APB Holds Evening Forum On ‘Navigating Leadership Challenges In A Volatile Market'

The Continuous Professional Development Committee of the Association of Professional Bankers (APB) Sri Lanka held an insightful evening forum recently, at the BOC head office auditorium, with the participation of a large number of bankers, professionals and special invitees.

- Thilini Gunasekera

The celebrity CEO of the corporate world, Dr Kishu Gomes graced this occasion as the guest speaker. The topic for the day was ‘Navigating the Leadership Challenges in a Volatile Market’, which is an emerging topic in the corporate arena.

Dr Gomes commenced the presentation with the concept of ‘New Normal Leader’. He emphasized on few leadership lessons learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Gomes took up examples and described the limited applicability of risk management in an unexpected pandemic situation. He mentioned that most of the businesses were shut down due to supply chain disruptions and elaborated on the balance between the cost vs reliability, high fixed costs, business continuity plans (BCP) to people response processes (PRP), leadership challenges occurred in various industries and the importance of technology using Zoom and other platforms and the quick adaptability to changes and challenges.

Dr Gomes spoke on the ‘business challenges in the new normal world’ and highlighted some key focus areas in the present-day business context, such as declining markets, economic downturn, reduction of gross profit margins, high inflation and fierce competition among players in the market that needs to be watched carefully by the corporate leaders.

He was of the view that as leaders, we need to “stay focused on controllable” factors. He also underlined the fact that we are facing a highly volatile market with an unforeseen future in front of us and the competition is getting worse than before with the technological innovation.

He quoted from an example from American business leader General Electric CEO Jack Welch in his presentation. “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.”