Beyond the Case
A podcast where global leaders from the Harvard Business School Owner/President Management (OPM) community join in a personal capacity and share the real decisions, failures, and mental models behind building enduring companies.
This podcast is independent and not affiliated with Harvard Business School.
Beyond the Case
Nothing Is Impossible When Discipline Is a Lifestyle: Ironman Lessons - Mohamed Mahlab
Elite endurance fitness demands structure, early mornings, repetition, and the ability to keep going when your brain wants to stop. Mohamed Mahlab uses that same “choose the hard thing” mindset to challenge himself as a leader: he sets public commitments, builds disciplined routines, and carries responsibility for thousands of livelihoods.
Starting sport at 38 - overweight, out of breath, finishing last, he rebuilt confidence through daily training, then progressed step-by-step from short triathlons to 24 Ironman finishes. The deeper lesson wasn’t the medal; it was proof that “impossible” can be trained into “done,” and that solo preparation creates self-belief you can’t outsource.
In business, he grew Rowad Modern Engineering from a tiny, borrowed-furniture setup into a top construction player in Egypt operating across ~10 countries. He credits relentless work, differentiation and ethics as the compounding edge. He’s cautious about scaling too fast because culture, capability, and reputation take time.
Crisis periods (2011 revolution, COVID) became accelerators: he expanded cross-border, kept sites running to protect labor incomes, and used the disruption to improve systems and digitalization. His leadership philosophy: be a finisher, enable others to succeed, and treat success as a responsibility, not a trophy.
Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation:
1. Raise the bar gradually: sprint → Olympic → half → full; progress beats bravado.
2. Public commitment fuels grit: accountability to family/team can outlast motivation.
3. Be a finisher: train “2 hours and 1 minute,” not “2 hours minus 1.”
4. Discipline is trained early—and refined forever: identify weaknesses and work them.
5. Responsibility creates stamina: thousands of employees’ families change the meaning of “tired.”
6. Differentiate through basics: safety gear, schedules, professionalism—especially when the market doesn’t.
7. Ethics as strategy: the “right way” may be slower, but it protects longevity.
8. Don’t scale faster than capability: culture, know-how, and ecosystem trust take time.
9. Hard times can be opportunities: revolution and COVID pushed expansion and operational upgrades.
10. Learn continuously, apply immediately: cases (Toyota, Friendly Fire, execution boot camps) became real operating changes.
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