Interview with Dr. Sharkawi
Chairman of Leading Regional Private Equity Firm with Offices in Dubai, Cairo and London
As a leading private equity executive, with extensive experience spanning multiple businesses across Europe and the Middle East, Dr. Sharkawi has a reputation for growing, scaling and turning round businesses. And when he requires additional executive guidance and assistance, Dr. Sharkawi turns to Amira elAdawi and her team.
“My companies have worked with all the other ‘big name’ consulting firms, but we achieve much better results when we work with Amira,” stated Sharkawi. “For example, in one organization with which I was working, we were contending with an executive whose performance was creating challenges for the business – from loss of clients to loss of talent and the resulting loss of returns. We needed to rectify the situation, but given that this executive was also an equity partner, we needed to do so in an extremely careful and thoughtful way. That’s when we turned to Amira.”
Citing Amira’s ability to navigate even the most challenging corporate environments, Dr. Sharkawi praised her unique ability to get “in the trenches” with employees and executives alike. “Other consultancies only speak with executives,” he said. “But Amira listens to everyone and makes them excited to work with her and with each other.”
Like most of Amira’s work, the project began with a granular assessment of the organization. This rallied cross-functional teams from within the organization to assess the real (not stated) strengths and weaknesses of the business and the organizational team.
“This ability, to synthesize complex challenges into clear, measurable and accountable bite-size pieces that our own team can tackle successfully, empowered the team and provided them with a roadmap to get there,” said Dr. Sharkawi. Best of all, because those responsible for implementing these new strategies co-authored the plan under Amira’s guidance, the plan enjoys a higher level of success than that of traditional consulting groups.
“The plan Amira developed was both logical and inspirational,” stated Dr. Sharkawi. “All executives – even the one who had previously proven to be somewhat of a challenge – were excited. She did an incredible job of coaching and guiding the CEO and the organization at large, which was not easy in this particular corporate culture. The results were impressive.”
“Amira is brilliant, but she’s also a good and humble person, which in my experience is very rare with extremely smart people. She is easy to work with and also makes it fun for everyone. My entire team is happy when she is working with us, from the executives to the most junior team member – even my kitchen staff are always asking me when Miss Amira will be back!” said Dr. Sharkawi. “On a serious note,” he continues, “she delivers an experience that exceeds that of even the largest consulting firms, and with much less stress. In fact, we don’t even consider them anymore. We go straight to AMIRA & CO.”