Interview: Cultural Leadership Development in Bangladesh

A research team from Amsterdam- Netherlands is conducting a markets research on 'Cultural Leadership Development' in 30 different countries. They selected market leaders from those 30 countries and took interviews. They will further upload it to their central university website (www.minorccbs.com) for their grad and PhD students to use/study. Mr Rockey, who works in Coca Cola Amsterdam have taken this interview and recorded the script as stated below. The interview has been recorded on 05 May 2020 (Bangladesh Time 0100 Hrs). Special thanks to Rockey M.

INTERVIEW starts..

Rockey Introduced himself as a research associate and his team who are involved with this interview on 'cultural leadership development in Bangladesh'//

Rockey: Can you tell me about yourself?

Saef: Well, I have been working with diverse people and environment from multi-diverse culture and work ethics. Last 14 years, I have been working with global banking giants like Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and Commercial Bank of Ceylon as country head of Compliance Monitoring, Head of Audit and Head of Operations from time to time. I have also developed a number of national and international policies and frameworks in the areas of audit, compliance and organization as well as business development. I have been developing the Compliance and HR Framework of A&C Christofi Limited, a renowned audit advisory firm at Cyprus in Europe. I am closely working with Bangladesh Capital Market, Bangladesh Securities Market and the two national stock exchanges in Bangladesh. I am an enlisted trainer, policy maker and consultant at the two national stock exchanges in Bangladesh - Dhaka and Chittagong Stock Exchange.

 I am serving as Head of Internal Control & Compliance and Chief Anti-Money Laundering Compliance officer at Riverstone Capital Limited in Bangladesh. Riverstone Capital Limited (RCL) is a Bangladesh based Merchant Bank registered and licensed under the Merchant Banking and Portfolio Management Rules 1996 of Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC). My Forte lies in compliance, audit, HR and Business Development in local and international markets. More precisely, I concentrated in areas of Anti-money laundering, terrorist financing, Anti-bribery and corruption, Fraud detection, HR advisory, and business development within my capacity. I am a certified anti-money laundering investigator (CAMI) from Ponsun AML Academy, India. I am also a certified audit report writer from PEF Associates Inc. USA.

I am a lead trainer for nationwide financial literacy program in Bangladesh jointly under International network for Financial Literacy (INFE), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and IOSCO. Besides, I am an active member of Global Institute of Internal Auditors (GIIA), MetricStream Inc., CEB Audit Leadership Council, Global Association for Risk Professionals (GARP) etc.    

I love to read books. And my favorite book is AL Quran, Which I believe the most amazing manual for human kind. I like travelling and watching movies. So this is pretty much about me.

Rockey: With what kind of people do you currently work with within your job role?

Saef: As I work with various stakeholders within my numerous roles currently performing, I do work with versatile ranges of people, from regulators to co-workers, from nationals to multinationals and henceforth. Mostly, they are from diverse background, culture and ethics. A portion of them are highly business oriented, challenge driven and markets motivated, whereas another portion of them are simply operational, hence mechanical.

The other stakeholders are key regulators, with whom I need to deal with almost on a regular basis. There are classifications of stakeholders at all levels as far as authority is concerned. Also I need to deal with government bodies, socio-economic platforms and various other international authorities like, FATF, UNSC Regulators, INFE, OFAC, OECD, GIIA, GARP, etc. Locally we need to deal with Bangladesh Securities Exchange Commission (BSEC), DSE, Bangladesh Central Bank, BFIU etc. as our primary regulators.

Furthermore, I need to communicate with range of local and international clients across the globe relating to my capacity in internal control and compliance within my business jurisdiction. So there are highly skilled resources, business leaders, bankers, government bodies, international regulators, local market motivators, clients of all types - I need to deal with on a regular basis. My co-workers are specialized in investment banking, business advisory, trade advisory, economic research and legal advisory both nationally and internationally. So there is a range of individuals and teams that I need to work with on a regular basis.

Rockey: How would you describe the work environment in Bangladesh?

Saef: The overall working environment is moderately flexible, here. People adapt with the environment whatever it is, in general. The capability of adoption against all odds are the prime strength for survival of the fittest here. That means people are very resilient in general compared to other nations of the world. They can stand up and start business as usual after any disaster, easier and faster than other parts of the world. This shapes the general work environment very much.

Currently many organizations are working on their employees’ feedback, to improve the working environment to make them more comfortable to work even for long hours. However, the work environment in Bangladesh varies widely between institutions owned by the state and those, privately owned. Now let me clarify this difference.

Public ones are more bureaucratic in nature as it is in most parts of the world nowadays. Moreover, centralized decision making, being highly structured and hierarchical in nature where methods and systems are more important than practical and proactive executions. Poor communication and unavailability of accurate information is predominant in this mechanistic environment. There is a reasonable practice of training and development but the methods and subject matter concern again requires consideration and learning outcome is questionable in many cases.

On the other hand, private organizations have diverse work environment starting from FMCG to Ready Made Garments, from banks to brokerages and whether they are owned by local or foreign owners. These organizations have their own nurtured work environment often characterized by cut throat competition with predisposition of profit generation and wealth creation before anything. So Transparent and open communication, team building and recognition of hard work are present in varying combination but training and work life balance consideration are farfetched. As I have worked at number of private and multinationals I believe, Bangladesh work environment are primarily based on principles and thousand years old culture as well as the philosophy of the owners. Sometimes they are driven by their belief system and relationship with stakeholders.

But being one of the fastest growing economies with more than 6 -7% GDP growth for last decade or so, made Bangladesh stable as well as moderately flexible in terms of work environment in general, with changes coming from across the world. See, with such a continuous growth rate along with 315 billion USD ?expected GDP by end of 2020, On an average 1.1% change in population growth rate with a total population of 164.7 million (2020), and GDP per capita 1828 USD ?(2019) - you cannot effort to lose track due to stagnant or negative work environment. So in general, people are very hard working, focused and positive towards changing their lives through their work commitment and that made the trick, I believe.

In order to make it easier for you to accept diversity, you need to develop multifaceted competence. I can talk from my own experience: having made a career in Finance, I moved into Audit and Compliance, and policy making, which introduced a new horizon of thinking to me, made me deal with problems that were alien to me. But, that experience made me who I am today, the Head of Internal Control & Compliance in a leading merchant bank in Bangladesh.

Rockey: How do you as a head prefer to work with your team and other employees?

Saef: I prefer to work with my team as well as with other employees as a work partner, facilitator and more of like an enabler. I tend to forget the name "Head" while performing as a Head, rather I prefer to lead the role as a "Head". So that means, I try to lead my team and co-workers with more responsibilities, lesser tension, positive inter-personal communications, and with making them believe how important they are for the organization and nation at large. See, I always believe that Leaders will show you the path, with tolerance to disagreements and differences of opinions.

I enjoy working in an environment where everyone has a right to say and every voices are heard and taken care of. In my work experience in last 14 years in multinationals like HSBC and Commercial Bank of Ceylon, I have worked closely with people from different countries, cultures and even continents. I have seen how people's behavior and work pattern changes from culture to culture and I learnt - how to deal with them to fetch the optimum output within a tight deadline. So this is very interesting, I feel. To cope with different segments and cultures, yet reaching out to the organization goal at the end of the day. There are many books written on organizational behavior, especially in past few decades but I can tell you - the real life experience will and can only make you feel the heat at its core. 

I have been actively engaging with various national and international risk management forums for past few years as facilitator. I have always believed in performance consistently exceeding objectives and stretch targets throughout my career. So strong communication, management and negotiation skills have always helped me to build stakeholder relationships while delivering high quality, risk focused and value added results. Which really matters at the end. No one remembers how you scored the goals as long as you win a football match. Everybody is interested on the results. So is the case in life, may be everywhere. But leaders are those people who plans out how to reach there with a team full of independent thoughts and behaviors. Leaders will lead by examples toward success.

So in short, leading by examples, being optimistic toward life, positive attitude, coaching and mentoring have always brought brilliant individual as well as collective results that made each moment of my career meaningful and worthy. I always try to translate vision into reality. May be this is why, I do not sleep with a dream, rather I always wake up with one.

Rockey: How do people in Bangladesh define leadership?

Saef: Leadership in our country is basically defined as - who can provide direction and hence unite his/ her followers towards the greater aim or achievement that not necessarily serves the purpose of the wellbeing of general civilians. Most people in Bangladesh believe that leaders are those who hail or lead some political party or religious groups or a social platform. Mostly people think leadership is to coordinate among team members and motivate them to utilize their potential according to company's expectations. But you know leaders and leadership are universal in nature and there is extreme dearth of effective leaders in the business community nowadays.

There are some handful business owners whom we can call leaders in Bangladesh, but the quality of leadership in general is very scarce within this 164.7 million Bangladeshis, especially within key areas of business, politics and administration. And this is one of the key reasons why I think, we are lacking behind for last 20 odd years, where we have actually failed to create excellent leaders in those key areas. Apart from the fact that we have many successful role models scaled within institutions and businesses, but leaders like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Sheikh Muzibur Rahman or Even Mahatma Gandhi - we can't even think of nowadays. Our upcoming and current generations are really in short of visualizing their perfect role models or leaders - a leader who can change the direction of a civilization or a nation or a business community at a minimum.

There are political influences and polarization everywhere. Nowadays a leader cannot survive without political backbone or motivation in any field, which again, makes purposeful leaders, or one eyed leaders - I must say. And leadership should come from inheritance, not by accident or by force. People, nowadays, make leaders who are politically vibrant, financially sound and socially well-known for their own short-term benefits in return. But they forget to choose a truthful, honest and a vibrant person with integrity and bravery in his heart in this process. As a result, we rush towards short-term specific benefits instead of long term bigger goals.

Rockey: Have you ever needed to negotiate with people from Bangladesh? If so what do you think are important interests that people in Bangladeshi cherish the most?

Saef: This is something I need to do on a regular basis, in various scales and parameters, with various stakeholders as I mentioned earlier. Clients - both in-country and outbound, regulators, vendors, third-parties what not.

See, people's interests vary in various perspective. Who doesn't want to win a negotiation? But in general, Bangladeshis are yet to learn tools and techniques of formal business negotiation, I think. Apart from the fact that they can really bargain well with buyers and sellers in local markets, but weaker formal communication in general makes things tougher for them while it comes to negotiation with their business or potential clients. So their potential interest would be more of feeling self-importance within a negotiation and when their voices are heard. Although, a huge development has been addressed in RMG, apparel, Medicine and other export oriented businesses in last 30 years, which really changed this pattern a lot and made many business negotiators in past few decades. General people here are like minded to adopt rather than take challenges.

One other factor is - Bangladeshi people are culturally family oriented. This cultural factor impacts on business negotiations as well. When it comes to prioritizing, Bangladeshi people value building relationships as the most important factor in establishing businesses also. Obviously, profitability is a major concern. But it needs to come with a sustainable long term business relationship and planning. So relationship building is in their blood and as a nation, Bangladeshis are famous for their hospitability, too. Which in turn, made them weaker negotiators in many cases, I think.

Rockey: Do people in Bangladesh think more short-term or long-term and what kind of effects does it have for you as a leader?

Saef: Varying researches on time orientation of Bangladeshis have proved that we in fact are people who have short term orientation and tend to have short term outlook as well as aim for short run gain rather than strategic long term opportunities and return. Not to mention the famous research of Geert Hofstede Cultural dimensions study, gave Bangladesh an intermediate score of 47, which does not indicate a strong preference in either direction, neither very long term nor short term. As a leader this tendency possess certain challenges in every aspects of management starting from planning, organizing, controlling to lead and leadership as a whole.

It often becomes difficult to break the shackles as subordinates and even the superiors prefer to maintain time-honored traditions and norms while viewing dynamic changes with suspicion and doubts. Most people here invest in capital market with a frame of mind of earning short term capital gains and benefits instead of planning for a longer term investment and return.

So is the case in bank deposits and other financial organizations. Since majority of the wealth is concentrated within a small portion of high class people, most of the population are still working very hard and fighting for their livelihoods, in general, which tends to push them toward such short term benefits. So expectations remain generally higher, while investment period is shorter. This pushes leaders under real planning and execution, as how to deal with or how to meet those short term high expectations.

So, you need to be more accurate and fault prone in capital market trading for example, which is highly volatile in nature. Leading a bunch of trying people with higher short term expectations makes you feel the heat of leadership at its core all the time. But that's why life is beautiful here, haha.   

Rockey: What or who do leaders in Bangladesh consider when making tough decisions?

Saef: The roles and responsibilities of leaders, everywhere are changing frequently due to a wave of reforms which cause leaders to face continuous challenges in their jobs across the world. According to Mayrowetz (2008) research, 'as there are ambiguities about the activities which may actually be considered as leadership, it is difficult to sketch the boundaries of leaders' work'. Depending on the situation and personal characteristics, leaders may work alone or collaboratively to reach their goals. And we all know according to Duignan (2006), Riley and Mcbeath (2005), 'Heroic Forms of leadership, where leaders work mainly alone, tend not to use the leadership capabilities and aptitudes of others.' This type of leadership does not draw on the leadership capacity of a person.

Decision making both its ways and nature varies according to the priorities as well as the business objectives in prevailing contexts of the decision makers in particular. On the general, and ideally, tough situation requires a decision maker to be cautious about the financial vitals and criterion as well as the objectives of all the stakeholders concerned. As I have already mentioned we are basically short term oriented and high power distance societies, our leaders usually consider financial aim: gain and losses, objectives of stakeholders’ especially those of owners and do not pay much attention to the market dynamics: demand and customers preferences etc.

Hence the crisp and swift decisions might tackle a tough situation in the short run but backfires greatly in the long run leading to ultimate decline of businesses. Taking reactive decisions based on readily available information and lack of market research is a common practice, here. Technological advancement and its implication is yet another factor without which, it’s quite hard to hear all voices from all levels while taking a holistic decision in a tough situation.

So although they consider profit and loss factors, stakeholders' objectives and goals, they usually miss out adequate market research on 'demand vs. supply' as well as customer preferences and change management. Short of change management skills is another key area in this case. Equally important for you is to develop a mindset that is trained to take decisions based on facts as opposed to taking calls based on perception. Often you would end up with a decision that goes against popular understanding on things because you arrived at those decision based on thorough factual analysis. This is another core area, where I think we are lacking behind.     

If you are a business leader, be it anywhere in the world, all you have to do is to take the right decision on the right time, and see how it applies to your industry or company or your own function. As you conjure up your thought in this connection, I would urge you to seize the future offered by digital technology. While you do that, please don't bother about being the best; rather try to be the first to take the advantage of the future, as remarked by legendary Jack Ma, the CEO of Jack Ma. This is another core area - the lack of foresightedness.

Most businesses fail because the business leaders can not foresee the future end product of their business. As a result, they lose track somewhere in the middle of their pre-determined path as the rest of the world as well as the customer demands change in the meanwhile. So my suggestion is - try to keep ahead of the current market demand, and try to create demands. The ex-ceo of APPLE, Mr Steve Jobs pointed it rightly while he said: "We create Demand". So visions and being visionary are key attributes of a leader - be it business or politics. Having the right rational vision is more important for a leader than being simply visionary, or a dreamer. Bangladesh is no different in this case.

Rockey: How big is the influence in politics upon business leaders?

Saef: In many ways politics and its systems, shape businesses in our country but private organizations have now become more independent, profit motive and market driven. Often political big shots are the owners of large businesses vice versa and hence business and politics are inseparable. Often people blame that this happens to be the single most important reason why market imperfection is so predominant in Bangladesh: starting from syndication of business, market collusion, raising of product prices artificially, withholding supplies and selling shoddy products without adequate inspection are all examples of politics exerting its undue influences on general people of the country.

The mass people with their everyday struggles and back breaking toils have given up on these influences but truly speaking they are those real people who keep the country humming and stand on its feet. On vast scale, poor corporate governance and consistent increasing trends of COST OF DOING BUSINESS indices are all the aftermath of overly strong power play of politics in the country. In such a politically exposed business ground, you need to learn how to manage and negotiate with different stakeholders in order to run your own show.

According to Price Waterhouse Coopers, Bangladesh will become the 23rd largest economy by 2050, leaving behind Malaysia and Thailand. So, just do the simple math and you will know the opportunities to grow your business here. Whatever industry someone might be in, I am sure they would increasingly see the political influence for ensuring sustained business performance.

On the other hand, current government of Bangladesh is also very business friendly and cooperative. They try to facilitate business and businessmen across the country by all means. Most politicians are also liaised with many businesses and vice versa, which makes this understanding easier for them. Keeping the hind side behind, I must say this liaison is to some extent good for growing business as long as you have a powerful judiciary and a good anti-corruption unit in action. See - we are a growing democracy for last 30 years, where we have been through many tests and trials through this period on our democratic system. Many of the benchmarks we adopted, some of them we discarded in course of time - but certainly our leaders need more time to flex with the right attitude and practices. Our institutions need more evolution to cope up with the next generation needs. And we are hopeful.

We are hopeful because most of my labor force is and will remain within working age for next few years and they are very hard working - be it RMG workers, farmers, potters, industry workers, day laborers, wage-earners and many more. And who doesn't know that the business leaders run the show of a country's administration from behind the curtain - this is same in almost everywhere in the world. So in short, business leaders are liaising with politicians to strengthen their footsteps and vice versa.

Rockey: What is something that leaders in Bangladesh still struggle with?

Saef: Business leaders are responsible for growing their business, by navigating through a myriad of disruptive forces that are constantly changing the business landscape. There, interestingly, is no recipe for success anymore. In fact, these days, we find many business leaders ending up with disastrous results by following someone else's recipe for previous successes. We need to remember that as business leaders our excellence depends on how adept we are in solving problems for our customers; every problem is unique in nature requiring a fresh thought process and strategy.

In Bangladesh, an ideal leader with all his right motives and acts may still struggle with a wide variety of constraining conditions such as market imperfection, the availability of accurate information, lack of adequate knowledge, overly bureaucratic mechanistic work methods both in their internal as well as external work environment, inadequate supply of talents, inefficient and poorly trained resources, in some cases lack of transparency, accountability and ownership etc. A rabble rouser can get away with many of these constraints but gaining trusts among the followers shall always be the challenge on both sides.

On the other hand, irrespective of the industry one may operate in, the business leaders, in recent years, have witnessed disruption impacting the core of their businesses. This disruption has largely been facilitated by the greater incorporation of digitization across the industry. So much so that it has enabled the creation of the world's largest taxi company, Uber, that owns no taxi; world's largest accommodation service provider, Airbnb, that has no real estate; world's most valuable retailer, Alibaba, that has no inventory; world's most popular media owner, Facebook, that creates no content; world's largest on-demand entertainment service provider, Netflix, which is not even available on cable, etc. and so forth. Interestingly, none of these companies existed 20 years back. So to adopt with such trends - we need to build proper leaders and need to invest more on change management for the existing leadership.

So for the leaders, the modus operandi of success is to keep pushing themselves out of their comfort zone; never to presume that all these opportunities will just land up on their laps just because they know how the future is going to look like. Like we never thought the Corona Virus would change the entire world so much so that now every business and business leaders are thinking for a new horizon of doing business going forward. It changed the whole world, our thought process and everything - upside down so fast. It just did!

If you don't abandon the old ways of doing things, then you won't be prepared to seize the future we await. Another important part of your preparation would be to cultivate the habit of embracing diversity, because if you are only hanging out with the like-minded people, you wouldn't be able to know what was wrong with your thought process. So is the case in everywhere, be it Bangladesh or anywhere else on the planet. Leaders need to be visionary as I said earlier, rational thinker and positively motivated - without which they struggle everywhere on the world. And Bangladesh is no difference. Interestingly we got a prime minister (Sheikh Hasina) who has got all these features and leading the country strongly for last decade or so. So despite having many struggles with our leaders in Bangladesh, we are hopeful indeed.

(Both the speakers thanked each other.)

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interview ends at around 0150 Hrs -Bangladesh Time on 05May2020