to shut down the business and start over again.
But given where the business was in terms of commitments, that was not a option. At Deyaar, I represented the new breed of leadership the company needed. It has been a great place to apply my experience of brand building, franchise management, channel management and sales and distribution management.
(In the UAE) we have a lot of developers, brokers, property managers, maintenance companies in the property domain. All of whom are happy with the money they are making. But a property owner or end user suffers from this multiplicity of agencies when it comes to maintenance.
Having been through all this, I figured that we could be the solution - by undertaking to rent out the property for landlords, being responsible for maintenance, pay off their exposure, match their mortgage obligations to the bank and put the balance of the rental profit in their bank account ... a complete end-to-end solutions provider.
If you have the muscle to develop and rent, why not club them all together?
Since the full-scale launch of its operations in 2003, Deyaar has evolved as the UAE's largest non-master developer. It has over 17 residential and commercial projects across the UAE, Lebanon and Turkey.
Deyaar manages the largest portfolio of third party properties with more than 16,000 units in the UAE. Its net profits have risen from Dh75 million and Dh140 million in 2004 and 2005 respectively to Dh412 million in 2006.
Myself
What was a defining moment in your work life?
My commitment and loyalty to Pepsi came from an incident that happened when I was barely three weeks into the job. We were trying to build a display in one of the outlets just a couple of days before Christmas. There was an electric jack I didn't know how to use.
I managed to knock over a rack with 18 pallets of beverages in it. It was a disaster. I was prepared to be fired. I had just created a heck of a havoc in one of the largest supermarket chains, disrupted the place during peak shopping time and incurred major financial losses that Pepsi would have to pay for.
I called my boss and told him what had happened. His first question was, "Are you OK?" followed by, "If you're fine, we can take care of the rest."
In no time, some 20 of my colleagues had turned up to help me clean up and fix the place. Not once did my boss mention this again or admonish me. Every time I apologised, he'd only say, "Did you intend for this to happen? As far as I am concerned, you were trying to do your job.
You had no malice or bad intent. It was an accident, and accidents happen all the time." My boss taught me the importance of forgiveness. From that instant, my loyalty to Pepsi was sealed.
Even today when people make multimillion dirham mistakes, I ask them if they have learned anything.
If their intentions were good and the damage can be contained, 9 times out of 10 it's fine by me. We are a bunch of big boys and girls; we can pick up the pieces and start over. It was a turning point in my life.
It taught me that loyalty and commitment have to be two-way, from both employee and employer. Today, I treat my team like my partners.
How would you describe yourself as a dad?
I always say lead from the front at the workplace, don't make excuses and perform. Then I would go home and let my hair down.
From being a very easy going person, I became a more disciplined person at home. As a father I have to talk to my children, coach them, listen to them and be patient at home as well - something we tend to discount. It's a big challenge.
In the office and at home you have to manage and be a role model for those around you. My son, Ramy, was born in 1992 and my daughter, Mira, was born in 1997. When I am around the kids, I am a hands-on dad.
Unfortunately, I travel a lot and miss out on many things, such as school events and birthdays, where my wife has to double up as dad and mum. I am still quite easy going and friendly but firm on certain issues. There are clear rules they have to follow, so they don't end up being spoilt.
I like to believe I am a good husband. I have been happily married for 14 years, so I must be doing something right!
What do you see as the future of Deyaar?
I have no doubt, God willing, that in the next three years we will be a very solid real estate solutions provider - regionally and in select countries.
We are now looking to expand into Turkey, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and India. What's more important is not how I see it, but how everyone else - employees, directors and shareholders - see it.
Deyaar has now forayed into other challenging markets of the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Asia.
To energise this growth, we are betting on our people. We don't tell people how to do things, we show them by example.
