IDN Media HQ Open House Day 4: Empathy and Flexibility in Leadership

On 31 October 2019, the fourth-day of IDN Media HQ Open House, we had the presence of Fahroni Arifin (Head of Brand Management and Strategy of Indosat Ooredoo), Ir. I Gusti Ngurah Putra, M.M. (Executive Director of Waskita Karya), and Ivan of Feddy Mulyana Pasya (Data Management and Reporting Sub Directorate Head of Directorate General of Immigration). According to the perspectives as well as the values of their companies, they were discussing what made a person a good leader.

The first speaker, Fahroni Arifin as the Head of Brand Management and Strategy in Indosat Ooredoo, told us that an instance of leading should be brought by a true leader who could make positive changes. For Fahroni, leadership could be learned from the quote from Ki Hajar Dewantoro, “'Ing ngarsa sung tuladha, ing madya mangun karsa, tut wuri handayani'. The first phrase means if you stand on the front line, give the best of you by showing everyone an outstanding example that makes your team known for a certain positive identity. The second one is to show empathy—a leader isn’t the one who always commands, but he or she needs to nurture and understand what the team is feeling about the challenges that they may be facing. The last phrase, ‘tut wuri handayani' means to encourage each other in the middle of the exhausting process of reaching a common goal.” Fahroni believed that becoming a leader began with little simple things—directing our own selves into doing positive things on a daily basis could also make each of us a leader. 

 

Today, we got the honor of having Ir. I Gusti Ngurah Putra, M.M. as the Executive Director of Waskita Karya as well. Starting his talk with a flashback to a history that could finally bring him here, he mentioned that every single thing was related to investing. “A company hires you because it wants to invest in you—with the salary it gives you, it wants you to give even bigger contributions. In order to be able to give bigger contributions, do have integrity—give your totality to get your best performance, dedication, creativity. Don't forget to be militant—don’t give up before making it come true, flexibility is also needed—there are a lot of changes we should follow in order to be sustainable. That way, you’ll perform well.”

 

The talk went on with the third speaker, Feddy Mulyana Pasya. Data Management and Reporting Sub Directorate Head of Directorate General of Immigration revealed the projects that our Directorate General of Immigration was working on. Feddy said that the Directorate General of Immigration always considered business products and digital era as two synergies that should really be combined well so that the business could stay alive. A change from conventional to digital was essential nowadays, "To implement one of the characteristics of a leader, we're open to any changes that we need to follow in order to be sustainable. Making a passport, as you probably have known, can be done easily online so that there won't be any long queue anymore. We also have the latest technology in our e-passport product. It comes with biometric data saved within a chip so that we can guarantee worldwide security and advancement."

We could show our boldest identity, but weakening ourselves by not showing an interest in different and, most importantly, new ideas would hamper our process of developing. It could be concluded that the most realistic values we got from IDN Media HQ Open House Day 4 in order to become a maintainable company were humanity, flexibility, and willingness to keep on adapting.