Louai Al Roumani - Lessons from a Warzone: How to be a Resilient Leader in Times of Crisis

Louai Al Roumani was the Chief Financial Officer and Strategist at Banque Bemo Saudi Fransi (BBSF), in Syria during its devastating war. He has over fourteen years of experience in various finance and strategic planning roles in the Middle East and the UK. Louai studied in Beirut and Boston and now lives in London with his wife and works for UNICEF UK as Finance Business Partner.

To Mama, Baba, Nadeen, Zeina and Dana

The most memorable line that ever stuck with me from Shakespeares stories, while growing up as a child in the Arab world, was not one of his most iconic ones. It wasnt Hamlets To be or not to be. This philosophical inquisition into life and death was too deep for the child version of me to make sense of. And it wasnt Juliets impassioned cry to her lover asking him to disown his family. That impulsive cry for anarchy seemed excessive and unfathomable to me.

It was in fact the warning the fortune-teller had for Julius Caesar that affected me the most: Beware the Ides of March.

The Ides of March is the seventy-fourth day in the Roman calendar, which corresponds to 15 March. The fortune-tellers line was simple, yet alluring. Later on in the story we find out that Julius Caesar was assassinated on no other date than 15 March in 44 BC. So the prophecy was fulfilled. It didnt matter that the superstition behind the message was unclear: it was anecdotal, specific and time-bound. Sometimes thats all it takes for an idea to gain traction and so that date became etched in my memory.

As the years went by and every passing winter came to an end, and around the time when spring almost shyly made its appearance in mid-March in Damascus with blossoming apricot trees hovering over the citys pavements, and the street vendors swapping heaps of chestnuts for piles of green almonds I would recall that line and laugh it off.

Not on 15 March 2011, though. That date, when the first major protests appeared in my city of Damascus in Syria, is almost always cited as the start of the Syrian unrest that would later evolve into one of the worst wars in recent history. That day would turn out to be the biggest turning point of my life, and it happened on no other date than the Ides of March. Beware the Ides of March I recalled once more the mystical message, and this time I imagined that the fortune-teller had been talking to me all this time, warning me of this doomed date ever since I was a child.

Then it happened again. In mid-March 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed itself on the world, disrupting all walks of life in a way that was unprecedented in modern times. The first lockdown in the UK began, and peoples lives changed radically, out of nowhere. Again I recalled the fortune-tellers message. On the first morning of lockdown, as I made myself some coffee in my London flat, I couldnt help but notice the eerie similarities between the energy in Damascus in 2011 and that in London and the whole world in the face of this pandemic.

The contexts were clearly different. But there were also uncanny resemblances, the most dominant one being the feeling of impending doom that had dawned on everyone, out of the blue. The pandemic was also a systematic crisis, different in scope, but similar in its universal sense to the crisis we faced in Syria, which affected everyone in that country. Then there was the uncertainty factor everyone back then in Syria, and now in the UK and elsewhere, was asking similar questions: When will this end? How will it evolve? Will life be back to normal in three months, as the politicians are telling us it will?

Then came the queues the perfect early barometers of any crisis. But the reasons for queuing, and its discipline, were strikingly different; people definitely queued better in London than they did in Damascus. In London, people queued to stock up on toilet paper, and not outside banks, because hardly anyone carries cash these days. In Damascus, however, where the economy was mainly cash-based, queues swarmed outside the banks.

In the Preface I explain the reasons why I wrote this book. One of them was my burning desire to emit a different voice from a place that was often seen as devoid of hope. There are legitimate voices of sorrow and agony from Syria, but I wanted my voice to be different hopefully one of insight, as I do believe there are universal lessons to be learned from my experience of operating in a uniquely difficult context.

As the pandemic unfolded, around the time the first edition of my book was published, it was featured by the Sunday Times, which called it a remarkable book telling business leaders what to do when disaster strikes. The Financial Times featured it as one of their summer reads and stated, the lessons in resilient leadership in turbulent times that Roumani offers are universal. Leading organizations in the UK invited me to speak about my experience, and to explore how some of these can be applicable to what everyone is facing.

In the real world, and unlike Julius Caesars story, there are no fortune-tellers to warn us of the Ides of March. And even if there were, its what we do to confront these challenges that matters. Whether it is a war, a pandemic or just normal tough times, I learned that there are certain principles to apply, which can build resilience and enhance the chances of thriving, no matter what.

This book aspires to share these lessons, and hopes along the way to inspire readers with stories from a distraught and yet beautiful place, which has been sadly and wrongly defined by the war.

I hope you enjoy it.

Louai Al Roumani

9 October 2020

London

I had one request for my father in the summer of 1990 when we spoke on the phone one evening: to get me my He-Man toys from Kuwait. I was spending the last few weeks of the holidays with my sisters and mother in Damascus, Syria, as we did every year, before we had to return to Kuwait, where we lived. I was only nine, and my father was due to fly from Kuwait to visit us the next day.

Next morning, my grandfather woke me up and told me that my father wouldnt be able to make it that day. The Iraqi army had occupied Kuwait in the early hours of the morning and so Kuwait City airport was closed. I was too young back then to understand the political context, but I do recall some instances of sitting amongst my extended family in the preceding weeks as they discussed Saddam Husseins threats to punish Kuwait. I couldnt understand the references made to the earlier IranIraq War and to the billions of dollars worth of dues that Saddam Hussein asked Kuwait to pay, as compensation for what he viewed as economic warfare undertaken by his much smaller neighbour. All that mattered to me, as a child, was to understand how everyone assuredly concluded that there was no way there was going to be a war: