Hani Girgis, CEO and managing partner at Deloitte Innovation Hub: 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 Deloitte Innovation Hub CEO and Managing Partner Hani Girgis (LinkedIn). Edited excerpts from our conversation:

My name is Hani Girgis. I’m the CEO and managing partner of the Deloitte Innovation Hub and a senior partner at Deloitte UK. Outside of work, I’m also known as Hani G and, more importantly, I’m a father of three. I’m the oldest of five siblings, was born and raised in Denmark, and have lived in more than 10 countries over the years. Originally, though, I’m Egyptian.

Deloitte is one of the oldest professional services companies in the world, and we’ve been in Egypt for a very long time — but the Deloitte Innovation Hub has only been in Egypt for just over two years. The story is very simple: from an EMEA perspective, we were looking for a location that would have the most amazing talent — and where we can help create the most talent. With that in mind, we spent a lot of time working with ITIDA — which was very, very valuable to us — and we ultimately decided that the place to grow our next innovation hub would be in Egypt.

We’re all about helping our clients deliver technological transformation. In the age of AI, agentic, and cyber, we typically help clients solve very complex problems.

You can’t talk about technology today without talking about AI — and increasingly agentic AI. We’ve been hearing and talking about AI for a while, but the key is distinguishing the reality from the hype. A lot of money has been invested in AI, and there are lots of proofs of concept — the question is what actually translates into direct, productionized systems. So we’re helping clients filter through the right use cases and the right technology stack, because it’s fast-evolving — you can’t even blink without a new technology or a new release coming out.

A lot of people talk about a structured routine, but I’m unfortunately a very unstructured person. I’m on a plane quite often, so my routine is basically wherever I am. For example, I’ll usually take an overnight red-eye, land in Cairo at 5:30am, and go straight to the office. There I’ll get freshened up, get ready, and be at my desk by 6:00 or 6:30am.

When I’m in London at home, it’s different. If I have to go off to clients, it’s about making sure I understand the meetings I’m getting into, making sure I’m briefed, and that I face the day with a step in my stride. So unfortunately, I’m not someone who wakes up every day at 5am to go to the gym for an hour and a half. I’d love to — the intent is there — but what I would like my morning routine to be like and the reality are two very different things.

One thing that stays the same, however, is that no two days are the same, and that’s the beauty of my work.

I’m very much a people person. I’m maybe not as “productive” as most leaders are, but where I don’t focus on productivity, I focus on spending time with people. In my diary, you’ll see back-to-back meetings, but I deliberately put in slots where I go and just walk the corridors. When I’m in Cairo, for example, I’ll talk to people in HR, talk to people in finance, talk to my practitioners. At the end of the day, we’re a people business — and unless you know and appreciate what’s happening at all layers of the onion, so to speak, you lose out.

I stay focused and organized because I have the most amazing executive assistant on earth. She’s been with me forever, and [our] meeting is only in the diary because she told me, “this is the most important meeting you need to do.” And I have to give credit to my whole team as well. As you get more responsibilities, you have to accept that you can’t own and control everything, and that you need to rely on your team to direct you.

I think the responsibility of any leader is to empower the team. I was introduced many years ago to the idea that while leadership is often represented as a pyramid with the leader at the top, you can flip that pyramid upside down. My job is to empower the immediate folks working with me — my COO, offering leads, technology evangelists, and HR — so that they, in turn, empower the teams beneath them. At the end of the day, it comes down to two things: empowerment and direction.

Work-life balance is about context, including who you are as an individual and where you are in your life. In my early twenties, for example, I doubled down on work. But then in 2008, when I had my first child, Isabel, I absolutely put work on the back burner. I firmly believe in working hard, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in balancing this with personal life.

When I’m done with work, I do two key things. First, I love reading — and I’m not going to lie, it’s not like I’m reading fantastic self-help books. I read fiction: detective stories, crime, that kind of thing. Second, I watch a lot of TV — including a lot of nonsense. Netflix, Prime, whatever — there’s almost no series I haven’t seen. I’d also like to do more Jiu Jitsu — I did it for four years and discovered it very late in my life — but I haven’t done it for at least a year because I’m on a plane the whole time and I make excuses for myself.

On a personal level, I turn 50 this year. I’m not really one for setting big goals, but I was adamant I was going to run a full marathon by the age of 50, and I haven’t. I’ve run a half-marathon and would still love to complete a full marathon — even if I do it slower than a turtle — just to say I’ve achieved it and for the discipline of training up for something like that.

Professionally, I want to grow the Deloitte Innovation Hub to be the best place for talent to want to come to in the tech and innovation space in Egypt. We’ve gone from zero to 680 people in 25 months — and with God’s grace, we’re going to be 12k people. That’s my magic number.

The best piece of advice I was given came from one of the first managers I ever worked for — and honestly, he wasn’t the best manager. Everything he embodied is everything I’ve grown not to want to be. But his advice stuck with me: always pay attention to everybody.

If you want access to the CEO, the most important person is not the CEO — it’s the secretary. If you just walk in and say, “I want to meet him,” you’re just one of many. But if every day you walk into the office and say good morning to the secretary, and you treat that person like an individual, then one day, when you actually need something, that’s your gateway.

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