{
  "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1",
  "title": "Nabil Al Kilany",
  "home_page_url": "https://nkilany.com/",
  "feed_url": "https://nkilany.com/feed/posts.json",
  "description": "Certified Board Director (GCC BDI). Led MHG Trading's September 2025 TASI Main Market listing. 25 years in building materials and industrial B2B across KSA and the GCC.",
  "language": "en",
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Nabil Al-Kilany",
      "url": "https://nkilany.com"
    }
  ],
  "items": [
    {
      "id": "https://nkilany.com/blog/culture-is-the-governance-you-actually-have",
      "url": "https://nkilany.com/blog/culture-is-the-governance-you-actually-have",
      "title": "Culture is the governance you actually have",
      "summary": "A board can change its charter, its committees, its independence ratios and its risk appetite in a single meeting. It cannot change, in that meeting, the rule that decides whether any of them get used.",
      "content_html": "On 16 September the GCC Board Directors Institute staged a debate on the motion \"This House believes the board receives the truth it deserves.\" The panel was sitting directors of listed companies and a group chief executive from the healthcare sector, arguing the case as it should be against the case as it is in Saudi Arabia. The room voted twice. Before the debate, 93% supported the motion. After it, 67% did, and the undecided share had grown. The Institute did not publish the poll; the figures are the ones shown in the room, which I watched. Nobody had produced new evidence in the intervening hour. What had changed was that the room had been asked to think about the filter between a company and its board. Afterwards I compared notes with Annette Bak Kirby, who led McKinsey's leadership and culture practice, Aberkyn, in the Middle East and now coaches boards through INSEAD Executive Education. Her count, from the boards she has advised, was that more than seven in ten were blind to that filter until it bit them. That conversation is the reason for this article, and for its claim: the item a board spends least time on is the one that decides whether the rest of its governance is used.\n\nIn one sitting, a board adopts a risk appetite statement, a whistleblowing policy and a related-party policy. Three resolutions, three votes, no dissent recorded. Eighteen months later the audit committee first hears about the problem from the regulator.\n\nNothing failed on paper. The policies existed, the committee had met, the charter said what a charter is supposed to say. What failed was unwritten: what happens, in that company, to the person who carries bad news upward. Edgar Schein separates the written layer of an organisation, which he calls espoused beliefs and values, from the layer that governs behaviour, which he calls basic underlying assumptions. A governance strategy is written in the first. A company runs on the second. The first article in this series argued that where ownership is concentrated, the controller selects the monitor. The monitor is only as independent as the room allows.\n\n<figure class=\"post-figure\"><img src=\"/storage/blog/culture-is-the-governance-you-actually-have/fig-two-layers.png\" alt=\"Schein's three levels of culture read from a boardroom: artefacts (charters, committees, policies, the board pack) are changed by resolution in one meeting; espoused beliefs and values (the values statement, the code of conduct, the risk appetite) are where the governance strategy is written; basic underlying assumptions (what it is safe to say, do and ignore) are where the company runs, on its own clock.\" loading=\"lazy\"></figure>\n\nSaudi Arabia compressed that gap into a decade, moving a generation of family and founder-led firms onto listed-company governance through the Main Market and Nomu faster than most markets have managed, and every one of them adopted the framework before the culture it landed in had time to move with it. The evidence below is American, British and European; no study I can find measures the two together for Saudi companies.\n\n## What the board is allowed to know\n\nA board's information is filtered before it arrives, and the filter is cultural. The independent directors of Wells Fargo published their investigation in April 2017, after 100 interviews and more than 35 million documents, and located the root cause in a \"distortion of the Community Bank's sales culture and performance management system\" and in a decentralised structure that \"gave too much autonomy to the Community Bank's senior leadership\". The board received summaries describing the problem as contained. Wells Fargo had the policies. The finding was the culture.\n\nBoeing's 737 MAX shows the same filter from the other side. The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure published its final report in September 2020 under five themes, one of them \"culture of concealment\", finding that Boeing withheld information from the FAA, its customers and the pilots, and concealed the very existence of MCAS from them. Notice what the report does not say. It does not say the certification paperwork was missing.\n\nWhere culture has been measured, it predicts. Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales, publishing in the Journal of Financial Economics in 2015, found that proclaimed values appear irrelevant to performance while integrity as perceived by employees goes with stronger performance. The values on the website are the governance strategy. The employee survey is the culture. Only one of the two predicts anything.\n\n## Culture turns incentives into behaviour the design never anticipated\n\nGovernance sets the target and the control. Culture decides how the target gets reached. Wells Fargo's cross-sell strategy was unremarkable as written; a bank selling more products to the customers it already has is a strategy a board can approve. The report cites the CFPB order's figure of 1,534,280 possibly unauthorised deposit accounts, opened by employees keeping their jobs. The Department of Justice and the SEC settled with the bank in February 2020 for USD 3 billion over conduct running from 2002 to 2016.\n\nVolkswagen shows what happens when a target cannot be reported as impossible. In January 2017 the company agreed to plead guilty to three felony counts and to pay USD 2.8 billion in criminal and USD 1.5 billion in civil penalties, with six executives indicted and an independent compliance monitor imposed for at least three years. The Department of Justice has published no finding on Volkswagen's culture, and the internal Jones Day report was never released. The claim that an engineering culture made the impossible target unreportable is commentary, and I mark it as such.\n\nThe fraud data points the same way when it is read carefully. In the ACFE's 2024 global study, the median occupational fraud loss was USD 145,000 and 43% of frauds were detected by tips, more than three times the next method, with 52% of those tips from employees. The most common control weakness was the absence of internal controls at 32%, ahead of override of existing controls at 19% and lack of management review at 18%. Poor tone at the top was named in 8% of cases and 19% of owner or executive frauds. Those numbers indict two things at once, controls that were missing and cultures in which people did not speak. Only the first is purchasable by resolution.\n\n<figure class=\"post-figure\"><img src=\"/storage/blog/culture-is-the-governance-you-actually-have/fig-control-weakness.png\" alt=\"Primary internal control weakness in 1,921 fraud cases, ACFE 2024: lack of internal controls 32%, override of existing controls 19%, lack of management review 18%, poor tone at the top 8% overall and 19% when the perpetrator is an owner or executive. Tips detected 43% of frauds, 52% of them from employees.\" loading=\"lazy\"></figure>\n\n## The governance strategy can build the culture that defeats it\n\nTightening governance changes culture. Popadak, who now publishes as Jillian Grennan, tracked firms as shareholder governance strengthened and found that they moved toward results orientation and away from customer focus, integrity and collaboration. Sales, profitability and payout improved first. Intangibles then deteriorated, and firm value declined 1.4% through what she calls the corporate culture channel. The governance reform was real, and so was the culture it produced.\n\n<figure class=\"post-figure\"><img src=\"/storage/blog/culture-is-the-governance-you-actually-have/fig-culture-channel.png\" alt=\"The corporate culture channel as a loop: shareholder governance tightens; results orientation rises while customer focus, integrity and collaboration fall; sales, profitability and payout improve first; intangibles then deteriorate and firm value falls 1.4%, which feeds back into the case for tighter governance. Popadak, working paper, 2014.\" loading=\"lazy\"></figure>\n\nThe same research prices culture in the other direction. Edmans, in the Journal of Financial Economics in 2011, found that a portfolio of the \"100 Best Companies to Work For\" earned an annual four-factor alpha of 3.5% from 1984 to 2009, and 2.1% above industry benchmarks. Sørensen, in Administrative Science Quarterly in 2002, found that strong cultures deliver reliable performance in stable environments and lose that advantage when the environment turns volatile. The culture that made a founder successful is the culture that resists the board when the market moves.\n\nFahlenbrach, Prilmeier and Stulz, in the Journal of Finance in 2012, found that a bank's 1998 stock performance predicted its 2007-08 performance and its probability of failure, and that the relationship survived a change of chief executive. The authors explain it as a persistent business model, with short-term funding, balance-sheet gearing and growth doing the work. Calling it risk culture is my gloss, and I flag it as one.\n\nWhat the literature cannot do is settle cause. Most of it is associational: survey measures of culture share a method with the performance they are tested against, and the case studies are selected on failure, so they say nothing about the base rate. The strongest designs, Fahlenbrach's persistence across a decade and the text-based measure Li, Mai, Shen and Yan built from 209,480 earnings-call transcripts, narrow the gap without closing it. Read the argument as strong evidence of mechanism, weak evidence of magnitude.\n\nThe executives themselves are not the obstacle. Graham, Grennan, Harvey and Rajgopal, in the Journal of Financial Economics in 2022, surveyed 1,348 North American executives: 92% agreed that improving culture would increase firm value, and 84% said their own company needed to improve its culture. Almost everyone believes culture is worth money, almost everyone believes theirs needs work, and almost nobody's board pack carries a measurement.\n\n## The boardroom has a culture too\n\nThe room at the top is a group, and groups carry cultures. Forbes and Milliken, in the Academy of Management Review in 1999, described boards as strategic decision-making groups whose output depends on three processes: effort norms, cognitive conflict, and the use of members' knowledge and skills. All three are cultural. A board that never tests the executive's number, or receives the pack too late to read it, has a low effort norm whatever its charter says.\n\nThe GCC Board Directors Institute's 2025 Board Effectiveness Review, drawn from 193 respondents and 14 interviews across the region, found that 67% of directors said all members actively participate and 63% said members were well prepared. The interviews qualified it: the role of the chair, or of a few influential voices, can shape outcomes disproportionately, and it is the chair's responsibility to empower all members. The same review found that only 32% of boards have a formal director lifecycle process. A board recruited through relationships carries the culture of those relationships.\n\nAnnette Bak Kirby put the paradox to me in writing the next morning: a board will not ask for development in an area it has not yet seen needs its attention, so the work of improving how a board talks to itself lives, in her phrase, in the blind angle of the boardroom. Boards that concede they are not using their collective potential still look for the remedy in governance and policy, when the larger uplift is the human shift inside the room. The Board Value Index published by Board Intelligence in June 2026, from more than 400 directors, chief executives and finance chiefs in the UK, US, Nordics and Middle East, gives the cost: 86% said board processes had contributed to a delayed, rushed or poor decision in the previous six months, and only 37% saw their board as essential to value creation. Neither figure is about a missing policy.\n\nThe Institute of Risk Management's risk culture guidance, which the board directorship programme behind this series puts in front of directors, closes with ten questions a board should ask itself. Two carry this article. How does the organisation respond to bad news? How does it reward appropriate risk-taking? Ask both in a boardroom and watch what happens before anyone answers, because the pause is the data.\n\n## The Saudi position\n\nSaudi regulation is not the constraint. The Capital Market Authority's Corporate Governance Regulations, renumbered by the January 2023 amendment, place the professional conduct policy in Article 83 and require the board to establish a policy for professional conduct and ethical values. Culture runs through the same text: the board must be aware of the culture of risk management, executive management must build a culture of ethical values, and the chairman must encourage constructive criticism (Articles 21, 25, 26 and 68). The Companies Law of 2022 supplies the machinery underneath. No article can require that the policy is believed.\n\nThe loyalty objection comes first in a family firm: that culture means loyalty, and that talk of culture is a way of diluting it. Loyalty and honesty upward are not competitors. The version of loyalty that treats bad news as betrayal is the one that costs a board its information, and the founder sets the price of the first piece of bad news ever brought to him.\n\nIn a founder-led firm the founder is the culture. A company trained for a decade to route around a board it did not have will route around the board it now has. The Saudi extrapolation is low confidence, stated once. The mechanism travels even where the measurement does not.\n\n## Sequence, not slogans\n\nMeasure the culture before redesigning the governance, not after. The instruments are unglamorous. An employee-perceived integrity measure, on the Guiso and colleagues design. The Financial Reporting Council's 2016 report, which holds that a healthy culture both protects and generates value and that boards should oversee strategy and culture together, setting, monitoring and being prepared to act. The IRM's ten questions. An exit-interview read. And the cheapest diagnostic of the lot: find out what happened to the last three people who carried bad news upward, and whether they were promoted, ignored or managed out. Then change the governance.\n\nI sit inside a listed-company framework and pay the full tax willingly. What I have learned is which part of it works. It is the part the culture had already agreed to. Everything else is a document until the room decides otherwise.\n\n## Sources\n\n- Schein, E. and Schein, P., *Organizational Culture and Leadership*, 5th ed., Wiley (Jossey-Bass), 2017, ch. 2; the labels \"espoused beliefs and values\" and \"basic underlying assumptions\". ISBN 978-1-119-21204-1.\n- Capital Market Authority (Saudi Arabia), *Corporate Governance Regulations*, issued by Resolution 8-16-2017 (13 February 2017), amended by Resolution 8-5-2023 (18 January 2023); Article 83 (professional conduct policy; Article 85 in the 2017 numbering), Articles 21, 25(13), 26 and 68(11). https://cma.gov.sa/en/RulesRegulations/Regulations/Documents/CorporateGovernanceRegulations1.pdf\n- Companies Law, Royal Decree M/132, 2022, and its Implementing Regulations.\n- Independent Directors of the Board of Wells Fargo & Company, *Sales Practices Investigation Report*, 10 April 2017; counsel Shearman & Sterling; 100 interviews and more than 35 million documents; CFPB order figure of 1,534,280 possibly unauthorised deposit accounts (fn 7). https://lowellmilkeninstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/WF-Board-Report.pdf\n- US House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure (Majority Staff), *Final Committee Report: The Design, Development & Certification of the Boeing 737 MAX*, September 2020, 238 pp.; Theme 3, \"Culture of Concealment\". https://democrats-transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2020.09.15%20FINAL%20737%20MAX%20Report%20for%20Public%20Release.pdf\n- Guiso, L., Sapienza, P. and Zingales, L., \"The value of corporate culture,\" *Journal of Financial Economics*, 117(1), 2015, pp. 60-76. DOI 10.1016/j.jfineco.2014.05.010.\n- US Department of Justice, \"Volkswagen AG Agrees to Plead Guilty and Pay $4.3 Billion in Criminal and Civil Penalties; Six Volkswagen Executives and Employees are Indicted,\" 11 January 2017; plea accepted 21 April 2017 (E.D. Mich. 16-CR-20394). USD 2.8bn criminal and USD 1.5bn civil; three felony counts; independent compliance monitor. https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/volkswagen-ag-agrees-plead-guilty-and-pay-43-billion-criminal-and-civil-penalties-six\n- ACFE, *Occupational Fraud 2024: A Report to the Nations*, released 20 March 2024; 1,921 cases, 138 countries. Median loss USD 145,000; 43% detected by tips; 52% of tips from employees; control weaknesses: lack of internal controls 32%, override of existing controls 19%, lack of management review 18%; poor tone at the top 8% overall and 19% for owner or executive fraud. https://www.acfe.com/-/media/files/acfe/pdfs/rttn/2024/2024-report-to-the-nations.pdf\n- Popadak, J. (now publishing as Jillian Grennan), \"A Corporate Culture Channel: How Increased Shareholder Governance Reduces Firm Value,\" working paper, Wharton; SSRN 2345384 (DOI 10.2139/ssrn.2345384); open PDF dated 15 January 2014. Unpublished. https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/documents/areas/fac/finance/Popadak_A%20Corporate%20Culture%20Channel_1.15.14.pdf\n- Edmans, A., \"Does the stock market fully value intangibles? Employee satisfaction and equity prices,\" *Journal of Financial Economics*, 101(3), 2011, pp. 621-640. DOI 10.1016/j.jfineco.2011.03.021.\n- Sørensen, J., \"The Strength of Corporate Culture and the Reliability of Firm Performance,\" *Administrative Science Quarterly*, 47(1), 2002, pp. 70-91. DOI 10.2307/3094891.\n- Fahlenbrach, R., Prilmeier, R. and Stulz, R., \"This Time Is the Same: Using Bank Performance in 1998 to Explain Bank Performance during the Recent Financial Crisis,\" *Journal of Finance*, 67(6), December 2012, pp. 2139-2185. DOI 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2012.01783.x.\n- Li, K., Mai, F., Shen, R. and Yan, X., \"Measuring Corporate Culture Using Machine Learning,\" *Review of Financial Studies*, 34(7), 2021, pp. 3265-3315. DOI 10.1093/rfs/hhaa079.\n- Graham, J., Grennan, J., Harvey, C. and Rajgopal, S., \"Corporate culture: Evidence from the field,\" *Journal of Financial Economics*, 146(2), November 2022, pp. 552-593. DOI 10.1016/j.jfineco.2022.07.008.\n- Forbes, D. and Milliken, F., \"Cognition and Corporate Governance: Understanding Boards of Directors as Strategic Decision-Making Groups,\" *Academy of Management Review*, 24(3), 1999, pp. 489-505. DOI 10.5465/amr.1999.2202133.\n- GCC Board Directors Institute with Heidrick & Struggles, *Board Effectiveness Review 2025* (9th ed.), November 2025, 49 pp.; 193 respondents and 14 interviews. https://gccbdi.org/sites/default/files/2025-11/GCC%20BDI%20Board%20Effectiveness%20Report%202025%20-%20ENG_LRes.pdf\n- Board Intelligence, *The Board Value Index*, Summer 2026 Global Edition, published 11 June 2026; more than 400 non-executive directors, CEOs and CFOs at companies over £50 million turnover in the UK, US, Nordics and Middle East. 86% report a delayed, rushed or poor decision in the past six months attributed to board processes; 37% see the board as essential to value creation. https://www.boardintelligence.com/board-value-index-report-global-summer-2026\n- Institute of Risk Management, *Risk Culture: Under the Microscope*, October 2012; the A-B-C model, the sociability and solidarity model, the eight aspects, and the ten questions a board should ask itself. https://www.theirm.org/media/4703/risk_culture_a5_web15_oct_2012.pdf\n- Financial Reporting Council, *Corporate Culture and the Role of Boards: Report of Observations*, July 2016, 66 pp. https://media.frc.org.uk/documents/Corporate_Culture_and_the_Role_of_Boards_Report_of_Observations_interactive_PDF.pdf",
      "image": "https://nkilany.com/storage/blog/culture-is-the-governance-you-actually-have/hero-04-bad-news-corridor.jpg",
      "date_published": "2026-09-17T10:00:00.000Z",
      "date_modified": "2026-09-17T10:00:00.000Z",
      "tags": [
        "governance",
        "leadership"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://nkilany.com/blog/five-days-inside-chinas-robot-economy",
      "url": "https://nkilany.com/blog/five-days-inside-chinas-robot-economy",
      "title": "Five Days Inside China's Robot Economy",
      "summary": "Chinese makers shipped about 97 per cent of the world's humanoids in the first half of 2026. Five days at the World Robot Conference in Beijing, walked as a distributor rather than a technologist: which numbers hold up, what wears out, and which sectors a Gulf buyer can model today.",
      "content_html": "*The author attended the World Robot Conference 2026 as a private sector delegate on the Artificial Intelligence Association's national capability-building programme for physical AI. Views are his own.*\n\nOn the morning the World Robot Conference opened in Beijing, Unitree Robotics listed on Shanghai's STAR Market. By the close its shares had risen roughly 460 per cent, valuing a company that sells a $1,600 robot dog at about $50 billion. It had touched $66 billion at the opening bell and given a third of that back before the session ended. A few kilometres away, in the exhibition halls of Yizhuang, its humanoids were boxing in front of a crowd ten rows deep. I was in that crowd.\n\nI went as a private sector delegate, which is a particular way of walking a hall. I spend my working life pricing and distributing physical product into the Gulf. I was there to work out what any of it costs to own.\n\nThe number everyone repeated was that Chinese makers accounted for about 97 per cent of global humanoid shipments in the first half of 2026. That comes from Smart Analytics Global, is corroborated by ABI Research on a different measure, and is probably right. The number announced at the conference, that China alone shipped more than 40,000 humanoids in the same period, is probably not. Independent trackers put the entire global market at 19,000 to 22,000 units, and Counterpoint's vendor-level count of the five largest Chinese makers reaches under 20,000. Morgan Stanley's full-year forecast for China is 50,000, up from 28,000 in January, its second upgrade of the year. For 40,000 to be a half-year figure, shipments would have to collapse in the second half of a boom. I wrote the 97 per cent down. I left the 40,000 where I found it.\n\n## The show behind the show\n\nThe demonstrations are what travel on social media: robots boxing, dancing, playing table tennis, taking penalty kicks against schoolchildren. They are real and they are fun. They are also the least interesting thing in the building.\n\nThe story is that the industry has moved from proving robots can move to proving robots can work, and that the machines winning that argument are the plainest ones in the hall. In August, X Square Robot ran a livestream in which a six-axis arm station driven by its WALL-B model sorted 1,816 parcels an hour at better than 98 per cent accuracy. The mark it was aimed at was the 1,248 an hour that Figure AI's bipedal Figure 03 averaged across a 200-hour run at its California headquarters in May. These are not the same test, and both figures come from the companies that benefit from them. The argument survives anyway, and X Square's Yang Li put it to the South China Morning Post at the conference: if wheels get the job done, why pay for legs? Buyers walking the halls this year asked about payload, uptime and price per task. Not backflips.\n\nThat scepticism had a written counterpart. HSBC told clients in July that the shipment surge \"could be illusionary\", and that without a significant improvement in robot makers' AI models the current upcycle is unlikely to hold for another one to two years.\n\n<figure class=\"post-figure\"><img src=\"/storage/blog/five-days-inside-chinas-robot-economy/02-expo-booth-meeting.jpg\" alt=\"The delegation seated at a round table inside an exhibition booth, in conversation with a company representative.\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption>A working meeting on the exhibition floor: Longwood Valley's ROPA6 orthopaedic surgical robot platform.</figcaption></figure>\n\nThe order books are real, but older and narrower than the conference mood implied. UBTECH disclosed in November 2025 that its Walker series had accumulated more than 800 million yuan in orders, with BYD, Geely, Dongfeng Liuzhou and Foxconn among the customers. Galbot won a 236 million yuan procurement in June, the largest disclosed embodied-AI order in China this year, from a Yibin state-owned energy joint venture rather than from a carmaker, and separately has had its S1 working CATL's production lines at Ningde since March. The sector has crossed from slideware into invoices. Volume is the next crossing, and it comes later.\n\n## Inside the factories\n\nAt the Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics, known as X-Humanoid, we walked the line where humanoid robots are developed, assembled and tested. This is the institution whose Tiangong platform runs on state backing from Beijing's municipal government and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Watching engineers tune a torso in a harness, a metre away, strips the mystique off the product category. It is manufacturing. Precise, repetitive, auditable manufacturing.\n\nThe presentation was about the company and its products, and I asked the technical lead directly what wears out. The joints. They take most of the beating, and they are the part that needs replacing.\n\n<figure class=\"post-figure\"><img src=\"/storage/blog/five-days-inside-chinas-robot-economy/03-humanoid-assembly-bench.jpg\" alt=\"Four engineers crouched at workbenches, working on the legs of humanoid robots suspended in overhead harnesses.\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption>Engineers at the assembly benches, 21 August.</figcaption></figure>\n\nAt Leju Robotics we saw something I had not fully appreciated before the trip: a data training centre, more than 10,000 square metres and the largest of its kind in China, where fleets of humanoids rehearse household and industrial tasks across sixteen built scenarios, from a car assembly line to an elder-care room. One robot generates roughly four hours of training data a day. The robots are both the product and the instrument that improves the product. Whoever owns the training data compounds.\n\nWe also sat with institutions most trade visitors never see: the Beijing Institute of Artificial Intelligence at Beijing University of Technology, the Beijing Arbitration Commission, which also sits as the Beijing International Arbitration Court and hears technology disputes, the China Society of Automotive Engineers, and the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence. A pattern held across every meeting. Cities and provinces now run more than a dozen government-backed embodied-AI innovation centres, two of them designated national-local joint centres in Beijing and Shanghai. Precision reducers, the harmonic drives and RV gearboxes that Japan's Harmonic Drive Systems and Nabtesco once controlled, are now majority-supplied domestically: Chinese makers took about 61 per cent of China's RV reducer market by unit in 2024, against 42 per cent in 2022. The state is building an ecosystem, layer by layer.\n\n## The Kingdom on the programme\n\nTwo papers by Saudi women researchers were presented at the WRC Symposium on Advanced Robotics and Automation, the conference's IEEE-indexed academic programme, one on a multi-agent service robot for live events, one on a trustworthy government-services robot. A Saudi chief executive spoke on the conference panel about cross-border compliance for robotics companies going global. Our delegation met the Saudi Cultural Attaché in Beijing to connect the Kingdom's training pipeline to Chinese institutions.\n\n<figure class=\"post-figure\"><img src=\"/storage/blog/five-days-inside-chinas-robot-economy/04-bigai-delegation.jpg\" alt=\"A large group photograph of the delegation and their hosts in front of an institute sign in Beijing.\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption>The delegation with their hosts at the Beijing institute visit, 20 August.</figcaption></figure>\n\nThe Kingdom's AI story is usually told as procurement: what we buy, what we host. In Beijing I watched it told as participation: what we present, whom we train, where we sit on the panel.\n\n## What I brought home\n\nAsked what I made of the conference, I reflected a bit and said the focus here is on humanoids, which I feel are not ready for full industrial deployment. I said it may require five years. I said the sectors that are commercially viable are hospitality, health care and logistics.\n\nI am impressed with the humanoid robots' balance and their ability to walk and do some action sequences. But the delay in reaction, the slowness in performing some tasks, and the amount of training still required to become autonomous is large.\n\nThree conclusions, held with different confidence.\n\nFirst, and I hold this one firmly, the commercially viable sectors are hospitality, health care and logistics, and most of what serves them is not humanoid. Hospitality means hotel, cleaning and service robots. Health care means robotic arms. Logistics means a mix, and I do not know how much of that mix is humanoid yet; I will leave that to the industry's proven numbers. These have reference customers, spare-parts networks and unit economics a distributor can model.\n\nThe humanoid layer is not there. Five years is my own estimate for full industrial deployment, and it is a judgement rather than a forecast anyone handed me.\n\nSecond, held loosely, the window for Gulf partnerships is narrower than it looks from here. Chinese vendors are appointing regional channels now, while the GCC precedents are thinner than the headlines suggest: one humanoid showroom in Riyadh, opened last November, and construction-robotics ventures committed at NEOM that have yet to put a robot to work. Being first into a channel and being third are different businesses, and I have an interest in saying so.\n\nThird, capability transfer beats product import. The most valuable thing China showed us was the machinery around the robot: the innovation centres, the data-training floors, the component localisation, the dispute-resolution infrastructure.\n\nI flew back to Riyadh with one image that stays with me: a hall of half-built humanoids hanging in their harnesses, patient as suits on a rack, waiting for software. The hardware race is being won in front of everyone. The software race is still open.\n\n<figure class=\"post-figure\"><img src=\"/storage/blog/five-days-inside-chinas-robot-economy/05-harness-hall.jpg\" alt=\"The delegation on a marked walkway in a large test hall, flanked by rows of white humanoid robots suspended from overhead gantries.\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption>Humanoids waiting in their harnesses on the test floor, 21 August.</figcaption></figure>\n\n---\n\n*Selected sources: WRC 2026 closing statistics from the organiser's release, 24 Aug 2026 (organiser figures). Unitree listing: SCMP, Bloomberg and TechNode, 19 Aug 2026; TechTimes, 21 Aug 2026. Shipment share: Smart Analytics Global via Bloomberg, 10 Aug 2026; Counterpoint Research, 19 Aug 2026. China half-year shipment claim: China Humanoid Robotics and Embodied Intelligence Committee of 100, released at the conference, 20 Aug 2026. Morgan Stanley forecast: SCMP and CNBC, 24 Jun 2026. HSBC note quoted in Fortune, 19 Aug 2026. Parcel sorting: X Square Robot company release, 13 Aug 2026; Figure AI run reported 25 May 2026; SCMP, 23 Aug 2026. UBTECH company release, 17 Nov 2025. Galbot procurement award reported 29 Jun 2026; CATL company announcement, Jun 2026. Precision reducer share: Chyxx industry research, 2025. Conference analysis: KrASIA, 24 Aug 2026.*\n\n*Nabil Al-Kilany is Chief Business Development Officer of MHG Trading, listed on Tadawul and trading as Buildstation. He has spent twenty-five years distributing building materials across the Gulf, Spain, China and Türkiye, which is the seat he was sitting in when he wrote this.*\n\n---",
      "image": "https://nkilany.com/storage/blog/five-days-inside-chinas-robot-economy/01-hero-wrc-stage.jpg",
      "date_published": "2026-09-03T07:04:30.000Z",
      "date_modified": "2026-09-03T07:04:30.000Z",
      "tags": [
        "ai",
        "business-strategy"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://nkilany.com/blog/the-board-seat-is-regulated",
      "url": "https://nkilany.com/blog/the-board-seat-is-regulated",
      "title": "The board seat is regulated. The mandate is not.",
      "summary": "Saudi Arabia made family charters binding in 2023 and sets a searching test for who may sit as an independent director. Adoption is the visible gap. Whose judgement that director feels he owes is the real one.",
      "content_html": "Saudi Arabia made family charters legally binding in January 2023. About three quarters of Saudi family businesses still do not have one. That reads as an adoption gap, and it is the wrong thing to be counting.\n\nOnly 30% of family businesses worldwide have a family constitution, on PwC's twelfth global survey, so the Saudi quarter is a lag rather than an aberration. The Saudi figures come from INSEAD and the chief executive of the National Center for Family Businesses, published in November 2025: roughly three quarters without a charter, 59% without a succession plan. Those documents are a symptom. The cause sits one level below them.\n\nThe sector is large enough that this matters to the whole private economy. Around 95% of operating enterprises in the Kingdom, some 633,000 firms, are family businesses, and they employ nearly half the country's workforce. Estimates of their contribution to output range from about 27% of GDP to roughly a third, depending on which National Center figure you take and against which denominator. The lowest reading is enough.\n\nTwo regimes govern these firms. For Main Market issuers, independence is compulsory. On Nomu, where many recently listed family businesses sit, the same provisions are merely guiding, and for the unlisted majority nothing applies at all.\n\n## The architecture is already built\n\nIn May 2018 the Ministry of Commerce and Investment issued a Guiding Charter for Saudi family companies under Ministerial Decision 42241/1439H. It sets out four tiers of authority: the general assembly, the family council, the board and executive management. Three of its provisions matter more than the rest of the document combined. Article 18 bars a family council member from also sitting on the board or the executive team. The chief executive may not serve as chairman or vice-chairman, under Article 37. And Article 31 says the board \"exercises its work with independence, particularly from the family.\"\n\nFour years later, Article 11 of the Companies Law, issued by Royal Decree M/132 and in force from 19 January 2023, made the family charter enforceable. Read the two halves of it together. Paragraph 2 says a family charter \"shall be binding\" and may be written into the articles of association. Paragraph 1 says shareholders \"may\" conclude one. It can govern ownership, management, employment of relatives, dividend policy, the disposal of shares and the settlement of disputes, and it can do none of those things unless a family chooses to write it.\n\nFor Main Market issuers the Capital Market Authority goes further. Article 16(3) of the Corporate Governance Regulations requires independent directors at no fewer than two members or one third of the board, whichever is greater. That provision is mandatory, not guiding.\n\nSo the scaffolding is built. What it does not include, and probably cannot, is the part that determines whether any of it operates.\n\n## Boards exist. The question is whose judgement they answer to.\n\nThe assumption that Gulf family firms lack boards is wrong. The GCC Board Directors Institute's Board Effectiveness Review 2025, published in November 2025, found that 91% of respondents agree boards should concentrate on policy and strategy, leaving day-to-day operations to management. It then found that \"many boards still struggle to separate governance from management, which can frustrate executives and diminish the board's influence.\" Only 32% said their boards have a formal selection, induction, review, development and deselection process. Board composition \"remains largely relationship-driven, with added challenges in family businesses,\" shaped by family ties, personal relationships and former executive relationships. Overboarding is \"especially prominent within family-controlled or unlisted companies.\" And 67% reported no formal succession plan for executive and critical organisational roles.\n\nThat is a self-selected survey of 193 members and contacts of a director-training institute, with no sampling frame and no stated margin of error, so the percentages describe the people who answered, not the Gulf board universe. Of those respondents, 52% sit on at least one Saudi-domiciled board and 30% on at least one non-listed family business. Read that way it cuts harder, not softer: this is the governance-conscious end of the market, and even here nine in ten know what a board is for and most cannot hold the line.\n\n<figure class=\"post-figure\"><img src=\"/storage/blog/board-seat-and-mandate/fig-knowing-vs-doing.png\" alt=\"Nine in ten agree the board should stay out of day-to-day operations. A third have a formal process for selecting directors, and a third have a formal succession plan.\" loading=\"lazy\"></figure>\n\nThe reason is visible in the CMA's own text. Article 19(c) sets out, \"by way of example,\" what negates a director's independence. A shareholding of 5% or more. Kinship with such a holder, with another director or with a senior executive. Employment by the company within the past two years. Payments beyond board remuneration above SAR 200,000, or half the prior year's remuneration, whichever is less. Service of more than nine years. It is a searching test of who a director is. It says nothing about whose judgement he will feel he owes.\n\nSaudi law is not silent on election. Cumulative voting has been mandatory for Main Market boards since 2016, under Article 5(a) of the CMA's Implementing Regulation of the Companies Law, and it lets a shareholder concentrate every vote on a single nominee. On a nine-seat board a coordinated 30% minority has the arithmetic to seat three directors. The machinery exists.\n\nIt is rarely decisive, for reasons that are structural rather than legal. Cumulative voting pays only when minorities coordinate, and a dispersed retail float facing one family block generally does not. The nomination committee that screens candidates is appointed by a board the controller elected. And nothing in Article 19 disqualifies a director because the controlling family proposed him, campaigned for him and can decline to renominate him at the end of his term.\n\nComposition, meanwhile, is not where the deficit lies. PwC's 2023 Middle East survey found 28% of boards are family only, against 36% globally; 45% seat no director under 40, against 57%; and 19% seat no director from a different industry, against 26%. The region outperforms the global average on all three. It underperforms badly on one: 59% have no women on the board, against 31% globally. The Middle East sub-sample is small, so read all of it directionally.\n\n<figure class=\"post-figure\"><img src=\"/storage/blog/board-seat-and-mandate/fig-me-vs-global-boards.png\" alt=\"Middle East family-business boards against the global average on four measures. The region is ahead on family-only boards, directors under 40 and outside-industry directors, and far behind on women directors.\" loading=\"lazy\"></figure>\n\nThe one measurement that speaks to role separation directly is now fourteen years old. In 2012 Pearl Initiative and PwC interviewed 106 GCC family firms, 40% of them Saudi. About half had defined the boundaries between family, board and management. Only 20% had implemented those definitions in full, and 48% in part. Family members held senior executive positions in 85% of them. No published survey since has repeated that specific measurement.\n\n## What the gap costs\n\nSuccession has a price and it has been estimated cleanly. Bennedsen, Nielsen, Pérez-González and Wolfenzon instrumented family-CEO succession with the gender of the departing chief executive's firstborn child, and found in Danish administrative data that \"operating profitability on assets falls by at least four percentage points around CEO transitions.\" The underperformance was largest in fast-growing industries, industries with a highly skilled labour force and relatively large firms. Those are the industries Vision 2030 is built to create. Set that against a Saudi cohort in which, on the National Center's figures, 23% of founders are past 55 and most have no plan. That last figure appears only in the INSEAD piece and carries no source there.\n\nBloom and Van Reenen reach the same place from management practice rather than profitability: across 732 medium-sized manufacturers in four countries, family ownership is associated with better management than comparable non-family firms, a family chief executive is roughly neutral, and choosing that chief executive by primogeniture costs about four-tenths of a standard deviation on their index. Ownership is not the problem. Inherited operational control is.\n\nThe equity market says it too. Villalonga and Amit found the family premium is a founder premium: with controls and a selection correction, a founder chief executive adds 1.16 to Tobin's q, while a descendant chief executive subtracts 0.23. The authors attribute the descendant discount entirely to second-generation firms, which is precisely the handover now queued across the Kingdom.\n\nCapital is the second cost. When the Capital Market Authority and Tadawul signalled measures in July 2020 to encourage family companies to convert and list, chairman Mohammed El-Kuwaiz was reported as saying that 30% of family businesses avoid a public offering for fear of losing control. The figure is unsourced, so treat it as a regulator's impression. As an impression from that seat it is still worth having, because the obstacle he named was control, not disclosure.\n\n## What it costs the minority\n\nFor an outside shareholder the abstraction becomes cash, and here the Saudi evidence is real but contested. Alsultan and Hussainey studied 91 non-financial Saudi listed firms across 429 firm-year observations with firm fixed effects and found related-party transactions negatively associated with earnings quality. On dividends the picture is unsettled. An unpublished 2023 doctoral thesis at the University of New England, covering 88 Saudi listed firms from 2010 to 2018, reported family ownership positively related to dividends but family occupation of the chief executive's seat significantly negatively related, which its author reads as entrenchment. A larger published study, Boshnak on 280 Saudi listed firms from 2016 to 2019, finds family ownership has no significant effect on dividend payout at all.\n\nThe disclosure architecture is easier to state. CMA Article 41(6) requires a Main Market company to notify the Authority and the public without delay of a related-party contract only where it equals or exceeds 1% of total revenues. For a SAR 10bn issuer a SAR 99m contract sits below that trigger, and a pattern of them sits below it indefinitely. Those contracts still surface in the annual related-party note. They simply never arrive as news.\n\nA third cost appears only when someone wants out. Article 11 permits a charter to govern the disposal of shares, and in Gulf family groups the absence of a priced, pre-agreed exit is a common trigger of open conflict. Majid Al Futtaim is the current illustration. The founder died in December 2021 leaving ten heirs. In February 2022 Dubai's ruler appointed a special judicial committee to adjudicate disputes over the estate. In June 2025 that committee named a nine-member board at the group's parent, Majid Al Futtaim Capital: four family members and five outsiders. The *Financial Times* called the five government representatives; S&P called them independent or non-executive. Majid Al Futtaim Holding, the operating group, is rated BBB by S&P and Fitch, is a repeat international sukuk issuer, and says its own operations and governance are unaffected. It had professionalised its management and its board. The exposure was at the ownership-transfer layer, which no amount of executive quality reaches.\n\n## What separation is worth\n\nThe argument is usually made as an obligation. It is better made as a price.\n\nBlack, Jang and Kim studied 515 Korean listed firms, using the country's 2 trillion won asset threshold as an instrument in a regression-discontinuity design. Moving from worst to best on their governance index predicts a 0.47 higher Tobin's q, which they translate as roughly a 160% higher share price. Holding the rest of that index constant, firms with 50% outside directors carried 0.13 higher q, in the authors' own words \"roughly 40% higher share price.\" Korea is a closer comparator for Saudi Arabia than any Anglo-American market: concentrated ownership, family-controlled groups, a fast-institutionalising regulator, and a mandatory-independence rule structurally similar to Article 16(3).\n\nKlapper and Love add the part that matters most here. Firm-level governance is associated with operating performance and market valuation across emerging markets, and it matters more where the legal environment is weaker, because firms \"can partially compensate for ineffective laws and enforcement by establishing good corporate governance.\" They also find that observed governance levels are themselves lower in weak-law countries. The opportunity and the difficulty arrive together.\n\n## The honest counter-argument\n\nTwo objections are serious. The first is Saudi and recent. Alobaid covered 145 non-financial Tadawul-listed firms across 828 firm-year observations and found family ownership positively associated with both return on assets and return on equity. Family control in this market is not underperforming. The same paper finds that board independence strengthens the relationship, and recommends that regulators prioritise independent directors in family-dominated companies. Alobaid is making this argument, not refuting it. And ROA and ROE are accounting measures, in a market where related-party transactions are separately shown to degrade the earnings quality those measures are built from.\n\nThe second objection is the stronger one, and it comes from the governance literature itself. Duchin, Matsusaka and Ozbas used regulatory mandates as a natural experiment and found that when the cost of acquiring information about a firm is low, performance improves as outsiders are added to the board, and when that cost is high, performance worsens. An unlisted, multi-line Gulf group with no analyst coverage, no segment reporting and forty years of undocumented relationships is close to the highest-information-cost firm there is. Seating independent directors in a company that cannot inform them is theatre, and expensive theatre. Their sample is US firms subject to exchange and Sarbanes-Oxley mandates, so applying it to Saudi Arabia is my inference and not theirs. It should still change the sequencing: build the reporting before you build the board.\n\n## The extreme case\n\nAhmad Hamad Algosaibi and Brothers remains the reference point, though not for the reason usually given. More than SAR 44bn in claims were filed against the partnership. About SAR 27.5bn were ultimately approved, and in September 2021 the Commercial Court in Dammam ratified a restructuring under the 2018 Bankruptcy Law that returned creditors roughly a quarter of what they were owed. It took twelve years and litigation in courts on three continents.\n\nThe merits are not open. AHAB sued Maan Al-Sanea in the Cayman Islands alleging a multibillion-dollar fraud. The Grand Court dismissed those claims in 2018 and the Court of Appeal upheld the dismissal in December 2021, finding that the AHAB partners had themselves known of and authorised the borrowing at the heart of the case. Whatever else that record establishes, it does not describe a family unable to see inside its own enterprise. It describes an enterprise in which ownership, management and oversight had collapsed into the same set of hands, so that nobody stood outside the arrangement with either the standing or the information to stop it.\n\n## Three questions\n\nCan the board dismiss the chief executive without first convening the family? Does any serving board member also sit on the family council? And is there a pre-agreed mechanism for transferring shares, priced and triggered before anyone needs it?\n\nSaudi Arabia wrote the answers to the first two into ministerial guidance in 2018 and made them enforceable in 2023. The third it left to the parties, and Majid Al Futtaim shows what that costs. The state has settled who may sit on a board and how the vote is counted. It cannot settle whose judgement a director will feel he owes, and until a family settles that for itself, everything else is documentation.\n\n## Sources and notes\n\n**On the sector's contribution to GDP.** The National Center for Family Businesses has published two figures on two denominators: about 27% of GDP, in figures released through INSEAD in November 2025, and 66% of private-sector GDP, a figure it first gave in January 2021 and was still using in July 2024. At the 51% private-sector share reported in the Vision 2030 Annual Report 2025, the second implies roughly 34% of the total. The two do not reconcile. The Center's own count of family businesses has also moved from 63% of private-sector entities in 2021 to 95% of operating establishments in 2024 without published explanation. The article takes the lowest available reading.\n\n**On the Saudi figures generally.** The INSEAD piece co-authored by the National Center's chief executive carries no source, footnote, sample size or methodology for any of its Saudi statistics, including the 95%, the 633,000, the 59% and the 23%.\n\n**On the El-Kuwaiz remark.** Single-sourced to an Asharq Al-Awsat report of 26 July 2020, syndicated via Al Bawaba; the original is no longer retrievable and no corroborating report was found. It is a reporter's indirect paraphrase, not quoted speech, and the 30% figure carries no underlying survey.\n\n**On scope.** CMA Corporate Governance Regulations Articles 16, 19 and 41 are mandatory for Main Market issuers. For Nomu, only Articles 13(c), 50(b), 51(a), 52, 56 and 88 are mandatory; the rest are guiding.\n\n- PwC, 12th Global Family Business Survey, October 2025. <https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/assets/pwcs-12th-family-business-survey.pdf>\n- Spina, C. and Almubarak, A., \"Saudi Arabia Tackles the 'Succession Decades',\" INSEAD Knowledge, 3 November 2025. <https://knowledge.insead.edu/family-business/saudi-arabia-tackles-succession-decades>\n- Vision 2030 Annual Report 2025, published 25 April 2026. <https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/media/ecdjfopq/vision2030_annual_report_2025_en.pdf>\n- National Center for Family Businesses, 66% of private-sector GDP: Argaam, 26 January 2021. <https://www.argaam.com/en/article/articledetail/id/1438358>\n- Ministry of Commerce and Investment, Guiding Charter for Saudi Family Companies, Ministerial Decision 42241/1439H, May 2018. Articles 18, 31 and 37, as published by Okaz, 18 May 2018. <https://www.okaz.com.sa/economy/na/1642168>\n- Companies Law, Royal Decree M/132, Article 11, in force 19 January 2023. <https://misa.gov.sa/app/uploads/2025/07/Companies-Law.pdf>\n- CMA Corporate Governance Regulations, Articles 2, 16(3), 19(c) and 41(6). <https://cma.gov.sa/en/RulesRegulations/Regulations/Documents/CorporateGovernanceRegulations1.pdf>\n- CMA Implementing Regulation of the Companies Law for Listed Joint Stock Companies, Article 5(a), mandatory cumulative voting. <https://cma.gov.sa/en/RulesRegulations/Regulations/Documents/Implementing_Regulation_of_the_Companies_Law_for_Listed_Joint_Stock_Companies_en2026.pdf>\n- GCC Board Directors Institute, Board Effectiveness Review 2025, November 2025. Self-selected survey, 193 respondents plus 14 interviews; no sampling frame or margin of error stated. <https://gccbdi.org/sites/default/files/2025-11/GCC%20BDI%20Board%20Effectiveness%20Report%202025%20-%20ENG_LRes.pdf>\n- PwC Middle East, Family Business Survey 2023. Middle East base disclosed at n=46. <https://www.pwc.com/m1/en/publications/documents/family-business-survey-2023.pdf>\n- Pearl Initiative and PwC, \"Family Matters: Governance Practices in GCC Family Firms,\" 2012. 106 interviews, 40% Saudi. <https://www.pwc.com/m1/en/publications/documents/pipwc-report.pdf>\n- Bennedsen, M., Nielsen, K., Pérez-González, F. and Wolfenzon, D., \"Inside the Family Firm: The Role of Families in Succession Decisions and Performance,\" *Quarterly Journal of Economics*, 122(2), 2007, pp. 647–691. <https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/122/2/647/1942108>\n- Bloom, N. and Van Reenen, J., \"Measuring and Explaining Management Practices Across Firms and Countries,\" *Quarterly Journal of Economics*, 122(4), November 2007, pp. 1351–1408. Table V, column (5): family ownership +0.138, family CEO −0.010, primogeniture −0.410, as nested increments on a standardised index against an omitted non-family baseline. <https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/122/4/1351/1850493>\n- Villalonga, B. and Amit, R., \"How do family ownership, control and management affect firm value?\", *Journal of Financial Economics*, 80(2), 2006, pp. 385–417. Regression estimates, Table 6 Panel B. <https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~bvillalo/VillalongaAmit_JFE2006.pdf>\n- Alsultan, A. and Hussainey, K., \"The Moderating Effect of Ownership Structure on the Relationship between Related Party Transactions and Earnings Quality: Evidence from Saudi Arabia,\" *International Journal of Financial Studies*, 12(3):58, 2024. <https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7072/12/3/58>\n- Alharbi, A.S.H., \"Corporate Governance and Financial Policies of Family Businesses Listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul),\" doctoral thesis, University of New England, 2023. Full text under embargo. <https://rune.une.edu.au/web/handle/1959.11/55625>\n- Boshnak, H.A., \"The impact of board composition and ownership structure on dividend payout policy: evidence from Saudi Arabia,\" *International Journal of Emerging Markets*, 18(9), 2023, pp. 3178–3200. <https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ijoem-05-2021-0791/full/html>\n- Majid Al Futtaim: The National, 14 February 2022; Associated Press and *Financial Times*, 9 June 2025; S&P Global RatingsDirect on Majid Al Futtaim Holding LLC, 20 January 2026. <https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/economy/2022/02/14/maf-says-business-as-usual-as-dubai-committee-looks-into-inheritance-matters/>\n- Black, B., Jang, H. and Kim, W., \"Does Corporate Governance Predict Firms' Market Values? Evidence from Korea,\" *Journal of Law, Economics and Organization*, 22(2), 2006, pp. 366–413. <https://www.ecgi.global/sites/default/files/working_papers/documents/finalblackjangkim.pdf>\n- Klapper, L. and Love, I., \"Corporate Governance, Investor Protection and Performance in Emerging Markets,\" *Journal of Corporate Finance*, 10(5), 2004, pp. 703–728; World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 2818, 2002. <https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/9850f480-44f2-5137-a073-c36c990fe95e/full>\n- Alobaid, R., \"Family ownership, board independence, and firm performance: evidence from Saudi stock market,\" *Future Business Journal*, 11:267, November 2025. <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s43093-025-00689-2>\n- Duchin, R., Matsusaka, J. and Ozbas, O., \"When are outside directors effective?\", *Journal of Financial Economics*, 96(2), 2010, pp. 195–214. <https://econpapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:96:y:2010:i:2:p:195-214>\n- Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi and Brothers: Arab News, January 2020 and September 2021; The National, 8 September 2021; Cayman Islands Court of Appeal judgment, 21 December 2021. <https://www.arabnews.com/node/1607626/business-economy> · <https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/economy/2021/09/08/saudi-arabias-ahab-settles-12-year-debt-dispute/>",
      "image": "https://nkilany.com/storage/blog/board-seat-and-mandate/hero-governance-boardroom.jpg",
      "date_published": "2026-08-07T11:06:57.000Z",
      "date_modified": "2026-08-07T11:06:57.000Z",
      "tags": [
        "governance",
        "business-strategy"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://nkilany.com/blog/the-devil-you-know",
      "url": "https://nkilany.com/blog/the-devil-you-know",
      "title": "The devil you know",
      "summary": "A family firm judges the insider on a decade of supervised work and the outsider on a résumé. The selection research says the visible half of that comparison is the part that predicts least.",
      "content_html": "Small and medium enterprises contributed 22.9% of Saudi GDP in 2024, the most recent reading in the Vision 2030 Annual Report published in April 2026, against a 2030 target of 35%. Closing twelve points in four years is a management-capability problem before it is a finance or regulation problem, and capability resolves, more often than owners admit, into a single recurring decision: who gets to run the business next.\n\nThe pattern runs like this. The family knows every weakness of the general manager who has been with them eleven years, because they have watched him execute their instructions and seen where he falters. They know nothing of the candidate the search firm has produced, whose weaknesses sit behind a résumé, a list of achievements and a well-run second interview. They hire the stranger. When it does not work, the episode gets filed as proof that nobody outside the family can run the place.\n\nWhat follows is a mechanism, not a measured Saudi phenomenon. The evidence is American, British and European, and nobody has counted the Saudi case.\n\n## The comparison is rigged before it starts\n\nWhen authority is never delegated, nobody inside the company accumulates a record of independent judgement. The people around the owner are observed executing decisions rather than making them, so what he learns about them over a decade is the shape of their limitations under supervision. He has never seen any of them carry a decision alone, because he has never given one away. The insider is judged on a full record of constrained performance and the outsider on a partial record of unconstrained claims.\n\nThe visible half of that comparison is the part that predicts least. In the most recent major revision of the selection literature, published by Sackett, Zhang, Berry and Lievens in the *Journal of Applied Psychology* in 2022, the operational validity of years of job experience for predicting job performance is .07. The unstructured interview is .19. Schmidt and Hunter's older estimate for years of education, which Sackett and colleagues did not revisit, is .10. At .07, years of experience account for about half of one per cent of the variance in how somebody performs.\n\nThe signals that do work are largely the ones these firms do not use. Structured interviews sit at .42, the strongest predictor in the updated table. Job knowledge tests reach .40, empirically keyed biodata .38, work samples .33. Only the first of those is cheap. Job knowledge tests and work samples need job analysis and content development, and empirically keyed biodata needs a criterion sample most family firms will never have. A structured interview a small company can build in an afternoon.\n\n<figure class=\"post-figure\"><img src=\"/storage/blog/the-devil-you-know/fig-selection-validity.png\" alt=\"Operational validity for predicting job performance. Structured interview .42, job knowledge test .40, biodata .38, work sample .33, unstructured interview .19, years of education .10, years of job experience .07.\" loading=\"lazy\"></figure>\n\n## The stranger then underperforms, and the family draws the wrong lesson\n\nMatthew Bidwell examined seven years of personnel records from the US investment banking arm of one financial services company and published the result in *Administrative Science Quarterly* in 2011. External hires were paid roughly 18% more than people promoted into the same jobs, performed significantly worse for their first two years, and left at higher rates, voluntarily and involuntarily. The people they beat had less education and less experience. They were also promoted faster once inside.\n\nThat is one firm in one industry in one country, and the magnitudes should not be moved to Saudi Arabia. The mechanism can be. Firms that observe their own people accurately learn things about them that no external record conveys, and they pay a premium when they buy from outside that knowledge.\n\nNote the awkward corollary. Bidwell's advantage exists only where the firm is genuinely observing. A company that measures nothing has nothing to weigh against the CV, so the outsider wins on paper by default. That is my inference from his finding, not a result he tests.\n\nThen the loop closes. The expensive chief executive underperforms, departs, and the failure gets read as evidence about the market for talent rather than about the firm. Authority moves back inward. The pipeline that was never built is cited as proof that building one would be futile.\n\n<figure class=\"post-figure\"><img src=\"/storage/blog/the-devil-you-know/fig-the-loop.png\" alt=\"The loop that keeps authority inside the family: authority is never delegated, so no insider builds a record of independent judgement, so the outsider looks better on paper and costs 18% more, and then performs worse for two years before leaving, which is read as proof that nobody outside the family can run the business.\" loading=\"lazy\"></figure>\n\n## The machinery for producing a promotable insider is thin\n\nTen per cent of the GCC family firms surveyed by the Pearl Initiative and PwC in 2012 had the head of human resources represented on the board, against 27% for the chief financial officer. The function that would build a pipeline sits below the finance function in board access.\n\nThe same survey asked what mechanisms these firms use to manage the moment of succession. Eighteen per cent named a performance appraisal process, against 32% of family firms globally. On entry and exit provisions the split was 12% to 28%. On provision for an impartial third-party mediator, 9% to 24%. That is a measure of succession governance, not of whether these firms appraise their workforces, and it should not be read as the latter. Whether the underlying appraisal machinery exists is a gap in the evidence.\n\nThe state has moved into the space regardless. The Human Resources Development Fund, in a statement of February 2026, put its 2025 spending on training, empowerment and mentorship support programmes at more than SAR 8.29bn, reaching over 226,000 establishments, nearly 94% of them micro, small or medium, and benefiting more than two million citizens. Those are inputs and reach, not outcomes. A subsidised course is not the same thing as a company that can tell you which of its people is ready.\n\n## What it costs\n\nThe management-practice literature puts a number on the alternative. Bloom and Van Reenen surveyed 732 medium-sized manufacturers across the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany. Controlling for country, industry, size, age and workforce composition, family ownership is associated with management practice 0.138 standard deviations above comparable non-family firms. Adding a family chief executive subtracts a further 0.010. Choosing that chief executive by primogeniture subtracts 0.410 more. Family ownership is not the problem. Selecting the operator by birth order is.\n\n<figure class=\"post-figure\"><img src=\"/storage/blog/the-devil-you-know/fig-management-waterfall.png\" alt=\"Waterfall of management-practice score against comparable non-family firms. Family ownership plus 0.138 standard deviations, family chief executive minus 0.010, primogeniture minus 0.410, net minus 0.282.\" loading=\"lazy\"></figure>\n\nThe most recent evidence localises the damage where this argument sits. Feng, Henley and Kochanova, working with UK firm-level data and publishing in *Small Business Economics*, find that family ownership weakens the productivity returns to structured management practice, with a between-firm interaction of −0.532 across 13,032 small and medium enterprise observations and no significant effect among large firms. That is the long-run, cross-sectional estimate; the within-firm equivalent is smaller and not significant. But the shape is the one an owner would predict. The penalty is a small-firm penalty, and professional management in larger firms appears to absorb it.\n\n## The objections, taken seriously\n\nThe first objection is that governance costs more at the bottom, and the IFC argues it too: \"Pushing classic corporate governance on smaller, simpler early-stage companies can be very counterproductive.\" Its progression matrix does not assume a functioning board before the expansion stage. Compliance overhead behaves largely like a fixed cost, so it falls hardest on the smallest firms. Canadian government analysis put the gap at 1.67 percentage points of operating expenses between firms with fewer than five employees and firms of 100 to 499, which is to say the smallest firms carry roughly six times the relative burden. The jurisdiction is wrong for a Saudi argument; the shape of the cost is not. Owners who reject governance-as-paperwork are reading their own economics correctly. Appraisal rules, defined authority and a stated succession mechanism are a different and cheaper category.\n\nThe second objection is that preferring insiders may be rational, and on Bidwell's evidence it often is. This is not an argument for hiring strangers. It is an argument that the trust asymmetry is real and that the firm has chosen the wrong problem: the binding constraint is the absence of internal development, not the absence of external recruitment.\n\nThe third is that Saudi practice may be improving faster than critics allow. A 2026 study in the *South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences*, surveying a stratified sample of 300 employees across Saudi SMEs in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam, finds strategic human resource practices present and significantly associated with employee performance at r = .752. It surveys employees rather than HR functions, and a correlation that size between self-reported practice and self-reported performance in a single instrument invites a common-method caution.\n\n## What actually changes it\n\nThree things, none of which requires a board, a charter or a consultant. Give somebody a decision to own, with a budget, a deadline and the right to be wrong. Write down what good looks like before the year starts, for family and non-family employees on the same terms. And when the outside hire does become necessary, run a structured interview against a defined scoring guide rather than a conversation about a résumé, because that is the instrument the evidence supports and the one a small firm can actually build.\n\nA family that does this will still hire from outside sometimes. It will simply stop doing so out of ignorance about the people it already has.\n\n## Sources\n\n- Vision 2030 Annual Report 2025, published 25 April 2026. SMEs at 22.9% of GDP, the 2024 actual against a 21.1% target for that year; 2030 target 35%. <https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/media/ecdjfopq/vision2030_annual_report_2025_en.pdf>\n- Sackett, P., Zhang, C., Berry, C. and Lievens, F., \"Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection: Addressing systematic overcorrection for restriction of range,\" *Journal of Applied Psychology*, 107(11), November 2022, pp. 2040–2068. Figures are operational validities, corrected for criterion unreliability. The structured-interview estimate carries the widest spread in the table and should be read as a range. <https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000994>\n- Schmidt, F. and Hunter, J., \"The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology,\" *Psychological Bulletin*, 124(2), 1998, pp. 262–274.\n- Bidwell, M., \"Paying More to Get Less: The Effects of External Hiring versus Internal Mobility,\" *Administrative Science Quarterly*, 56(3), 2011, pp. 369–407. Sample: the US investment banking arm of one financial services company, 2003–2009. <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0001839211433562>\n- Pearl Initiative and PwC, \"Family Matters: Governance Practices in GCC Family Firms,\" 2012. 106 interviews conducted August to October 2012, 40% Saudi. The 18% appraisal figure appears under \"Succession, conflict and continuity\" and refers to succession-governance mechanisms, benchmarked against the PwC Global Family Business Survey. <https://www.pwc.com/m1/en/publications/documents/pipwc-report.pdf>\n- Human Resources Development Fund, statement of 4 February 2026 on 2025 results, reported by Argaam and Al-Watan. <https://www.argaam.com/ar/article/articledetail/id/1877806>\n- Bloom, N. and Van Reenen, J., \"Measuring and Explaining Management Practices Across Firms and Countries,\" *Quarterly Journal of Economics*, 122(4), November 2007, pp. 1351–1408. Table V, column (5). The three values are nested increments on a standardised management index against an omitted non-family baseline. <https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/122/4/1351/1850493>\n- Feng, Y., Henley, A. and Kochanova, A., \"When formal management practices meet informal governance: family ownership and productivity in UK firms,\" *Small Business Economics*, 2026. Between-firm estimate; SME subsample 13,032 observations. <https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-026-01191-x>\n- Ryabota, V., Volynets, A., Kravatzky, A. and Carrington, H., \"Governance for SME Sustainability and Growth,\" IFC *Private Sector Opinion* 43, 2 May 2019. <https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/609571567666610488/pdf/Governance-for-SME-Sustainability-and-Growth.pdf>\n- Tu, J., \"Impact of Regulatory Compliance Costs on Business Performance,\" Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, 9 October 2020. Regression estimate with controls; the relative gap is 83.5% and the absolute gap 1.67 percentage points. Underlying data is Statistics Canada's 2011 Survey of Regulatory Compliance Costs. <https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/paperwork-burden-reduction-initiative/en/survey-regulatory-compliance-costs/impact-regulatory-compliance-costs-business-performance-october-2020>\n- Ainosa, A. and Binti Hussain, I., \"Employee perspectives on strategic human resource management practices and their impact on organisational performance in Saudi Arabian SMEs,\" *South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences*, 29(1), 2026. <https://sajems.org/index.php/sajems/article/view/6423>",
      "image": "https://nkilany.com/storage/blog/the-devil-you-know/hero-devil-you-know-folio.jpg",
      "date_published": "2026-08-05T20:58:17.000Z",
      "date_modified": "2026-08-05T20:58:17.000Z",
      "tags": [
        "governance",
        "business-strategy"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://nkilany.com/blog/amd-rx-9070-egpu-idle-crash-ulps",
      "url": "https://nkilany.com/blog/amd-rx-9070-egpu-idle-crash-ulps",
      "title": "An AMD RX 9070 eGPU crashing only at idle? Check ULPS first",
      "summary": "Three bugcheck codes, two eGPU cables, one replaced dock, and the actual cause turned out to be four bytes in the registry. A debugging log for anyone chasing the same ghost.",
      "content_html": "<p>Nvidia is still the safe default for AI work. The problem is what that safety costs: an RTX 5090 is close to three thousand dollars. Meanwhile I had a mini-PC sitting on a shelf doing nothing but idling on its integrated graphics, and the itch to turn it into a dedicated agentic-AI testing rig won. So instead of handing Nvidia the money, I bought an AMD Radeon RX 9070 for about a quarter of the price, hung it off the outside of the machine through an eGPU dock, and ran the whole stack on AMD's open <strong>Vulkan</strong> backend rather than CUDA. Then I lost the better part of a month to debugging. This is the write-up I wish I'd had going in.</p>\n\n<p>Here's the short version, in case you're mid-panic and about to RMA something. If you've bolted a discrete GPU onto a mini-PC or laptop over OCuLink or USB4, and it crashes or just quietly disappears, but only after the machine has been sitting idle, never while it's actually grinding on something, the cable isn't your problem. Neither is the dock, or the card. Don't send anything back yet.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>TL;DR</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li>AMD's driver ships a power-saving feature called <strong>ULPS</strong> (UltraLow Power State). When the system goes idle, it powers down whatever GPU it has decided is \"secondary.\" It was written for laptops that flip between an integrated and a discrete GPU, and on an eGPU rig it misfires, because your external card looks \"secondary\" in exactly the sense the driver cares about.</li>\n<li>Waking the card back up is where it falls apart. What you get depends on the day: a driver timeout, the device dropping off the bus, a full bugcheck, or the whole box freezing with no dump to show for it.</li>\n<li>The fix is two registry values, <code>EnableUlps</code> and <code>EnableUlps_NA</code>, both set to <code>0</code>, plus switching off USB selective suspend. No new hardware.</li>\n<li>The giveaway that it's this and not your wiring: <strong>the crashes cluster at idle and never happen mid-workload.</strong> That one correlation is basically the whole diagnosis.</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<h2>1. The setup</h2>\n<p>The hardware: a Ryzen mini-PC with its integrated GPU, and a discrete Radeon RX 9070 (RDNA4) in an external enclosure on OCuLink, with USB4 on the same dock as a backup path. For compute I skipped ROCm and used AMD's open <strong>Vulkan</strong> backend. llama.cpp's Vulkan path is solid on RDNA4, and for what I was doing it buried the CPU fallback. None of this is exotic. It's the ordinary shape of an eGPU build on a small-form-factor or laptop-class host: one GPU soldered to the board, one GPU living in a box on the desk.</p>\n<p>That ordinary shape turns out to matter, because it's precisely the shape AMD's driver expects to see on a <em>laptop</em>. And it applies laptop rules to it, which is where the trouble starts.</p>\n\n<h2>2. The symptoms</h2>\n<p>One fault wore four different masks over those weeks. If you're digging through Event Viewer right now, these are the ones I kept hitting:</p>\n\n<figure class=\"table\">\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr><th>Code</th><th>Name</th><th>What it looked like here</th></tr>\n</thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr><td><code>0x116</code></td><td>VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE</td><td>The driver blew past the timeout-detection-and-recovery window, and Windows gave up on the card.</td></tr>\n<tr><td><code>0x10E</code></td><td>VIDEO_SCHEDULER_INTERNAL_ERROR</td><td>Logged with a <code>STATUS_DEVICE_REMOVED</code> parameter. Translation: the card walked off the bus mid-session.</td></tr>\n<tr><td><code>0x7E</code></td><td>SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED</td><td>An access violation inside a driver thread. Different fingerprint, same underlying cause.</td></tr>\n<tr><td>n/a</td><td>Hard freeze, no dump</td><td>The worst one. The machine simply stops. No bugcheck, no minidump, nothing in the log except that damning \"previous shutdown was unexpected\" on the next boot.</td></tr>\n</tbody>\n</table>\n</figure>\n\n<p>The thread tying all four together: not one of them happened during a stress test, a model load, a render, anything that kept the card busy. Every single one hit <strong>after</strong> the work stopped. Sometimes a minute later. Once after 21 hours of perfect uptime.</p>\n\n<h2>3. What we ruled out first (and how)</h2>\n<p>Read this part even if you scroll ahead for the fix, because the process is the transferable bit. Everything below is a real, common way an eGPU dies. None of them was my problem, but ruling each one out cleanly is what finally cornered the actual cause.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>TDR timeout tuning.</strong> I pushed <code>TdrDelay</code> and <code>TdrDdiDelay</code> up to 60s. That stopped the BSODs <em>during</em> a deliberately stalled transfer, which was handy, but it was papering over the stall, not removing it.</li>\n<li><strong>Reseating everything.</strong> Powered down, pulled the card, reseated it, reconnected every cable, then bought a fresh cable rated for the link's full bandwidth. The pattern didn't budge.</li>\n<li><strong>Switching the link entirely.</strong> The dock exposes both OCuLink and USB4 to the host, so I tried both. A bad connector on one path shouldn't take down the other, and yet it failed the same way on both. That's a useful negative result: identical failures across two independent physical links point away from a single bad cable or port.</li>\n<li><strong>Rebuilding the whole stack.</strong> On the off chance a stale binary was to blame, I rebuilt the GPU compute stack from source against the current Vulkan driver. Nothing changed.</li>\n<li><strong>Beating on it.</strong> Repeated full memory load/unload cycles, then twenty minutes of continuous heavy requests, back to back. Passed clean. Then it fell over about an hour later doing absolutely nothing. That should have tipped me off sooner: a card that shrugs off real punishment but dies at rest doesn't have a bandwidth or a heat problem.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Takeaway.</strong> If your eGPU is bulletproof under load and only ever dies after minutes or hours of idling, put the cables down. This isn't wiring. It's power management.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Every failure shared one trait: it struck after the GPU went idle, never while it was working.</p>\n\n<h2>4. The real cause: ULPS</h2>\n<p><strong>ULPS,</strong> short for UltraLow Power State, is a power-saving trick built into AMD's graphics driver. On a laptop with switchable graphics it earns its keep: sitting on battery with nothing demanding running, the driver all but shuts the discrete GPU off and lets the integrated one drive the desktop. Real battery saved.</p>\n<p>How it decides is the catch. It looks at whether a GPU is \"secondary\" to some \"primary\" one, and that's exactly the relationship between an integrated chip and a discrete card whenever both exist, whether the discrete card is bolted into a slot or dangling off OCuLink in a box on the desk. The driver can't tell those two situations apart. It sees a secondary adapter and reaches for the off switch.</p>\n<p>For a real laptop dGPU, waking back up is routine. For a card on the far end of an external, lower-margin link, it isn't, and when the wake fails you get the exact grab-bag from earlier: a timeout, a card that's silently gone from the bus, or a driver thread that dies outright trying to bring it back.</p>\n\n<h2>5. The fix</h2>\n<p>Two registry values and one power setting. Everything here is reversible, and none of it costs you a part.</p>\n\n<h3>1. Disable ULPS on the card</h3>\n<p>Open <strong>Registry Editor</strong> (or PowerShell) as Administrator and go to the display adapter's driver key:</p>\n<pre><code>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\Class\\\n{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\\0000, 0001, 0002 …</code></pre>\n<p>Each four-digit subkey is one GPU Windows knows about. Open them one at a time, read <code>DriverDesc</code> to be sure you're on the discrete card and not the integrated one (leave that alone), and set:</p>\n<pre><code>EnableUlps     = 0  (DWORD)\nEnableUlps_NA  = 0  (DWORD)</code></pre>\n<p>If the card shows up under more than one subkey, and it often does, do all of them.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Where it gets maddening.</strong> If <strong>Memory Integrity</strong> (Core Isolation / HVCI) is on, Windows guards this particular key against writes. Elevated Administrator won't help. Taking ownership of the key won't help. You just get a flat <code>\"Requested registry access is not allowed\"</code> and no hint as to why.</p>\n<p>The way through: turn Memory Integrity off under <strong>Windows Security → Device security → Core isolation</strong>, reboot, make the edit, then decide whether you want Memory Integrity back on. The value sticks either way. If you'd rather not go near that setting at all, TechPowerUp's <em>Radeon ULPS Toggle</em> flips the same two values through its own elevated helper, and it's worth a look.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<h3>2. Turn off USB selective suspend</h3>\n<p>OCuLink and USB4 controllers often share silicon on these boards, so close this door too while you're here:</p>\n<pre><code>powercfg /setacvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT 2a737441-1930-4402-8d77-b2bebba308a3 48e6b7a6-50f5-4782-a5d4-53bb8f07e226 0\npowercfg /setdcvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT 2a737441-1930-4402-8d77-b2bebba308a3 48e6b7a6-50f5-4782-a5d4-53bb8f07e226 0\npowercfg /setactive SCHEME_CURRENT</code></pre>\n\n<h3>3. Reboot</h3>\n<p>The ULPS change is read when the driver initializes, not on the fly. Reboot once. Don't skip it, or your test will look exactly like a fix that failed.</p>\n\n<h2>6. How to actually verify it worked</h2>\n<p>Almost everyone skips this step, and skipping it is exactly why my version took weeks instead of days. <strong>A quick test proves nothing here.</strong> The whole failure is about idle, and some flavors of it don't even leave a log; a hard freeze can sit there for hours before you notice the box is gone. Five minutes tells you nothing. An hour of stress testing tells you nothing either, because load was never the question.</p>\n<p>What works is boring: a tiny script that writes a timestamped heartbeat to a file every few seconds and just runs, for as long as you can bear to leave the machine alone. Several hours minimum. Overnight if you can.</p>\n<pre><code>2026-07-23 21:22:11 IDLE SOAK START\n2026-07-23 21:22:11 | GPU=OK | WHEA_total=0 (delta=0)\n2026-07-23 21:22:16 | GPU=OK | WHEA_total=0 (delta=0)\n2026-07-23 21:22:21 | GPU=OK | WHEA_total=0 (delta=0)\n… 9,209 more lines, five seconds apart, zero gaps …\n2026-07-24 10:46:57 | GPU=OK | WHEA_total=0 (delta=0)</code></pre>\n<p>Two things to look for afterward:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Any <strong>gap</strong> between consecutive timestamps that's meaningfully longer than your sleep interval. That's a stall, even if the system quietly recovered from it, and it means the fix isn't all the way there.</li>\n<li>Any hardware errors in that window. On Windows, check the <code>Microsoft-Windows-WHEA-Logger</code> source for corrected PCIe errors, which tend to surface before anything else goes visibly wrong.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>And because the log is on disk, written line by line, it survives even a total freeze. Come back to a dead machine and the last line tells you exactly when it died.</p>\n\n<h3>Checklist, if you're bookmarking this for later</h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Crashes only after idle, never under load → look at power management, not the link.</li>\n<li>Search Event Viewer for <code>0x116</code>, <code>0x10E</code>, <code>0x7E</code>, and check <code>Microsoft-Windows-WHEA-Logger</code> for corrected PCIe errors.</li>\n<li>Before you replace anything, set <code>EnableUlps</code> and <code>EnableUlps_NA</code> to 0 on the discrete GPU's keys and turn off USB selective suspend.</li>\n<li>If the registry write gets refused, suspect Memory Integrity (HVCI), not your own permissions.</li>\n<li>Reboot before you test. The setting isn't live until you do.</li>\n<li>Verify with an idle soak of several hours, not a load test. Load was never the problem.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n<p><em>Written up from a real, multi-week troubleshooting log on an AMD Ryzen mini-PC with an RDNA4 card over an OCuLink/USB4 enclosure. Editing the registry and switching off OS security features carries real risk, so know what you're changing and put it back if you don't need it permanently. Your exact keys and paths can differ between driver versions; confirm <code>DriverDesc</code> before you touch anything.</em></p>",
      "image": "https://nkilany.com/storage/blog/amd-egpu-ulps-cover.png",
      "date_published": "2026-07-25T09:11:27.000Z",
      "date_modified": "2026-07-25T09:11:27.000Z",
      "tags": [
        "ai",
        "it",
        "ai"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://nkilany.com/blog/the-photograph-i-have-kept-since-2012",
      "url": "https://nkilany.com/blog/the-photograph-i-have-kept-since-2012",
      "title": "The Photograph I've Kept Since 2012",
      "summary": "I was supplying the contractors pouring its foundations. Fourteen years later, I went back.",
      "content_html": "*Here I am on site at KAFD in 2012, wearing DCP colors. Behind me are raft reinforcement, cranes, and shuttering. Back then, the district was mostly just an idea on paper.*\n\nIn 2012, I was the general manager of DCP Saudi, and the King Abdullah Financial District was one of our toughest projects. We provided construction chemicals to many contractors across the site, including concrete admixtures for Riyadh's hot summers and waterproofing for future basements under towers and a metro station. My role meant I was often on site, working between specifiers, designers, and site teams to solve problems. One afternoon, while standing among the excavations and steel, wearing a hard hat over my suit and tie, I asked a colleague to take a photo. It was a regular moment on a remarkable project. Back then, the district mostly existed in drawings, schedules, calculations, and the shared imagination of everyone building it.\n\nFourteen years later, I came back and could hardly recognize it.\n\nThe construction site had turned into a real district, with towers, landscaped plazas, walkways, restaurants, offices, homes, and a metro station that people photograph even if they are not catching a train. Walking through it reminded me of that old photo and filled me with pride, not just in the finished buildings, but in the thousands of people whose work made it all possible.\n\n## What rose from those foundations\n\nKAFD started under King Abdullah and was developed by the Public Pension Agency through Rayadah Investment Company. Work on the site began in 2006, and the master plan was approved in 2007. To be honest, the project had a tough middle period: for years, progress was slow, and by the mid-2010s, much of it was built but mostly empty. In 2017, the Public Investment Fund took over and set up a new company to manage and develop the district, giving it a new purpose as a business and lifestyle hub for Saudi Vision 2030. The fact that the project could stall, change hands, and still become something valuable is part of what makes the finished district so impressive.\n\nBack then, as I delivered to contractors across the site, I saw KAFD in small pieces, one pour, one package, one deadline at a time. Now, walking through it, I could finally see the whole picture: 95 buildings designed by over 25 international architectural firms, each tower unique, but all coming together as one place. The master plan we once saw as sections and specs had turned into a city where you could go out for dinner.\n\n## The invisible work\n\nAlmost everything my company added to KAFD is hidden now. That's just how construction chemicals work: admixtures are inside the concrete, waterproofing is buried underground, and repair mortars are behind the facades. Nobody takes pictures of these things. On my return, I realized this is true for almost all the work that goes into building a district like this. Behind every finished building are thousands of drawings, inspections, approvals, calculations, safety checks, meetings, and technical decisions. There are workers, engineers, supervisors, consultants, contractors, suppliers, and project managers all solving problems that most visitors will never know about. Projects this big are never the work of just one person, company, or discipline.\n\nWhen I look at my 2012 photo, I remember the heat, the unfinished concrete, the steel bars, and the constant activity of people and machines. Seeing KAFD today, I see what all those individual efforts have achieved.\n\n![The same place, fourteen years later](/storage/me/kafd-now.jpg)\n\n*The same place, fourteen years later.*\n\n## The station that developed alongside the district\n\nThe best sign of how much things have changed is the KAFD Metro Station by Zaha Hadid Architects, designed and built between 2012 and 2024, almost exactly the years I was away. In 2012, that spot was just excavation and storage areas. Now, it's the interchange for the Blue, Yellow, and Purple lines of the Riyadh Metro, with six platforms on four public levels. The architects studied how people, trains, and vehicles would move through the station and used those patterns to shape the building, which features opposing sine waves running from the inside out through its flowing shell. The facade's perforations help reduce heat from the sun, and its curves echo the patterns left by desert winds in the sand. The station opened with the first phase of the Riyadh Metro in December 2024 and has LEED Gold certification, with cooling that adjusts to the number of passengers throughout the day.\n\n![KAFD Metro Station exterior, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects](/storage/me/kafd-metro-exterior.jpg)\n\n*The KAFD Metro Station by Zaha Hadid Architects. Photo: Francisco Anzola,* [*CC BY 2.0*](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)*.*\n\n![Inside the KAFD Metro Station](/storage/me/kafd-metro-interior.jpg)\n\n*Inside the station, opposing sine waves run from the interior out through the flowing shell. Photo: Ali Lajami,* [*CC BY 2.0*](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)*.*\n\nThe district itself is also certified. KAFD is called the world's largest LEED for Neighborhood Development Stage 2 Platinum project by its developer and the US Green Building Council, with over 500,000 square meters of landscaped space. Much of this greenery is in the Wadi, a public corridor 5.5 meters below street level where the air feels much cooler. In Riyadh, making an outdoor space walkable in August is an engineering challenge before it's a design one.\n\n## Cities are built twice\n\nVisiting again reminded me that working on a project like this is never just another job. Standing there, I realized I could still see the district through a supplier's eyes, knowing which hidden materials are inside the visible walls. The 2012 photo doesn't show any of that, it just shows dust, steel, and a man in a hard hat. I keep it because it proves something the finished skyline hides: cities are built twice, first in plans and imagination, and then through the work of the people who make them real. I'm proud that a small part of what holds KAFD together is ours.\n\n---\n\n*Nabil Kilany was general manager of DCP Saudi in 2012, supplying construction chemicals to contractors at KAFD. He is now Chief Business Development Officer of Buildstation (MHG Trading), listed on Tadawul.*",
      "image": "https://nkilany.com/storage/me/kafd-2012.jpg",
      "date_published": "2026-07-21T08:28:33.000Z",
      "date_modified": "2026-07-21T08:28:33.000Z",
      "tags": [
        "leadership",
        "materials-technology",
        "building-materials"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://nkilany.com/blog/ai-strategy-and-execution",
      "url": "https://nkilany.com/blog/ai-strategy-and-execution",
      "title": "Compressing 4 decades to one",
      "summary": "Overview of Harvard Business School Course and the 4 decade gap of transformation",
      "content_html": "The most striking insight from four days at Harvard Business School was not about AI's capabilities, but about human behavior. Microsoft launched Copilot to its 62,000-person sales team with strong executive support and an extensive internal campaign. Daily active usage peaked at 22.7 percent, then dropped to 5.1 percent within a month. Even the world's most advanced technology company, using its own product, saw initial enthusiasm quickly fade. This case, discussed in HBS's Generative AI Strategy and Execution program in June, reflects a recurring theme in economic history.\n\nConsider the historical parallel: Edison activated the Pearl Street station in Manhattan in 1882. Thirty-eight years later, electric motors accounted for just over half of mechanical drive power in American factories, and the anticipated productivity surge did not occur until the 1920s. Economist Paul David explained that factory owners replaced steam engines with electric motors but did not change the factory layout. Productivity gains emerged only when factories were redesigned to leverage electricity, allowing machines to be placed where work naturally flowed rather than tethered to a central drive shaft.\n\nThe key difference today is speed. Within two years of ChatGPT's launch, 39 percent of American working-age adults had used generative AI, according to research by Alexander Bick, Adam Blandin, and David Deming published by the St. Louis Fed. By comparison, the internet reached 20 percent adoption at the same stage, and the PC took three years. Goldman Sachs estimates that generative AI could increase global GDP by 7 percent over ten years. The diffusion barrier that slowed electricity's adoption is gone. The remaining challenge, as Microsoft experienced, is work redesign. This is a leadership issue and was central to the program.\n\nThe program, led by Professors Rajiv Lal and Suraj Srinivasan, followed the classic HBS case method: read the case, discuss it in small groups at 8 am, and defend your position in class. Over four days, we examined nine companies at various stages of AI adoption. These included Coursera identifying where generative AI adds value, Salesforce developing Agentforce and an agentic workforce, Adobe evaluating generative AI's impact on its core business, Unilever building an AI-ready organization, Gamma achieving $50 million in recurring revenue with just 30 employees, Criteo addressing commerce with AI-driven shoppers, Harvey integrating legal AI into core workflows, WorkFabric creating agentic enterprise twins, and Microsoft addressing post-launch challenges. The curriculum also included hands-on work with AI agents, a workflow redesign workshop, and a session with Raffaella Sadun on the future of work.\n\nI left with three key implementation rules.\n\nFirst, business strategy must lead, with AI serving as an enabler. As Unilever's global digital director states in the case, generative AI is not the strategy itself. The right question is not \"what is our AI strategy,\" but rather, \"what is the business trying to achieve, and which aspects should be redesigned based on AI's capabilities?\"\n\nSecond, adoption requires change management, not just procurement. Microsoft's usage improved only after Copilot was integrated into daily workflows, with the meeting recap feature providing a clear reason for regular use. Sustained adoption depended on visible senior sponsorship, role-specific use cases, and ongoing enablement. Each pause in support led to a decline in usage. Simply purchasing licenses and offering a single training session is as ineffective as attaching an electric motor to a steam-era factory layout.\n\nThird, approach experimentation scientifically. GitHub and Google conducted randomized controlled trials to measure the impact of AI assistance on developer output. This disciplined approach applies to any function: use treatment and control groups, define clear metrics, and measure results over a few weeks. In a rapidly evolving field, planning horizons are short, and systematic small-scale experiments are more effective than large, untested initiatives.\n\nA common objection warrants a direct response. The same researchers who tracked AI's rapid adoption estimate its current impact on US labor productivity at only 0.1 to 0.9 percent, barely noticeable. However, this does not undermine the ten-year outlook; it mirrors the early days of electrification. In 1900, eighteen years after electrification began, productivity gains were minimal because organizational redesign had not yet occurred. Adoption has outpaced any previous workplace technology. As in 1900, the potential payoff now depends on effective management.\n\nThis is why I left Boston convinced that the forty-versus-ten comparison is not just a metaphor, but a practical assumption. The differentiation among companies that once took a generation with electricity will now occur within a decade. Success will not depend on having the best model, since that advantage is widely shared, but on who effectively redesigns their work. The key question for any leadership team, including my own, is whether we are truly rebuilding the factory floor or merely replacing the motor.\n\n*Sources: Paul A. David, \"The Dynamo and the Computer,\" American Economic Review, 1990; Bick, Blandin and Deming, \"The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI,\" NBER Working Paper 32966 and Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; Goldman Sachs Research, 2023; HBS cases \"Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions: The Deployment of Copilot (A)\" (626-065) and \"Gamma: Slides in the Blink of AI\" (826-001); HBS Executive Education, Generative AI Strategy and Execution, June 2026.*\n\n![Generative AI Strategy and Execution cohort, Harvard Business School](/storage/group-photo-s.jpg)\n\n*Generative AI Strategy and Execution cohort, Harvard Business School, June 2026.*",
      "image": "https://nkilany.com/storage/ai-strategy-and-execution.png",
      "date_published": "2026-07-19T11:19:57.000Z",
      "date_modified": "2026-07-19T11:19:57.000Z",
      "tags": [
        "leadership",
        "business-strategy"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://nkilany.com/blog/gen-z-igeneration-ai-assisted-update-on-gen-y-millenials-article",
      "url": "https://nkilany.com/blog/gen-z-igeneration-ai-assisted-update-on-gen-y-millenials-article",
      "title": "Gen Z (iGeneration) AI assisted update on Gen Y (Millennials) article",
      "summary": "An update on the previous Gen Y article: https://nkilany.com/blog/gen-y-mellenials",
      "content_html": "<p>Original Article on Gen Y: <a href=\"/blog/gen-y-mellenials\">Gen Y (Millennials) Values and their impact on Organizational Design - Nabil Al Kilany</a></p><h2>Introduction</h2><p>The original 2011 paper assessed the relevance of “Generation Y values” to the design and management of organisations. Since that time, organisations have been reshaped by sustained digitalisation, platform ecosystems, intensifying environmental and social expectations, and the COVID‑19 pandemic followed by widespread adoption of remote and hybrid work. In parallel, a new cohort—Generation Z—has entered the labour market at scale, while Millennials have moved into managerial and leadership positions. These shifts matter because organisational design is ultimately about aligning people, work and strategy under changing conditions.<br><br>This updated paper revisits the relevance of cohort-linked values by (1) re‑examining generations as an analytical lens and its limitations, (2) summarising evidence‑supported characteristics of Millennials (Generation Y) and Generation Z, and (3) translating these characteristics into implications for organisational design—particularly structure, processes, rewards and people practices. The position taken is cautious and evidence‑based: generational labels can be a useful heuristic, but managers should treat them as hypotheses to test rather than facts to assume. The most reliable implications are those that also follow from broader organisational evidence on motivation, fairness, learning and psychological safety.</p><h2>Generations as an analytical lens (and its limits)</h2><p>Generational thinking in sociology is often traced to Mannheim’s discussion of generations as cohorts that share formative historical experiences and can develop broadly similar “generational locations” in how they interpret events. Importantly, Mannheim also emphasised that generations are not homogeneous: within‑generation differences (for example, by class, culture, gender and social position) can be as important as differences between cohorts (Mannheim, 1952).<br><br>In organisational research, the popularity of generational explanations has been accompanied by strong critique. Reviews argue that many studies mistakenly attribute differences to “generation” when they may be better explained by life stage (age), the economic or technological climate at the time of measurement (period effects), or sampling and measurement differences (Parry and Urwin, 2011; Rauvola, Rudolph and Zacher, 2019). Meta‑analytic evidence finds few systematic, practically meaningful generational differences in many work attitudes (Costanza et al., 2012), and recent work calls for abandoning stereotyped “generationalism” in favour of more precise explanations (Rudolph et al., 2020; Rudolph et al., 2020).<br><br>Accordingly, this paper uses generational categories for structuring discussion, while focusing on design implications that remain sensible regardless of whether observed differences are strictly “generational” or partly age/period driven. The managerial question is straightforward: how should organisations design work so that they attract, integrate, motivate and retain employees across age cohorts, while also meeting customer expectations shaped by digital and social change?</p><h2>Cohort profiles: Generation Y and Generation Z</h2><h2>Definitions and boundary years</h2><p>Birth‑year boundaries vary across authors and should be treated as approximate. In management writing, Millennials (Generation Y) are commonly positioned as those born in the 1980s and early‑to‑mid 1990s, while Generation Z is generally positioned as those born in the late 1990s through the early 2010s (Seemiller and Grace, 2016; Schroth, 2019). These conventions correspond to different formative experiences: Millennials grew up during the transition from analogue to digital, whereas Gen Z grew up with the internet, smartphones and social media as default infrastructure, and many entered the workforce during or after the pandemic period.</p><h2>Millennials (Generation Y): what remains relevant in 2025</h2><p>Millennials are now a heterogeneous group spanning early‑career to mid‑career and senior leadership roles. Across the evidence base, recurrent themes include preference for development opportunities, frequent feedback, meaningful work, and flexibility in how work is done. Importantly, many organisational responses originally framed as “Millennial demands” have become mainstream design features in competitive labour markets, such as continuous performance conversations, internal mobility, and learning and development as part of the employment bargain (Lyons and Kuron, 2014).<br><br>From an organisational design perspective, the most durable implications are not stereotypes about entitlement or disloyalty, but the normalisation of (a) ongoing capability development, (b) collaborative work enabled by digital tools, and (c) employer branding that integrates purpose and values into the employee experience. The design challenge has therefore shifted from “accommodating Millennials” to institutionalising modern people practices at scale and with fairness.</p><h2>Generation Z: evidence‑supported characteristics and values</h2><p>Generation Z is still early in its workforce life cycle, so evidence continues to develop. Nonetheless, peer‑reviewed sources converge on several patterns relevant to organisational design.<br><br>First, Gen Z is digitally immersed, with high comfort using technology, but not necessarily uniform “digital professionalism” (for example, norms for asynchronous collaboration, attention management, and boundary setting). Second, Gen Z tends to prefer fast learning cycles, clear expectations and rapid feedback—reflecting the interaction of early‑career life stage with technology‑accelerated norms (Schroth, 2019). Third, Gen Z places strong emphasis on authenticity, inclusion and fairness. Fourth, Gen Z shows heightened salience of well‑being and psychological safety, which matters for retention and engagement (Zahra, 2025).<br><br>These themes overlap with Millennials but are often more explicit and more closely tied to the post‑pandemic context: Gen Z’s entry into work has occurred alongside heightened uncertainty, accelerated automation and AI, and normalisation of hybrid work. This context increases the organisational value of clear development pathways, supportive supervision, and fair access to opportunities.</p><h2>The contemporary organisational design context</h2><p>To translate cohort-linked values into organisational design, it is useful to summarise what has changed in the “design environment” since 2011.<br><br>Digitalisation and platform ecosystems have lowered coordination costs, expanded information access, and increased the feasibility of networked, boundary‑spanning collaboration. This has shifted many organisations away from strict functional silos toward agile, project‑based, and ecosystem-oriented structures.<br><br>Remote and hybrid work has become a mainstream design choice. Evidence from a large field experiment indicates that a structured hybrid schedule can improve retention and job satisfaction without damaging performance, although effects depend on job type and implementation (Bloom, Han and Liang, 2024). Earlier experimental evidence also found productivity and attrition improvements for working from home, while noting potential promotion penalties if visibility is reduced (Bloom et al., 2015).<br><br>Finally, well‑being, learning and psychological safety have moved from “soft topics” to strategic design variables. Psychological safety predicts learning behaviour and voice in teams and supports adaptability in complex environments (Edmondson, 1999). Contemporary reviews emphasise its relevance for modern knowledge work and innovation (Edmondson and Lei, 2014). For younger cohorts who place high salience on mental health and inclusion, psychological safety becomes both a performance lever and a retention lever.</p><h2>Implications for organisational design and management</h2><p>Galbraith’s “star model” frames organisational design as the alignment of strategy, structure, processes, rewards and people practices (Galbraith, 1995). Using this lens, the question becomes: what changes in these elements make organisations attractive and effective for a multi-generational workforce that includes both Millennials and Gen Z, while also remaining robust to digital and hybrid work realities? The implications below focus on design features that are consistent with cohort-linked preferences and supported by organisational research more broadly.</p><h2>1) Structure and coordination: from hierarchy to networked teams</h2><p>Younger cohorts commonly expect collaboration, information access and the ability to contribute beyond narrow job boundaries. This does not mean hierarchy disappears; rather, organisations can move toward “networked hierarchy” designs that retain accountability while enabling lateral coordination. Practical structural choices include cross‑functional customer or product teams, clearer decision rights within teams, and explicit interfaces between functions.<br><br>Hybrid work increases the importance of coordination design. Organisations should define which decisions require synchronous interaction and which can be handled asynchronously, establish documentation norms, and design regular “cadences” (planning cycles, handoffs, retrospectives) that support distributed teamwork. Without these design choices, hybrid work can amplify misalignment and increase perceived unfairness between those with more and less access to decision-making and mentoring.</p><h2>2) Processes: feedback, learning loops and internal mobility</h2><p>Millennials and Gen Z consistently value development and feedback. Evidence‑aligned design responses include shorter feedback cycles (regular check‑ins rather than annual appraisals alone), structured onboarding, and early‑career scaffolding that makes expectations explicit. These processes should be complemented with internal mobility systems—project marketplaces, short-term assignments, and transparent postings—that allow employees to build skills without leaving the organisation.<br><br>A key managerial risk is misinterpreting preference for rapid feedback as entitlement. A better design interpretation is that digital environments normalise short learning loops; organisations that institutionalise coaching, frequent feedback and clear progression criteria can convert this preference into faster capability building and improved performance (Schroth, 2019).</p><h2>3) Rewards and recognition: fairness, transparency and flexibility</h2><p>Across cohorts, perceived fairness is a powerful driver of motivation and commitment. For younger cohorts—who often report lower institutional trust—transparent pay bands, explicit promotion criteria and consistent recognition practices reduce ambiguity and cynicism. Flexible benefit structures (for example, learning budgets, wellness support, and optional location flexibility where roles allow) enable personalisation without fragmenting organisational equity.<br><br>Where hybrid work is used, reward systems should be aligned to outcomes rather than visibility. Evidence that remote work can carry “promotion penalties” when visibility is reduced suggests organisations must deliberately design evaluation and talent processes to avoid proximity bias (Bloom et al., 2015).</p><h2>4) People practices: inclusive leadership, psychological safety and well‑being</h2><p>For Gen Z in particular, the salience of mental health and inclusion means that leadership style and climate are design variables. Psychological safety—shared belief that it is safe to take interpersonal risks such as speaking up, asking questions and admitting errors—predicts learning behaviour in teams and supports adaptability in complex environments (Edmondson, 1999). Contemporary reviews emphasise that psychological safety is especially valuable in innovation, knowledge work, and high‑reliability settings (Edmondson and Lei, 2014).<br><br>Organisations can design for psychological safety through leader behaviours that invite voice, norms that treat mistakes as learning opportunities (where appropriate), mechanisms for respectful dissent, and systems for workload management that reduce chronic strain. These choices align with Gen Z’s expressed preference for emotionally safe workplaces and can improve outcomes for all cohorts.<br><br>Hybrid work requires an additional layer of people practice design: distributed coaching, structured mentoring, and fair allocation of stretch assignments. Evidence suggests hybrid arrangements can improve retention without harming performance when designed intentionally; unmanaged hybrid work, by contrast, can reduce access to informal learning and mentorship (Bloom, Han and Liang, 2024).</p><h2>5) Customer experience and branding: digital-first service and authenticity</h2><p>As customers, younger cohorts tend to expect digital-first experiences and seamless self-service. Research on Gen Z consumers highlights that smart technologies strongly shape expectations of service encounters and the perceived quality of interactions, implying that organisations need robust omnichannel design, reliable digital service recovery and careful governance of data privacy and trust (Priporas, Stylos and Fotiadis, 2017).<br><br>Employee and customer expectations also intersect. Gen Z’s preference for authenticity increases the reputational cost of “performative” purpose statements that are not backed by operations and employee experience. In design terms, this reinforces alignment between the organisation’s external brand, internal people practices, and actual decision processes.</p><h2>Synthesis table: cohort-linked preferences and design responses</h2><figure class=\"table\"><table border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\"><tbody><tr><td width=\"192\">Preference (commonly reported)</td><td width=\"192\">More salient in…</td><td width=\"192\">Design/management response (evidence-aligned)</td></tr><tr><td width=\"192\">Meaning and purpose</td><td width=\"192\">Gen Y &amp; Gen Z</td><td width=\"192\">Clarify purpose and line of sight; embed social/environmental commitments into strategy and operations, not marketing alone.</td></tr><tr><td width=\"192\">Flexibility and autonomy</td><td width=\"192\">Gen Y &amp; Gen Z</td><td width=\"192\">Formal hybrid policy where possible; outcomes-based management; intentional routines for asynchronous work (Bloom, Han and Liang, 2024).</td></tr><tr><td width=\"192\">Rapid feedback and development</td><td width=\"192\">Gen Z and early-career Gen Y</td><td width=\"192\">Short feedback cycles; structured onboarding; mentoring; internal talent marketplaces; transparent progression criteria (Schroth, 2019).</td></tr><tr><td width=\"192\">Well-being and psychological safety</td><td width=\"192\">Gen Z</td><td width=\"192\">Leader capability building for psychological safety; mechanisms for voice; workload and boundary management (Edmondson, 1999; Edmondson and Lei, 2023).</td></tr><tr><td width=\"192\">Digital-first interaction</td><td width=\"192\">Gen Z</td><td width=\"192\">Digital collaboration norms; omnichannel customer journey design; privacy and trust governance (Priporas, Stylos and Fotiadis, 2017).</td></tr><tr><td width=\"192\">Fairness, inclusion and authenticity</td><td width=\"192\">Gen Z (and many Gen Y)</td><td width=\"192\">Transparent decision processes; credible inclusion practices; reduce proximity bias and unequal access in hybrid work (Bloom et al., 2015).</td></tr></tbody></table></figure><h2>Conclusion</h2><p>The central intuition of the 2011 paper—that cohort-linked values influence organisational design—remains relevant, but the evidence base now supports a more nuanced conclusion. Strong research syntheses caution against treating “generational differences” as large, stable and explanatory on their own. Many supposed differences are small or inconsistent, and generational categories can become stereotypes that distract from actionable design levers such as leadership, job design and organisational climate (Parry and Urwin, 2011; Rudolph et al., 2020).<br><br>At the same time, the historical forces that shaped Millennials and Gen Z—digital ubiquity, economic volatility and post‑pandemic work—have accelerated design trends that align with many of their expressed preferences: flexibility, continuous learning, purposeful work and well‑being. The practical implication for organisations is to build adaptable design capabilities rather than “designing for a generation”: team-based coordination, hybrid-ready routines, transparent and fair reward systems, and people practices that support psychological safety and development.<br><br>Used carefully, generational insights can help as an entry point for hypothesis generation and stakeholder dialogue. The managerial discipline is to validate those hypotheses with local evidence (employee listening, performance metrics, retention and engagement patterns), and then design interventions that benefit the whole workforce while accommodating diverse individual needs within and across cohorts.</p><h2>References&nbsp;</h2><p>Bloom, N., Liang, J., Roberts, J. and Ying, Z.J. (2015) ‘Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(1), pp. 165–218.</p><p>Bloom, N., Han, R. and Liang, J. (2024) ‘Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance’, Nature, 630, pp. 897–903.</p><p>Costanza, D.P., Badger, J.M., Fraser, R.L., Severt, J.B. and Gade, P.A. (2012) ‘Generational differences in work-related attitudes: A meta-analysis’, Journal of Business and Psychology, 27(4), pp. 375–394.</p><p>Edmondson, A.C. (1999) ‘Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), pp. 350–383.</p><p>Edmondson, A.C. and Lei, Z. (2014) ‘Psychological Safety: The History, Renaissance, and Future of an Interpersonal Construct’, Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1, pp. 23–43.</p><p>Galbraith, J.R. (1995) Designing Organizations: An Executive Briefing on Strategy, Structure, and Process. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.</p><p>Lyons, S.T. and Kuron, L.K.J. (2014) ‘Generational differences in the workplace: A review of the evidence and directions for future research’, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35(S1), pp. S139–S157.</p><p>Mannheim, K. (1952) ‘The problem of generations’, in Kecskemeti, P. (ed.) Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge &amp; Kegan Paul, pp. 276–322.</p><p>Parry, E. and Urwin, P. (2011) ‘Generational differences in work values: A review of theory and evidence’, International Journal of Management Reviews, 13(1), pp. 79–96.</p><p>Priporas, C.V., Stylos, N. and Fotiadis, A.K. (2017) ‘Generation Z consumers’ expectations of interactions in smart retailing: A future agenda’, Computers in Human Behavior, 77, pp. 374–381.</p><p>Rauvola, R.S., Rudolph, C.W. and Zacher, H. (2019) ‘Generationalism: Problems and implications’, Human Resource Management Review, 29(4), pp. 100–112.</p><p>Rudolph, C.W., Rauvola, R.S., Costanza, D.P. and Zacher, H. (2020) ‘Debunking myths in organizational science and practice about generations’, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 13(3), pp. 1–30.</p><p>Schroth, H. (2019) ‘Are You Ready for Gen Z in the Workplace?’, California Management Review, 61(3), pp. 5–18.</p><p>Seemiller, C. and Grace, M. (2016) Generation Z Goes to College. San Francisco: Jossey‑Bass.</p><p>Zahra, Y. (2025) ‘A comprehensive overview of Generation Z in the workplace’, South African Journal of Industrial Psychology, 51, a2263.</p>",
      "image": "https://nkilany.com/storage/gen-z.jpg",
      "date_published": "2025-12-16T14:27:21.000Z",
      "date_modified": "2025-12-16T14:27:21.000Z",
      "tags": [
        "leadership",
        "business-strategy",
        "planning"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://nkilany.com/blog/gen-y-mellenials",
      "url": "https://nkilany.com/blog/gen-y-mellenials",
      "title": "Gen Y (Millennials) Values and their impact on Organizational Design",
      "summary": "An essay wrote in 2011 on the impact of new generation of workforce entering the job market and the impact on organizational design.",
      "content_html": "<p>I wrote this article back in 2011, however I feel it is still relevant today especially in the middle east region and I feel I need to update it with a comparison against Gen Z and the impact of the current geopolitical events, there is no doubt that the severity of the events would test the human values of Gen Z and have an impact on their charectar and mind set. Here is the article as is!</p><p>Title: <span lang=\"EN-GB\">The relevance of ‘Generation Y Values’ to the design and management of present day organisations</span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Introduction</strong></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">As a father and a son, I can intuitively and without research determine that I, my parents, and my children are different. Though the common saying “like father like son” has some truth in that members of the same family might have some common ways of looking at things, the personal schema is different simply due to the exposure to different events, technologies and people that have an impact on shaping the lives of these family members. These differences among generations constitute different approaches to life, career, and causes adopted.</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">This paper will discuss Generation Y’s attributes (people born between 1980 and 2000), their approach to their careers, and the underlying impact on today’s organisations’ design and management.&nbsp;</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Organisations are all about people. The perception of organisations and their persona is driven by the collective behaviour of individuals and groups interacting within the organisation and its environment. The importance of this subject stems from the fact that Generation Y comprises of approximately 21% of today’s workforce in the labour market (Appendix A: world population) and thus its values, characteristics and schema is directly related to the design and management of today’s organisations as well as transforming organisational culture.</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">The paper concludes that if organisations are to maximize their potential and achieve their strategic goals; they’ll have to adapt their organisational structure and to an extent their mission to accommodate Generation Y values and attributes.</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">The information available for the purpose of this paper does not include research on change of behaviours and attitudes after the worldwide financial crises of 2009 and thus the findings of this paper are indicatory and might be subject to situational</span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">&nbsp;</span><span lang=\"EN-GB\">circumstance.</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>The Argument</strong></span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><u>Theory of Generations&nbsp;</u></span></i></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">The theory of generations was put forth by Karl Mannheim in his 1923 essay “The Problem of Generations” which is considered as the most systematic and fully developed treatment of generations from a sociological point of view (Bengtson et al, 1974). The theory states that people of similar ages in a common geographical location that has witnessed a noteworthy historical event as they grow up, form a generation in which its members’ lives have been shaped by this historical event or events. As the members mature they assign meaning to their experiences based on their earlier experiences. Mannheim also notes that individuals of a generation are stratified by their location, status, culture, class, etc. and thus they may see events from different angles and they would not be totally homogenous. I would take that a step further and factor in the personal gender schema to the strata.&nbsp;</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><u>Generational Theory&nbsp;</u></span></i></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Another noteworthy theory is the generational theory put forth by historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, in their 1991 book “Generations” which identifies a recurring generational cycle within American history dating back as far as 1584. Their work was later expanded in their 1997 book “The Fourth Turning” which identifies various generational archetypes and generational turnings along with characteristics and attributes of generational members (Strauss &amp; Howe 1997).</span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">&nbsp;</span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Howe and Strauss named generations based on timing and historical events relative to those timing, what is important for the purpose of this paper is the majority of available workforce today which predominantly consists of three generations:</span></p><figure class=\"table\"><table border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" width=\"584\"><tbody><tr><td colspan=\"4\" width=\"584\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Table 1 – World Population Demographics – U.S. Census Bureau (IDB)</strong></span></p></td></tr><tr><td width=\"166\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Generation</strong></span></p></td><td width=\"144\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Birth Year</strong></span></p></td><td width=\"113\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Age in 2011</strong></span></p></td><td width=\"161\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>2011 Percentage of World Population <sup>(4)</sup></strong></span></p></td></tr><tr><td width=\"166\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Baby Boomers <sup>(1)</sup></strong></span></p></td><td width=\"144\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">1946-1964</span></p></td><td width=\"113\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">47-65</span></p></td><td width=\"161\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">33%</span></p></td></tr><tr><td width=\"166\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Generation X <sup>(2)</sup></strong></span></p></td><td width=\"144\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">1965-1979</span></p></td><td width=\"113\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">32-46</span></p></td><td width=\"161\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">21%</span></p></td></tr><tr><td width=\"166\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Generation Y <sup>(3)</sup></strong></span></p></td><td width=\"144\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">1980-2000</span></p></td><td width=\"113\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">11-31</span></p></td><td width=\"161\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">38%</span></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan=\"4\" width=\"584\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><sup>(1)</sup> Strauss &amp; Howe 1991</span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><sup>(2)&nbsp;</sup>Strauss &amp; Howe 1992</span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><sup>(3)&nbsp;</sup>Strauss &amp; Howe 1992</span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><sup>(4)&nbsp;</sup>U.S. Census Bureau (IDB)</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table></figure><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Assuming that 30% of Generation Y has entered the labour market and that the worldwide workforce is formed from people between the ages of 17 and 64; then Generation Y will be 16.6% of the world workforce. This is a considerable percentage of the workforce and it will be rising as more and more students graduate which makes studying this cohort of great importance.</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">As a note, the above generational timings are slightly different according to different historians. The following is a graphic showing different generational timing based on source:</span></p><figure class=\"image\"><img src=\"/storage/image.png\" width=\"903\" height=\"618\"></figure><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Figure 1: Generational Timings as per source. (Wallace 2007)</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">I would relate these differences to generational location and specific events related to those locations, for example in the Arab World a distinct generation called Nakba (calamity) Generation stemmed out relative to the Palestinian territories occupation by Israel in 1948 which led to a mass migration of Palestinian population from their home land as refugees into neighbouring countries as well as a number of wars between Israel and the neighbouring countries in the following period. The Nakba Generation is synonymous to the baby boomer generation in the west. Furthermore I’d conclude that Generation Y start dates for the Middle East might be delayed to start in the early 1990s as that would be the time where the region started to become exposed to technology as well as the globalization process. On the other hand, I believe that the differences between the members of generation Y in different localities are diminishing rapidly also as an effect of the spread of access to information technology and cross cultural interaction.&nbsp;</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">With Generation Y (which is also referred to as the millennial generation) in mind and going back to Howe and Strauss, Generation Y has been classified as having a Hero (Civic) archetype in an unravelling era that is characterised by culture wars, postmodernism and wide adoption of digital technology (for more information on archetypes and turnings please refer to Appendix B: Strauss and Howe Archetypes and Turnings). This classification implies that generation y came at a time where society mood is enjoyment and that the members of this generation grew up over protected, pragmatic, self-confident, team oriented, and social. Though I belong to the late members of generation x which to an extent brings me to the early members of generation Y, my personal experience with members of this generation makes me a bit uncomfortable; on one hand I see positive attributes with regards to character such as self-confidence, technological savvy and social interaction, but on the other hand I see negative attributes with regards to their attitude towards money, entitlement orientation, narcissism and lack of both responsibility and loyalty.&nbsp;</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><u>Generation Y Attributes</u></span></i></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Upon reading material in preparation for this paper, I was surprised at the amount and diversity of research and articles on generation y. However, considering the generations’ sheer numbers and percentage of the world population, their coming of age to enter the workforce justifies the amount of research. So what does research tell us about generation Y?</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">The college age cohort of Generation Y is aware of social issues and is supportive of cause related initiatives (Keating 2000), Yerbury elaborates:</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">“Contemporary young people are described as having been born into an age where they are unable to rely on anything (Beck 2001), yet they have incorporated this uncertainty into their lives, with members of Generation Y exuding an optimism and sense of confidence not often found in members of Generation X. They are likely to be well travelled and to use information and communication technologies without a second thought about the implications of these activities for the sinking of distance and the compression of time. They are also less concerned with permanence in the workplace or in where they live. They exhibit a range of contradictory impulses, on the one hand valuing the opportunity to take the initiative and try radical, new ventures and, on the other hand, seeking conformity and security (Huntley 2006; McCrindle 2008). They tend to espouse a set of values that affect all aspects of their lives, choosing to make decisions about everyday life from a perspective of self-actualisation (Giddens 1991,p.214)”&nbsp;</span></i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Yerbury 2010</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><br>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">The following table is taken from a Deloitte Consulting (2005): Who Are The Millennials, aka Generation Y?</span></p><figure class=\"table\"><table border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\"><tbody><tr><td colspan=\"3\" width=\"592\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Table 2: Who are the millennials</strong></span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"223\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Demographics</strong></span></td><td width=\"172\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Tech-savvy</strong></span></td><td width=\"197\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Millennials at work</strong></span></td></tr><tr><td rowspan=\"3\" width=\"223\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">No definitive agreement on birth years; experts say somewhere between 1978 and 1995; most say 1981 to 1993</span></td><td width=\"172\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Connected…24/7</span></td><td width=\"197\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Work well with friends and on teams</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"172\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Self-confident</span></td><td rowspan=\"2\" width=\"197\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Collaborative, resourceful,</span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">innovative thinkers</span></p></td></tr><tr><td width=\"172\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Optimistic</span></td></tr><tr><td rowspan=\"3\" width=\"223\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Children of Baby Boomers</span></td><td width=\"172\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Hopeful</span></td><td width=\"197\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Love a challenge</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"172\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Independent</span></td><td width=\"197\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Seek to make a difference</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"172\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Comfortably self-reliant</span></td><td rowspan=\"2\" width=\"197\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Want to produce something worthwhile</span></td></tr><tr><td rowspan=\"2\" width=\"223\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Younger siblings of Gen Xers</span></td><td width=\"172\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Determined</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"172\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Goal oriented</span></td><td width=\"197\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Desire to be a hero</span></td></tr><tr><td rowspan=\"3\" width=\"223\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Largest generation (75 million)</span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">after the Boomers (80 million)</span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">compared to the Gen Xers (40 million)</span></p></td><td width=\"172\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Success driven</span></td><td width=\"197\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Impatient</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"172\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Lifestyle centred</span></td><td rowspan=\"2\" width=\"197\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Comfortable with speed and change</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"172\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Diverse</span></td></tr><tr><td rowspan=\"2\" width=\"223\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">38% of millennials identify</span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">themselves as “non-white”</span></p></td><td width=\"172\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Inclusive</span></td><td width=\"197\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Thrive on flexibility and space to explore</span></td></tr><tr><td rowspan=\"2\" width=\"172\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Global, civic- and community-minded</span></p></td><td width=\"197\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Partner well with mentors</span></td></tr><tr><td rowspan=\"2\" width=\"223\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Positioned in history to be the next “Hero generation”</span></td><td width=\"197\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Value guidance</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"172\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Pulling together</span></p></td><td width=\"197\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Expect respect</span></td></tr></tbody></table></figure><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">I would agree with the above research findings and find them in line with Howe &amp; Strauss’s research where it conforms to the Hero archetype: are born after an Awakening, during a time of individual pragmatism, self-reliance, and laissez faire. Heroes grow up as increasingly protected post-Awakening children, come of age as team-oriented young optimists during a Crisis, emerge as energetic, overly-confident mid-lifers, and age into politically powerful elders attacked by another Awakening. (Strauss &amp; Howe 1997)</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Having the above said coupled with the fact that generation y is 38% of the world population; millennials become an important segment from both employers perspective looking for fresh talent and from a customer perspective with a decent purchasing power “Of the $6.5 Trillion spent annually by consumers in the U.S. some $600 Billion is spent by the 80 million members of generation Y” (Gronbach 2000), what this means to me is that organisations have to work hard on understanding generation Y both to manage and sell to in addition to the underlying impact on organisational strategy, structure and culture.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><br>&nbsp;</p><p><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><u><o:p> </o:p></u></span></i></p><p><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><u>Organisational Design</u></span></i></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">For the purpose of this paper, I’ll only be touching on the surface of organisational design principals where the purpose is to highlight and emphasise the human element, its effect on organisational design and the relation with Generation Y attributes.</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Regardless of the nature of organisation, it needs to have a purpose; whether it is an NGO, a service, or a manufacturing organisation there are always organisational goals to be met. Mullens (2010: P542) states that “The overall function and direction of an organisation is determined by the nature of its corporate strategy. Strategy provides goals, objectives and guidelines for the structure and operations of the organisation”.&nbsp; What this means to me is that organisational design follows the corporate strategy, and thus there is no best way for organisational designs and each organisation can have its unique design features.&nbsp;</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Another factor of the organisational design which I cannot separate from strategy is culture. Since organisations don’t operate independently from the environment which is part of, the pervasive nature of culture in terms of external influence and “how things are done around here”, values, beliefs and attitudes have significant impact on organisational structure design (Mullens, 2010, P552).&nbsp;</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">The below star model by Jay Galbraith for organisational design is the mostly used model for conceptualization of organisational design since the 1970 (Galbraith, 1995).</span></p><figure class=\"image\"><img src=\"/storage/image-1.png\" width=\"647\" height=\"436\"></figure><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Figure 2: Star Model for organisational design conceptualization.</span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">The star model clearly has “People Practices” as an integral factor the design of organisations and asks the designer two specific questions about people: What talent is needed? And do we make best use of talent and resources? To answer these questions; understanding the values and attributes of talent joining the work force becomes essentials while at the same time in line with today organisations such as the learning organisations, complexity approach, and virtual organisations. One of the interesting modern approaches to organisational design is the contingency approach which emphasises the need for flexibility; the main influences in the contingency are illustrated in figure 3 below (Mullen, 2010, P586-588). The model clearly identifies the characteristic of members of the organisation and organisational culture are considered main factors in the organisational design.&nbsp;</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><figure class=\"image\"><img src=\"/storage/image-2.png\" width=\"1000\" height=\"724\"></figure><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Figure 3: Main influences in the contingency approach to organisational structure design</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Having established the relationship between culture, organisational members’ attributes and values with organisational design; what would the impact of generation Y entering the workforce as well as a large customer segment on today’s organisations and design?</span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Impact of Generation Y Values on Today’s Organisations Design</strong></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">In the previous sections I’ve established that individuals’ attributes and characteristics have an impact on organisational design. However since organisations have different structures, strategies and cultures; that impact can be accommodated in a number of ways depending on organisation types and existing structures. Furthermore that impact can vary by department and job design but for the purpose of this paper I list generic implications to organisations:</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><figure class=\"table\"><table border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\"><tbody><tr><td colspan=\"3\" width=\"583\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Table 3: Generation Y Values and Attributes impact on organisations</strong></span></p></td></tr><tr><td width=\"152\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Generation Y Attribute</strong></span></td><td width=\"203\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Underlying requirement as employees</strong></span></td><td width=\"228\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Underlying Requirement as customers</strong></span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"152\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Cause Oriented</span></td><td width=\"203\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Need to believe that they are a part of an organisation that cares about society (Introduce CSR programs)</span></td><td width=\"228\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Willing to buy from an organisation that is perceived to care about the community. (Engage Cause Related Marketing)</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"152\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Connected 24/7</span></td><td width=\"203\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Provide mobile access to work environment</span></td><td width=\"228\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Offer e-Trade, web based support and web shops</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"152\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Social, team oriented</span></td><td width=\"203\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Provide collaboration tools, Internal communities and websites.</span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Encourage cross functional teams.</span></p></td><td width=\"228\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Offer products that can be shared or interactive with peers</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"152\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Self-confident, independent</span></td><td width=\"203\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Provide work challenges related to a clear career path</span></td><td width=\"228\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Focus branding on uniqueness and carefully targeted product offering</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"152\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Lifestyle Centric</span></td><td width=\"203\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Will require innovative pay structures</span></td><td width=\"228\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Branding becomes more important</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"152\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Success Driven and Goal Oriented</span></td><td width=\"203\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Provide performance related rewards and promotions</span></td><td width=\"228\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Offer products that increase efficiency</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"152\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Less concerned with permanence to work place</span></td><td width=\"203\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Offer international assignments, develop carefully designed employee retention programs</span></td><td width=\"228\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Increase spread and ease of product acquirement to different geographies (e-Channels)</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"152\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Value Guidance and mentorship</span></td><td width=\"203\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Provide a coaching and mentorship management style</span></td><td width=\"228\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Provide opportunity for customers to learn something new from products</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"152\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Thrive on flexibility and space to explore</span></td><td width=\"203\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Provide flexibility with regards to working space, location and knowledge access</span></td><td width=\"228\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Provide customized offering through multiple channels</span></td></tr><tr><td width=\"152\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Impatient</span></td><td width=\"203\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">More dynamic approach to processes and change</span></td><td width=\"228\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Service and availability become critical factors</span></td></tr></tbody></table></figure><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">A shift in design principals and success factors began to emerge at the end of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, this shift resonates well with the emergence of Generation Y. Table 4 summarises the older and newer factors of success with regards to organisational design (Ashkenas et al.,1995 p7):</span></p><div align=\"center\"><figure class=\"table\"><table border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\"><tbody><tr><td colspan=\"2\" width=\"454\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Table 4: Old vs. New success factors for organizations</strong></span></p></td></tr><tr><td width=\"200\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Old Success Factor</strong></span></p></td><td width=\"253\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>New Success Factor</strong></span></p></td></tr><tr><td width=\"200\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Size</span></p></td><td width=\"253\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Speed</span></p></td></tr><tr><td width=\"200\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Role Clarity</span></p></td><td width=\"253\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Flexibility</span></p></td></tr><tr><td width=\"200\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Specialization</span></p></td><td width=\"253\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Integration</span></p></td></tr><tr><td width=\"200\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Control</span></p></td><td width=\"253\"><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Innovation</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table></figure></div><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">One more thing to consider is that another impact of the emergence of Generation Y to organisational design has to do with existing Generation X and Baby Boomers presence, it is most likely that Generation Y employees would be supervised by a mixture of members of Generation X and late Baby Boomers; which means that if organisations are to adapt they’ll have to bridge gaps and different patterns among these generations.</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><strong>Conclusion</strong></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">There is no doubt that Generation Y entry to the workforce and customer base has a direct impact on organisational design. The attributes of Generation Y need to be accommodated if organisations are to capitalise on this segment that has a huge potential. Like everything in life there are Pros and Cons for everything, Generation Y attributes can provide opportunities for cost reduction, increased agility in approach to business,…etc. while on the other hand Generation Y affinity travel and lifestyle centricity makes them high maintenance individuals.&nbsp;</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Though information technology spread and rapid adoption throughout the world is decreasing gaps between Generation Y members in different parts of the world; still locality, exposure and social culture are variables to be considered when designing organisations. One thing for certain is since organisational settings are influenced by psychology, sociology and economics we can safely say that it is never a laboratory controlled environment and that findings are constantly changing depending on situations and events. We can only plan to accommodate change, train ourselves to become more agile and flexible to capitalize on opportunities as they unfold.</span></p>",
      "image": "https://nkilany.com/storage/characteristics-of-gen-y-parents.webp",
      "date_published": "2025-12-10T09:51:27.000Z",
      "date_modified": "2025-12-10T09:51:27.000Z",
      "tags": [
        "business-strategy",
        "planning"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://nkilany.com/blog/certified-director-program-gbdi",
      "url": "https://nkilany.com/blog/certified-director-program-gbdi",
      "title": "Certified Director Program, GCC BDI",
      "summary": "A comprehensive program on board of directors and board members roles, responsibilities and effectiveness.",
      "content_html": "Module one completed of the Director Program that is presented by the GCC BDI which is an NPO with a mission to make a positive impact on the economies and societies of the region by promoting professional directorship and raising the level of board effectiveness.\n\nIt is a privilege to be amongst such a fine group of fellow executives and board members of top Fortune 500 companies where we engage in fruitful discussions and mental abrasion.",
      "image": "https://nkilany.com/storage/2b9158cf-5a02-4256-8a1b-8c630be56b7b.jpeg",
      "date_published": "2025-04-28T16:34:44.000Z",
      "date_modified": "2025-04-28T16:34:44.000Z",
      "tags": [
        "leadership"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://nkilany.com/blog/design-middle-east-awards",
      "url": "https://nkilany.com/blog/design-middle-east-awards",
      "title": "Design Middle East Awards",
      "summary": "MHG winners of Design Middle East Awards with Build Station project in Dubai #design #middleeast #leadership",
      "content_html": "Build Station one stop shop for building finishing materials concept store opened in UAE in July 1st 2023, its the first of its kind in the region where it provides an experience centers for architects, civil engineers, interior designers and real estate owners with the chance to feel the products, understand the solutions and get inspired by applications of these materials and solutions.\n\nIn addition to the display and stock of the available products, the store is equipped with two workshops that hold a CNC machine as well as a waterjet machine that enable engineers and owners to actually customize design of existing products to their specific needs.\n\nThe project was awarded the design award for its contribution to the engineering and design community in Dubai.\n\n<div class=\"video-embed\" style=\"position:relative;height:0;padding-bottom:56.25%;overflow:hidden;margin:20px 0;\"><iframe style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/oXXw_KAIFyE\" title=\"Video\"></iframe></div>\n[/media]\n\n![BST Facade](/storage/bst-facade.jpg)\n\n![int shot1](/storage/int-shot1.jpg)\n\n![int shot](/storage/int-shot.jpg)\n\n![BST Interior](/storage/bst-interior.jpg)",
      "image": "https://nkilany.com/storage/img-8597.jpeg",
      "date_published": "2024-05-22T21:21:02.000Z",
      "date_modified": "2024-05-22T21:21:02.000Z",
      "tags": [
        "business-strategy",
        "planning",
        "general",
        "building-materials",
        "ai",
        "branding"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://nkilany.com/blog/great-memories-amazing-friends",
      "url": "https://nkilany.com/blog/great-memories-amazing-friends",
      "title": "Great memories, amazing friends",
      "summary": "Great memories, amazing friends coupled with an amazing learning experience at SELP-ME program, Harvard Business School.",
      "content_html": "SELP ME stands for Senior Executive Leadership Program - Middl East, I've attended this program in 2024 where me and a group of senior leaders from around the middle east and beyond interacted in rich learning experience over 11 months. Harvard's amazing learning experience provides inspiring collaborative learning environment and exposure to international case studies, amazing networking and building relations and friendships that I'm sure will last through out life.\n\n![Module-IV-Group-Photo](/storage/me/module-iv-group-photo.jpg)",
      "image": "https://nkilany.com/storage/img-8595.jpeg",
      "date_published": "2024-05-22T21:21:02.000Z",
      "date_modified": "2024-05-22T21:21:02.000Z",
      "tags": [
        "leadership",
        "general",
        "building-materials",
        "ai",
        "branding"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://nkilany.com/blog/saudi-build-2024",
      "url": "https://nkilany.com/blog/saudi-build-2024",
      "title": "Saudi Build 2024",
      "summary": "A side of #Saudi_Build_2024 and my panel discussion on future of construction materials.",
      "content_html": "Saudi Build is an annual conference where industry stekholders have the chance to meet and explore what the local market has to offer in terms of materials, solutions and trends. Though the construction market is the slowest in terms of adopting new materials to become main stream, the exhibition enables forecasting of direction, viability and possible future of materials and construction technologies.\n\nIn the panel discussion, I've tackled themes around sustainability and green materials trends, new polymerization processes and possible upcoming materials with high strength and low weight as well as possible local manufacturing opportunities and market direction.\n\n<div class=\"video-embed\" style=\"position:relative;height:0;padding-bottom:56.25%;overflow:hidden;margin:20px 0;\"><iframe style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/T4hbJ5ivMM8\" title=\"Video\"></iframe></div>\n[/media]",
      "image": "https://nkilany.com/storage/img-8596.jpeg",
      "date_published": "2024-05-22T21:21:02.000Z",
      "date_modified": "2024-05-22T21:21:02.000Z",
      "tags": [
        "leadership",
        "business-strategy",
        "materials-technology",
        "general",
        "building-materials",
        "ai",
        "branding"
      ],
      "language": "en"
    }
  ]
}