Page 313 - Aamir Rehman - Dubai & Co Global Strategies for Doing Business in the Gulf States-McGraw-Hill (2007)

Bringing It Home: Fostering GCC Awareness in the Head Office 295

example, can aspire to a more modest 5 percent share in the Gulf in
the medium term, ramping up to 10 percent over time. The strate-
gic measures required to reach that goal (e.g., stronger distribution
partners, market-specific products, etc.) would need to be
identified and tested for viability. To ensure the right level of input
and global commitment, the plan would need to be developed
through collaboration between regional and local management.
It is crucial that the plan be specifically for the GCC, not the
broader MENA region. While the GCC plan would naturally feed
into—and likely drive—the broader Middle East plan, the unique
attributes of the Gulf market call for a region-specific plan.
Narrower, country-level views, especially for Saudi Arabia and the
UAE, also have their place and inform the “Gulf” plan. It is impor-
tant, however, that the GCC be seen as a unit and that cross-market
opportunities be explicitly discussed within the strategic plan.
Irrespective of how the GCC reports to the head office, the global
CEO and strategy team should insist that a Gulf-specific plan
be created.
The next two steps of the cycle—annual performance targets
and a regional business review—are standard practices in large cor-
porations and will be familiar to most organizations. What is
important in our case is that the business be reviewed and consid-
ered through a set of documents distinct from the analysis of other
Middle East clusters. The head office should be asking: “How are
we doing in the Gulf?” as well as “How are we doing in the Middle
East overall?” Savvy organizations have already made such a
distinction for China, posing the “China questions” as separate
from general questions on Asia.
The fourth step of the cycle is a review of the market and com-
petitors that is as objective as possible. Strategy leaders from the
head office, along with counterparts in the region, should refresh
their knowledge of market trends and competitive dynamics on a
regular basis. With dynamic change—competitive and regulatory—
occurring in the region each year, firms run the risk of adhering to
outdated strategies unless external monitoring is continual. While
the local strategy team is best positioned to monitor the changes,
support from the head office is important in validating the analyses
and ensuring that global resources are allocated appropriately in
line with the evolving strategy.