How is the work culture and market in Italy different from Egypt, and was it difficult to adjust?
I was realistic from day one, I said I am not going to learn any Italian; we will have to stick to English. If I know the context of the discussion I can understand fairly well because I speak French, but all internal communication is in English. In terms of culture, it has not been very difficult to adjust because it s not that different from Egypt, which was a bit of a surprise to us. If you don t push, things don t get done, particularly because the former owner was the electricity company. Like any government-owned company the culture was relaxed; send the right emails rather than do the right work so we had to push very hard for results. I guess if you compare the work culture in Egypt, Italy and Germany, you ll probably find Italy closer to Egypt than to Germany. As for the market, it is different. It s a very big market, tenders and volume are big and the purchasing power is high. At the end of the day no matter how good you are you re limited by how big or small the market is.
