Adel Hattab is an experienced leader within the technology industry having CEO, Business Unit and Region VP experience of leading technology companies. His experience covers multiple industries such as Lighting, Telecoms, Energy, Oil and Gas, Mining and Metals. Adel’s passion is growth and the customer. He holds an MBA in Finance from MIT/Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration as well as an M.Sc in Engineering from Helsinki University of Technology.

For many years I have claimed that talent or the team members of our company are the only true “asset” or strength of the company. If this is true, it becomes ever more important to attract and retain that talent to make sure that we as leaders provide the best environment for thriving on the job, consequently leading to high performance. Now, if the talent of the future becomes the key decision maker in choosing their place of work or company, the question to us as leaders is how do we retain and attract the best?
I believe the purpose of the company creates the foundation of potential attraction to our talent, both current and future. Our mission of Brighter Spaces is all about providing a fantastic environment for a person to strive in a smart building, whether it be an office, a hospital or a university campus for example. On top of the energy savings and wellbeing, we generate a vast amount of data, which we turn into insights that make today’s smart building very significantly smarter and significantly more sustainable. I am therefore confident that our mission attracts and retains people. Naturally, it is crucial that we market this mission, market our team and ultimately market our company, Helvar, creating the buzz to retain and attract our talent. After all who would not want to significantly save energy and provide that wellbeing and smartness in an innovative company with great colleagues?

 

How should we then lead in this more demanding talent environment where talent makes the choice where he or she ends up working? I believe it is the basics of leadership that matter. It is about caring for and growing your talent, meaning that you provide an environment that allows for working and performing as a team and we all develop ourselves powered by the company. It is about creating and fostering a powerful and authentic culture that we all adhere to. In our case, a culture that has strong family values, empowerment and customer elements to it. Leadership is also about enabling others – that is the caring part. How can we empower to the maximum enabling team members and teams to decide and act upon? After all, they by default will have the best understanding and knowledge of a problem or opportunity at hand.
I also believe that we as leaders must create a strong environment of trust and transparency, fostering agile decision-making. In this culture, it is naturally very accepted and desired to talk and tackle the bad news or problems, all in the interest of moving in the right direction with maximum speed. I also believe that leadership is about involving the entire company when defining your key decisions, such as values to name one critical decision, again, after all, the wisdom lies in the team itself. Finally, leadership is about developing your talent which often may be compromised during tougher times. As our European financial outlook is challenging across many industries, it is our responsibility as leaders to continuously develop and to ensure above all that we develop our talent.
As said the world is becoming an ever more changing and volatile environment. In such an environment I believe only the agile will win. Therefore, I am convinced that enabling the entire company to act swiftly is the recipe to winning in a more uncertain future. We have learned that volatility will remain and thus the question is how can we lead our troops every day with care and growth in mind to enable their success, and ultimately, the success of the company?
Interested in joining Helvar on our Brighter Spaces mission? Explore Helvar careers here.