Shaun Johnson, Vision Invest

I’m now in my fourth year in Riyadh. I think the training that I received in private practice in Australia and the UK has certainly helped me in terms of the transactional side of things in Saudi Arabia. But I think what really helped enormously were my last few years in the UK working in-house. I began to really hone in on developing my skills within a corporate at a senior level, and I have now been able to deploy best-practice methodologies and principles at a senior level within my role here in Saudi. The thing is, some companies here in the region have very sophisticated legal departments, some don’t, and many have functions that sit in the middle. I think when you come to the Middle East from a mature/sophisticated professional environment, you should be able to add inherent value on an individual basis. However, the key to making your success sustainable will depend on how much you’re able to implement, transfer and embed your best practices within that environment to carry on when you’re gone.

One of the things that I enjoy the most about working in this region is that you have an opportunity to add value at a very senior level, and perhaps in a more effective manner than you might do if you were working in a larger westernised organisation that has multiple layers of bureaucracy. I’m not saying that bureaucracy is a bad thing, as sometimes that’s the only way you can control large organisations. But I think in this region we have a fantastic opportunity to really influence best practice as companies start to mature and institutionalise certain ways of working.