Etude of Memories

“Etude is a short musical composition, typically for one instrument, designed as an exercise to improve the technique or demonstrate the skills of the player” – wiki

Living life and gaining experiences like playing music instruments, every level is intended to take us to the higher challenges and complexities. There is an exam at the end of level to test our technical competency, patience, and perseverance designed to ensure our readiness to higher complex situational challenges awaiting in the next level. 

Natural vs Striver 

Back to early years in starting corporate life, I had been so focus in building technical competencies to make myself sharper and deeper skills. I told myself if the job requirement/ difficulties required me to have at least level 8 per minimum requirement, my level should be at that level or surpass it if necessary. If not, then I needed to build myself to surpass minimum requirement, at least I did not have to struggle in meeting job expectation. 

My journey has brought me to meet various types of people and to experience problems and challenges in various forms & industries. Increasing level of challenges have tested my persistence and perseverance to the limit, but at the same time giving me chance to do different ways with new perspectives. Few of them stretched me until the most extreme level and I am grateful for that because it is expanded me breaking my barrier of belief.

Meeting lots of people and experiencing & understanding their characters, either they came as life blessing or life lessons have helped me a lot to be more sensitive in various situational circumstances. Frankly, I am not a natural finance talented person like everybody thinks of me. I might end up my career as a doctor in hospital. l made last minutes decision that changed my entire life journey, at the end of my senior high school. Helping my widow mother and two siblings was the right thing to do at that time, therefore becoming a “corporate doctor” made more sense than “hospital doctor” from timing perspective.

I learnt from my parent to always against the status quo, focus on the present, and persistent to try countless times even I failed many times and the world was not in my side. The greatest lesson from my parent and grandparents, and later from my university professor, is a true belief that living with integrity and acting ethically are the most important to live my life as good person more than anything.

Family and my university professor developed my character (“Self”). Experiences has developed my perspective and judgement (“Thought”), layer by layer from time to time, from industry to industry, and from different people I met. I am a Striver.

Limitless Perception and Belief

One of my travel experiences in remote areas in Borneo island introduced me to young brave and smart HSE employee. His presence in managing one of difficult client in remote area to encourage the importance of HSE made the client become best HSE site in our client organization. Unfortunate event happened. He got stroke, haemorrhage bleeding in his brain, and immediate surgery shall be done – exactly a night before he received an award from company. His parent received the award on behalf. It was an emotional moment. The father come from rich and influential people while his only son devoted his career in deep remote area in Borneo jungle as HSE officer.

It was his “Etude”, a challenge to overcome and turnaround.

Post-surgery, part of his body was paralysed and his self-esteem was heavily impacted. I met the doctor. The doctor suggested him to try his best efforts in the next 3 months at least to walk. I strongly believe he could completely recover and I shared with him my belief. The young man was a fighter, he never gave up. He has all the ingredients to turnaround his situation and condition; but it was never easy; to be honest it is in the boundary between possible and impossible. Three months later he came to office, walking with stick. During 3 months he had been persistent to walk and stand, countless times of falling. We started to give him administrative task in HSE to help him gradually optimized his brain capacity and built his self-esteem from scratch. His condition had steadily improved including his sharp focus and analytic skills. Cut the long story short, nowadays the young man just finished his 12km Pocari Sweat Challenge Run in Borneo. He got promoted and living happily with wife and a son. 

He showed his limitless thought and perception, with high persistency to turnaround his situation. Never give up is the key.

What if, we never gave encouragement and certainty to the young man when he was lying in hospital bed …. scared, confuse, and uncertain with his future.

What if, we cancelled the award for him.

What if, we just treated the young man as a burden for company, and just get redundant.

All above “what if” factors are an uncontrollable factors in his life. Religious people always relate this as “karma”, good deed will end with good “karma” and bad deed will end with bad “karma”. I personally believe he would find different ways. He is a fighter. His basic foundation about life is so deep, inherited from his parent. For a young man coming from well-known family and choosing tough career path to devote his knowledge and passion with people in remote area of Borneo jungle, his preference reveals who he is and what he stands for.

It is Self and Thought. Self represents strong determination and initiative to achieve by maintaining focus at present, not dwelling in the past and not too far future. It is rooted from our belief about life as journey or life as destination, about ethic & morality, about cause & effect, and about finding ourselves. Thought represents wide perspective & judgement sourced by our core belief, life experiences, knowledges and understanding. I call it “limitless perception and belief”. It is the true source of grit.

On the other hand, the situation provided a deep and valuable lesson to me. Another “etude”. For all above “what-if” conditions, it was a real testing to me whether I should use my head or my heart or to find way to align between both. In the hospital, a day before surgery, I just learnt how my best favourite tie could be the boost factor for resurrecting the young man’s hope. I gave it in hospital saying he needed to get all strength and courage to bring me back this tie. I decided to employ the young man with the fact he would not work effectively for few years. I believed his key of speedy recovery only happened when he used to continue working and be with his supportive collaborating team. On the other hand, people observed and wondered whether Company would abandon or take care the young man. We took care him. It is like a simple drop of kindness. It created ripple effect to the entire organization.

It is People.

Executive charisma – is it fact or myth?

When I heard about “Executive Charisma” for the first time from one of SVP (Senior Vice President) of my prior Company, he explained to me it is about convincing & persuading skill to express our thought in absolute clarity, fashion appearance, and look dazzlingly. 

Since then, my journey for building up “executive charisma” is like long journey to find “holy grail”. I was so focus on building up two core leadership competencies: convincing & persuading and decisiveness & risk taking; until I forgot the real essence that it is all about People.

During my earlies time heading operation, I visited our biggest coal mining customer camp in Borneo, to address internal sabotage issue. There were 500-600 people there. The fact is our front liners were influenced by competitors and internal customer to sabotage our own food. Their intention was to create bad rating and more penalties. The front liners aimed to get their severance/ separation payment and re-hired by competitor. It is one of “Etude” for me. When I was there, the front liners asked lots of questions until I forgot the material that had been prepared. What surprised me was the fact that in the past 6 years there had not been a single visit from their leadership team in Head Office. They did not know who their management was. Rather than thinking about the content of message to be addressed during town hall, the front liners only simply wanted to be listened and understood. 

My next visit to other customer camp surprised me why a large corporation that has a good reputation in national capital market, for the sake of cost savings, forced our front liners to sleep in ex containers with no window. There were 200-300 front liners. Their dormitory was given to customer employees, due to the cost reason customer had to close few of their dormitories. The challenge was either I kept silent for the sake of relationship with customer, or I spoke my mind straightforwardly risky our contract. I chose to meet the Customer Head of Camp and addressed my concern about our front liners’ inhuman treatment and reminded their reputation as well. Significant changes occurred shortly afterwards.

When a group of social organization surrounded and hosted your full team on the top hotel’s floor of an event held by costumer with the aim of asking for fund and started negotiating with a gun, what should you do. There were two options for me. First option, run away through back door, leaving team behind because in my position safety of leadership team member is very important. Second option, faced it and kept my mind clear to find a way, but it is gravely risky. My inner consciences told me for second option. I could not let them behind. At the end, after tough conversation and convincing them, they went away. Later, I also knew our internal customer involved by leaking information where we were to them. 

From “one Etude” to “another Etude”, I just realized that the way to get people’s heart is by being authentic and how we make ourselves useful to people and the environment around us. Being authentic is being truthful to ourselves and to act genuinely without motive. That’s why I notice, and I believe People also notice, when a speaker did not have “fire” or “chi” when he passionately spoke about his greatness in the past. It is like electromagnet. Perhaps no genuine sincerity there and/ or perhaps those information was partially true... or not true at all.

Now I understand that executive charisma is not something that can be learned and mastered. It is like life blessing that comes from prayers and gratitude from those around us whose lives have become better because of our existence. The larger the circle, the wider and stronger the executive charisma could become. 

The executive charisma is not a myth. It is a life journey to understand our purpose and existence, to live the life beyond ourselves.

Being An Agent of Changes

It is always started from Self. 

It is rooted from our belief about life as journey or life as destination, about ethic & morality, about cause & effect, and about finding ourselves. Self represents strong determination and initiative to achieve by maintaining focus at present. 

From Self to Thought.

Thought represents wide perspective & judgement sourced by our core belief, life experiences, knowledges and understanding.

Both reflect how we lead ourselves.

From Thought to People.

We start to lead our own team, from small team to bigger team. If we are good in managing team, other team would follow us and we can manage cross team or bigger stakeholders. The convincing & persuading skill and being decisive & risk taking by managing ambiguity are still important skills to develop to ensure people understand our thought clearly in my perspective.

It reflects how we lead our own team; and followed by leading stakeholders.

Only by then we can drive result and become an agent of changes.

It is all stepping up process and each process has their own way to prepare our readiness. I always believe no one can be an agent of changes and driving result, without strong belief, self-esteem, thought and people leadership.

Etude of Memories, Becoming Great Conductor

In living this life, we were like the “Conductor”. We started to be our own life’s conductor, standing alone in front of mirror and seeing our own reflections. When the time come, we are moving up to be our team’s conductor; a small orchestra to play one genre of music either classical, jazz, pop, R&B, or et cetera. We become very good at that. Once this small orchestra performed outstandingly, other small orchestras wanted to joint and be led by us. Then we were moving up again to become cross team’s conductor in one big orchestra. 

To gain experiences in delivering grand beautiful symphony, a Great Conductor follows all the process from beginning to an end, and even he consistently goes back to learn new genre of music to ensure his presence always relevant.

What did happen if we skip the process? Or if we cheated the process.

We could. However, would it make us better person in term of technical experiences, view, perception, judgement, and our integrity. 

How do we understand classical music if we do not have experiences and deep understanding about classical music? 

How do we understand jazz music if we do not have experiences in deep understanding about jazz music?

We could pretend but someone who is more expert would find out. Life always finds balance in nature. 

All the journey to be a “Great Conductor” in life are stepping up process in the entire our life journey. Every success & failure, up-side down, happy & sad are part of those lessons. It has made us to be a person we are today. All gaining life experiences are the collection of “Etudes” that spreading in the entire processes starting from Self Process, Thought Process, People Process; and Driving Result as logical consequences. In the simplest words, “Etudes” from the moment we took charge to lead ourselves, taking up to lead team, and to lead stakeholders to drive changes.

I personally call it “Etude of Memories”.

Writer’s Note:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. With new year and new resolution to be better person from day to day.

Article picture is contributed by Andi Saputra.