Mujib Khan, managing director and vice chairman of AIG Egypt Insurance Company, has over two decades of experience in the insurance industry and is also a veteran in emerging markets. Asked to share the secrets of his success, he laughed, saying, "Who said anything about being successful?
That's an assumption." Displaying from the outset the trait that tops his list as most necessary for success a sense of humor Khan went on to illuminate the importance of delegation and other key skill sets. Edited excerpts:
AIG is the largest insurance company by market capitalization in the world. We've got a presence in approximately 130 countries so we're practically everywhere. We market insurance products and services to corporations and individuals in the country, and outside in certain instances. Egypt is unfortunately behind compared to the other states in the region -- less than 1% of people here have insurance. Morocco, with half Egypt's population, has two times as much. Turkey, with a similar population, has a market five times bigger.
There's a lot of stress on being the number one company in any industry, whether it's insurance, banking, etc., because you set the benchmark. So to stay there you have to work very hard. But I think at a certain point of time in your life, you learn to live with that stress -- if you are able to absorb it and move on. If you are so caught up in trying to fix that stressful situation, then you are not able to work. It is a question of internalizing that and moving on.
I kick off at six o'clock in the morning and wander over to the kids and wake them up. Then, have breakfast and try to leave by around 7:30, latest 8:00, so that I can get in to the office a little bit earlier than 9:00.
I go through emails early in the morning and then the meetings start and the rest of the day. Before you know it, it's over.
I have a to-do list, and a lot of my files have a follow-up folder. At least three hours per day are spent in meetings. I receive 15 phone calls, 20 maximum, daily. Email is the new pain in the neck. On an average day I'm looking at anywhere between a minimum of 60 to about 90. I'm still coping with the laptop and internet. With the internet, what you can do is amazing but of course the internet also overwhelms you so it's very important to understand to use the internet rather than be used by it, which is what I think happens to most people. They let their lives be taken over by it.
You have to delegate, for the simple reason that if people don't make mistakes, they will not learn. There is a certain amount of loss in that, but it is far better to delegate and let people learn from mistakes than trying to [do] it all yourself; you may think it will be more efficient but in the long run it won't be.
Learn to delegate early and in the right manner; delegation is not just saying, 'Here, go ahead and do it.' Delegation is: 'Here, go and do it and this is what I expect you to do within this time frame, using XYZ resources and this is what I'm expecting at the end of it.' There are very clear steps and one needs to be aware of those to delegate properly so it is both a learning experience and a happy experience for the delegator and the delegatee.
Management is really about being interested in people and the issues and that's all; it is not science. You've got to have certain disciplines and pillars to guide you -- but once you have them, it's really about being involved with the people and making sure you get to the bottom of issues, understand them, and come up with a way to resolve them. Right now, I'm trying to restrict my number of employees to approximately five -- these are my direct reports. The goal is to be actively involved with these five and to know what is going on with the secondary layer, which would be about another 20.
To be successful I think one needs to have a sense of humor [Note from the writer: He definitely possesses this trait, he had me laughing and smiling throughout the entire interview]. You need to invest a lot of time in reading [the news] because we are living in an environment that is constantly changing. I also get a couple of leading insurance magazines; Reaction is one of them. You need to have a lot of discipline. You also need to know what are your parameters, particularly in terms of time.
I leave at around 6 or 6.30pm; despite my best intentions to leave earlier, it never works out and I get home by about 7.30pm, have dinner with my wife, watch a bit of news, catch up on what's going on in the world and then hopefully am in bed by 10pm.
By Nicol A. Staab
© Business Today Egypt 2007
