IN this week’s Success: The Insight Story column, Hektar REIT CEO Johari Shukri Jamil (pic) shares with SunBiz his journey to where he is now.
What traits do you look for in your talent or how do you decide who is right for a job?
In recruiting and building my A-team, I believe that we need to look beyond the resumes and qualifications. It is important to take the time to recognise the kind of candidate you need for that particular role who possesses the right personality for it.
You may be able to shortlist the most experienced and qualified candidates during the first round to screen through and then have formal interviews, but I highly recommend getting to know the candidates in a casual setting where they are able to show their inner selves further.
It is crucial to decide whether a person acknowledges the job or the business; one may know their role well and will seek to perform the best they can, while the other will go beyond understanding their role as they have stronger desire and motivation to improve their contribution for the success of the company.
Assessing their job knowledge and skills based on scenario testing is also an effective way to perceive how the candidates may be able to contribute to the company.
Other key considerations that would influence my decision in selecting talents are:
• Their motivation and aspiration, and if it is aligned with the company’s culture and goals.
• Whether the talent has a high level of EQ (emotional quotient) and resilience level.
• Leadership qualities, such as lifting others, being a strong team player and focusing on problem-solving rather than blaming situations or others.
• Preferring results-driven and self-motivated talents as their willingness to go beyond shows the employees’ interest and dedication to the company. Those who actively work towards their goals, who are persistent and don’t wait for things to happen, are the catalyst for transformation and performance management you need.
• Placing emphasis on potential over performance: An employee’s desire, mindset and aptitude to grow, develop others, cast a vision, drive or build a team, and the influence the talent have in different levels of the organisation.
“All high potentials are high performers, but not all high performers are high potentials.”
Assessing one’s learning agility refers to the ability of a person to learn, adapt or thrive in a new situation. How a person responds and their functional ability to learn, unlearn and relearn is key when facing new challenges in ever-evolving work environments.
What advice can you offer those looking to start their career/business?
I believe that when an individual comes of age to start their career or perhaps prepare to be an entrepreneur, it is fundamental to obtain the following attributes:
• Positive attitude;
• Being humble and display empathy;
• Be resourceful;
• Persistence and resilience;
• Good interpersonal skills; and
• Establish strong networking.
Above are some of the qualities that make a significant difference for every individual. Another key thing to remember is that you will make mistakes and fall, but the important thing is to learn from them and bounce back. Every time, a stronger and more resilient version of you should come out and tackle the challenges. The foresight to evaluate risks and taking the necessary mitigating measures will help to stay one step ahead of the problems.
We all know about the industrial revolution, are we in for a technological revolution? Please share your thoughts.
As we are aware, the world is constantly evolving, and technological advancements have played an essential role in shifting the dynamics and equilibrium of the world.
Technology has acted as a system enabler to enhance productivity and efficiency at the workplace. It has also facilitated us in achieving differentiation, enabling us to gain a competitive advantage over others. This race of differentiation is constant and has encouraged us to bring uniqueness to what we do with an accelerated process within a short period of time.
Here, I believe that we are still in the early stage of the technological revolution; the era of artificial intelligence is in its infancy stage, and it will bring a massive shift in how we do things. Currently, we are still being dominated by centralised platforms such as Facebook, Apple and Google.
We should all continuously evolve with time and be ready for change. The first thing to prepare as head of the company is to ensure that the company is change ready. We must move towards digitalisation, with emphasis on data management and analysis, as this is key to measuring the performance of your company.
In other words, know your business. When you are operating with consistent, reliable data, then you have the right setup to add business intelligence tools that could give you insights that lead to even smarter business decisions.
How has mentorship made a difference in your professional life?
Mentors can help mentees achieve their full potential by providing unbiased advice, offering exposure to relevant contacts, and teaching critical thinking skills.
As a mentor, you can expand your influence on future leaders, gain interesting contacts, and increase your reputation by helping mentees become successful.
How do you stay abreast of issues affecting your industry?
Being an avid reader of news on economic and geopolitical agendas, I keep myself updated on the various issues or forecasted challenges towards the retail industry in which I am currently working. I am supported by the strategy team that conducts benchmarking and performance reviews (portfolio analysis) and updates me and the management team with daily news monitoring.
• Pay attention to the stakeholders in your industry.
• Market monitoring and peer performance comparison (market analysis) is conducted in-house periodically.
• Risk monitoring: Anticipate or identify then formulate strategies to address issues in a timely manner
• Ensure that we have a “war chest” referring to our preventive and predictive strategies and finances for crises and contingencies.
• Regularly engage with industry trade publications, analysts and media houses, KOLs (key opinion leaders) and business thought leaders.
• Participate in industry forums, exhibitions, industry training and talks.
• Ensure close relationships with different levels of stakeholders in the industry.
• Investing in systems and work enablers.
• Sharing sessions with employees ever so often.
• Customer surveys and feedback from both retailers and customers.
How do you think the industry you are in will evolve?
Change can be good, but constant change can be daunting. Retailers today are finally recovering from the turbulence that impacted them due to the two straight years of Covid-19. Massive demand fluctuations during the pandemic forced retailers to rethink archaic systems in favour of more pliable operations. But as we all know, with crisis comes opportunity. Both shopping centres and retailers learned that rapidly evolving consumer preferences require more effective analytics and tools to build loyalty.
Virgin Group founder Richard Branson once said that the head of the company must set the vision but be ready to change course when needed.
To ensure that we are always on top of the game, we must look at these five things: our flexibility to adapt to new changes, speed of action to respond, product and operations knowledge, resources management and expertise in data management and analysis.
Measuring performance in the retail industry should also be updated to suit the advancement and changes in today’s world, to include customer experience and brand satisfaction instead of focusing on sales and footfall only.
The younger generation will be the drivers of the retail future. They care about brand values and put focus on knowledge sharing. They are eager to find and distribute information and as these consumers become more environmentally conscious, they look at retailers and brands that reduce their packaging waste and are socially responsible.
This would force the retailers to look at their environmental footprint and this trend has already started globally and is even in Malaysia and will evolve further.
Organisations are now under pressure to think about long-term sustainability in every aspect, which is a good thing for the future.
We, as landlords, are constantly working on improving our malls to provide the best retail experience and value to our shoppers and will continue to inculcate more techno-logical advancements and look at partnering with tenants to offer a more personalised effort to improve our shoppers’ experience.
What are the top three factors that you would attribute success to?
• Positive attitude.
• Being resilient.
• Respecting everyone.
Tell us a joke
Well, instead of a joke, I would like to share a mantra with readers:
“Never give up and continue to strive for constant improvement.”
These are the lines that I tell myself whenever I encounter any challenge or significant predicament.
In life, problems will occur, and committing to constant improvement through resolving issues and developing effective improvements will guide you to your desired destination. Your accomplishments and achievements will stem from your consistency towards your objectives.
Thereby, it is fundamental that one must be able to be strong enough to deal with them and never give up.
Source: The Sun Daily
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