From finance, to HR consulting, to learning & development at startups

Kitty: Can you tell me a bit more about your own career journey? So how did you end up in your current role, and was it what you expected, if you look back?

Yanuar: My educational background is actually accounting and finance. I started my career in finance, but after not long, I was thinking I’d like to explore a different industry or different organisation, and that's when I decided to move into consulting. I joined as an HR consultant with Hay Group. I was blessed to be able to work in a consulting firm, having exposure to the different industries, different practices, from rewards, job evaluations, performance management to learning & development, that really strengthened my HR expertise. After a while there, I decided to take my Masters and had a short career at a corporate, because it's different when you work as a consultant vs when you work in an organisation, especially in terms of the implementation.

I went to Japan, spent around three years there both for study and work. I returned to Jakarta, got back into consulting, and that's where I got involved more in learning & development, where in the previous  stint I was more on the rewards, measurement and performance management. For my second period in Hay Group (now Korn Ferry), I was more on the learning & development side, establishing the practices for the Jakarta office. 

I spent two years there and decided to move to Lazada because after a few years in consulting, I wanted to focus more on my leadership skills. Working in corporate, you get to build, manage and improve your team’s capabilities so this was an opportunity for me to be a better leader.

I spent two years there and decided to move to Lazada because after a few years in consulting, I wanted to focus more on my leadership skills. Working in corporate, you get to build, manage and improve your team’s capabilities so this was an opportunity for me to be a better leader. I also wanted to make an impact because in a start up, there would be plenty of opportunities to come up with new approach and implement new things to create impact for the organization.

It was a nice, challenging period during my three years there, setting up the fundamentals in Indonesia for organisation development, talent management, learning and development, even employee engagement. So that’s a little bit about how my career movement is aligned with my personal goals and personal expectations. 

Now that I have new responsibilities for regional learning and development across South East Asia, my new challenge is how we could scale up the learning, have similar standards across the ventures, learn from best practices and create a stronger trainer pool across the organisation.

How a diverse team of senior HR professionals can help establish the fundamentals at a startup

Kitty: It's interesting hearing you haven’t been with startups for your whole career, because you know what it should be like, being structured, methodical and intentional with organisational development. 

When you joined a startup company, did you notice any big gaps or lack of support or resources in the way OD happens at a startup versus in a more mature organisation?

Yanuar: In a typical startup, diversity of the individuals and the strength of leadership matters. I am grateful that I was surrounded by a diverse HR leaders and experts in the company both in the country and regions. With regards to startups, we need to better rally the expertise and experience from a diverse team in order to leverage the strengths and experience of each individual when developing and executing our HR strategies.

With regards to startups, we need to better rally the expertise and experience from a diverse team in order to leverage the strengths and experience of each individual when developing and executing our HR strategies.

Kitty: It's good to hear that you have a great ‘brains trust’ of diverse, HR practitioners to draw on. 

Change is not just about the structural aspects, but developing an aligned leadership team and ensuring employees’ emotions are cared for

Kitty: You mentioned you joined at a time when there was M&A and a lot of different things, people, processes coming together. How can a startup use a moment like that to be even more strategic with talent development and change?

Yanuar: The crucial thing about managing change is not just the structure or “nonliving things”, but it is connected with deep emotions as we're dealing with people. Regarding the role of HR when restructuring happens, it’s crucial to be close to the ground, to the front, to really listen to people’s voices and understand their concerns together with them throughout this journey. Once people settle in with a new structure and a new direction, they will get more comfortable and that's when they’ll trust that this change is actually for the better.

Regarding the role of HR when restructuring happens, it’s crucial to be close to the ground, to the front, to really listen to people’s voices and understand their concerns together with them throughout this journey. Once people settle in with a new structure and a new direction, they will get more comfortable and that's when they’ll trust that this change is actually for the better.

When we talk about talent development post-restructuring, first we need to ensure the communications flow correctly. We need to strengthen the senior management team because they are the first layer who send the message. If we don’t have a solid senior layer and it's negative at the top, it will snowball negative impact down to the lowest layer. So that's the first crucial thing with any restructuring, ensuring that all senior people, down to the middle management layer understand the “why”, and that the people managers are able to look at the changes from the company perspective. 

It's very important to develop the leadership skills for this middle management layer so they have the mindset to think as part of the management of the company, not just as an employee. They need that perspective on why management made a particular decision, why we have a particular policy (although we might not always fully agree from an individual perspective, but as a leader, once decision was made then we need to commit to that), and realise that leaders can't please everybody.

Startups tend to have a lot of young people managers. They’re smart, but might not be that mature as leaders. It's very important to develop the leadership skills for this middle management layer so they have the mindset to think as part of the management of the company, not just as an employee. They need that perspective on why management made a particular decision, why we have a particular policy (although we might not always fully agree from an individual perspective, but as a leader, once decision was made then we need to commit to that), and realise that leaders can't please everybody. When a restructuring comes, having strong leaders from the frontline to the middle management layer helps maintain employee morale and ensures communications goes to all levels without deviating from what’s actually intended.

Talent development is about managing change better. I don't think we are perfect on that matter because in a startup, especially in eCommerce, change happens quicker than us managing it. But still, when change happens, we need to think about not just the structural aspect, but the emotional aspect for people.

Five practical areas startups can focus their learning initiatives when things are constantly changing

Kitty: It's always easy to forget that because the whole discipline of change management, it feels like a science. Right? There's frameworks, there's methodologies, there's a certain sequencing for how things should happen that we forget that it's, at the end of the day, inexact because we're dealing with people. 

Since you're in L&D, what do you see as a role of learning when things are always changing? I’d like to hear what you think about mapping competencies if things change every week. Because with learning, we're always trying to improve in certain skill gaps and competencies, how does a startup navigate the constant change while still moving the needle?

Yanuar: When we talk about competencies, I still believe it depends on the phase of the organisation. If it's an organisation that just started the learning journey, we should focus on ensuring the core competencies are solid for the employees. When we talk about core competencies, these usually don't change much throughout the years.

It was surprising that the skills people needed could be very basic, but sometimes focusing on the basic is necessary to move the needle. This is the mindset that we should have as L&D professional to be able to understand the situation on the ground and focus on what really matters to the company, how we would be able to help the achievement of business objectives. These are example of few core competencies that might be useful for start ups.

First, equipping people with Microsoft Excel because a lot of analytics needs to be done with Excel. It can save people a lot of time if they can make a proper formula which will improve people productivity due to higher effectiveness and efficiencies.

Second, the capabilities of effective communication, how to get messages across to minimise conflict, to enhance team collaborations. More often, many conflicts happened due to miscommunication. If we could minimized unintended conflicts than people could focus on their work and how as a team they could support one another.

Third, data analytics. How to gain insight from a whole bunch of data. This is increasingly important since the rise of technology. Nowadays, we live with lots of data around us which is very different from several years ago when data is still a scarcity. Nowadays, the issue is no more about collecting the data but shifted into how we could make sense of the insights from the tons of data available.

Fourth, it is about presentation skills and how you present your ideas. This is important because the way we present ourselves would be different depends on the stakeholders as our audiences. For example: the way we do external communication, such as for our marketplace sellers would be different with our multinational brands sellers. Moreover, it would be different even within our internal stakeholders, the way we communicate to our Senior Management Team would be different with our colleague/peers in our company. This skills usually consist of two parts which equally important: the message (the what) and the way we communicate (the how) which will depends on our audience (the who), time to do presentation (the when), and the location to do presentation (the where).

When we talk about leadership competences, it is very important to ensure that our leaders understand on what matters and what does it truly mean on being a leader. These fall under “leading the business” (how strategic you can be and make better decisions), “leading the organisation” (how a leader can design, build effective organisations, and allocate resources), and "leading self" (be a leader that inspires your people, whey they should follow you as a leader).

Finally, when we talk about leadership competences, it is very important to ensure that our leaders understand on what matters and what does it truly mean on being a leader. These fall under “leading the business” (how strategic you can be and make better decisions), “leading the organisation” (how a leader can design, build effective organisations, and allocate resources), and "leading self" (be a leader that inspires your people, whey they should follow you as a leader).

Lastly, back to the topic on change management when things are constantly changing, as an L&D professionals, we also need to equip our employees on how they could adapt to change (as it's crucial to keep ourselves relevant). For example, how can we equip our people with customer insight so they understand changing customer behaviour? Some learning intervention could be through learning, research, or inviting speakers in a particular customer industry in order to understand the latest trends and how technology can change the business. It is important to always have a forward looking and focusing on what trends that might disrupt our industry.

Nowadays, HR must understand the business model, the value chain, the customer and how the business works so we can prepare programmes that consider the latest trends happening in the market.

Nowadays, HR must understand the business model, the value chain, the customer and how the business works so we can prepare programmes that consider the latest trends happening in the market. That's how to balance between core competencies we need and changing trends.

Continuing to make an impact in the organisation by finding new ways of learning and being open to new perspectives

Kitty: Some things are timeless and universal no matter what industry you're in or stage the company is at. 

So what's in store for you? How would you like to grow professionally and personally this year or the second half of this year?

Yanuar: I just moved to a new role and growing professionally is really about challenging myself to be open to new approaches, new ideas and new perspectives. Having consulting experience, I've gotten used to a specific approach, right? But it's interesting to see that leaders here have a totally different way of how they see learning. 

We should be able to get rid of what we are expert at and relearn things. When you are open with a new perspective, you actually become richer and find new ways of learning or doing things.

We should be able to get rid of what we are expert at and relearn things. When you are open with a new perspective, you actually become richer and find new ways of learning or doing things. This way is better because you can combine the different aspects. People who are very used to the old ways don’t want to learn and probably find it difficult to adjust. 

In the year ahead, I’d like to keep relearning and thinking about the best way to give impact to the business, to give value and come up with new ways of learning.