Writing · 10 essays · 55 minutes of reading

The Writing

Essays on business, operations, leadership, AI and photography. Two decades of running things, written down.

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Latest · Business The Forty-Five Minute Audit That Will Tell You Whether Your Business Is Actually Healthy I am going to give you something practical in this piece, because I think most business writing is too abstract and the people who actually run things need tools, not theories. September 25, 2026 · 9 min read

All essays

  1. 01 Business The Forty-Five Minute Audit That Will Tell You Whether Your Business Is Actually HealthyI am going to give you something practical in this piece, because I think most business writing is too abstract and the people who actually run things need tools, not theories. 9 min
  2. 02 Photography I Photographed Strangers in Algeria for a Year. Here Is What Faces Actually Tell You.In 2015, I started a project that I was not really qualified to do. 8 min
  3. 03 Strategy Why Most Company Strategies Are Just Long, Beautiful Excuses to Avoid the Real DecisionI have read, by my honest count, somewhere around three hundred company strategy documents in my career. 8 min
  4. 04 Leadership The Quietest Person in the Meeting Is Usually Running the CompanyI learned this from a man named Abu Khaled, in a glass-walled conference room in Riyadh many years ago. 7 min
  5. 05 AI The Question Nobody Is Asking About AI and WorkEveryone is debating which jobs will survive. The more unsettling question is what work will mean when most of it can be automated. 5 min
  6. 06 Operations The Operations Imperative: Leading Businesses in the Digital AgeSpeed is no longer the advantage. It is the baseline. The question is whether your operations architecture is built for a world that doesn’t slow down. 5 min
  7. 07 Business The Companies Winning Right Now Aren't the Biggest. They're the Fastest to Learn.In a decade defined by disruption, adaptability has quietly become the most valuable asset on any balance sheet. 2 min
  8. 08 Retail The Blueprint of Retail Excellence: A Master Class in Operations ManagementThe Store Manager’s Dilemma: Why Most Fail and How to Actually Run a Profitable Box 5 min
  9. 09 Retail The GCC Retail Reality: Why Your Operational Deck is Probably WrongI have spent nearly two decades in the GCC markets. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that a beautiful strategy deck from a global headquarters usually falls apart the moment… 3 min
  10. 10 Supply Chain Moving Beyond the Spreadsheet: The Reality of Procurement in the GulfIf you’ve managed a supply chain in the GCC, you know that the “perfect” procurement process usually lives only in the boardroom deck. In the actual office, the reality is much… 3 min