Chevening Leadership Essay
As an employee at PT. PLN (Persero), a state-owned electricity company in Indonesia, my experience as a leader was assigned as a commerce supervisor at my office branch in Parapat, North Sumatera. The objective was to lower the electricity bill arrears due to its worrisome situation. Back then, I had a team that consisted of six people. I gathered my team to discuss how to lower the arrears. I told my team that I want to lower the arrears and clear them, creating a habit to pay before the due time. We set the strategy to clear the arrears by mapping the customers' locations that are behind their payment, set the strategy on how to communicate with the customers and collect without any fuss, and set the milestones that involve gradually reducing the arrears for three months. The team was divided into the campaign team and the collecting team. The campaign team's job was to campaign on the importance of paying the electricity bills on time and listening to the customers' complaints. The campaign team moved each day from one public place like a bus terminal and market and one village to another. The collecting team's job was to collect from the customers who are behind their payment. Their job is to persuade the customers to pay without any fuss and not cut off the electricity connection.
Finally, this strategy was implemented. We held a brief meeting to evaluate the strategy and any event that occurred the day prior, and also motivated the team to maintain the communication and make them feel challenged every morning. At 5 p.m., the result will be reported: how many customers have paid, the lowered arrear percentage, and rank all the collecting officers based on their achievement. The result of this strategy was terrific as we achieved the target that has been set in the first two-month milestone. In the third month, the result started to go not as expected. The arrears should all be cleared in the third month; however, only 80% of the arrears cleared at the designated time. The event kept going on for the next two months. My team and I started to analyze this.
We found that the campaign about paying the electricity bill on time did not work effectively. Furthermore, two officers took away the customers' money. As a leader, I cannot let my team members commit fraud, so I had to let them go. To change the customers' habits, we had to develop a new strategy. The stakeholders, namely village heads, military, and police, involvement must be implemented. After they were convinced, they were willing to join our campaign, even helping our collecting team. As a result, we successfully cleared the electricity bills arrears in our branch at the end of the seventh month.