TechHR Pulse Indonesia: CXOs on innovation and agility
JAKARTA – Business growth entails more than profitability; it requires the ability to innovate quickly. But are businesses moving fast enough, and with the right priorities in mind?
At People Matters TechHR Pulse, two of Indonesia’s most progressive companies – Gojek and AlloFresh – offered a glimpse into how they spark growth through agility and innovation.
In the CXO Power Panel, ‘Can You Handle The Speed? Unleash Your Business Growth Potential,’ Herman Cahyadi of Gojek and Angga Narendra of AlloFresh joined People Matters Senior Editor Mint Kang in uncovering the biggest challenges CXOs are grappling with today – and what their organisations are doing differently.
Key points included the importance of aligning innovation with customer needs and market shifts, the necessity of budget management, and the role of collaboration in innovation.
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Innovation and agility amid shifting market demands
“The biggest challenge right now is how to cater to the shifting of the market. So that’s always the number one priority,” said Narendra, who is the chief strategy officer at AlloFresh.
“You can plan everything like three years ahead, four years ahead, or even one month ahead. But if the market is shifting, then you need to shift as well … Second, when you shift, does your shift actually misalign with your strategy or not? So, [it’s about] shifting markets and how you react upon it.”
Only then can leaders determine a practical one-month or three-month strategy. “Everything has to be aligned,” Narendra said.
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Purposeful and profitable
With regard to reining in costs and managing resources effectively, Cahyadi – who is head of people and culture at Gojek – urged fellow HR leaders to be purposeful when setting their priorities.
“We just need to find a purpose [behind] what we want to do,” Cahyadi said, warning against companies’ tendency towards greed, which is often associated with hyperscaling.
“[Being] greedy is actually [part of] the nature of people, right? Because we want to have more,” he said.
But while businesses should indeed prioritise profit, they should also be mindful of why they are doing so. For Cahyadi, it’s not so much about “how to increase profitability” amid growth, as it is about “how to maximise your profitability through cost management”.
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Business innovation requires team collaboration
One element of innovation that the panel touched on was how collaborative cultures are also often more open to innovation.
“I would say it takes a lot of collaboration,” Narendra said, calling on leaders to set an example of being collaborative and responsive to their teams and customers.
“At the end of the day, the top management needs to know [how] to build the culture … Without direction from the top, people at the bottom cannot follow. What you need to build is this kind of synchronisation every single day,” he said.
“You also need to be very honest about your targets. Let’s say [you are aiming to reach] a mark of $1 billion – that’s the moment where you need to share how to do it. And those sharing moments are not just from top to the middle management [but from] top to bottom.”
Narendra believes making an effort to be inclusive of everyone in the company’s growth journey enables them to understand their role and contribution in the innovation process.