You define yourself as excelling at strategic and executive positioning, stakeholder engagement, and market entry—especially in complex developing and emerging markets. Can you, to the layman, explain what these are?
Crestview in the Middle East works to bridge the Gulf and Canada, the UK, and Australia. Trade between these geographies is already significant—tens of billions of dollars annually—and growing. Unlocking the full potential of these bilateral relationships means helping our corporate and government clients across regions develop and convey a clear ask and a compelling value proposition. Our clients’ ask and value proposition also need to be reflected in how their organization and their leadership communicate. In industry terms, we position our clients and their executives strategically to help them achieve their goals.
But communicating well is not enough. Our clients are accountable to shareholders and/or stakeholders. These two groups often have distinct—at times even divergent—expectations that rarely are easy to meet. Gaining both the confidence and trust of stakeholders and shareholders requires building rapport rooted in mutual understanding and mutual benefit. That is what we mean when we speak of stakeholder engagement: being in proactive exchange with your constituents and calibrating your interests with theirs.
Communicating well and building stakeholder relationships is especially challenging in new environments. Our clients need to have a grasp of the economy, politics, and culture of their target markets; regulation that is relevant to them; decision-makers who could impact them; and broader geopolitical dynamics. Once in their target market, they need to have a strategy for how to scale, coupled with a narrative that resonates in that geography. Helping clients enter new markets typically tests all our core competencies.
Developing and emerging markets differ from developed economies in how dynamic they are. Things can change quickly, and organizations need to be prepared for sudden change and able to adapt on the fly.
The MENA region is a large tapestry of different heritages, dialects, and tribes. Yet it is often put under one large parasol and painted in a broad paintbrush. How can a product enter such a fragmented market and still make an impact?
In our industry—professional services—nothing is ever set in stone. Clients are as diverse as mandates, and the only constant is change. In my experience, the most effective consultants prioritize clients over products or services. The danger always is rushing to prescribe a treatment that is based on learned assumptions about the problem at hand without proper diagnostics. The temptation to paint with a broad brush is not limited to the Middle East; it is a universal phenomenon—meant to simplify and to fast-track.
When we at Crestview speak of doing business in the Middle East, we mean serving clients in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. These are countries our team members have lived in for many years and know very well. Over time, we may take on mandates elsewhere in the Gulf, but we made a conscious decision to focus on what we know, fully aware that neither the Gulf nor the Middle East is a monolith.
The Arab region is notoriously known for leaders who do not exactly listen and more “my way or the highway”, yet you are here to advise high-end individuals who are in “extremely high places”. How does one tackle that on the ground?
I would challenge the notion that leaders in the Gulf region do not listen. The UAE, for example, is a federation of seven Emirates and home to a variety of families, tribes, and nationalities. Each has their interests, and yet all coexist peacefully and collaboratively, driven to benefit the entire country. That this federation has not only survived but thrived for 54 years and counting suggests it knows how to accommodate and leverage multiplicity. We see leaders listening, learning, and building a shared future.
Beyond the UAE, the Gulf has become a hub for consultants because international best practice is in real demand and out-of-the-box thinking encouraged. I would argue that innovating in the way the Gulf states have means abiding by the authority of ideas more than the idea of authority—to invoke Larry Summers.
Leaders must, moreover, be decisive to be effective. Some ideas will be discarded while others will be backed. Whether a leader lasts depends on their skill in backing ideas that make a meaningful difference.
As a German national, with the right-wing AfD gaining ground back home, here you are, in a region with its own political intricacies, offering advice on this side of the world. How do you face, and tackle, extreme political views, in this region and elsewhere?
While I am indeed a German national, I have lived in the Gulf region for 17 years—half of my life. If I had to describe how I feel about the Gulf, I would use the German word Zuhause, which roughly translates to home. Germany, on the other hand, I would call Heimat, similar in meaning to the term homeland. I feel connected enough to both regions to contribute to public discourse but do not claim to have a recipe.
I believe that delegitimizing extreme viewpoints means openly engaging with them. Extremes are flawed because they are oversimplifications, embraced for utility rather than accuracy. We can only demonstrate that an idea is wrong if we invalidate its specific truth claims. That requires dialogue and mature interlocutors. The core issue with cancel culture—which does have its place whenever the intent is to offend rather than to argue—is that it shuts down all dialogue, sustaining instead of delegitimizing ideas.
What makes engaging with extreme viewpoints difficult is that it presupposes a culture of dialogue, which in turn depends on an appreciation for and an ability to grapple with ideas. And dialogue that is uninformed is futile. Reading, listening, observing, and learning must precede speaking. Nietzsche—in the Preface to his Genealogy of Morals—describes rumination as a scarce quality, one we are more likely to find among cows roaming grassland than among contemporary society. If he is right, and I think he is, tackling extreme viewpoints demands much of upbringing, schooling, social and political culture, and so forth. Get these processes wrong, and chances are that not merely ideas but civilization as such is at stake.
