Some time ago, while I was working for this company, a colleague opened up to me that they are having issues with unfair treatment by the management. A team member crosses his limit and no action is taken, another gets a warning letter for doing the exact same thing.

I got a complaint from more than a colleague working for the same organization that this is happening to them. As it was not my first time witnessing injustice in the workplace; I saw promotions happening for ass-licking activities, or because the department head’s nephew just joined the organization.

I realized that injustice is the root cause of all the serious complications of Egypt LLC, the fictional company we’ll discuss in this article.

Policies and Regulations

Despite the existence of the Internet and the accessibility of information, Egyptians who never worked for another company and never saw an alternative option to this hellhole think Egypt LLC is actually an ordinary company. That a workplace driven by gluttony, greed, and injustice is viable.

Trapped in a false reality that this is the norm. 

With weak or ineffective policies and regulations, and a slice of inequality, employees can easily manipulate the management for their own benefit; creating a playing field that is not level and opportunities are not equally available to all.

In this country, the higher management is aggressively and unethically competing with its own people; abusing their positions of power for personal gain.

Elite we-know-it-all management and a tyrant CEO looking down at employees, mistrusting them, believing that people should be led like cattle; led with no clear strategy.

Strategic Mismanagement

A crucial guiding element for a corporation when making long-term decisions is its vision. Without a clear vision, core values, and identity (more on that in a later section), we float endlessly without a strategy, passively waiting for the next big wave of change to take us to our demise.

All oil-rich neighboring companies have a clearer 2030 vision. With the least corruption possible and synchronized government actions, the GCC’s significant improvement in economic diversification is driven by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, followed by Oman.

In Egypt, there is no vision, no mission, and no values.

Just the hashtag #الجمهورية_الجديدة (Arabic for The New Republic) and the rhetoric slogans around it; a hashtag that resonates to nothing, has no clear goals or justification except for the goal of pure propaganda.

Investment Priorities

You wake up every other morning to the sight of a new bridge built up or under construction. Investment in infrastructure development is important but can be put into a greater plan with a broader vision to boost growth.

What are the company’s investment priorities?

Should Egypt LLC invest in a brand new glamorous city in the middle of the spacious eastern desert that has no clear return on investment (ROI)? Does this increase investor confidence?

Obviously, not.

On the contrary, you see that the current CEO ignoring practical and effective case studies like the ones in Malaysia, Vietnam, and South Korea, just to name a few. Instead of working on increasing exports and growing the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or Gross National Income (GNI), the company’s CEO decided to imitate cities like Dubai, where the sight of skyscrapers is an effect of economic growth, not a cause.

Unbridling the CEO’s narcissism and egoism, following his passion for bridges and the love of concrete, our company now is resource-drought by building a brand new city in the middle of nowhere.

The New Administrative Capital, which has not been named yet, is expected to replace Cairo as the capital of Egypt. Stupidly thinking that this will solve all our economic and population problems.

Companies don’t rise after relocating to an office with a better interior in a glass building, people will still litter in this fancy new office and continue to be bureaucratic; the Guinness-record-breaking widest road will still be chaotic, and trucks will drive the wrong way, and Egypt will continue to be the circus that it is.

Alternatively, the company should focus on producing niche high-quality, value-adding products and services to compete in global markets, in spite of that, it deviates from all logic and invests in fisheries, frozen chicken imports, and a Netflix copycat.

Dysfunctional Human Resources Management

The expulsion of skilled calibers due to harsh policies and unlawful work conditions/environment along with the steady deterioration of economic conditions, and their wealth and social status accordingly; Egypt LLC ends up with incompetent decision-makers shaping its future.

No matter how younger generations are needed in other aging nations to drive economic growth, like in some European entities, the management of Egypt LLC blames its failures on the overstaffing (overpopulation), and not its mismanagement, corruption, and resource misallocation.

In place of Japan’s IKIGAI, Egyptians don’t have a reason for being; they don’t have the balance of Sweden’s Lagom or the vision to create an Egyptian version of Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder. Instead of the vision of Ludwig Erhard, a Lieutenant General is responsible for our economic miracle, or disaster.

The HR department needs to crucially work on the culture of the Egyptian employees to create purpose; after patriotism became exclusive to the higher management cult. On the contrary, the department poisons the minds of the employees with an indigestible huge amount of TV series every Ramadan and football smokescreen all year long. The uncreative drama of a parallel society of husbands with affairs, a violent thug above all laws, or military patriotism indoctrination. If half the money that was spent on the production of “The Choice” TV series was invested in PR to improve tourism, the industry would have been at a different level.

These media productions, of course, have their impact on the degradation of taste, but can they also make the majority suffer from the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

Have less and less coexistence? Less acceptance of one another? Make the company less productive overall?

The Road to Nothingness

Starting a business or a new phase of a business with a loan has its risks and pressures. Entrepreneurs tend to keep away from this by “bootstrapping”. The goal is to avoid having limited flexibility, paying loan interest, and falling prey to the threats of debt. Also, reduce expenses, increase revenue, and reinvest profits into the company.

This strategy requires creativity, resourcefulness, and a willingness to put in a lot of effort in order to succeed. Bootstrapping can be a successful approach for businesses to keep ownership of their company and avoid ceding control to investors. 

But for the CEO to extricate himself from all effort and planning, he goes for a quick-fix remedy by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and deposits from neighboring companies which makes it a slow painful death for the economy.

As we build up the company on loans, one loan after the other, we become burdened to pay the interest of previous loans, just like a teenager who all of a sudden got eligible for credit cards, abusing the shit out of the banking system.

Even though the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects Egypt’s economy to expand steadily over the following ten years, with an estimated annual growth rate of 5.5% by 2026, it is anticipated that Egypt’s economic growth will be supported by the ongoing implementation of economic reforms, such as initiatives to reduce the budget deficit, attract more foreign investment, and improve the business environment. These are things we hope for but doubt at the same time.

Opportunity Cost

Egypt L.LC used to produce “white gold” quality cotton with extremely long staples, but production has been declining for years. No decisions were taken to save what was once king. Meanwhile, real estate is the hot thing, with money tied up in the concrete of this new city or that.

Cotton aside, what about tourism?

The industry that declined since the 2011 revolution because of unrest, now that security has been reinstated, terrorism is destroyed, and COVID-19 is over, where is the should-be-flourishing tourism industry?

What efforts did the management do to restore the industry’s status?

With unique selling points like everything that we have from the Ancient Egyptian civilization to the Red Sea treasures, can’t we do some marketing like what Dubai or NEOM are now doing?

An official super app for everything tourism in Egypt instead of Watch IT?

Some proactive actions towards hasslers around the Pyramids of Giza and sexual harassment everywhere else?

Such an unprecedented waste of value propositions Egypt L.L.C has that it is not capitalizing on!

Conclusion,

Unlike the foolish ideas of futile mega projects, micro-projects typically have a lower level of risk and require less investment capital, but they can still make an important contribution to the overall economic development of Egypt.

Projects that are usually designed to address specific local needs or tailored to solve current problems; reviving existing industries, or enhancing tourism with supporting services and proper marketing strategies would have way lower investment and way higher ROI.

As stated by the CEO himself in one of the conferences, he started many projects without feasibility studies or any plans for ROI. No need for a feasibility study because this project is a winner. Because I, the egoist, I know it all, and I said so.