Ideas Worth Thinking About

As the largest tournament in the competition's history, featuring 48 national teams, it revealed a story of long-term strategy, courageous leadership, and cultures built well before kickoff.

From Jordan's historic debut to Messi and Ronaldo's lasting influence, here is what the tournament teaches us about leadership.

There was a time when your CV was the first thing employers wanted to see. Today, that reality has changed.

In 2026, your LinkedIn profile is often your first interview before anyone contacts you.

Your CV still matters, but it is no longer the center of your professional identity. Your LinkedIn profile has become your digital reputation.

The Middle East and North Africa is experiencing an unprecedented acceleration in AI adoption across entrepreneurial ecosystems. AI-driven startups have attracted more than three times the investment levels seen in 2021.

Governments in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and other Gulf countries are actively investing in AI infrastructure, digital transformation programs, and innovation ecosystems.

Saudi Vision 2030 alone places Artificial Intelligence at the center of economic diversification and human capital development.

AI is enabling entrepreneurs to launch businesses with smaller teams, lower operational costs, and faster access to market intelligence than ever before.

A few years ago, I was facilitating a leadership program when one of the participants approached me during a break and said something I still remember today.

"I've attended leadership trainings before. They were all interesting, but after a few weeks, everything went back to normal."

At the time, I realized he was describing a problem that exists far beyond one organization or one training room.

Organizations spend significant resources on leadership development every year. They bring in trainers, send managers to workshops, and invest in learning platforms. Yet when we look six months later, we often struggle to identify what actually changed.

People attended. Certificates were issued. Feedback forms were completed. But leadership inside the organization remained largely the same.

When people talk about the Gulf's transformation, the conversation often revolves around mega-projects, technology, investment funds, and ambitious national visions.

And while all of these are important, I believe the most significant transformation happening across the region is less visible.

It is happening inside organizations.

Over the last few years, governments, corporations, NGOs, and development programs across the Gulf have been operating in a completely different environment than they did a decade ago. Expectations are changing faster. New industries are emerging. Traditional ways of working are being challenged.

In this environment, infrastructure alone is not enough. Technology alone is not enough. Even funding alone is not enough.

Few conversations create as much confusion inside organizations as the discussion around OKRs and KPIs.

At some point, almost every leadership team asks the same question: "Should we move from KPIs to OKRs?"

The question sounds reasonable. The problem is that it assumes the two systems are competing with each other.

In reality, they were never designed to solve the same problem.

Over the years, I have seen development organizations, NGOs, consulting firms, and private-sector companies invest significant effort in redesigning their performance systems, only to discover that the issue was not the framework itself. The issue was understanding what each framework was actually meant to do.

When people discuss the FIFA World Cup 2026, the conversation usually focuses on tactics, star players, and squad depth.

But there is a dimension of this tournament that rarely gets discussed. And it has everything to do with leadership.

For the first time in history, the World Cup will be hosted across three countries: the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Teams will travel enormous distances between matches, crossing time zones, adapting to different climates, and managing constant disruption.

In other words, they will be asked to perform at their highest level under conditions that are deliberately uncomfortable.

Sound familiar? This is exactly what we ask of leaders every day.

When I took on a program with a budget exceeding two million dollars, spread across four international donors, I thought the hardest part would be the work itself.

It was not.

The hardest part was managing four organizations that each had their own priorities, their own reporting formats, their own definitions of success, and their own timelines.

That experience taught me more about program management than any certification or training ever did.