Shinta Kamdani is the owner and CEO of the Sintesa Group, based in Indonesia. Originally founded in 1919 as a rubber plantation, the company has since then grew to a “major consolidated holding company” that has “interests in consumer and industrial products, property and development, and energy.”
Shinta Kamdani manages and oversees the expansion of Sintesa’s business interests outside Indonesia. The Sintesa Group runs 16 subsidiaries, which operate in the property, energy, industrial products, and consumer products industries. Before ascending to her current position, Shinta recalls her father preparing her for the task since a young age. Primarily, her father taught her the value of staying humble and grounded, and of always keeping her community in mind. She practices “serving leadership,” which entails collaborating with and supporting her employees.
Before becoming CEO of Sintesa, Shinta Kamdani also had to overcome her status as a “triple minority” in her own country. Not only is she a woman, but she is also a non-Muslim and an ethnic Chinese. This means nothing was ever handed to her. She had to work harder than her male colleagues to prove herself and earn their respect.
Aside from Sintesa, Shinta Kamdani also holds several positions in business and social organizations. She is the President of Indonesia Business Council for Sustainable Development (IBCSD), the Chairwoman of Indonesia Business Coalition on Women Empowerment, and an International Board Member of World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
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Moreover, we believe the foundation of our initiatives relies on the people. All of our employees share our commitment to sustainability. Thus, we continuously arrange a knowledge management program to ensure all employees can adopt sustainable and inclusive culture into daily and professional lives.
Jerome Knyszewski: What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Shinta Kamdani: Sintesa Group is a strategic investment company that manages 16 subsidiaries under four pillars: property, consumer products, industrial products, and energy. Our consumer products and industrial products pillars have successfully managed to be publicly listed companies of the several pillars above. Moreover, Sintesa Group is one of the few companies who have reached 100 years milestones and have established several leading businesses. We are recognized by investors as a reliable and knowledgeable partner to help companies succeed in the Indonesian market
Upholding our big vision to become a Sustainable Excellence Company, we see this purpose is not solely achieved on the silo of the company’s financial performance to fulfill shareholder’s needs. Instead, we look beyond than financial statement to pursue the company’s shared value in building inclusive growth and ecosystem within the navigation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This is not however a step that must be carried out only to improve the company’s image, but as the key to innovation and sustainability. Reflecting on these principles, Sintesa Group aims to build a sustainable ecosystem both internally and externally and scale up our global impact. In doing this, we have developed our SDGs Roadmap called “Sintesa for the Earth”. It is a solid commitment of how our company that compromise of 16 subsidiaries, could pave the way to maintain, cultivate, develop and exceed work culture for nature preservation and incorporate sustainability into our business model and value chain.
Through the value chain, we incorporated initiatives compromise of health and well-being (SDGs no 3), water and energy efficiency (SDGs no 6 and 7), waste management through the lens of the circular economy, responsible consumption and production, handling hazardous waste compliance with mandatory regulation (SDGs no 12).
We are also expanding our business towards the green economy’s lens through our business portfolio in clean and renewable energy We also expanding our business towards the lens of green economy through our business portfolio in clean and renewable energy: Steam Gas Power Plant and Geothermal. Looking beyond, we have recognized that tourism is among the hardest hit sector during the Covid19. Thus, we want to utilize this opportunity to accelerate our efforts in building a sustainable ecosystem by developing eco-tourism business in Special Tourism Economic Zone (SDGs no 8). By far, this one of our ambitious sustainability business model with the concept of sustainable tourism. We are committed to empowering local communities, monitoring and regulating coastal and maritime activities, ensuring climate resilience, recycling waste, preserving historic sites-biodiversity and cultural heritage, and developing eco-friendly infrastructures. We also develop a strategic plan to protect environmentally sensitive ecosystems in the preservation area within the zone.
In addition, we believe sustainability is not a solo journey. It is about working collectively, building dialogue, and inspiring action-oriented collaboration among industry (SDGs no 17). Therefore, by establishing the Indonesia Business Council for Sustainable Development (IBCSD), we together with government partners, companies, academia and civil society organizations have started discussion, building capacity and joint actions to promote sustainable sourcing, efficient use of resources, tackling food loss and waste, handling plastic and hazardous waste, protecting forest and biodiversity, etc.
Not only to the extent of environmentally. Sintesa see that strengthening corporate diversity and inclusion are vital as the foundation of organizational success. At the internal level, Sintesa Group is one of Indonesia’s first companies to be certified by EDGE (Economic Dividend for Gender Equality). The Sintesa Group focuses on providing greater space for women to grow and develop, starting from the recruitment, development, promotion, and empowerment. On the other hand, Sintesa Group also strives to provide a supportive environment for women to carry out their roles both domestically and in work through flexible working arrangements and infrastructure.
At the external and global level, Sintesa Group believes in the importance of providing opportunities for women to grow not only at the internal employee level. But, it can also be amplified in the external through empowering entrepreneurs, leaders and establishing synergy. In this case, the synergy is a multi-stakeholder synergy between the private sector, government, academia, and investors to realize this agenda. This was achieved by establishing the Angel Investors Network and Indonesia Business Coalition of Women Empowerment (IBCWE) to empower women entrepreneurs and business leaders in Indonesia to take an active role in increasing women’s participation in the economy. Besides, Sintesa Group is also active in advocacy support and best practices in international organizations P4G and B20 to ensure that national women’s empowerment can be broadly developed into the global realm.
Moreover, we believe the foundation of our initiatives relies on the people. All of our employees share our commitment to sustainability. Thus, we continuously arrange a knowledge management program to ensure all employees can adopt sustainable and inclusive culture into daily and professional lives. We put firm hopes, that small act matters to multiply. Sustainability is about raising awareness of how everyone plays essential roles in making a better future by making a wise decision towards their lifestyle.
Jerome Knyszewski: Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
Shinta Kamdani: Being a leader is not an easy job, especially for leaders who have to balance domestic work as a mother and wife, multitasking abilities, time management, and stress management are crucial for personal development and wellness. For me, the key here is to prioritize self-Care practices for a Healthy Mind, Body, and Soul. This includes regular exercising, conscious breathing (meditating), and eating healthfully. Moreover, it is crucial to take your time to pause, unplug yourself from all devices, and work for just a few minutes about twice or third a day to muster your energy for the next activity.
More importantly, we have to prioritize any work to increase our productivity by streamlining the process and delegating tasks. The Eisenhower Matrix will help you decide on task by urgency and importance, sorting out less urgent and important task to be either delegated or ignored. It is also important, in particular, for women leaders to build a personal strong support system in the family and organization around you to avoid burnout and to be able to take care of domestic work.
Moreover, as a leader, we have to do a challenging task which requires a high level of concentration. Hence, to avoid decision fatigue, this includes resource and time allocation. This might involve blocking out the time early in the day, when you have fresh energy to work on challenging projects, and administrative scheduling works after lunch, when feasible.
It is also important, in particular, for women leaders to build a personal strong support system in the family and organization around you to avoid burnout and to be able to take care of domestic work. Shinta Kamdani, Sintesa Group
Jerome Knyszewski: None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Shinta Kamdani: My parents hold most important role model in my life. From my father I learned a lot about business and entrepreneurship. Since an early age, my father has introduced me to business, he often takes me to their offices, factories, and social events. We also sometimes discuss business at family gatherings and dinners. Business was common for us.Moreover, from him, I learned a lot about self-confidence, perseverance, and determination. He is one of those old school businessmen who can make tough decisions based on little information and gut feelings. He is also a visionary, and because he is a compelling person and, he can get people to agree and support his ideas. From him, I learned the importance of self-confidence and how difficult it is to be a good leader if you are not sure of yourself. While from my mother, I learned a lot about the legacy of giving back to the community, where it can bring critical influence on the well-being of community.
All of that aspects, experience and knowledge have shaped me into building purpose driven organization, where the purpose of the organization or company is not merely pursuing profitability, exploiting resources but to serve the community and environment.
From my point of view, a good company is a company who checked all the boxes of what business should be, meaning they are operating in a “standardized market” with “standardized” product, service and innovation” they have good performance. Still, their performance remains stagnant.
Jerome Knyszewski: Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. The title of this series is “How to take your company from good to great”. Let’s start with defining our terms. How would you define a “good” company, what does that look like? How would you define a “great” company, what does that look like?
Shinta Kamdani: From my point of view, a good company is a company who checked all the boxes of what business should be, meaning they are operating in a “standardized market” with “standardized” product, service and innovation” they have good performance. Still, their performance remains stagnant. They run the business “as usual” with limited urge to aim high growth and even hesitate to expand into a new market.
The great company sees two or even third step further. They are always looking for opportunities in the market. They are continuously learning, they also establish a strong purpose and leadership. Rather than sticking up to make the company cost-efficient, they invest to make continuous innovation in their product and in their business model, which generates them more productivity and efficiency. More importantly, they emphasize on leadership and uphold inclusive culture, where employees feel empowered and valued. They also attract great talent. Moreover, they are not only seeking for profitability but also long-lasting impact, hence they are thinking strategically forward to implement conscious innovation, product that benefit not only customers but also social and environmental aspects.
The great company sees two or even third step further. They are always looking for opportunities in the market. They are continuously learning, they also establish a strong purpose and leadership. Shinta Kamdani, CEO of Sintesa Group
Jerome Knyszewski: What would you advise to a business leader who initially went through years of successive growth, but has now reached a standstill. From your experience do you have any general advice about how to boost growth and “restart their engines”?
Shinta Kamdani: Leading a company for 100 years makes this challenge familiar to me. In addressing this challenge, a significant strategy need to be executed. First, we need to re-think our products and services. In this highly competitive and changing environment, customers have countless choices of products and services available in the market. Hence, we need to continually evaluate our products/services performances in the market and collecting customer’s complaints and review. Moreover, we also need to utilize data analytics to evaluate our performance and provide accurate data for decision-making.
The second, is to build innovation capabilities through strengthening the business strategy and develop a culture that empowers innovation. To enhancing the business strategy, we need to ensure that our approaches remains relevant in the new digitalized and marketplace disruption. This is not the world of fixed strategic plans. This may include corporate transformation strategy through M&A, Vertical or Horizontal Integration, or even redefining organization vision. Moreover, we need to develop and cultivate innovative culture by embedding an innovation mindset by attracting new talent, improving employee skills, empowering ideas, and providing innovation incentives.
Jerome Knyszewski: Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
Shinta Kamdani:
- Review the Business Strategy
We are inevitably facing an unprecedented environment. With the disruptions caused by the pandemic, it is imperative to review our business strategy towards market disruption and social and technological disruption. The first is to review the current company’s conditions and capabilities in navigating this crisis, identifying crucial factors that significantly affected the company’s revenue and costs. The second, is to map the business strategy into 3 scenarios for, namely an optimistic scenario (quick-recovery), a moderate scenario and a pessimistic scenario (worst-case scenario). In these three scenarios, we need to identify crucial factors that significantly affected the company’s revenue and costs, conducted business analysis and financial modeling in each scenario and identified economic and management factors that could substantially disrupt the company’s liquidity. In each of these factors, the company also prepares and determines strategic steps to stabilize all business activities, organization, and costs (optimizing accounts payable and accounts receivable, cost efficiency, divestment, and other options).
- Adapt Company Business Model
During the crisis, the market is also changing; customers are more picky regarding their purchasing choice, moreover, customers are also being pushed to adapt in the new environment and habit, and in turn reflect to behavioral changes. In capturing these changes, we need to revamp our business model that might not be relevant. For example, due to lockdown, ‘the stay at home economy’ has been thriving, hence considering the new trends, have re-created on how we can deliver value and how we can approach our customers. Moreover, this is also an opportunity to expand into the digital market and redefine our operation towards digitalization, which could increase our efficiency by far.
- Develop Transparent Communication with The Customers
During the pandemic and lockdown, I can admit that our hospitality industry has been hit hardest. Hence, significant steps have been taken to keep our customer’s trust resilient. Other than keeping the health protocol discipline, we also develop transparent communication with the customers, we continuously inform strong health, hygiene, and safety measures to protect the customers during their stay. Moreover, we also communicate with empathy and openly with our customer, on how we can cater their needs and always open for feedback.
- Maintain Employee’s Stability
In this crisis, often, we might not prioritize our employee’s stability. The pandemic has brought a lot of pressure to our employees. They are afraid they cannot be fully productive or even afraid of job losses during company’s financial instability. It is important to understand that during this hard time, employee’s wellness and safety are also very important in navigating through the crisis. Hence, we need to take step forward by prioritizing our employee and adapting the ‘Future of Work” to maintain our employee’s safety, health and also productivity. By adapting remote working or flexible working hours and maintaining workplace safety and embracing digital platforms for collaboration tools, our operations can be stabilized or even improved. Moreover, the technological and market shift have also made a strong call for investment in employee engagement and training to adapt and acquire skills in the ‘new normal’ market.
Jerome Knyszewski: In your experience, which aspect of running a company tends to be most underestimated? Can you explain or give an example?
Shinta Kamdani:
- Corporate Sustainability & Responsibility. Most companies are driven to generate profitability. Hence they tend to disregard the company’s harmful activity that may bring the risk for them in the long term. Not only in the environmental aspect, but also in the social aspect. As business leaders, we need to be aware that the company are operating in an interconnected ecosystem. When a company acts, a significant impact can be generated from there either positive or negative. Company harmful action can destroy development and cause enormous economic losses. Each year, companies spent more than billions of dollars to resolve environmental and human rights lawsuits. This does not include social costs due to increasing inequality in society and organization. With this significant amount, the company can better allocate and mobilize the finances towards sustainable actions and investment that eventually positively impact the organization and stakeholders.
- Inclusive Culture. Most company is driven to make profitability as their top priority. In turn, employees are always being pushed to delivery strong performance in generating profitability. This priority is not entirely wrong because in some point and with financial crisis, the company needs to generate revenue and profit to stay in the market. However, companies underestimate the ‘inclusive culture’, where every employee needs to feel welcomed, valued, and equal regardless of their background, gender, and even limitation. Ultimately, these will not bring positive impact in the long run, where company could create ‘unhealthy’ or ‘disengaged’ working environment, where many employees are not feeling engaged and committed to their work, which could have lost many great talent and creating high employee turnover.
Jerome Knyszewski: Great customer service and great customer experience are essential to build a beloved brand and essential to be successful in general. In your experience what are a few of the most important things a business leader should know in order to create a Wow! Customer Experience?
Shinta Kamdani: More and more customers are lingering towards customer’s experience that could deliver experiences and service with empathy, care, and concern. In particular, customers want to be understood, heard and cared for in this time of crisis instead of being bombarded with sales or promotion information.
Moreover, we are aware that transitioning customers experience towards digital and automated channels will be more cost-efficient, however, this may be no longer relevant where customers crave more human to human interaction due to pandemic. Hence, we must deliver customers experience that is more humane and embed human interaction that is honest, helpful, and responsive.
Furthermore, with ‘stay at home’ economy, customers need swift access to interact with us wherever and whenever they are. Meaning, we need to expand our access by expanding our engagement towards digital channels and provide human interaction within the technology to engage closely with them. Moreover, we need to remove unnecessary friction and bureaucracy to enable customers to interact with us easily to provide convenience and show our responsiveness.
Another way is to establish trust through transparency by communicating with customers about how the company manages the business and how they can positively contribute to the community. Especially in the new normal, customers are shifting their preferences, in which they are not buying the products, but buying for the company’s purposes.
Additionally, companies also need to utilize data, analytics, and technology that could help deliver tailored experience, where we can enhance customer ‘intimacy’ and understand customers need better, smarter, and faster to enhance customer experience.
Additionally, companies also need to utilize data, analytics, and technology that could help deliver tailored experience, where we can enhance customer ‘intimacy’ and understand customers need better, smarter, and faster to enhance customer experience.
Jerome Knyszewski: What are your thoughts about how a company should be engaged on Social Media? For example, the advisory firm EisnerAmper conducted 6 yearly surveys of United States corporate boards, and directors reported that one of their most pressing concerns was reputational risk as a result of social media. Do you share this concern? We’d love to hear your thoughts about this.
Shinta Kamdani: Indeed, in the age of technological advancement and digital interaction, customer engagements are shifting towards social media to gain accessibility and build close interaction to the customers. Sintesa Group, as a strategic investment company, has also realized the benefit of building a corporate reputation through social media in communicating on how we run our business portfolio sustainably.
However, on the other hand, the accelerated use of social media and user-generated content makes risk management related to the company’s reputation remains a challenging part. News spreads faster, whether it is a fact or false news. This is certainly brought misconceptions about the company. Every company and ours undeniably have been positioned in this position, where we must respond immediately and prudently. In navigating this, our company, Sintesa Group, has established a crisis management team led by our VP of Corporate Affairs and Corporate Communication Manager. We have been actively invest on social media-monitoring actions to protect such avenues to happen. Proactively, we understand that prevention is far more effective than cure. Thus, before we decide on strategy or corporate action, we have to always make sure that the action taken is sustainable and responsible not only for the customers but also for community and environment. Furthermore, we are also building private-sector collective action to learn and share best practices in enhancing corporate reputation management and community trust.
Instead of searching for perfections, founders need to learn to seek development. Shinta Kamdani
Jerome Knyszewski: What are the most common mistakes you have seen CEOs & founders make when they start a business? What can be done to avoid those errors?
Shinta Kamdani:
- Poor Hiring Decisions
The team is the most critical aspect of business success. When it comes to hiring, sometimes new CEOs or founders are expected to be fast, without a solid pre-employment selection process. We need to take note here that hiring takes time. Consequently, this could lead into hiring less-than-ideal employees and eventually can risk the company’s performance.
In avoiding this mistake, CEOs need to prepare earlier by identifying the candidates you need and dig deep into required job responsibilities and skills. It is also important to include soft skills and emotional intelligence-related skills as part of the pre-employment selection process. Moreover, it is crucial to take the time to collect outside information regarding the candidate to gain the sense that they could be suitable for the company.
- Targeting The Wrong Market
Another common mistake that new founders face is not taking enough time to understand the market characteristic that they are serving. The market is not for everybody. Hence founders need to research and map out the specific target market, the demographic background, lifestyle, and customer purchasing decision framework. Moreover, communicate with your customers to understand their problem, and utilize the insights to create strong products that is crucial for customers.
- Fear of Failure
I think every founders or CEO have fear of failure. This fear oftentimes leads to indecisiveness, procrastination and failure to take risks. Overcoming this setback is the key that founders have to pay to succeed. Instead of searching for perfections, founders need to learn to seek development. Even more, amid uncertainties and global crisis, CEOs have to take decisive actions, even though with little information. We cannot always make the right decision, but we can always learn from our mistakes. We can also seek support, find mentors, and collaborate to help our way forward and faster.
Jerome Knyszewski: Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Shinta Kamdani: My passion and purpose has always been to empower more women. Not only as a professional but also as entrepreneurs and investors. I believe together, women can move mountains. However, reaching towards gender equality movement is not merely an action of women herself, but also their support system, including men as father, husband, and colleague. Most men support the women’s economic empowerment, however the patriarchy system has been rooted so deep, so it becomes a natural role where women in charge for the domestic role. Thus, we need to include men in this process by providing a platform for men to share their aspirations toward women empowerment. Men need to be engaged as gender advocates — speaking out as active agents and stakeholders who can transform social norms, behaviors and gender stereotypes that perpetuate discrimination and inequality.
The HeforShe movement has been the patron towards gender empowerment, and I believe we need more platform like this. However, rather than focusing on men movement to empower women on a general level, I would like to focus the agenda towards men’s active contribution in Gender-Lens Investing, meaning investing on the ‘women economy’. This is not only investing in the companies that led by women but also companies that promoting gender equality in all stages of business operations from employees, customers to the whole value chain.
To realize this in full potential, we need to guide the investors to examine the gender bias at each stage of their investment process. This means by including gender analysis in each step of the process, not only in selecting investments but also in recruiting teams in their fund operations. Essentially, we need to ensure that all stakeholders understand the landscape and the importance of gender analysis and strategy in each step. In addition, we need the investor team to have a greater vision where they see their jobs in the base of operations and more as an avid advocate in which they have ownership in gender empowerment roles.
Jerome Knyszewski: How can our readers further follow you online?
Shinta Kamdani: Please connect with me through my Instagram.
Jerome Knyszewski: This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!