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Pakistan desperately needs genuine leadership

By KASHIF KHAN

KARACHI - Our economy is on a dangerous junction, says Shahbaz Ali Baig, Chief Executive Officer of Pakistan’s top HR Consultancy Firm. After working for 17 years abroad, Shahbaz has done marvelous job by training workforce in a number of organizations including HBL, KESC, etc.

He warns that if we don’t solve our core issues such as security problems, political stability, corruption and discrimination – soon the bubble will burst. We need to be better predictors and we need to change ourselves now before it’s too late.

In an exclusive interview with KAROBAR ONLINE he says that bad times happen very quickly and within a heads up. Preventive measures are always better than corrective measures. Let’s not wait till things go bad. Also corporate world needs to cut down costs. We are spending too much on marketing – instead we need to focus on growth, quality, and operations. Many companies in textile industry and others failed because their costs were too high. We need to be lean – we need to go back to the basics – focus on our core competencies like agriculture. We need to discourage imports on consumer goods. We need to focus on self sustaining our economy which is not difficult to do. We can learn from our neighbors. I have studied economies of Malaysia and India and Bangladesh and there are lots of lessons we can learn from them. We need will and leadership and support to make it happen. We need to simplify things and not complicate things more.

K.K- Detail of your education?

SAB – MBA and Bachelors in MIS and Marketing. Also Project Management Professional certified. I am Six Sigma certified Master Black Belt. I am certified lead auditor for ISO and FDA. I am one of the few highly selective certified implementers of Entrepreneurship Operating System (EOS).

K.K Tell about your career

SAB-I have over 17 years of professional experience. I have worked for some of the top companies in USA such as US Oil, Citibank, Georgia Pacific, Wisconsin Tissue and majority of my career was build at General Electric. I was promoted 4 times in a span of 5 years. I started in GE as a project manager in IT. My first project was to make sure there are no issues during Y2K. I quickly became the program manager and later a Six Sigma black belt. When Project management office PMO was formed I was the first one to be inducted in PMO. I later moved away from IT and became Quality Assurance Manager for all of GE Healthcare. My role was to ensure compliance across our facilities. Make sure I train quality representatives globally on Quality policies and procedures, six sigma. I also was responsible for managing our global compliance and complaint handling tool. Through out my career at GE, I was involved in people development, organization development, change management, training and managing global projects.

After a successful career at GE, I became a Director at Servicemaster. Servicemaster is one of the largest companies in the service industry. I was Director and Deployment champion of quality, six sigma and continuous improvement. Once again, my role required me to bring change management in the business, train people and resolve issues and conflicts so teams can focus on customers rather than operational issues. I was managing projects in both our head quarter which was in Chicago and also our main business center which was in Memphis.

I had always planned to learn as much as I can in USA and apply it back in Pakistan. In my fifteen years in USA, I worked twice as much as an average person because my goal to was maximize my time here and learn all the best practices and go back to Pakistan to apply them.

I left a life of luxury and success and at peak of my career left USA and moved back to Pakistan. I joined HBL and developed a Quality Assurance department. In the first few months, I traveled all over Pakistan and trained our branch managers on service quality. I also listened to their challenges and developed a SWOT analysis. I managed the first ever Customer Care Week at HBL which was a huge PR success and it motivated employees and excited customers. I resigned from HBL to take on position of Head of HR and OD for KASB Securities but my resignation was not accepted and I stayed at HBL to work as project lead with Bankworld and IFC to develop a training strategy for HBL. I was offered to head OD and training for HBL as per recommendations of IFC consultants but due to internal reasons I was not given this opportunity. At the same time, I was Director of Executive Development Center for DIHE. In my role, I organized several workshops and seminars and talk of people from corporate sector and political leaders.

I resigned from HBL and formed Virtual CEO a consulting firm whose purpose was to make a remarkable difference. One of my clients increased their revenue by 26% in one year due to my advisory services.

My success of Virtual CEO brought me to KESC where the HR gap was organization development and lack of training. I was hired as Director and head of Learning and OD for KESC. I felt that KESC is critical to Karachi and Pakistan hence though the organization had many internal and external challenges such as politics and operational issues; I wanted to make a difference. I conducted training needs assessment and leadership perception analysis and developed a training plan accordingly. I was also responsible for managing our training center. KESC was a challenge as I had to deal with internal bias and external pressures but I held my ground and kept doing projects that motivated and energized employees. For ‘karkuns’ we developed a grade progression scheme. My team also managed the largest management trainee program of any company in Pakistan. This hiring process took me to best institutes in Pakistan and we hired top talent. We also developed a testing assessment center to ensure that only deserving people are hired. I also facilitated roll out of performance management system for 5500 employees. Working for KESC was a patriotic act for me. I left KESC because I felt in the current scenario I cannot make more progress and help such as employees, management and customers. I came to Pakistan to do the right thing and not just to get a job and I want to only work in places where I can make a difference.

My professional values are: do the right things, grow or die, do as you say you will do, be humbly confident, help people first.

I joined Engage HR as an Executive Director. Engage HR is one of the most recognized HR consultancy firm. Masood Naqvi, Khursheed Hadi, Arshad Nawab and Anwar Mateen are the board of directors and they are KPMG and I respect them for their professionalism hence I said yes to running this company as this gives me the platform to make a difference – hire right people for the right jobs, help companies grow, reduce operational costs in companies and coach and train leadership of companies so they learn how to grow their business even in difficult times.

K.K- Why you have decided this field?

SAB- My background is diverse...I have vast experience in IT, business development, entrepreneurship, human resources and training and development along with quality and project management. I find that in this new business era – one needs to have a cross functional background so one can understand the business challenges...if someone knows how to manage people, process and technology – one can be successful.....I have a toolkit that helps me solve business solutions

K.K- What human resources your company have?

SAB-I have merged my practice of Virtual CEO with Engage HR. Now I have a broader platform and I get to work with ethical and professional people whose expertise are in Executive search, outsourcing, HR policies and procedures, HR infrastructure, and technology based HR solutions. We have some proprietary solutions that will help SMEs, MNCs, banking, manufacturing and service industries.

K.K- What problems you are facing?

SAB- The problem I face is corruption, discrimination, racism and prejudice. Unfortunately there is still all of this in corporate world as well as semi public companies. My objective is to help business leaders remove these issues and make sure that companies hire and retain people based on merit only. We also need to learn to identify the innate talent in people. HR unfortunately focuses on text bookish things like policies, performance management forms but doesn’t focus on human element of how to motivate your people and how to energize employees. Also internal branding is important. If you can keep your employees trained and motivated they become your ambassadors. This is where I come in. I use best practices and timeless methods of solving issues. But – I can’t solve issues for companies and leaders who doesn’t want help. Hence I work with leaders who are open minded and willing to improve and grow and want to do right things and not make decisions based on corruption and bias.

K.K- What you demand from the government?

SAB- I want to help government in using the money we are getting for flood victims effectively. USA and other countries are willing to give us funding but they require us to develop projects and project plans for improving our economy. I want to help the government develop their vision and roadmap that will take us to economic growth in the future. I need government to not just give these assignments to people with ‘sifarish’ but give assignments to professionals who are also patriotic and are value driven so they get the best out of them. I am willing to help the government. Question is does the government want to be helped?

K.K- How do you see competition?

SAB– Human Resource Management (HRM) and Human Resource Development (HRD) are still infant industry in Pakistan. I see that we hold too many workshops and seminars but the same people attend these seminars and still true change doesn’t come. People are working without work life balance and still not producing. In USA and other countries they work 5 days a week 40 hours work week and produce more than we do. I feel competition is very commercial. Either they focus on seminars and workshops which are in most cases time wasters. Others are selling text bookish solutions. Very few people in this industry have the passion to actually make a positive difference. My team does not sell products and services – we listen to our customers and find solutions for them. We keep our costs less and provide value. We partner with our clients and our success comes from our client’s success. If our interventions and solutions can help business achieve its vision – we feel we are successful.

K.K- Your leadership style?

SAB–I have a 3 strike rule. I make sure my team knows my professional values and I expect them to live by those values. 3 strike rule means if 3 times they violate those values – than our professional relationship ends. We can be friends but we can’t work together. Most people don’t leave jobs they leave their bosses. If you interview people who have worked for me – you will know that I focus on their development. I elevate their performance and help them see their abilities. I do not discriminate and always make my decisions objectively about people.

K.K- How do you spend leisure time?

SAB- Sports – cricket, tennis and gym. Sports keep you energized, competitive and young. Sports make you use not just your body but your brain as well. I am sad to say that our young generation doesn’t play sports like they should. We need to encourage our youth to play sports. I also enjoy good movies, books both fiction and of personal and professional development. Also my hobby, passion and my second job is of Current Affairs host on PTV. I host various live programs on PTV News and PTV Home where I get to express my views and to meet dynamic people and interview them. My programs are well received and I have done over 50 live programs in the last 6 months. During these six months I have covered topics from international relations, terrorism, economy, sports and politics.

K.K- Most difficult decision?

SAB – Most difficult decision was to move back to Pakistan after living abroad for 18 years.

K.K- Most difficult part of your work?

SAB- Time. We need a sense of urgency to fix things and we have so much to fix. Challenge is to make sure others have the same sense of urgency.

K.K- Type of music?

Pop music – Michael Jackson is my all time favorite. I also like good Pakistanti music and Indian music. Sajid Ali is my favorite Pakistani singer.

K.K- Believe in astrology?

SAB- I don’t but what ever is written about Scorpios in the books is very accurate and reflects my personality.

K.K- Spend vacations?

SAB- I travel to USA as part of my family is there. I work so much that I don’t actually get to take true vacation like I used to.