Leadership and influence
Chevening is looking for individuals who will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.
In a world we can be anything, I chose to be professional in logistics. Since I accepted the special program (the Fastrack managerial program) in one of the prominent logistic companies in Indonesia 10 years ago. It reshaped my perspectives of the future me. I am one of the 32 selected people over a hundred applicants who got accepted to the program. Throughout the program, I learned much from Warehouse Management, Customs in Indonesia, Shipping, Project Management, and Leadership, and soon, that brought me more and more interested in this challenging sector. The second year passed, and I was trusted as the youngest project manager to handle several transport projects across Java island. These were very valuable for me, they made me more empowered personally and involved my ability to be a fast person both as a planner (fast learner) and as a leader (fast to deciding within a limited time). The numerous project led me to have a chance for a wider opportunity in the mining sector. Recently, I am working under a group known as the leading nickel producer in Indonesia, I am in charge of the (onsite) supply chain of whole group companies (Specialty in Distribution, Warehousing, and Logistic)
On this occasion, I realized there are plenty of things that need to be improved since this subsidiaries company aged still less than 2 years. In the first 2 months, I review the Standard Operating Procedure's documents and then conclude with two things the company must immediately do. First, change the work culture with mutual agreements, and second, invest in internal management systems for monitoring and evaluation of materials. The second point of my proposal was rejected the outright cause of budget reasons, while the first point of my proposal went smoothly.
Giving up is not my thing, I returned, by collecting the actual data through a simple data presentation via Microsoft excel. I made a simple excel formula for monitoring the materials weekly and monthly, I started from scrap. I believe rejection is pending approval, and I just need more data for being listened to. All I did was just convince the company will decide on an investment is something strategic and in line with the company's plan projections.
After 9 months, with a simple monitoring system, I made it via Microsoft excel. The company finally concludes it could help the management in deciding what to do on the next plan, one of the crucial points was It could affect cost reduction of sending urgent goods (plan more stock for certain materials), and management could decide for terminating repurchase for rarely used items. All stay-up-late nights were paid off, the ERP - SAP system proposal was approved, and purchasing dept started looking for vendors. A year spent, the system started running and is currently compiling data from approximately 5000 data items for thousand transactions (coming in - out materials) per month. Finance uses my data as a reference in the approval of goods requests.
