What I Got Wrong About Language
I arrived in Riyadh thinking language would be my primary barrier. I do not speak Arabic. I assumed that in a country where Arabic is the language of government, daily life, and cultural identity, my inability to communicate in the language would be a constant professional obstacle.
It has been less of a barrier than I expected, and a different kind of barrier than I anticipated. The professional infrastructure and construction sector in Riyadh operates largely in English at the senior level. Major programs, international firms, government agencies with significant international engagement — the working language in formal professional settings is English, and that English is often very good.
The language barrier I actually encounter is not in the meeting room. It is in the informal conversation before the meeting starts, or the discussion over coffee afterward, or the exchange between colleagues in Arabic that happens while I am present. That is where context gets built. That is where relationships deepen. And that is where my Arabic deficit is actually felt — in the texture of informal relationship-building that I cannot fully participate in.
What I Got Wrong About Pace
I arrived with a North American sense of how quickly business develops: meeting, capabilities presentation, proposal, engagement — six to eight weeks from first conversation to contract in a well-aligned situation. In Riyadh, the first conversation is genuinely just the first conversation. The relationship needs more investment than I was prepared to make before business becomes a natural topic.
The adjustment has taken longer than I expected and has been more valuable than I anticipated. The relationships I have built in Riyadh through the slower, relationship-first development process are qualitatively different from the professional relationships I built in Canada. They feel more genuine, more durable, and more likely to produce sustained collaboration rather than transactional engagement.
I have also adjusted my expectation of what ‘fast’ means in a different context. When the right principal is present and aligned, decisions here move extremely quickly. The bottleneck is relationship establishment, not decision-making. Once the relationship foundation exists, the pace can be exceptional.
What I Got Wrong About Market Sophistication
I came to the Saudi market thinking I would be bringing technical capability that was not locally available. In some specific areas, that is true. But the Saudi engineering and project management community is more experienced, more internationally trained, and more analytically demanding than I had assumed before arriving.
The first conversations I had with Saudi infrastructure professionals recalibrated my assumption immediately. These are professionals who have delivered programs at scales I was still learning to navigate. Who have managed multi-billion dollar programs with international consortia. Who have built institutional knowledge across sectors that the Kingdom has been developing for decades. My contribution is real, but it needs to be positioned as additive to a sophisticated existing capability, not as a replacement for it.
What I Got Right
The thing I got most right was the decision to commit. Not to come and go — to be present for events and meetings and then return to Canada. But to actually bring my family here, to integrate into the city, to be available for the informal conversations as much as the formal meetings.
That commitment is visible and it matters. It changes the nature of every professional relationship I have here. Being present in Riyadh — not visiting it — is the single most important decision I have made since relocating.
Six months in. A lot still to learn. I am grateful for every professional conversation that has been part of that learning.