Mrs. Arinya Talerngsri, Chief Capability Officer & Managing Director of SEAC (Southeast Asia Center),said "SEAC's ultimate goal is the enhancement of ASEAN's present and future by continuously uplifting and developing the capabilities of its people and businesses to be able to confidently and successfully compete at the global level. For this reason, we have been working and helping businesses in Myanmar for three years now and we have found that business in Myanmar have lots of room to grow. However, growth may not be enough, rather scaling up is a way forward given today's business landscape.GrowthandScaleare two different strategies and many entrepreneurs or executives may confuse between these two terms. We, thus, recently organised an exclusive event called "Scaling Your Business: Grow – Connect – Leverage Business Success" in Myanmar to cultivate better understandings and unveil essential scaling up elements for a proper application. The event, itself, was well received by 400 attendees from government agencies, private firms, press members, investors, local associations, and influential investors. Some of notable companies attended our event include Myanmar Brewery Limited, UMG Group of Companies, MPRL E & P Pte Ltd, City Holdings Limited, Yoma Strategic Holdings Limited, as well as KBZ Group of Companies."
In business context, "Growth" depicts how the business expands in size showing how more profits have been generated whereas "Scaling Up" stimulates businesses to gain revenue by being more effective while using minimal resources which will, eventually, foster an exponential growth.To implement Scaling Up, there are three critical elements which include Mindset, Design Thinking Approach, and Capabilities Development.
To start off, as mindset is an underlying factor for human's behaviour, to successfully scale up and transform your businesses, it is essential for people to have outward and agile mindset.
Outward mindset fosters the positive working culture resulting in better collaboration and successful transformation. It will help every involving party to see the shared goals and urge them to work unitedly in pursuing these goals together. Meanwhile, if we ever thought of scaling our business with the same approach that we have done in the past, it's not going to work at the speed we should be aiming for during transformation; instead, we have to start thinking about doing our business differently at a much faster pace which should start with incorporating agility into strategic planning, embedding agile mindset into leaders and staffs, adopting new business models and investing in technology with purpose.
Secondly, having an experimental mindset under Design Thinking axiom require all involving parties to fail fast and fail forward so they can truly understand their clients and market situations. Try, fail, learn, prototype, test and iterate are keys and you cannot take too much time to experiment things.
The most critical factor in implementing Scaling Up is the capabilities of people in the organisations as they are the main driving force in running businesses. Also, as minimizing resources is fundamental in scaling up, companies need to find the ways for their existing staffs to do and achieve more. You have to identify what would be the skillset or the mindset that your people will need and you must find the faster approach in developing them in a timely manner.
Another highlight of the event is the inspiring and insightful panel discussion showing the real stories of how prominent organisations in Thailand lead and scale their businesses. The panelists in this session are top executives fromAP (Thailand) PCL. andFood Passion Co., Ltd.in which they commonly shared thatHuman Resourceis the critical component for businesses to successfully scaling up.
"The journey to becoming today's leading property development known as AP (Thailand) wasn't easy. We grew from a small company and along the way we have survived tons of setbacks most of which were caused by the silo working culture prohibiting us from moving fast and collaboratively.After adopting Outward Mindset and Design Thinking approach, we have seen tremendous transformation allowing our people to work independently yet with greater responsibility leading to effectiveness and the ability to scale up exponentially."explainedMr. Vittakarn Chandavimol, Chief Corporate Strategy and Creation AP (Thailand) PCL.
Mr. Ruangshine Supanpong, Chief Disruption Officer, and Mrs. Chataya Supanpong, Chief Engagement Officer, Food Passion Company Ltd.added "As we were expanding ourselves in Thailand and overseas with new branches, we were unable to maintain our standards and we realised that a centralised management approach was no longer suit our business. We tried and failed many times until we found thata decentralised management flow and the adoption of Outward Mindset is the solution as our staffs are well aware of the companies' objectives and they know their roles and responsibilities as well as what they can help the companies in attaining the predetermined goals."
"If the right strategies are implemented at the right time, ASEAN is a region to be reckoned with for the many potential, investment opportunities, and roads to global success. For this, the most crucial fact for business enterprises is the preparations in developing their people in both their mindsets and skillsets. Additionally, they should seek new possibilities, understandings on market and clients, as well as be equipped with an experimental mindset to embrace risks, new knowledge, and disruptions. SEAC understand the challenges that ASEAN businesses face and offer solutions that support positive change and growth in the context of the ASEAN marketplace. We bring global expertise and apply it specifically to our client's business needs with tangible outcomes that can be seen from day one. Our way of thinking, designing impactful experiences and comprehensive delivery are leading change in how people improve, develop and reach their potential sustainably," addedMrs. Arinya.