Leaders are the bedrock of any organization, keeping the team motivated and effective. They excellence in digitalization and bringing modern technologies to improve people lives. Leaders implement new ideas that bring more comfort, happiness, and wellbeing to the people. There are quite great tech leaders and Waheed Y. Khayyat emerges as one such leader in the dynamic realm of digital and IT, with an extensive journey spanning over 24 years. His path to success has been paved with challenges, coupled with collaborations with diverse teams that have seasoned his understanding of the intricate tech landscape.
Currently steering the ship at United Cooperative Assurance (UCA), Waheed is not only a tech leader but also an entrepreneur at heart. His vision extends beyond the corporate realm, aiming to bring innovative solutions to business and societal challenges while enhancing the comfort, happiness, and well-being of people. This sense the interaction with Waheed and CIOBusinessWorld that introduces his idea to us.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at United Cooperative Assurance What challenges have you had to overcome to reach where you are today?
It was a very exciting journey despite all challenges that I faced alongside different wonderful teams whom I truly enjoyed working with throughout my career, trust me when I say; the real taste of success comes only at the end of long and bitter roads! I started my journey approximately 24 years ago, I started my career straight ahead into the IT line in Healthcare, I worked in “King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Center” known to be one of the very leading and large enterprise healthcare organizations in Saudi Arabia, I started my career at the field of IT Infrastructure and Operations stand, and escalated the ladder into different job levels across my career throughout different IT management positions and levels crossing from team leader, to mid-management, to senior management, and finally I am standing in the executive management level. Working in highly complex industries such as Healthcare and Insurance has truly crafted and sharpened my business experience throughout different business aspects including technical, management, operations, and strategical aspects.
Tell us something more about United Cooperative Assurance and its mission and vision.
United Cooperative Assurance (UCA) is a leading insurance company that is publicly listed in the Saudi Arabian Market with a capital of 400 million Saudi Riyal (SAR). The head office of the company is in Riyadh, and the company started to operate on 2009, The company is contributing to the overall economy of Saudi Arabia and helping the country to achieve the 2030 Vision of Saudi Arabia through provisioning of Insurance solutions including motor, medical, and other general insurance products. The vision of UCA is to create the kingdom’s most innovative, professional, and sustainable domestic insurer! Hence, to achieve this vision, our day-to-day mission is to create an environment which promotes the development of young Saudi insurance professionals at the core while developing leading edge agile platforms designed around our clients and their needs. UCA aims to strengthen its partnerships with our regulators, intermediaries, and world class reinsurers by embedding sustainable and transparent business practices.
How do you build and manage a motivated and effective team?
Human Resources is the bedrock of any sustainable work for any organization, keeping the team always motivated and effective comes only through a clear strategy for engaging people – IT and digital transformation leaders usually don’t deal with IT staff as the only team to make the transformation, it’s the entire company with all involved functional teams that we should bring together, converge, and create a collaborative and inspiring environment for them , this should be applied also to all enterprise-level initiatives that are transformational by nature. Depending on the strategy comes the actions, but it worth mentioning some of the most common tactics to consider; first try to invite and engage all individuals of the teams from the initiation phase of any undertake (avoid bringing them in the middle for the sake of achieving certain tasks only), let them feel they’re part of the initiative, and influencers on decisions, second, turn the team environment into a learning academy environment and cultivate the culture of continuous education, this is very important side to naturally grow and advance in-house skills and talent level which will lead to have a more effective and capable team. Third, promote for innovation, and creativity, and shift them from being “problem finders” to “solutions finders” and coach them how to be always part of the solution rather than being part of the problem. Fourth, break the ice, and bring joy through different side activities, you may use gamification techniques. There are plenty of other ways and methods that leaders can take to manage their team to make them more motivated and effective teams.
Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run, and what are your future goals for United Cooperative Assurance?
In continuation of my journey; I am looking for more thriving and to keep going forward through the technology path but with significant contribution and influential works to achieve the vision of my country and my company together through advancement and achieving of excellence in digitalization and bringing modern technologies to improve community and people lives. Furthermore, I am looking forward to being an entrepreneur to bring innovative solutions to business and community problems in addition to implementing new ideas that bring more comfort, happiness, and wellbeing to our people and country.
In the near future, where do you envision yourself, and how do you plan to accelerate and drive forward the process of change?
We live in a very fast changing era driven by the unprecedented rapid technology evolvement and advancement, it’s indeed a challenging situation that require a strong and solid leadership skills to continue the game, therefore, I plan to continue in that leadership position for the near future, and I look forward to modernize the IT operating model in my company to be extra agile and to meet the new business dynamics and requirements through embracement of new operating models such as DevOps, and as AI has entered even a new generation which is changing the world again, therefore, I must accelerate the adoption of more AI technologies enriched by Big Data for different business use cases.
As a successful leader, how do you manage to strike a balance between your professional commitments and personal life?
Achieving a work-life balance is amongst hardest matters to achieve and maintain, it’s not as easy thing as it may sounds to be; especially for leaders of critical business functions that have near to zero-tolerance to failure, such leaders used to have many sleepless nights in their life and found it very difficult to achieve the balance, therefore, one should draw a strategy to achieve the balance, more importantly to be committed to it, there are some few strategically points that I follow to maintain the balance as example, one of which is to maximize the output of the “productivity over time” formula by learning the skill of hyper focus to achieve more in less time, in other words, drive your time, otherwise the time will drive you, so dedicate yourself only for work during working hours, and vice versa (how to get rid of distractions is the skill that one need to acquire here), on the other hand, one need also to be flexible in defining his\her working hours vs. life hours of his week based on different planned or unplanned activities.
Describe in detail the values and the work culture that drives United Cooperative Assurance?
UCA has many values across different internal functions that may vary only by relativity to work, however there are four (4) core values that UCA stands on, first, is the “Quality” whereby UCA’s success is measured upon a considerable number of clients selecting us for their belief in our ability to meet their expectations in terms of Price, Quality Service and Specialized Expertise. Second is “Empowerment” of our employees by offering a work environment with equal opportunities to employees for further professional and personal growth, we believe in our work force, and we are inspired to work as a team towards the accomplishment of our goals. Third is “Commitment” to conducting our business according to the highest norms of ethical standards, competence, and integrity where we remain stable and reliable to perform to the best of our knowledge, skills and abilities amidst the challenges that constantly face us. Finally, the fourth core value is about “Communication”, to establish relationships with clients that we care for, we pride ourselves in keeping our workforce and clients well informed about relevant information through efficient communication and information systems that exceed the standard services.
What change would you like to bring to the Tech industry if given a chance?
Undoubtedly, tech industry is the innovation industry that keep brining charming state-of-the-art solutions and products to our lives which truly change our lives, most of these changes are for the good of the human kind but with some drawbacks and undesired outcomes that may get produced in the process, therefore, if there is something to bring to this industry is apply more data privacy and mind protection measures beside more ethical measures that should be applied on the global level to prevent certain contents from being shared and even go viral, trivia is invading the new generation and we need our world to be a safer place for our children knowing that the “Internet” is considered the World itself to a majority of our children and teenagers. We need to protect everyone for harmful contents that ethical bases would agree on, not only this, but also reduction in trivial contents and limitation from going viral.
Undeniably, technology is playing a significant role in almost every sector. How are you leveraging technological advancements to make your solutions resourceful?
Understanding new technologies in term of their critical capabilities, maturity, sourcing, and their use cases in business is a key knowledge resource that I keep myself always updated with, think of these modern advanced technologies like the tools in a toolkit box in a hand of a craftsman, he can do magic if he knows how and when to use each tool. For example, the robotic process automation (RPA) is one of the AI technologies that can be very useful and mature enough to automate a routine and highly repeated manual activities which may require lots of manpower hours to do, using RPA as the right tool to automate this sort of activities within certain scenario should meet your objective to save cost and time in addition to maintaining a consistent performance and efficiency, and so on and so forth.
Can you discuss your approach to talent management and development within the IT department, and how you build and lead high-performing teams to execute the organization’s IT strategy?
The answer to this question is embedded within my answer to question #3 above, here I am quoting the same statement “invite and engage all individuals of the teams from the initiation phase of any undertake (avoid bringing them in the middle for the sake of achieving certain tasks only), let them feel they’re part of the initiative, and influencers on decisions, second, turn the team environment into a learning academy environment and cultivate the culture of continuous education, this is very important side to naturally grow and advance in-house skills and talent level which will lead to have a more effective and capable team”, in addition, some other ideas to talent management and development can be used such as setting different Professional Certifications or other Educational Quests as annual targets and objectives for employees, this is to help spreading the culture and make sure that everyone sails within the same boat. Another habit that leaders may use is by requesting attendants of different training courses, conferences, and symposiums to write and submit a reflection paper after attending such sessions, in which they should suggest how to use what they learn to improve any of the business aspects exist in the company, that reflection paper should be reviewed, discussed further and approved if found feasible, once approved it should turn into a new initiative and become part of our objectives and the owner of the reflection paper should lead or co-lead that initiative.
What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs aspiring to venture into Tech?
Investing in Tech is one of the most attractive entrepreneurship fields that is full of inspiring opportunities, with high chances of success if it follows the right course of thoughts and actions, entrepreneurs in this field should find the right idea, turn it into the right product, at the right time, and by following the proper rational path that should guarantee sustainability to the startup company. It’s a big topic to talk about, however, let me just shed some light on the starting point “finding the idea”, there are quite good number of success stories of great tech ideas that turned into breakthrough products that changed people lives, or caused very positive impact on communities at scale, however, there ae also other examples of other good to great ideas that couldn’t fly or “at the best” could not survive for long, first you need to make sure that the idea is either coming with an innovative solution to a chronic problem that sometimes people get used to deal with it in somehow and tends to forgot that it’s a problem or that it can be done better, alternatively you may come with an idea that should touch human senses in somehow and improve people lives but not necessary to be meant for fixing a problem, in either ways you need to make sure that the idea is viable, and can be turned into a real competing product with reasonable cost, remember that some ideas were great but unfortunately they appear in the wrong time were consumers are not ready for it yet. If you’re there then build your prototype and create a minimum viable product (MVP) to sense the people interaction with it, it’s the best time to introduce the idea to public and exactly to your targeted customers to assess and measure how much you attracted of their attention, and how easy and fast they adapt the product.
