BRIAN KENNY: At Harvard Business School, we have a tradition dating back more than 20 years where we ask members of the graduating class to reflect on a question pose in the poem The Summer Day by Mary Oliver. The question is, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Put differently, that question might just as well be: what do you want your legacy to be? Without a prompt like that, most of us don’t dwell from day-to-day on our legacy. It’s not even something we give ourselves, but rather what we leave behind for others, through our actions, our values, and the relationships we form. About the best any of us could hope for is that we leave behind a legacy that others want to carry forward, that we’ve made a difference in the lives of others that’s worth continuing.
Today on Cold Call, we welcome Christina Wing to discuss the case, “Ghassan Nuqul and The Nuqul Group: Preserving a Father’s Legacy.” I’m your host Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call on the HBR Podcast Network.
Christina Wing’s research focuses primarily on topics surrounding families and business, including family dynamics, operating companies, family offices, and legacy opportunities. Christina is a three or four-peat customer here on Cold Call.
Christina, it’s great to have you back.
CHRISTINA WING: Thank you. It’s great to be here, Brian.
BRIAN KENNY: These are always really fun conversations. We are really thrilled today to have our protagonist on the call, on the podcast as well. Ghassan Nuqul is the chairman of Fine Hygienic Holding and the protagonist in today’s case.
Ghassan, thanks for joining us.
GHASSAN NUQUL: Thank you, Brian. Good to be here.
BRIAN KENNY: I thought this case did a beautiful job of talking about that in the context of your family, Ghassan, and your company. We’ll dive right in.
Christina, I’m going to start with you and ask you to tell us what the central theme is of the case, and what your cold call is when you start the discussion in the classroom?
CHRISTINA WING: The central theme of the case is about a family, a country, and a business that all have had extreme resiliency. My cold call is if the title of the case is “Preserving Legacy,” how are we preserving legacy by selling and breaking up the company?
BRIAN KENNY: That’s a good one. That probably sparked great conversation right off the bat. How did you hear about Nuqul, and what inspired you to write a case about it?
CHRISTINA WING: I had been following the family for a while. I have a fascination with the Middle East. Seeing the growth that they were able to achieve over 70 years in a country that’s had a lot of hardship made me have to know the story because you can’t just be good at business, you have to have a lot of heart to be able to keep doing these things for that long. That’s why I wanted to go to Jordan and meet this wonderful family.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. We’ll talk more about the impact the business has had, which is really astounding as you look at it over the last several decades.
Ghassan, let me turn to you for a minute and ask you, for our listeners, to describe Nuqul Group. What’s the business that you’re in?
GHASSAN NUQUL: Sure. Thanks, Brian. We are a diversified family business started in Jordan in 1952 by my late father. Who was, as you know, a Palestinian refugee who came to Jordan, 1948, penniless without anything. He started trading in FMCG, fast-moving consumer goods. Then in 1958, was the first, if you will, industrial activity started producing hygienic paper.
I joined him in 1985. We had four companies. We expanded the group between 1985 from four companies to 26 companies by 1996. Today the group has different activities. The core business is the paper business. We are the largest tissue producer in the Middle East, with five paper mills all over the Middle East and converting plants. We are basically producing diapers, adult diapers, tissues, toilet, kitchen napkins, wipes, and so forth. But we’re also diversified, so we are in banking, insurance, edible oil, lifestyle, HR software, stationary, sleep solutions, real estate, and so forth.
BRIAN KENNY: Okay. And you’re into the third generation of the family, and we’re going to talk about how that’s working, too. That’s really, a lot of that’s at the heart of the case. But also, central to the case is your father’s story, which almost read a little bit like a screenplay. I could picture it playing out in a movie. Really remarkable what he was able to achieve, given where he started. What does it mean to you to carry forward his legacy? Especially you’re in the second generation, the leader of Nuqul Group. What does it mean to you to carry that forward?
GHASSAN NUQUL: That’s everything in my life. If you asked me, Brian, “What’s your story? What’s your mission? What’s your drive?” This is exactly it, frankly. It all revolves around this and the story of my father, as I mentioned. When I joined him, Brian, I felt I was fortunate. I was fortunate, given his story, that at one point in time and this is literally true, he had no food to eat. This is the essence and the power of this group, that we are resilient, we never give up, and every hit we receive, it makes us stronger.
I said the least I could do is to evolve, to grow, to expand, to institutionalize, and to continue growing with this company, and at the same time preserving the legacy, the reputation, the values, the ethics, and what have you.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
GHASSAN NUQUL: I wrote a mission statement that I still live with today. To make a difference in my family, my business, and my country. Believe me, Brian, believe me, every word of this statement lives with me and it is the thing that I commit to every single hour of every day.
BRIAN KENNY: I love that. It ties right back to what we’re talking about with the Portrait Project here. These are moments where you step back and actually think about, “Where am I going and what does it mean for me to leave something behind for others?” That’s great. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Christina, I want to turn back to you for a minute. One of the things that you and I have talked about in the past with family businesses in particular is this challenge of balancing the legacy of the firm, the core values that the founders had in mind, with modernization and trying to keep those two things in balance with each other. How do you see this playing out in Ghassan and Nuqul Group’s story?
CHRISTINA WING: What’s so interesting is people always think legacy means one thing and it stays there. The legacy can be, as Ghassan just said, taking care of the integrity and the kindness in which you do things, but that still means that you can change the business. Where people get stuck is when they think the legacy needs to be that we make toilet paper the exact same way we did 70 years ago today. That would just be ridiculous. You have to modernize where you do things, how you do things, and the entire supply chain. Where the confusion comes is when the founder isn’t willing to accept change. Now in this case the founder, I think that these two had some tough conversations, but Ghassan was able to move his father into evolving the businesses but keeping the same principles of how we approach them. That’s the art and the science here.
BRIAN KENNY: Ghassan, the case does talk about some of the conversations, the frank discussions that you had to have with your father. And that maybe your children will be having with you at some point, as you think about continuing this legacy going forward. One of the things that you did was to spearhead the institutionalization of the business, as it’s described in the case. Can you tell us why that was important? What it means, first of all, to do that, and what the steps were that you took to do it?
GHASSAN NUQUL: Sure. Remember when I mentioned that when I joined, he had four companies. The minute he saw his son joining the business, we went to go from four companies to 26 between 1985 to 1996. It was a one-man show before I joined, and then it became a two-man show. With this, Brian, rapid expansion, not only in Jordan but elsewhere in the Middle East and the US as well because we invested in the US, plus in different industries. It’s not one industry. We became the bottleneck. Our projects got delayed. I’ll be honest with you, we made mistakes, we started making mistakes because we could not cope. Thirdly, I’ll say something very, very personal; I’m very uninhibited on this. At times, I’d go home and I’d cry. I used to cry because I couldn’t cope anymore. The last thing I want to do is to turn him down.
Basically, it dawned on me that instead of crying and complaining to him, what am I going to do given the mission statement I shared with you earlier?
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
GHASSAN NUQUL: I started to think down, “What are our issues? What are our struggles? What are our challenges?” It became obvious to me that the only solution, the only way forward, is to institutionalize the business, including the separation of management from ownership. It was in 2004. Yes, it was a tough battle with my father. Like Christina said, my late father was very accommodating in the sense that he believed in me. He trusted me, whether in college because I was doing very well in college, as well as the changes he saw in the business and allowed me to say it. The new leadership style I was bringing to the company, he trusted me. But remember that he had his own habits. He was a self-made man attending to every detail. Asking him not to talk to the foreman or an engineer, or what have you, just talk to the GM, it was unthinkable. But it took thorough perseverance, it took thorough cooperation from myself.
I did something very important, and in my opinion, it was the pillar for this journey. Which what we call in the group, I made it with my own hands with the team around me, it’s called the GSM, the Group Standard Manual, Brian. Because when you delegate, when you bring top people, when you give authorities, you need two things. You need to tell them what are the systems, and the ethos, and how we do things. And you need to give them authority, but with controls and monitoring because you want to make sure checks and balances.
Here came, all of a sudden, something called governance, corporate governance, which I never knew it was called governance. But I did it and I realized it won confidence, a family business in Dubai that this is what’s called corporate governance. I said to myself, “Oh my God, but I just made it.” I didn’t do it out of a fad or fashion. I did it out of business necessity.
The last thing I will mention here is all of a sudden, Brian, the results, the profits started going up into different levels.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
GHASSAN NUQUL: This gave me a lot of leverage with him that, “See? It’s working, we should have done it earlier.”
BRIAN KENNY: Right. But what you’re describing, Christina, I want to ask you about this. That sounds like one of the most difficult transitions to make in a family-owned business, is separating out the management from the ownership. And I guess making yourself vulnerable enough to accept that there might be people who you can bring into the organization that can help to improve it when you’ve always done it on your own. Can you talk a little bit about navigating that sort of transition, Christina?
CHRISTINA WING: This transition is brutal because founders want to sweep in and micromanage. In order for this transition to happen, there has to be great respect for the founders and the family and what they’ve done. But the family has to also acknowledge that the business has outgrown the ability to be managed by a one- or two-man show. Those things have to happen, otherwise it never will work. Once those things happen, it still has a high chance of failure in the first two years because we have people, their business is their baby. You’re asking them to stop tending to their baby-
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
CHRISTINA WING: … and let somebody else tend to their baby, and it requires a lot of trust. Once you get past the two-year mark, it tends to work. But in that two-year mark and the year preceding, there’s a lot of tears.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, yeah.
CHRISTINA WING: It’s very, very hard.
BRIAN KENNY: I can also see, Ghassan mentioned, his father’s used to picking up the phone and calling people that he’s probably been working with for decades at this business. “Why can’t I just call this person who I know will get this thing done for me?” That’s hard. We see that happen in every business where a new person comes in and they’re supposed to be playing a leadership role, and people are working around them. How do you start to navigate those kinds of changes, when perhaps the founder is a bit of a cult of personality within the firm?
CHRISTINA WING: Well, I think the hardest part is when you take away operations from a founder, they suddenly have a lot more time.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
CHRISTINA WING: They need to feel relevant. Relevancy is what all of us want. If you have a founder who’s used to working 7:00 to 9:00 at night, and then you take away the hundred emails and the phone calls, their identity slips. You need to find other ways for them to be relevant. Just because you go from being owner-operators to taking on a more investor-like role doesn’t mean you’re still not valuable. You need to get those people to move up in strategy, up in how they review things. But if you just cut them off cold turkey, many people actually die because their heart has been torn out.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. Ghassan, does this sound familiar to you?
GHASSAN NUQUL: Yeah. I’ll mention one thing, Brian. Christina is spot-on. My father had more time and do you know what he did every time? A new project. Believe me, believe me.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
GHASSAN NUQUL: He was always very ambitious until the very last day on the job.
BRIAN KENNY: You also made another big decision, Ghassan, which was not just separating the operations from the ownership, or the management from the ownership, but you also brought in outside advisors in the form of private equity. Can you talk a little bit about that decision, what drove it, and what the results were?
GHASSAN NUQUL: I am the son of the founder, I’m the new chairman, I am leading the organization. I’m very passionate about it, I had a great team. But at the end of the day, I did not work outside the family business, and this is a minus in my opinion.
BRIAN KENNY: This gets into the importance of professionalizing the family business. Can you talk a little bit about what the best practices are in regard to that?
CHRISTINA WING: I really dislike the word professionalizing the family business because I feel like it indicates that family businesses are only professional when they bring in outsiders. I do think that a business can be professional with family members, but I also think a business can be professional with non-family working in it. I think that’s a point of clarity because it doesn’t mean that all businesses can only be professional once family leaves. In this case, when we use the term professionalization, we really mean a great overhaul of all of the functions. And creating a business that can succeed without family because we employ so many people, and this business is very important to the country.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
CHRISTINA WING: In doing this, you have to go slow to go fast. What Ghassan mentions about finding out about all the debt is something that happens in a lot of businesses. A lot of founders indirectly hide mistakes in a way, because they’re confident that they can turn it around because they always have. Then when something like an illness comes in and you find out, “Oh my goodness, there’s this whole amount of debt I didn’t know about,” you need to make a big decision. Are we going to sell this business, or are we going to turn it around? In Ghassan’s case, he turned it around in the best way possible, which was by bringing in some outside capital, and then working very disciplined with the private equity firm to reduce costs and get everything else going up. But this is not an easy thing to do.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
CHRISTINA WING: It is very hard to go from 100% ownership to not 100% ownership, and suddenly have other people having a stake in how you make decisions. Because in this case, Ghassan wanted to hold this business forever. A private equity firm needs to leave.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
CHRISTINA WING: Which means you have a clock against how quickly you can make these changes.
BRIAN KENNY: What you’re describing to me sounds like it could cause a lot of tension within the family. Ghassan, I’m curious. As a frame of reference, some of us watched “Succession” on television. We realize that’s probably the worst-case scenario. But I would imagine that in any family enterprise of this magnitude, there’s got to be disagreements and tensions that happen all the time. How do you navigate that?
GHASSAN NUQUL: Sure. One of the things that I did proactively from learning through conferences on governance, family businesses, and advisors is the family constitution. I did that early on in 2008, 2009. It took us one-year-and-a-half with a top consultant. I involved my brother. What we would do, we would come every month with the consultant, he was out of Dubai, PWC, to Jordan to meet with the family to give them an update on the progress and share with them the tentative decisions so far, if they’re aligned, so there was buy-in. Two things I would like to mention on the constitution. You are addressing all potential conflict areas today on behalf of the future, which means that there could be some friction and some issues. It was not an easy and smooth ride, I have to admit. But in my opinion, doing it then is much safer than waiting until things happen and then you need to address them.
BRIAN KENNY: Now, as you think about engaging the next generation to bring them up the learning curve to be engaged in the business, that probably poses a new set of challenges. How are you engaging that next generation and bringing them along?
GHASSAN NUQUL: I involved my sons, three sons, with all the issues and frictions I had with my siblings. The reason is for them to see and know what could happen, how do you address them, how do you sort them because whatever is happening today might happen between them in the future. That’s one. The second point, we now finalized the draft of the new family constitution between myself, my wife, and my sons, already a family constitution. Thirdly, which is very important is the values and the ethos of the things that I learned from my father, and the mission and the journey we have to endure. When I say the journey we have to endure is even if the family members do you wrong, you don’t reciprocate. You continue to do what is right, you follow your principles. I’ll be honest with you, probably it is the toughest thing to do, but I learned it from my father. It comes from wisdom, age, experience, and endurance and good luck. But the good thing about all of it, I want to tell you, Brian, is my three sons have been absorbing all the story of my father so that they know today this was not easy to achieve. Make no mistake, there’s no guarantee. You cannot guarantee there will not be issues. What you do today is you take as much as possible precautions, and I can give you more examples, so that you minimize this possibility. If things happen, how do you sort and address them?
BRIAN KENNY: Right. That gets back to your point about resiliency. Obviously, this enterprise has been able to overcome all kinds of adversity over the years. Christina, it sounds to me like what Ghassan has done with the constitution and the other steps he’s describing, is really taking a formalized approach to bringing in that next generation, to maybe giving it a better chance to succeed that way. Is this something you’ve encountered in other family businesses that you work with?
CHRISTINA WING: A lot of family businesses create a family constitution. Very few know what the family constitution says. They create it, they sign it, they put it in a desk drawer, and they don’t live by it. I think the difference here is that Ghassan has so much love for family and so much respect for what his father did that he lives the constitution, so there’s no way to not know what’s in it. By being so truthful with his children about the history and problems, and educating them, and allowing them to understand their responsibilities, many parents hide that. I think is a good sign that this family is going to last a little bit longer than most.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
CHRISTINA WING: But they’re living the constitution, they’re not just signing it.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Ghassan, let me ask you. At the heart of this, we’re talking about legacy. You talked about how important it is for you to preserve your father’s legacy. But what about yours? We all have a legacy. Like it or not, everybody has a legacy. How are you thinking about yours? In the context of what you’ve been able to do with the enterprise and taking it to the next level-
CHRISTINA WING: Oh, Brian, I’m going to interrupt for a minute.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
CHRISTINA WING: His legacy is being a grandpa now. He finally has a girl in the family. Three sons finally produced a girl!
GHASSAN NUQUL: Christina, she’s taking my heart, my soul, my mind, everything.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
GHASSAN NUQUL: But I have good news. The second grandson, my first grandson, my second grandchild, will be coming in July. We’re expecting Ghassan Jr.
BRIAN KENNY: Congratulations. That’s wonderful on both counts.
GHASSAN NUQUL: Yeah.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, yeah.
GHASSAN NUQUL: It gives you more motives to work harder, believe me.
BRIAN KENNY: But tell me a little bit, how do you think about your legacy?
GHASSAN NUQUL: First, the sentence making a difference. In everything I do, trust me, in everything I behave with, my mind is set on making a difference. Today Nuqul Group has become in Jordan more than other, in the Middle East, as a reference for many modern family business, a symbol of private sector, in the corporate social responsibility, in many things. Even the quality of fabrics, quality of products. I’m not boasting, believe me. All I’m saying is that it was a result of the drive I had because of him.
BRIAN KENNY: Christina, let me ask you a little bit, just in terms of if we think about the cultural, the regional context of Jordan, the history there that Ghassan alluded to earlier. Does that shape the governance and growth strategy of the family a little bit differently than it would if they were in a different geographic context, political context?
CHRISTINA WING: Well, I think that context always matters, and different countries need different things. In this case, the culture of the people in this region is very much family first. There are, every Sunday, family dinners. Ghassan goes by and checks on his mom every day. There are expectations of certain family things that are really important to how they live. What’s interesting about a place like Jordan is you have all that close family part, but then you have it’s hard to do business there. You also want to be global. Where do you make your money, and how do you contribute money and contribute to the country? Being a leader in a place like this, doing philanthropic, giving scholarships, mentoring people, these aren’t things that have been in Jordan for a long time. It all needs to come into context of, one, the success that’s happened, but also how hard it is to keep it going.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
CHRISTINA WING: This is hard. Jordan doesn’t have a lot of natural goods. They have to import things in to make things. To be productive in this country, you have to work like this. And they’re very proud of their country, as well as their business and their family.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
CHRISTINA WING: It’s complicated.
BRIAN KENNY: And it gets back to resiliency, that theme keeps coming up. We haven’t talked about your mother at all, Ghassan. Can you maybe describe the influence that she’s had? Because she plays an important role in all of this as well.
GHASSAN NUQUL: My mom brought, Brian, the soft side to the family. My mom came from a better to-do family. She went to a very important boarding school, and she brings that softness. She’s a pianist. She’s full of life. My father, because of his hardship, was more serious. She brought to the family the love, the affection. Although my father gave me a lot of love in different ways, a lot of love. This, to me, is the source of power. This love, this family spirit makes me want to protect this family, to take it to another level, to be the, if you will the guardian, et cetera. The energy I get from her is unbelievable.
BRIAN KENNY: Tell us about the Nuqul Foundation. What are the kinds of things that you’re focused on in the foundation? And how does that play into the legacy?
GHASSAN NUQUL: Sure. Remember I mentioned making a difference, right?
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
GHASSAN NUQUL: And institutionalization. My father had smaller philanthropic activities. But they were not structured, they were not institutional. They didn’t have budget. They didn’t have a product impact assessment. It was about scholarships because he was deprived of higher education.
My wife Tala, who is a special lady and had a great influence on me, I give her the credit. She was the one. She looked at me one day telling me, “We’re not doing enough.” And the business’ corporate and social responsibility is different than the family philanthropy, so this is separate. This is family.
We educate Jordanians from all of over walks of life, and make them employable, make them positive agents of society. Employability is 91% upon graduation. We work on their soft skills, entrepreneurship, leadership, personal finances, giving back to the community, networking and beyond. If you meet, Brian, our scholars today and when they first came, you will know exactly what I’m talking about.
CHRISTINA WING: I was going to say this man makes time for everybody and he has no time.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
CHRISTINA WING: On top of the scholarships, the mentoring, the encouraging them to learn English in very good ways, it’s unbelievable.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
CHRISTINA WING: I’m very impressed.
BRIAN KENNY: It reminds me of a case that we talked about on this podcast not too long ago with another family business that was doing the same thing in Turkey, really trying to create a foundation for education. That’s another way of carrying a legacy forward that’s at a national scale. That’s really impressive.
GHASSAN NUQUL: Brian, can I say something personal with you, if you allow me?
BRIAN KENNY: Yes.
GHASSAN NUQUL: My father-in-law one day told me, “You know what, Ghassan, I never told you this. But do you know that you are the only one I know of among the family businesses in Jordan who built on his father’s reputation and legacy by starting the foundation and you named it after him?” This is what legacy he needs more than that when you are doing things and making a difference in the lives of younger deserving Jordanians. To me, Brian, this is the impact. I’m not doing it for public relations, believe me. Believe me, I’m not doing it. It’s the impact, the changes that you see in the lives of these young Jordanians when I meet with them, when I mentor some of them. It’s so rewarding, I can’t even tell you.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. No, I believe it. Thank you for sharing that. I’m sure that that’s very true. Ghassan, as you look ahead, can you talk a little bit about what your vision is for Nuqul Group? Where do you see Nuqul Group five, 10 years down the road?
GHASSAN NUQUL: I’m going to be very honest with you and realistic. One of the things I’m worried about is, frankly, I don’t want for my sons to go through what I have been going through. It’s been tough. Like Christina mentioned, there’s nothing easy. I’m very proud of the success, I’m very proud of the achievements, but at the same time it all came at very, very high price. Now I’m very disciplined, I’m strong. I have my hobbies, I do my sports, I travel. Make no mistake, I enjoy my wealth, if you will. But at the same time, it comes at a very, very high price.
Now the high price is not the hours. It’s the frustrations, the disappointments. This is maybe way things are, this is nature of life in family businesses. I don’t want it for them so I’m thinking very wisely, “How can I eliminate that or reduce that?” This is one thing that I’m working on.
The second thing, I want Nuqul Group to continue to be the beacon for family businesses in the region.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. So continuing with the modernization and the march forward, I get it, I get it. Christina, let me give you the final word here then and tell our listeners, if there’s one thing you’d like them to remember about the Nuqul case, what would it be?
CHRISTINA WING: The one thing I want them to remember is that what was created 70 years ago should and is changing constantly. Legacy doesn’t mean having to be in the same businesses the same way. The legacy can be the integrity and the love that you show for family and country. As it evolves, it enables generations to create their own legacy and still maintain and preserve the legacy before. You don’t have to have the exact same thing that the people before you had in order to continue their legacy, but you have to create your own as well. I think this case is a perfect example of a family that put family first, and the family is going to stay together. The business is being split up a little bit, but we still have the family, and the legacy, and individual legacies.
It’s a beautiful story. But it is hard, and it takes dedication to the thing you care about the most. The thing they care about the most is family, and they put family first. Doing that has allowed them to be able to put country and business also as an important part, but you have to have a pillar.
BRIAN KENNY: That’s a perfect way to end the conversation. Christina, Ghassan, thank you so much for joining me on Cold Call.
CHRISTINA WING: Thank you.
GHASSAN NUQUL: Thank you.
BRIAN KENNY: If you enjoy Cold Call, you might like our other podcasts, After Hours, Climate Rising, Deep Purpose, IdeaCast, Managing the Future of Work, Skydeck, Think Big, Buy Small, and Women at Work, find them on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And if you could take a minute to rate and review us, we’d be grateful. If you have any suggestions or just want to say hello, we want to hear from you, email us at [email protected]. Thanks again for joining us, I’m your host Brian Kenny, and you’ve been listening to Cold Call, an official podcast of Harvard Business School and part of the HBR Podcast Network.
