I find many businesses today work like a “Single Parent Family”. Even if you have a caring and wise father - you miss out the love and unconditional shelter of mother. And when you have the loving and a capable mother - you miss out the strength and push to exceed your limits from the father. I believe both are needed to have a healthy family. Organizations are no different.
It is March, 2021 - everyone is planning for Women’s day campaign. What to offer, how to align the brands to sound more trendy by recognizing women power, women leadership - how to make dresses and the products for women. Everyone wants to empower women leadership. Everyone one is encouraging women so that they #chooseToChallenge and come forward for leadership position. But what women leadership means to business?
“You are getting married, don’t give up everything, forget who you are and what you want to be. Live your own life!” that was my mother telling me after I got married. I just passed as a graduate Engineer from BUET in Computer Science at that time. I was in a relationship with my husband, Shahriar Islam - so getting married was the first thing we both were looking at. Words from my mother was bit off track but till today makes me think - it was probably those few lines that has made the Promee I am today.
After few years, my first daughter was born - I had to leave my job as Project Manager from a USA Based Software Development Company. I started back and again had to take a break when my second daughter was born.
With two major breaks in my career finally I got started and today I am Chief Operating Officer and a shareholder of Loosely Coupled Technologies, a multi-national software development company having its development centre and operations in Bangladesh. Today I run a team distributed in multiple country, serve large multi-nationals like Boston Consulting Group, Stratum Reservoir, Mind Share, Unilever, Suzuki and many other large brands across the globe. I joined Loosely Coupled Technologies as its first team member - as Head of Solution Centre in Bangladesh when they were setting up the development organization here. And here I am today as one of the key contributors of the leadership team.
It was a roller coaster ride - doing long hours, many whole-nighters, travelling what not. But it was very fulfilling all the way. I asked my CEO and Founder of Loosely Coupled Technologies, Firoze M Zahidur Rahman (we call him Jewel Bhai) - “I can take care of all the technology or development works or even other operational works - but I want to be always with you in all the works you do and get your inputs in mine. I want to work together and have my say.” People who know Jewel Bhai will understand it’s not easy to have “your say” with him. It was a blessing for me that he valued my words and gave me all the freedom to implement my ideas.
We have a SaaS (Software as Service) platform named EZAssist that Transforms Small and Micro Businesses to Digital. We operate this in Malaysia and Bangladesh. We onboard few hundred business every month. Many of them are women owned, many are men owned and many are run jointly as a family business. In Bangladesh we also work with large brands like KayKraft, Bibiana, Rong Bangladesh, Aranya - also support marketplaces like deshibhalobashi.com which jointly works with SME Foundation. I had the opportunity to get exposed to many businesses in the process of transforming them.
We need to push our team to continuously grow and stretch our limits. Our CEO always gives me a reference from Mohammad Ali (Boxer). Mohammad Ali was asked how many sit-ups he gives everyday? The reply was “Two hundred after it starts hurting, I don’t keep count till it hurts”. That is Jewel Bhai in terms of pushing the limit. But the team needs care, confidence, security, and coaching - that is where I play the role. I believe we are a good team together. I strongly believe my role in team makes a lot of difference. I can understand a lot of issues, challenges, discomfort of my team just because I am a mother, a woman. I can understand a lot the demand for appreciation just because I am a daughter, am a sister and am a wife. I believe women have this inherent power of feeling the untold and acting on it. Sometimes it may not be accurate - but I believe it helps building a strong bond in the team.
COVID was period when all our resilience got tested. We could see the business taking a nose-dive as we were heavily involved with large enterprises, we needed to act and save on cost. We need to reduce the “extra fat” - in other ways - the non-performers. But you don’t replace your kid with a high performing kid when your kid scores low in an exam or when she/he doesn’t win. So why now especially when everyone is in crisis. We handled the situation very well with a very kind heart. We pushed the team to maximum to perform, arranged “life coaching” session from great international speakers to keep the mindset strong and took a lot of extra burden. But we made them feel safe and push forward. In four months’ time we came out normal and kept on growing. I believe - it is the mindset of the mother that helped me to push this. Men being men may not always have this heart or mind. They will always be more logical and will do the right thing. But it was my role to keep the heart in place.
We work in uncertain times when change is the only constant thing. We transform Micro and Small Business who has very limited understanding and bandwidth to adopt technology in their business. EZAssist is not a marketplace that will generate sales for them, Business Owners need to use EZAssist to transform their business to digital. We don’t want to replicate the story of large marketplaces like Amazon, Alibaba of the world where their success eradicates small businesses. We want to enable small and micro businesses to transform, retain their advantage and eventually grow their business. Technology is same for Amazon and a small micro-business. They just need to understand and apply it to their business.
Saying this is easy but working together with small and micro businesses and transform them is entirely different experience. We work in a culture of fail-fast, learn and move on. It’s learning by doing. It is very important to face our vulnerability, work with it and improve. When I work with many organisations, I see the fear of failure. Digital Transformation is very new and has huge uncertainty. Unless you are open to failure and learning it will never happen. There is no Magic Pill. It is like learning to walk, learning to read and write. As a leader you need to ensure that team has the right mindset, tools and support. You need to play to role of mother, establish the environment of siblings and network of friends to support. You need to set the environment where everyone watches everyone’s back unconditionally. I believe that is a key role I play in building the product and operations that can serve the client base we serve through EZAssist.
I never wanted to be the leader to compete and outperform men. I am very happy with the leadership in Loosely Coupled Technologies. I have worked my whole life working with great leaders who are men. They are true inspiration. I want my place in the leadership with them, because together we will lead better and make the organizations better.
Writer: Syeda Nawshad Jahan Promee, COO, Loosely Coupled Technologies.