Name: Setiady

Title: Senior Vice President - Operation Design & Strategy

Organisation: Bank Central Asia

Setiady is the Senior Vice President of Operation Design & Strategy at Bank Central Asia with a career spanning over twenty years dedicated to refining business processes and pioneering innovative design frameworks.

His leadership within the Operation Design & Strategy team has set a high standard for optimizing workflows, elevating customer experience, and building adaptable business models that succeed in dynamic settings. Setiady's approach blends design thinking with strategic operations, enabling businesses to enhance efficiency and stay competitive through continuous innovation.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Setiady's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

Based on my experience, I think 2 of the most challenging issues as a leader are making difficult choices of decision and balancing the pace of developing your team and getting the task done. Decision-making is the task of any leader, and almost all decisions made have their advantages and disadvantages which is hard to ensure the best decision is made. Even aftermath, we wouldn't be able to correctly determine whether we have made the right or wrong decision because there is no way back to turn the time and re-do the decision and observe the successive implications.

The second issue is also a challenge since there are always team members with different paces, but at the same time, we need to get things done with speed. Many times we will not be able to be patient enough to allow the team members to learn, or sometimes the patience is not getting enough ROI as the team members are slow to learn.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

I started in a Management Trainee Program and climbed up the leadership status in the same department, never once being rotated to any other department. As a strong team member during my first years of working, I quickly climb to become the senior team member. After that, I spend several years learning to manage a small team of 2 - 5 people, learning the soft skill of managing people, not only tasks. Getting a hold of it, I am promoted to management level and handling up to 12 team members and a task force of about 20 people from different divisions.

I have worked with all divisions within the organization and branches, leading several important projects for the organization. Experiencing the different and variations of team members and peers within an organization, from those easy to handle to the difficult ones, from capable to slow learners, from cooperative to conflicting units, I am trusted to handle the Organization Design & Strategy department as a Senior Vice President. The department now has about 120 team members in 5 different sites.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

My typical working days would start from 6.30 AM, transporting me to the gym location. After exercising for about 30-45 minutes, I continue to work for about 9 - 12 working hours (including 1 - 1.5 hours of lunch/lunch meeting) - a few occasions beyond the 12 working hours, and get back to home or meet friends. After refreshing myself at home, I would go to sleep at about 10 - 11 PM. On some occasions, I would go to other sites, branches, or other events.

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

I think I keep being reminded that different people have different ways of thinking, and getting our thoughts into them is not an easy task. People are not always rational and you need to find the sweet spot to get through to their minds. As an introvert myself, it is not easy to force myself to go and initiate informal talk with peers within the organization, which is an important means of getting people on the same page.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so

far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

I think the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is really a mind-changing book that keeps you pondering on what you do as a leader in facing different people.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

Enjoy the journey to leadership instead of aiming to become a leader. The process itself is the important element to allow you to become a leader, not because you want the result of being a leader.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far? As we see more of the previous team members are getting their own ways of success, I am happy that they have found their ways, and many have returned to say thank you for the experience as my team members.