At the ongoing Make it in the Emirates summit in Abu Dhabi, which is to conclude on May 7, Mohamed Alabbar, Founder and Managing Director of Emaar Properties, said he believed in hard work and that it was not about long hours but also about studying every opportunity and knowing when to take risks, besides bringing the right people into the business.“You need to check your work. You need to study every opportunity and know where to take risks and bring people and monitor their work and keep pushing,” he said.

Alabbar said he liked to hire Indians because of their work ethic. “The harder you work, the luckier you will get. There’s a saying, hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard, and this is why I like to hire Indians…,” he said.

“I always tell people, from my own perspective, my IQ is average, but my hard work is the best. I believe in hard work,” he added.

“When you learn from 2008 and from COVID, you have to build an agile and resilient business that can handle these circumstances,” he said, referring to the recent crisis UAE businesses had to face.

He looked back at a period in 1997 when his business in Singapore went through challenges. “I remember the situation was very difficult. We took a loan from the bank, and then the bankers said we need our money back. My crisis management approach was shaped then,” he said. “The commodities, they are at the store, there are no customers.”

Alabbar highlighted the importance of reputation in a crisis. “We care about our reputation among the society in front of our leadership,” he said. “It’s important for us to always be up to this or to live up to these names and the name of our country.”

Sharing what he had learnt over the years as a businessperson, Alabbar said, “You want to go fast, take the money from the table, but there is a process. You have to manage cost, you have to manage technology, you have to manage risks. You have to follow the market on a daily basis.”

He confirmed how Emaar’s first steps during the recent crisis included reassuring its employees, on email, that the company would not cut their jobs or salaries. That decision was based on the lessons learnt from previous crises, he said. – editor@nrifocus.com