Dr. Atiur Rahman
Governor, Bangladesh Bank :
This is indeed a truly interesting theme to draw attention amongst the public sector policy makers and young business leaders given the pre-ponderance of huge pool of young people in Bangladesh. A true leader can change the society, nation, even whole world. This is not easy to have as there is a famous saying that “Too many bosses but too few leaders”. Before going further I would like pay due homage and honor to our great leader and father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman for his heroic leadership and presenting a new nation ‘People’s Republic of Bangladesh’ to us.
It is often told in management theories that leadership deals with change, inspiration, motivation and influence. In contrast, management deals more with maintaining equilibrium and the status quo. Leadership is an active, living process. It is rooted in character, forged by experience, and communicated by setting examples. Leaders in every organization are facing different challenges; the most common and at the same time difficult one is transforming the potentials into performance.
In today’s ever changing circumstances, to perform our job in utmost professional manner we need to create an urgency of change in individual mindset. Any change will not be possible unless most employees are willing to help and make it happen working together. Here comes the importance of leadership which hovers around the concept of urgency of giving in one’s most for a change. Autonomy, initiative, and responsibility work hand-in-glove to form the essential elements of leadership. These elements act as drivers of leadership transforming it from something that is to something that does.
Effective management today is less and less about “managing,” i.e., administering. Effective management is about leadership, exerting personal initiative that stems from personal vision, a sense that “I know what needs to be done, and I will do it.” Effective management stems from core values that shape a personal leadership style. A leader is that manager who inspires his-her people about the norms of his/her organization and his/her expectations from and for his/her people. In today’s economy we have many hundreds of multi-segment markets, each with its own competing demands. Therefore, a new model of management is required that encourages participation. Why? Because in a market with competing needs, it is the person on the front lines who often knows more about the stakeholders and their needs than some executives sitting at the top. If the organization is to survive, it must encourage ideas that flow upward as well as downwards. Only then a synergy of ideas will take place. Such a synergy is a must for the change that we are looking for.
We need leadership capable of developing vision and formulating change strategy. Those who are mere managers can only sustain status quo and cannot drive change.
We need leadership adept in driving change. Such leadership does not grow overnight, but develops over years in work supported by ceaseless lifelong learning. We wish to create an environment fostering change leadership and we all are actively engaged in unleashing the desired creative energies from each of our would-be leaders through participatory engagements in terms of benchmarking, sharing experiences, targeting changed outcomes, implementing and monitoring those objectives. There is a pressing need for young men and women to engage in public leadership today. BYLC defines public leadership as engagement in three areas, namely the public sector, civil sector, and social entrepreneurship.
We live in a world today that is becoming increasingly materialistic where most people are prioritizing personal gain over collective development. In such an environment, it is becoming increasingly important for young people to engage in public service to serve their communities and their nation.
It is good news for us that BYLC came to cater that need and hosted two leadership summits in 2011 and 2012. This is their third endeavor. We are happy to be a part of this noble initiative. BBLT (Building Bridge through Leadership Training), one of BYLC’s signature program is being supported by Bangladesh Bank under the framework of BB’s CSR activity. The beauty of BBLT to me is that it brings young students under the same umbrella at least for sometime from different parts of the society. BBLT’s participants came from Bengali and English medium academic institutions as well as from Madrassa.
