Most companies are failing to develop their upper-tier leaders mainly due to a culture of mistrust, a lack of quality education and bureaucratic mindset, analysts said at a leadership summit yesterday.
“Bangladesh is now facing the biggest challenge in creating leaders inside organisations,” said Rubana Huq, managing director of Mohammadi Group, a leading apparel exporter.
Garment factory owners usually do not want to promote mid-level managers to the upper ladder due to a culture of mistrust, she said.
“Owners remain very suspicious over the activities of mid-level managers as there is ample scope to indulge in corruption in the sector,” Rubana said.
Bangladesh Brand Forum organised the third Leadership Summit 2014 at Radisson Hotel in Dhaka.
“Quality of the mid-level officials will not improve unless we can ensure quality education,” Rubana told a panel discussion on "leading against odds -- what's next?".
Most garment companies are running as factories where owners take all the decisions, said Khalid Quadir, chief executive officer of Brummer & Partners Asset Manage-ment (Bangladesh) Ltd. As a result, they fail to attract the right talent,
he said.
Hassan Zaman, chief economist at Bangladesh Bank, said organisational culture is very important to develop leaders.
A lack of motivation, poor pay packages and long delay in getting promotion are some of the challenges in developing talented workforce at government offices, he said.
“Bureaucratic mindset is the main challenge in developing leaders inside an organisation,” said Zafar Sobhan, editor of the Dhaka Tribune, who moderated the panel discussion.
Bureaucratic mindset prevails even in the media outlets, he added.
Frequent transfers of officials from one ministry to another is one of the hurdles to developing leadership in government offices, said Ata Safdar, managing director of Reckit Benckiser for Thailand, the Philippines and Indo-China.
He stressed the need for investing more in skills development.
In another session, Sir Fazle
Hasan Abed, founder and chairperson of Brac, told the audience how he survived through a very unfriendly and challenging environment to create a successful non-government organisation.
Vivek Sood, chief executive of Grameenphone, also spoke in a session on 'communication to connectivity'.
