With unemployment in the MENA region rising and now standing at 10.3%, the highest regional rate in the world (ILO, 2011), Arab countries alone need to create approximately 80 million new jobs by 2020 (World Bank). It is a daunting goal. One way to address this enormous task and to tackle unemployment is the incubation and support of sustainable entrepreneurship and SME development. The organisation Mowgli, founded by Tony Bury, does its part by providing mentorship to entrepreneurs in the Middle East.

1. SMEs MOWGLI, ON MENTORSHIP IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Mowgli
On Mentorship in the Middle East
With unemployment in the MENA region rising and now standing at 10.3%, the highest regional
rate in the world (ILO, 2011), Arab countries alone need to create approximately 80 million
new jobs by 2020 (World Bank). It is a daunting goal. One way to address this enormous task
and to tackle unemployment is the incubation and support of sustainable entrepreneurship and
SME development. The organisation Mowgli, founded by Tony Bury, does its part by providing
mentorship to entrepreneurs in the Middle East.
T
ony Bury, a serial entrepreneur sustainable job creation, and social and economic
with over 45 years of experience development. The organisation achieves this by
in the Middle East, believes that a recruiting, training and matching mentors and
highly effective way to create long entrepreneurs in relational and business mentoring
term, sustainable employment relationships through their unique Mowgli Mentor
opportunities is by mentoring, supporting and Experience (MME) programs. The role of the
empowering entrepreneurs who start and grow mentor in this relationship is to provide hope and
businesses and helping them to develop their aspiration, to help entrepreneurs build confidence,
own leadership and decision-making capability. mitigate risk, focus on individual personal
Following that conviction Bury founded the development, expand their business, and address
mentorship organisation “Mowgli Foundation”. challenges along the way.
Mowgli’s mission is to provide mentors who inspire,
support and empower entrepreneurs in achieving Interestingly it is not only the entrepreneurs, the
their business and personal potential, encouraging mentees that benefit from this relationship and
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2. MOWGLI, ON MENTORSHIP IN THE MIDDLE EAST SMEs
Q&A with
Tony Bury
Founder of Mowgli
What inspired you to start The Mowgli
Foundation?
Fast growing markets have produced entrepreneurs,
who have developed businesses that have set
fantastic examples in fighting unemployment and
have greatly contributed to poverty alleviation. The
ABOVE: exchange: Bury realized that the mentors, too hugely moment I understood their positive role in society,
Mowgli
benefit from the experience through their own I concluded that we really need to find ways to
Mentoring
Experience personal and leadership development. The learning support entrepreneurs. After extensive research I
(MME)’
process is often a period of self-discovery resulting in quickly realised that the thing that entrepreneurs
Programs
the development of new skills and competencies that needed the most were mentors, people who support
can be applied within their own professional and them on their journey. This is how the idea of
personal lives. From published reports to Mowgli’s Mowgli was born.
own impact analyses and reports, mentoring
has a clear and proven influence on the ability of Initially, I knew little about mentoring. But when I
entrepreneurs to grow their business sustainably, started researching the topic I saw that I myself had
learn, develop and mentor others. It is for this reason many people in my life who to me were mentors,
that Mowgli strives to place mentoring at the heart and I began to appreciate the concept. When
of enabling entrepreneurship, as well as personal we started Mowgli in 2008 mentoring wasn’t a
and business leadership. widely spread practice in the Middle East, though
undoubtedly it is happening informally between
To date, Mowgli, run by Tony Bury together with a many people.
high-energy team including his daughter Kathleen,
has successfully run 24 MME programs in Jordan, Why is mentorship so important to the Middle
Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and the UK. They have East?
trained around 200 mentors and matched them
with high growth potential entrepreneurs, from all The Middle East is faced with dramatic youth
backgrounds, ages and sectors, to undertake a year- unemployment. When we looked into ways of how
long mentoring relationship supported by Mowgli. society could solve this problem, different strategies
In line with their plans to launch in Egypt, Tunisia, came to mind. Mostly, however, Arab countries
Morocco, Algeria, Qatar and the UAE, Mowgli has have to get more private sector ownership over
successfully secured funding to deliver a further commercial businesses. Supporting entrepreneurs,
20+ MME programs within 2012-13, training up creating SMEs and developing them is one way of
to a further 240 mentors within the MENA alone. going about this.
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3. SMEs MOWGLI, ON MENTORSHIP IN THE MIDDLE EAST
However, becoming a successful entrepreneur in the Figure 1: The Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell: The
Middle East is still largely dependent on what kind
Journey of the Entrepreneur under Mentorship
of relationships you have in the business community.
This makes it hard for many entrepreneurs to get 7
Facing
the Darkness
access to interesting opportunities. To support them
on their journey and help them get access to these 8
A New Trials,
opportunities, we first have to understand how 9 Perspective 6 Allies & Enemies
The Journey
entrepreneurs work. The first building blocks for any
entrepreneurs to be successful are their hopes and 10 The Return The Hero’s Journey
aspirations. Therefore, the first thing mentoring does
5
Crossing
is support entrepreneurs in exactly that. I cannot tell 1 4 the Line
Ordinary World Meeting
The Call the Mentor
you the difference that the following words make to 2 to Change
3
an entrepreneur: ‘I believe in what you are doing and Refusing
the Call
I believe that you are able to do it.’ Just that kind of
encouragement is a fantastic experience. It is the
whole point of mentorship.
The importance of mentorship
In a next step we focus on business competency,
which consists of three components: Knowledge,
in the Middle East goes far beyond
skills and behaviour. If you have the highest level supporting entrepreneurship to
of knowledge and the highest level of skills but developing different models of
do not demonstrate consistent behaviour, your
competency is rated low. This is why in mentorship
leadership.
we focus on behaviour. Whenever you listen to
successful entrepreneurs they will tell you that it
was a mentor who significantly helped in that area. easy, they do not necessarily have the skills to grow
the organisation at a later stage when processes
The key element that you see in Figure 1 is the and structures are needed. A mentor can assist in
personal development journey that we all go through deciding what additional skills the entrepreneur
from time to time, including entrepreneurs. You can needs and needs to bring in at this growth stage.
see that there is a thunderstorm at a certain stage: The third critical moment is when an entrepreneur
Each entrepreneur goes through these turmoils. becomes very successful, his ego may start to grow
There are three critical moments in an entrepreneur’s and he/she begins to make decisions that are not in
life cycle where he/she needs a mentor most: Often, his/her personal or business interest. A mentor can
at the very beginning, when financial performance is help check this behaviour.
poor, they are all stressed out and they make wrong
decisions. A mentor is exactly the person to talk to The importance of mentorship in the Middle East goes
because entrepreneurs can hardly tell their friends far beyond supporting entrepreneurship to developing
and family that they are going bankrupt next week. different models of leadership. My definition of
Another critical moment is when entrepreneurs leadership is simple: To serve is to lead; if I serve you
realise that while starting the business was fairly and you follow me and then I will become a leader.
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4. MOWGLI, ON MENTORSHIP IN THE MIDDLE EAST SMEs
The greatest thing that one human being can do for The word “Mentor” is often greatly misused: Some
another is to mentor them and if you cannot mentor, people think of mentoring as providing advice,
you cannot lead. That is why I believe mentoring is so others think of coaching as mentoring. In reality
important: it actually develops leadership. coaching is about performance enhancement.
In mentorship the mentor needs to be able to be
Our mentors give their time to entrepreneurs involved and understand what are the issues in the
without expecting anything back or receiving entrepreneur’s personal life, which is impacting his
financial compensation, but they always confirm or her business life and vice versa. It requires a high
that they get such joy from doing it. They enjoy degree of trust. Mentors as a rule have to have or
seeing their mentees develop their decision making to develop a high level of emotional intelligence.
and leadership capability around the advice that
is given and that the guidance and support is Are the relationships between mentors and
appreciated. Mentors therefore get just as much the entrepreneurs continued after the Mowgli
out of the mentor/mentee relationship as the program?
entrepreneurs that they are supporting and often
say that the mentee actually becomes their mentor. Following the 3 day mentor training and mentee-
Many have come back to me and told me that being mentor matching program, we facilitate a one year
a mentor has helped them deal with challenges in mentoring program and after that the mentor and the
other, sometimes more personal, areas of life as well. entrepreneur are free to continue their relationship on
their own. Although they remain part of the Mowgli
What are the major do’s and don’ts of Family (alumni), we do not monitor them for our
mentorship? official impact reports. Of the 80% of the relationships
that last the one year with Mowgli, 97% go on to a
Of course, a mentor is someone who listens and tells second year, and so far 95% have gone on to the third
you the truth and not necessarily what you want year. The relationship with the mentors doesn’t have
to hear, but at the same time they should not be to be maintained on a daily basis, but if a trusting
judgemental. What is also really important is that relationship is developed, they usually remain in your
the mentor should not have any vested interest in life. In addition, both parties need to understand that
the performance of their mentee. For instance, if the the mentorship relationship is absolutely symbiotic, if
mentor has an interest in shares of the entrepreneur’s it is not, the relationship falls apart. In fact the mentees
business then that corrupts the value of the are the drivers of the relationship: if they do not keep
mentorship program. in touch with the mentor, the relationship will fail.
The other aspect that is really important for a One of the greatest benefits of our Mowgli
mentor is that in case of failure they do not criticise program is that we partner entrepreneurs up
their mentees or discourage them, but support them with one “official” mentor but during the program
in getting back up, celebrating and learning from they are able to benefit from numerous unofficial
the experience. In the future, I would like mentees mentors at the same time. It is this experience that
to share their failures because it is so important we try to provide and that we hope contributes to
to share these experiences with the community, the sustainable success of entrepreneurs in the
especially in the Middle East. Middle East.
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