Baghdad Business School E-Book

Heyrick Bond Gunning

• Herausgeber: Eye Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2004

Beschreibung

The realities of a business start-up in a war-torn Iraq - it's not like this at Harvard Heyrick was on the first civilian plane into Baghdad after the airport had been secured. Armed with a camp bed, some baked beans, and a wallet full of greenbacks, his mission was to establish a foothold for one of the world's largest logistics businesses in one of the world's most inhospitable markets. This book charts the challenges, the characters, the comedy, and the catastrophe of trying to do business in a war zone. It also provides a unique perspective on the Iraq conflict; not of another journalist, soldier, or politician but of a businessman with unusual balls.

Leseprobe

Praise forBaghdad Business School

“Perfect for anyone who will be entertained by the wilder shores of business.” Financial Times Magazine

“He vividly describes how it feels to be thrown in at the deep end.” The Economist

“Bond Gunning is the real thing: a contemporary adventurer cannily disguised as a quiet businessman.” The Telegraph

“Amusing and very brave.” Forbes

“You can understand from reading Baghdad Business School why this is no standard business operation.” Nick Ryan

“To Bond Gunning, avoiding the staid monotony of office life was exactly the point [of going to Iraq].” Smartplanet

Published by Eye Books Ltd29 Barrow Street, Much WenlockShropshire TF13 6EN

www.eye-books.com

First published in 2004First Eye Classics edition 2014

Copyright © Heyrick Bond GunningCover photograph courtesy of Jennifer Glasse

The moral right of the Author to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Apart from brief extracts for the purpose of review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

ISBN: 978-1-903070-80-2

To Anna

Acknowledgements

To Phil Armatage, who was there from the start and who helped me retain my sanity and humour. To Dominic Herbert and Zaid for their insightful contributions. To all at DHL Iraq for working so successfully under such difficult conditions, in particular John Chisholm for his unrelenting support. To the Bahrain office, notably Phil Couchman, Fiona, Breda and Harsha, for helping to make the operation run more smoothly.

Contents

Introduction

Map of Iraq

Planning a Career

Developing a Plan

Networking

First Mover Advantage

Building a Business Process

Investing in Productivity

Marketing

Recruitment

Public Relations

Training

Charity

Time Management

Competition

Peer Review and Feedback

360º Feedback

Risk Management

Stress

Local Custom

Managing Morale

Epilogue

About Eye Books

About the Author

Introduction

Why is Baghdad Business School being re-edited in 2014? It is not that we need another book about Iraq. The conflict and attempted reconstruction have already produced suffocating media coverage. The political intensity has charged it all with a wearying combativeness. It has become numbing and feels increasingly stale. And the effect has been to drive us towards indifference about the detail of its human dimension.

The value of Baghdad Business School lies in this freshness, both its concern with the micro rather than the macro and its unique perspective on post-war Iraq. Heyrick is not a journalist, politician, aid worker or soldier (any more). He is a businessman and has a voice and an interest in the country that we haven’t yet heard. His experiences were not about policy or politics. They were about the mundane and maddening frustrations of trying to set up a business in a country undergoing the trauma of post-totalitarianism: none of the agendas that underlie everything else we have seen or read or heard to date. His worries were inevitably about security but they were also about air-conditioning units, finding people to work for him, how to get a drink and the etiquette of ten-pin bowling. He had employees to motivate and a civilian job to do. And, most importantly, he interacted with Iraqis not as an occupier or liberator but as the boss of a big postal company.

There lies yet more immense value to Heyrick’s story. Turning his story around and reflecting it upon the more conventional business experience, produces a joyful antidote to the epic pretension of most management theorising. No flow charts, two-by-two matrices, or clever financial models. This was just getting the job done without the luxury of time to pontificate or wallow in vacuous meetings. It was no-frills business, the Land Rover school of supply chain management. To illustrate the contrast of how the developed world may tackle the business challenge and then how Heyrick actually did it, we have created a fictional Encyclopedia of Current Business Orthodoxy, which introduces each chapter of this book,to outline.

Heyrick’s success in setting up his outfit and leaving a working legacy is testament to his composure, pragmatism, courage and wit. And it’s the wit that will probably be the most engaging feature of this chronicle. It is infused with charm and warmth, and a thread of gentle English eccentricity that has long been in short supply.

Dan Hiscocks

Publisher, Eye Books

Iraq

Planning a Career

Planning a successful career requires a great deal of thought and attention. Once the general career path has been identified it is essential to review all the major participants, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and narrow down the range of possibilities. Approach the firms that both suit your medium and long-term ambitions and are culturally sympathetic. Conduct a form of due diligence on them all to be prepared for any ensuing dialogue. This is no time for being impulsive – you are choosing a family as much as an employer.

The Encyclopedia of Current Business Orthodoxy

All right, mate? What are you doing now?” Before I had a chance to reply the caller asked, “Are you interested in setting up DHL in Iraq?” Those nine words were to metamorphose my life. It was a dreary February Monday morning, in London – the first day back at work after three weeks’ wonderful holiday in New Zealand. The trill ring of the phone had broken my reverie. I had come into work to catch up on the inevitable tidal wave of emails and already the phone was ringing. I could feel myself slipping back into the routine as if I had never been away – that was until I heard the question. The caller, an ex-colleague of mine, went on to explain that DHL was looking for someone with military and commercial experience and was keen to interview me. My initial reaction was to feel flattered, quickly followed by doubts over whether they had called the right man. Had DHL mistaken a rather normal career in the army for something else, or had they seen one of my recently written CVs extolling my virtues as a major mover in the world of mergers and acquisitions?! In truth, I had left the military three years previously where I had experienced a rather normal five years with the Grenadier Guards. My military service had included some time in London wearing a tunic and bearskin, carrying out public duties and, as with most soldiers of my vintage, I had then spent more time than I intended in Northern Ireland. Fortunately I worked in more of a surveillance role, which made it a little more exciting than normal soldiering, but not a patch on the Afghanistan adventure the military experience today. I had left the army and thought I had fallen on my feet working in a start-up dotcom at the height of the mergers and acquisitions boom. My timing was impeccable: ‘Mergermarket’ was a Financial Services dotcom compiling information on the mergers and acquisitions market – and I joined just as the dotcom bubble burst and the bottom fell out of the M&A market. But Mergermarket dropped the .com and went on to thrive, giving me the commercial experience DHL now found so appealing. Following an hour or two of stalling I made up my mind to go out to Bahrain for an interview.