Mr. Piyasak Ukritnukun is known as the Managing Director of Ngern Tid Lor Public Company Limited, but not many know the story behind his rise to becoming a leader at the top of the organization and how he led a finance shophouse into today’s listed company.
Here, we reveal the life lessons and perspectives that Piyasak shared with us in the DTX Classroom (Digital Transformation Exponential). You will learn about his life experience, commitment, inspiration, and ways of thinking that not only influence his life path, how he works, manages a company, and sees the world and people, but also the direction Ngern Tid Lor is moving forward and more than 6,000 lives in the company.
Hard work can overcome any challenge
Piyasak told us how he overcame his health problems when he was a young boy.
“My life story is really a story about
hard work.
My parents have two children. I’m the youngest child of a family that runs a restaurant business in America. When I was young, I had many problems compared to my older brother. My brother was a good student and was also good at sports. I was allergic to everything – pollen and sunlight, to name a few. I was also a fat kid. I had high cholesterol, was lazy, and bad at studying.
There was a time when my father had to often take me to see the doctor. My doctor told my father that exercise was the only thing that would help me get healthier because I had asthma, which caused breathing problems. When I was in elementary school, I was forced to swim for an hour every day. After swimming, I had to go to a taekwondo class.
As a result of being forced to do all these, everything got better. I got healthier and better grades. This challenge taught me that:
You don’t have to be gifted. Only diligence, dedication, and hard work will help you overcome almost any challenge.”
After finishing high school in America, Piyasak studied in the BBA International Program at Thammasat University, where he learned new life lessons.
Everything that happens in the present is the outcome of causes and effects in the past
Piyasak recounted that while studying at university, he took a job as an interpreter for a research company.
“At that time, I could understand Thai but my speaking skills were very bad. I applied to be an interpreter to translate Thai into English for foreigners who came to Thailand to do research. This job not only let me travel for free, but also gave me an opportunity to see ways of life in other provinces.”
After graduating, Piyasak worked for Boston Consultant Group for two years. But, just as he has learned, everything that happens in the present is the outcome of causes and effects in the past.
“While working at the consulting firm (BCG), I had a thought about why there was no Thai fast food chain in America. So, I decided to go back to America to survey the market for fast food chains and continued studying for my MBA. However, after moving back for two months, I got a call telling me they were doing a project in Thailand and needed a Thai analyst for three months. I flew back and took the three-month job. After starting work, I found a profile of the company the project wanted to acquire. That company was Srisawad Ngern Tid Lor.”
Although he had no due diligence experience, Piyasak was doing so well that he was invited to continue working until the deal was closed and Srisawad Ngern Tid Lor (which is now Ngern Tid Lor) was acquired by AIG.
Thus, it is not wrong to say that Piyasak was the person behind company changes since the first day of Ngern Tid Lor.
Ready for change: the key principle of Ngern Tid Lor
“After AIG acquired Ngern Tid Lor, I went to work on other deals in Hong Kong and Taiwan. One day, the CEO of Ngern Tid Lor contacted me saying he wanted a head of marketing. At the time, I was writing my essay to apply for a master’s degree and thought that being a head of marketing at a young age for a local moneylender would make my profile stand out. So, I accepted the job invitation to work with Ngern Tid Lor, which at that time was a little-known finance shophouse with a head office in Pathum Thani.”
When the subprime mortgage crisis (aka. the hamburger crisis) hit Thailand, Ngern Tid Lor and even Piyasak himself were forced to embrace changes as AIG decided to sell Ngern Tid Lor to Krungsri Bank. Piyasak got a chance to make the first commercial ad for Ngern Tid Lor 10 years ago and was promoted to managing director when he was 32.
What problems does our business want to solve? An important question for Ngern Tid Lor
Piyasak told us about the changes that Ngern Tid Lor continued to make. These changes were the result of the changing value or importance the company gave to customer services, which would give rise to the question of what problems our business intended to solve.
“These changes were probably made because most of our customers were grassroots people. At that time, our company was also having a brand confusion problem. We were formerly known as Srisawad Ngern Tid Lor and there was another company called Srisawad, which was operating a similar business, causing confusion among consumers.
As we were trying to solve this problem and grow our business, we visited and talked to many customers. As a result, we gained a better understanding of our customers and discovered that:
What our customers wanted was not just money. They also wanted transparency and fairness that they deserved as a borrower. This means higher service standards.
Because many businesses in this industry started out as family-run businesses, most of which were finance shophouses located in the provinces, the concept of consumer rights may not be familiar in this industry. So, we conducted a study to figure out how to get people to enter our financial system. We also started to think bigger as we were transforming into an organization with a vision to deliver transparent, fair, and high-quality financial services to customers.
Of course, we want to make profit, but profit is not our only goal.”
Piyasak also talked about an insurance brokerage, which is another business Ngern Tid Lor did not start in pursuit of more profit, but ended up making profit for the company anyway.
“The real reason why we started selling insurance products was because of our goal to lower the risk for our customers, while the income is just a bonus. This proves that having a clearly defined goal will lead an organization to success in the long run.
Having a clear goal is like having a compass, which shows you the right direction you should go. It also helps you eliminate distractions and keep your mind on track.”
This is the foundation of our strong corporate culture. We have found our true mission and cleaned up our past image as a finance shophouse to move toward the future with bigger dreams and to achieve a sustainable growth.
Unlocking human potential through a shared belief
Another important lesson that Piyasak learned from trying to overcome his health problems when he was young, and has guided his management, is that everyone has more potential than they think.
“What we have to do is to help our employees reach beyond what they think they are capable of by creating a supportive environment that allows them to succeed on the path they choose and show their true characters.”
The important thing that will help unlock the full potential of our people at Ngern Tid Lor is a shared belief. As Piyasak told us:
“Having a corporate culture and a shared belief would be tremendously helpful. So, we use our
7 Core Values as a basis for job interview questions. One of the questions we ask job candidates is: Have you had any direct or indirect experience with informal debt?
If he answers yes, it means he knows how bad an experience that was and when he works with us, he would not only work toward the company goals but also work for personal goals. This will encourage him to develop his skills to solve the terrible problems he once experienced.
When recruiting candidates, we focus on how they share our 7 core values rather than their technical skills because we believe that technical skills can be learned and developed later.”
To maintain corporate culture, we must eliminate errors
As a corporate leader, one thing that Piyasak said is difficult to do but needs to be done is to eliminate “people who are not one of us.”
“This is not easy given the cultural context in our country, but it is necessary if you’re just starting to build the right corporate culture. Every time a customer makes a complaint, we have an investigation. We go through our 7 core values to figure out which one our employee violated. There are times when we need to refine our values.
Creating core values is just like enacting laws. We can’t write a law to prohibits doing everything we don’t like, but if our employees understand the basic principles and make their own decision about what should or should not be done based on that understanding, our organization will grow quickly.”
How to create a happy workplace
Another important idea Piyasak shared in the DTX Classroom is that
employees will work at their fullest potential when they are happy.
“At Ngern Tid Lor, we cite a scientific study that shows that there are four things all human beings desire and use them to design our employee care programs. The first desire is a “goal.” Every employee has a financial goal. So, we have designed a program that will help our employees save money for their retirement from the first day they start working with us.
The second desire is a “happy work environment.” At Ngern Tid Lor, we have created many questionnaires to ask our employees what more they would like from the organization or what changes would they like to see in the organization.
The third desire is an “opportunity for development and growth.” Everyone wants to grow in their careers. It is thus important for all employees to understand that working together to help the organization grow will give them more opportunities to develop and grow. If the company does not grow, employees will have less opportunities to grow as well and they will eventually begin to look elsewhere to grow.
The fourth desire is “good relationship.” At Ngern Tid Lor, we encourage employees to get close and know each other. We believe that employees who have close friends at work or good relationships with an organization will work for that organization longer than employees who have no friends.”
Piyasak also concluded that only when the organization can satisfy these four desires for employees, powered by the shared belief that “we’re working every day to benefit people in society,” will it retain employees for a long time.
Work- life balance makes a difference
For Piyasak, there is not one model of work-life balance, but three.
“The first work-life balance model is a linear model. People in this model will start work on time and go home at 5:30 P.M. If the y-axis is time, I believe that it is very difficult for people who choose to spend their work lives this way to find success.
The second model is balancing work and life in half. This is not balancing time within 24 hours, but people in this model spend the first half of their lives working hard and gradually work less in the latter half as they have established themselves and get older. Simply put, they choose to work hard at a young age for a comfortable life when they get old.
The third model aligns the purpose in life with work. People in this model typically have passion and have discovered their purpose or meaning in life, which allow them to stop thinking of what they do as work.”
Piyasak left a word of wisdom about these three work-life balance models that:
“We can choose what kind of life we want to live today and in the future. But, what I want to say is that I’ve never met anyone who gets rich by luck.”
Leadership as a driving force of Ngern Tid Lor
The last question in the DTX Classroom was: What was Piyasak’s next goal as a leader of Ngern Tid Lor after he successfully transformed a finance shophouse into a listed company?
His answer was to lead the organization in becoming a “technology company.”
“We still have a long way to go, but I believe with our skills that we’ve developed, our directors, our shareholders, we have the opportunity to reach that goal if we don’t limit ourselves to being just a lending company. I think there are still many things that we can do. We don’t need to be just a lending company or an insurance brokerage company.”
Today, Piyasak is still working to drive Ngern Tid Lor toward a bigger goal.
“I want to make Ngern Tid Lor stable and sustainable forever. That one day, even without me, it could still continue to grow. In fact, a company is a legal entity that could last forever if it has a strong corporate culture and we pass it on to the right person. This is why I am investing in our employees in order to develop everyone.
What gives me the driving force to work is all of the employees we have selected and engaged with. We want to see them grow.
Well, I may have achieved my personal goals, but many employees have not yet reached their goals. Today, the success of my employees is a key driver for me to keep the company growing.”