A Lesson In Success

Dr Vajahat Hussain, CEO of Amity Middle East and one of our Influential Indians, gives insights into his role and why he thinks so many of his country men and women have found success in the GCC

What is your management style and how has it been embedded into the way Amity University is run?

“Just to clarify we are beyond just a university, we are a university we have a group of schools and we have preschools - so we have this entire life cycle of education. For this whole thing to work I think empowerment of our leaders is the key and that’s why we believe in sustaining jobs and have smart people to tell us what to do. We don’t tell them what to do. That’s what most of our team has been doing. Also we teach our leaders to multi-task so that every person is a CEO. They not only take responsibility for their own area they also take responsibility for their colleagues' areas and when they go to take a decision they have a 360-degree view rather than just do their little bit. This helps us keep everybody along the succession line ready to take on bigger jobs.”

What have been your key achievements in your current role to date and in your career in general?

“I like creating institutions and leaving a legacy of some sort by virtue of doing that. There are people who create great businesses and create great wealth but as someone who works for an organisation you really can’t do that for yourself. Instead you can leave a legacy behind where the institutions that you run have very competent teams and become sustainable because of that competence. I think that’s been something that I have achieved here at Amity. We have done pre-schools, we have done K-12 schools and we have made a very successful university and we continue doing this across the region. We are up in Sharjah, we are up in Abu Dhabi, we are now about to enter Ras Al Khaimah and we are talking about a university in Bahrain. We have also just set up a school in Amsterdam, so from the UAE now our next step is to go into Europe and North Africa and create institutions there.”