Reshaping Career Through Working in the Region
For people who have been in the shoes, working as a regional leader in GO-JEK is almost no difference with working as a CEO. To say that it’s a challenging task is, to put it mildly.
To put it in a sense, being a regional leader is like riding a never-ending roller coaster. Fast and you have to be ready for the unexpected ups and downs track.
One day you will find yourself helping the team to reduce the level of cancellation rate in Yogyakarta, the next day you have to meet regional government leaders in Nusa Tenggara and as if that is not hectic enough, you still need to resume the endless journey of finding new talents to hire in Semarang and by early next week you have to fly to Jakarta and align with other parts of GO-JEK team to report how the regional growth rate will meet the expectation.
As a home for more than 250 million people, it is impractical for GO-JEK team working in Jakarta to solve any problem that arises from the east to the westernmost point in Indonesia. This is where regional leaders step in. “Spearhead in the cities”, as one of our leaders described his role.
I recently sat down with GO-JEK Strategic Regional Heads who handle Central Region and East Region as they shared their story on why leading their growing regional team is the most fulfilling job for them and how they solve unique problems with local insight.
I caught up with Delly Nugraha, the Central Region Head, when he just finished regional leaders biweekly meeting in Jakarta a few days ago. You can say Delly has a big role. His region covers 28 cities and municipalities to manage and supervise the day-to-day basis from Central Java to East Java and Nusa Tenggara. This means that he has to deal with 28 mayors and 28 police district heads with different mindsets, culture and work ethic on a routine basis.
He defines his main job in three areas: develop an idea to boost his regional performance, get the best out of his team members, and day-to-day management work that includes planning, organizing and evaluating.
“I start my day by calling my district leaders, boost their morales and praises their good works. I want them to know that I care about their growth,” Delly explained when I asked what his day looks like.
It was important for the regional team to grow exponentially as challenges keep evolving and yesterday’s solution might not be applicable today.
Most of the time a regional leader would also need to come with initiatives to boost performance in their area as, occasionally, problems would occur and could potentially affect the business. Delly’s key to deal with such situation is to always learn the local insight and being hands-on in those circumstances.
Different strokes for different folks
A year ago, Yogyakarta, a city under his region, found itself in a less satisfying situation as a large number of users cannot be accommodated with only a few hundreds of drivers. Inevitably, the customers' cancellation rate soared.
Delly learned that drivers in Yogyakarta tend to pick up passengers in their familiar areas without having the urge to explore other territories, as a solution, he called them for a meeting and showed them areas with the high number of demands that were often unpicked.
The solution didn’t only boost GO-JEK business in Yogyakarta but also resulted in good rapport for Delly amongst the drivers. The unhappy drivers now trusted him and believe that he cares for them. Therefore, when he recruited more drivers a few months later, the existing drivers could understand the need of supply.
He believes that it was an approach that is impossible to be done if he was only trying to solve it by being in Jakarta and not going to the source of the problem, in this case, Yogyakarta and identify the issue. He also believes that the regional team is the future of GO-JEK in Indonesia. It’s how GO-JEK build its legacy.
“Our presence is pretty strong in Jakarta but it’s not enough. If you want to win the heart of Indonesian you have to build the regional areas,” Delly emphasized why he relishes the work he does in the regional team.
Anandita Danaatmadja, East Indonesia VP, shared a similar view. He believes that potential market in East Indonesia is very large and the lack of infrastructure and technology coverage compared to Jakarta made him feel that the social impact he made for building GO-JEK in the region is also larger.
During a meeting with one of the administrative district heads in his region, he was told that one of the parameters of an advanced city in Indonesia now is if GO-JEK has opened its operation there.
To build a better relationship with the regional head, Nanda and his team consistently make sure to meet the local government first before operating GO-JEK in the area. It is, after all, the small gesture that could win the respect of people in East Indonesia.
To learn about local insight in his region, Nanda sometimes goes “undercover” as a GO-JEK driver and talked with local drivers to listen to their complaints and suggestion as we previously covered in our article.
But what Delly and Nanda would agree the most is that working in the region brings a different level of challenges compared to working from the headquarter office.
Just like a CEO of a company, you need the ability to balance two things. Regional leaders need to master communication skills to be able to speak with different stakeholders, they have to understand data analytical process, on the other hand, they also need to have a relentless creative mind to develop the area.
We are now on our mission to find the world’s brightest talent. We #needyourhelp to build something that is bigger than yourself, to be a part of the history of making the team in the region that creates #infiniteopportunities for millions of lives.
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