Introduction
Yesterday, StudentsxCEOs team meets with Mr. Hasnul Suhaimi. As XL Axiata Tbk PT current CEO, apart from what I imagine before, he is a very analytical person. He had many business theories support him and guide him thru many decisions he took. Short, yet very inspiring. More detail about him can be seen at his blog, biography, and also XL website.
Indonesia Future Challenge
In near future, leaders in this country will be faced on 2 paths, entrepreneur or professional as there will be many opportunities arise about 10 years or so. We need to be tough enough, or die. Mr. Hasnul shares 3 insights on how to survive as be strong, adaptive, and had a solid team.
Symptoms, symptoms, and symptoms
We have many business problems, yet we need to be sure, whether they are symptoms or the main problem. We need to be wise on detecting the real problem. Business theories like Porter’s, Maslow’s pyramid, and so on can be used to detect problems and create solution for the symptoms. We need to be creative with approach without forget about knowledge we get in university.
Life as a CEO
Be a CEO, we need 4 major points. They are vision, reality check, solid support, and decision. Leader is the visionary person who led the way. Yet, on practical level, we need to know what the reality is. Something that is new for me is the importance of support. Support is very important, he emphasized. We can’t lean on glass, lean on solid rock instead! As CEO is decision maker, every decision can be good or bad. It is nice when the decision turn out to be good. But when things gone bad, make sure you have rock foundation to lean on. Find people who support and believe in you.
Decision maker… That’s what CEO does on daily basis. We need to be aware on how we decide with simple guidelines as identify the problem, analyze, select the best option, and implement the solution. Simple guidelines, yet often forgotten on our minds.
Mr. Hasnul also emphasized the importance of meeting and presentation. On meeting, be sure to focus, comment, ask, and contribute. While become a good meeting attendant is important, presentation skill also important. Learn to become a good presenter! He advised 4 points in presentation approach as speak not speech, eye contact, ask questions, and match the slide with speech.
Conclusion
Chat with Mr. Hasnul is such a great experience. Simply, his figure can be described in 3 points as smart, creative, and humble. He applied the business theories while experiment with many things. Yet he always emphasize that a leader must be humble. Become a leader, not a manager mean become a person who can initiate change because the member who want it, not the leader itself.
Join us
This is a great experience for me. Meet a great person that we saw in magazine before. So, you guys who want to meet great CEOs like what I had, check our website and Facebook fan page. And last thing, don’t miss the chance to become our guest stars =)
My thinking 