Ayman Essam, director of legal and external affairs at Vodafone Egypt: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Ayman Essam (LinkedIn), director of legal and external affairs at telecoms giant Vodafone Egypt. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

I introduce myself as a leadership professional and a big time extrovert. I recharge through my interactions with people and I am a proud father. I’m also a notorious risk-taker, so a huge part of my leadership identity is to surround myself with people who are risk-averse to help me stay grounded and to guide me into taking only the most calculated of risks. Another thing about me is that I am a Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) certified practitioner and coach — a course that has changed my life.

My mornings start with reading Enterprise at 6:30 am, in both English and Arabic,to make sure I’m getting all the news in the most proper terminologies across both languages. I am a lawyer by education, which makes me an old-hand at quick reading. Then, I dedicate about 30 to 40 minutes of my morning to self-sharpening, so I watch a TED Talk, or take a Linkedin course, or simply catch up on some reading before I check my schedule for the day.

I navigate through a wide spectrum of responsibilities as the director of legal and external affairs at Vodafone. My day-to-day responsibilities include overlooking and managing compliance, regulatory affairs, government relations, media relations, corporate information security, and fraud. And I’m also the official spokesperson of Vodafone Egypt, so I speak on the behalf of the company with a wide-range of people and entities.

Before I head to the office, my team is already assigned their tasks for the day. From 8:30 to 9:00 am, my team’s group chat is bustling with texts on who’s doing what today. I like to run my team on a very casual basis. I go to the office twice a week, strictly Mondays and Tuesdays for back-to-back meetings. So, I prefer to structure my days. I usually return all my calls, and WhatsApp messages either in between meetings, breaks or when I’m driving home from work.

I dedicate two days of the workweek for external visits. I try to make them on Sundays and Wednesdays, but it's not always easy to schedule. Ideally, I keep my media interviews at night and meet up with government officials in the mornings. I usually opt for coffee and dinner meet-ups whenever it's possible.

I think AI is going to impose a lot of changes to the telecoms industry. We already like to think of ourselves as a tech rather than a telecoms company. Stakeholder expectations of the telecoms industry’s adoption of A.I are definitely rising at an unprecedented rate. People expect 5G, high-speed, and premium network connectivity at all times. Thankfully, our industry is really attractive to content creators, fintechs, and governments looking to digitize, which gives us the leverage to grow across sectors. We call telecoms the sector of sectors, and it has become a crucial infrastructure for everything else to operate.

Imagine your life without connectivity, it's miserable. What Vodafone is essentially trying to do is provide a better life for our customers through basic connectivity. This goes beyond just people. We’ve made remarkable advancements in connecting rural and urban regions, contributing to the environment, and working towards women inclusivity. This is in addition to our fintech developments like Vodafone cash, which has become indispensable for many. We make people’s and businesses’ lives easier.

Being in service drives my work and personal life, it’s the one constant in my day. I try to be as useful as I can to as many people as I can, both professionally and personally. It's the legacy I'd like to leave behind. I am also primarily driven by the amount of value certain things take over other things, and so I tend to dedicate my time to the things I value most. It is always a trade-off.

I’m honestly not the best at balancing out the work–life ratio. I tend to work at personal times and vice-versa, it’s not easy for me to switch off and completely detach these two parts of my life. But I try to spend as much quality time as I can with the people who matter.

But, I have designated time slots for all my non-work related meetups. I have a fixed time slot to meet my parents, family, catch up with friends, and a designated slot to give back to the community. Every Monday evening, I’m at the Rotary Club in Zamalek. I also set an alarm that goes off everyday at 5 pm to remind me of who I need to see tonight. Plus, I keep a list of the people I haven't seen in a while, which pops up every Saturday, to remind me to try and schedule something soon.

I have been living by the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey: I think everyone should read it. My other book recommendations would be The Power of Vulnerability by Brene Brown, and Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender by David R. Hawkins.

‘Be yourself’ is the best piece of advice I’ve ever received, and it was from a former boss. He said it to me so many times in so many ways, and this has pushed me to genuinely embrace all the versions of myself. What you see is what you get.

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