IDN Media HQ Open House of IDN Day 1: Focus on Leadership Development

The saying: “A good leader will create more leaders instead of followers” has created an understanding that a good leader should be the one nurturing, instead of controlling. On the first day of the Open House of IDN Media HQ, we dug the saying more deeply by inviting some inspiring leaders who shared their insights about leadership. On 28 October 2019, Riza Pratama (VP Corporate Communications of Freeport Indonesia), Himanshu Shekar (Chief Executive Officer of GroupM Indonesia), Raymond Portier (Deputy General Manager of Djarum), and Irvansyah Utoh Banja (Deputy Director of Public Relations of BPJS Ketenagakerjaan) would be our first-day speakers.

The Open House of IDN Media HQ was opened by the COO of IDN Media, William Utomo. He mentioned that in order to always be consistent, IDN Media would perpetually be a media company democratizing information. This time, William mentioned that we were now about to launch a mobile application to be a one-stop platform that everyone could access to get whatever information they wanted.

Continued by Riza Pratama as the VP Corporate Communications of Freeport Indonesia, he discussed the gold mining industry that had been believed to be one of the economic powers of Indonesia: PT Freeport Indonesia. Making every decision had become very dilemmatic for the company because the effects that the mining activities had caused and the economic improvement that Indonesia had gained increased at the same time. However, Riza mentioned that a responsible company would always consider the step they got to take before and, especially, after recognizing the effects of its activities. Riza said that to take care of the decays our environment suffered, PT Freeport Indonesia regularly did reclamation. “A healthy person is the one who accepts criticism and so does a company. We know what we do and we’re committed to being responsible for it, no matter what. PT Freeport Indonesia also supports the young people in Papua so that they can get the best access to educations, jobs, healths, and other aspects,” Riza explained.

The next one after Riza Pratama was Himanshu Shekar (Chief Executive Officer of GroupM Indonesia) who mostly raised the issue of changes. A new office was mentioned to be a very simple example of change, but there were a lot of other kinds of changes we might face. According to him, trust and transparency were the keys to the state where everything in a team could be systemized yet harmonized. “Talking about young people like you guys, I do always believe in your creativity and ambition. Therefore, I know you are able to create a brighter future, but never stop learning every process that you undergo,” he faithfully said. 

After a short session from Petra Anderson as the Digital Strategist Manager of IDN Creative which talked briefly about creativity, Raymond Portier (Deputy General Manager of Djarum) put an emphasis on the importance of marketing. Marketing had a lot to do with networking which basically was very essential for the company itself. He boldly stated, “When networking is done well, a chance of collaboration and idea exchange with other parties will happen.” To learn marketing principals, Raymond said that he usually got some quotes from the films that he liked. One of them was entitled “Jerry Maguire” and it had one quote: “Focus, consistent, and patient” that he found very relatable with getting customers. 

The last speaker of the day, Irvansyah Utoh Banja (Deputy Director of Public Relations of BPJS Ketenagakerjaan), shared about the benefits of BPJS Ketenagakerjaan. It actually was all about our rights as workers which covered work accidents, old-age pension, retirement, and death. Struggling to give us better service, the roadmap that they wanted to actualize in the near future was to give home-care for those who needed it and many other sorts of treatment optimization. He also emphasized the point that BPJS Ketenagakerjaan welcomed any kind of company—even a startup company with only five people involved, for example, they could still register themselves to have this insurance. In the end, Irvan reminded us, “You need to know your rights, you’ve got to know what you have when something unwanted happens at work. BPJS Ketenagakerjaan is an appropriate basic protection to keep us being productive.”

According to those speakers invited on the first day of IDN Media HQ Open House, the leadership development can be done by having a leader that is responsible, able to thrive in a fast-paced environment with constant changes as well as to focus, and aware of the need for improvement. This also represents the spirit of IDN Media to become an online media platform that positively impacts the society, especially Millennials and Gen Z as the next great leaders.