Welcome to another Installment of Career Warrior. Here, we will feature interviews with outstanding entrepreneurs to share with you their stories and career advice.
Let’s be honest: Working is a very draining activity. One way or another, working will take a toll on our performance, both physically and mentally. We are always encouraged to be as professional as we can. Unfortunately we, humans, are are all emotional creatures. Using our emotions at our professional work can lead to reckless decisions. On this topic, we are featuring Michel Hamilton from Maybank Indonesia to share his story about logic and emotions at work.
About Maybank Indonesia.
PT Bank Maybank Indonesia is one of the top largest private bank in Indonesia that is also a subsidiary of Malayan Banking Berhad group (MAYBANK), one of the largest financial institution in South East Asia. Maybank Indonesia provides a comprehensive range of products and services for individual and corporate customers. They differentiate themselves with values such as customer focus, easy access, digital-ready, and complete product offering.
About Michel Hamilton
I’m a people person, always loves to coach and help my team to grow in parallel with nurturing the business. Everyone can talk and reach out to me anytime. I’m open to share and help.
Michel Hamilton is the chief strategy, transformation, and digital business officer for Maybank Indonesia. As the CEO direct report (part of the CEO office), Michel is mandated to lead and be the agent of change in the bank to shape, redefine, fine-tune, and sharpen the corporate strategy & business transformation as well as ensuring the execution & benefit realization of the strategic transformation program. Michel is also currently leading the bank’s digital business unit as well as coordinating to do digitalization at the bank’s operating model.
Can you describe a typical workday?
My typical workday will consist of working on a few different things. Some of which is to define corporate strategy, monitor and lead the strategic transformation, and run the digital business. After work, I like to do some running and playing with the kids to relax.
Who are some of your clients?
Our customer ranges in a wide different variety. We have customers ranging from individuals and up to corporate banking.
How did you manage to get them to be your customers?
The way we got our clients is by building relationships throughout the years. My best marketing tip to get my clients is to ALWAYS be honest and to be sincere. Try to seriously understand the client’s problem to solve them. Stay relevant to their needs while continuously implemented the latest solution that helps to uplift the customer experience and convenience level.
What has been your proudest moment in the history of your business?
For me, the proudest moment is to have the ability to continue to coordinate and align various stakeholders with different interests to work as a team and serving the same purpose.
What are some difficult challenges in running this business?
The most difficult challenging situation is to align the company strategy and vision to the working level execution. Often times the market volatility and uncertainty force us to rapidly be able to change our plan and strategy to react to the external factor changes.
What is your favorite career/business failure (and what did you learn from it)?
I have been always involve in a very complex and challenging transformation program
The lesson that I learned that being involved in a complex and large transformation program is always the most efficient way to develop ourselves as a person. We will have a very challenging time and it will definitely not easy to manage various stakeholders with different interests and objectives.
However, if we are able to get everyone together to serve the same purpose, we can really enjoy the outcome afterward and the best lesson to learn fast is by not hesitate to make mistakes. Be honest, stay committed, and learn from it. What we need to avoid is to repeat the same mistake.
Who has had the biggest influence on your career?
I don’t think i have one in particular. I admire all of the top leadership and sportsman in the world. All the top leaders and great minds in the world influence me one way or another.
What are some sacrifices that you made in the course of starting up or running your business?
There are few sacrifice here and there. My biggest sacrifice that I had to made is my time, my mind and my emotion.
I don’t mean sacrificing emotions in a bad way. I’m saying it is important to be able to put emotions aside in professional activities so that we can still give optimal results to our work. Work is a draining activity and the mind, when we are tired, it is very easy for an action to be based on emotional decisions instead of logic.
Every activity or job decision-making must be based on logic, justification, and proper rationale and not based on instinct or decisions based on emotions such as empathy, sympathy, like or dislike for something.
Humans are equipped with thoughts and emotions. Thoughts that distinguish humans from other living things, and humans must be able to control emotions with their thoughts. Thoughts must be able to become a greater foundation than emotions in all our activities to ensure that what we do is best based on common sense, logic and reason.
If you could go back in time to speak to your 22-year-old self, what would you tell him?
Never hesitate to speak up, never hesitate to go against the normal, and put aside the emotions when working in professional environment.
Lastly, what are some interview tips you would give to prospective candidates coming for your interview?
Ensure that they know what they want, their passion, ability to articulate things clearly and briefly, firm on their learning points and their purpose of building career
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