Presented at: Strategy Leaders Forum | 13-17 April 2014 | Dubai, UAE.

1. Partners In Building UAE's Security & Economy
Our Vision: To be a role model and reference point in proofing
individual identity and build wealth informatics that guarantees
innovative and sophisticated services for the benefit of UAE
Strategy in Action:
A case from a Public Sector
Strategy Leaders Forum
13-17 April 2014 | Dubai, UAE.
Presented by Dr. Ali M. Al-Khouri

2. AGENDA
• Introduction: Why Strategy?
• Strategy at Emirates ID
• Strategy Approach at Emirates ID
• Concluding Remarks

3. AGENDA
• Introduction: Why Strategy?
• Strategy at Emirates ID
• Strategy Approach at Emirates ID
• Concluding Remarks

4. Introduction: Why Strategy
• Adopted for Businesses in early ‘60s
• Need for Survival in the
face of tough Competition
• Driven by Profit Needs
amidst rising costs
• Defined market
boundaries

5. Why Strategy in Governments?

6. Psychological construct !
• Typical assumption: “Everything
will happen as per assumption”!

7. The Real World is somewhat Different!
• But the reality is always different!

8. Strategies Failure
of strategies fail!

9. Public vs. Private
Slower to change..
Bureaucratic ..
Adaptive to change..
Dynamic ..
PUBLIC
SECTOR
PRIVATE
SECTOR

10. Todays World
• New terms and concepts
• Higher levels of complexity and
fragmentation?
Need to
understand the
dynamics
shaping
today’s fuzzy
world!

11. AGENDA
• Introduction: Why Strategy?
• Strategy at Emirates ID
• Strategy Approach at Emirates ID
• Concluding Remarks

12. How we Planned our 2007-2010 Strategy
Our
Planned
Strategy
2007-2010
This represented the first strategy cycle
for Emirates ID since its establishment
in December 2004.
The strategy planning team, in general,
assumed a rosy journey!

13. How we Executed our 2007-2010 Strategy
Our
Planned
Strategy
2007-2010
Executed
Strategy
2007-2010
?In 2009, we found that B did not even exist
(i.e., strategy objectives were unachievable)!
So we needed another strategy!

14. How we Planned our 2010-2013 Strategy
Our
Planned
Strategy
2010-2013
New management team derived a carefully
developed strategic plan… different
measures were put in place to ensure a
smooth journey this time ..

15. How we Executed our 2010-2013 Strategy
Our
Planned
Strategy
2010-2013
Executed
Strategy
2010-2013
The journey once again had many ups and downs.. and was full
of challenges, but with careful steps, B was achieved.

16. 2010-2013 Strategy Results
92%
Budget: 5 folds
Savings: > 500 million
Efficiency: 200%
Effectiveness: 100%
IMP³rove assessment:
above average for
benchmarked class;
close to global
growth champions
Emirates ID
achieved 97% of
set strategic targets

17. 2010-2013 Strategy Results
Best Federal
Organisation in
Organizational
Excellence
Leadership
Award
Operations
Award
G2G Partnered
Project Award
UAE Government Excellence
Program 2011
Emirates ID today is
recognized as an
international benchmark
for strategic management,
organizational
development and for
innovation in identity
management systems

18. Our Learning Experience
Key control factors
.. indeed, there was a prescription that we kept maintaining and
following during the design and execution of the strategy..

19. AGENDA
• Introduction: Why Strategy?
• Strategy at Emirates ID
• Strategy Approach at Emirates ID
• Concluding Remarks

20. Strategy Architecture and Components

21. The Inner Circle Ring
Represents
key performance
dimensions

22. Innovation and Results Orientation
The two wings of
the strategy..
Focusing on
outcomes
not on outputs
Enabling novel
ideas that should
strengthen the
Results wing

23. Strategy 2010-2013 Simple!

24. Alignment with the operational model
Business Operating Model

25. Performance
Management
Innovative
systems to
measure &
monitor
performance
at the
individual,
departmental,
and
institutional
levels.

26. Human Resources Development
We used this
international
framework to
the train and
develop our
staff, and
improve their
performance.

27. Business Process
• Core competencies (functions &
capabilities)
• 80:20
• 3Es
• Outsourcing
or achieved
through
partnerships

28. Financial Performance: Outsourcing Approach

29. Foundational Activities

30. Organizational Structure
The development of the organizational structure in an innovative
way, and focus on the element of knowledge ownership .

31. Policies and internal regulations
Focused on the development of policies and procedures
aligned with EFQM model in order to meet the cognitive
orientation.

33. Differentiation

34. to develop organisational excellence

35. Quality Management: Standardisation

36. Aimed at:
• Capturing
employees tacit
technical
knowledge.
• Improve Process
standardization &
automation.
• Improve Service
Quality.

37. Knowledge Management: Organisational Learning
Support learning at individual,
group, departmental and
organisational levels.

38. Knowledge Retention

39. Communication

42. Engaging Stakeholders: Periodical Meetings

43. • Emirates ID crafted a sub-
strategy for social media.
• Today, Emirates ID has 16
different interactive
channels

44. Leadership & Decision Making

45. Project Management: Portfolio Management
• Particular attention was given to how projects were managed.
• A Project Office was formed to monitor projects that reported
to the Management Board, while the overall management of
projects was left to the appropriate departments.

46. [improved]
Decision Support Systems
Management teams spent sustainable
amount of time in defining, tuning and
re-tuning key performance dashboards.
This supported the organisation to make
daily decisions and address challenges
as they arose.

47. Review & Monitoring: Weekly Management Meetings
A key factor behind the strategy success at
Emirates ID can is represented in top
management’s commitment to make the strategy
a ‘non-stopable transformational machine’!

48. Strategy Architecture and Components

49. AGENDA
• Introduction: Why Strategy?
• Strategy at Emirates ID
• Strategy Approach at Emirates ID
• Concluding Remarks

50. Top 10 Reasons for Strategies Failure
Source: HRN- Europe 2009 Survey% of respondents assigning reason for failure

51. Top 10 Reasons for Strategies Failure
Source: HRN- Europe 2009 Survey% of respondents assigning reason for failure
If we do a little zoom-in, we see that the
majority of factors are related to how
well we perform ‘communication’!

52. The Culture Machine
• Communication can play a magical role in shaping the
culture machine and making it work the way we desire.
Without proper communication, organisations become
victims of their own strategies.
• Carefully planned communication
mechanism would help avoiding
cultures of ‘passing blames’ and
‘excuses’ and would support the
organization focus on the
solution instead!

53. The Role of Leadership
• The role of (enabled) leadership is critically
critical!
• Leaders normally are those who have the
holistic & overall picture of what
organisations should achieve.
• Leaders are the ones expected to get the
pieces together when ‘what next’ is blurred!
• By design, they are the one’s to blame,
when things don’t go the way it was
designed!

54. Where is your Attention?
80% of
organisational
work normally
add only 20%
of value to
citizens
Leaders are the ones who support their organisations to focus
on what is important and contribute to results not just outputs!

55. Strategy linkage with Value Chain
Strategies
need to be
linked to the
overall
organisation
value chain

56. Learning to start from the END!
Strategy & Execution
Expectation Analysis Design Execution Delivery
Not easy, but it is a SKILL that is needed to be developed!

57. Interconnected Strategic Endeavor
There is no one-size-fits-
all, nor a magic bullet
solution to ensure
strategy success..
But take this:
you don’t have a
choice!
strategies have proven
to work well in wars
since the early days of
mankind!
Successful strategies
are just products of well
designed and executed
work!

58. THANK YOU
Thank you
Dr. Ali M. Al-Khouri
Director General | Emirates Identity Authority | UAE
www.emiratesid.ae | ali.alkhouri@emiratesid.ae |
Read our recent research :
@DrAliAlKhouri