Association can stimulate and influence a person’s consciousness, cognitive processes and also, leadership style. Due to the influential impact of association, it is advised that a person should be aware and consider the type of personalities that they allow in their vicinities.
Humans consciously or subconsciously imitate, adapt, and inculcate the qualities of others that are close to them. Omar Mohamed Said, the CEO of Flowco Malaysia, is no different. His good leadership qualities stem from the leaders he served under and it is easy to identify that the greatest influence on his leadership capabilities was that of his late father.
“At Flowco our passionate focus has always been at providing our customers with the highest standard of quality and services by exceeding our improve our quality, consistency and efficiency.”
Learning from Variety of Leadership Styles
Omar did not start his career in Flowco as one would expect. He started with one of the large accounting firms and had to find his own feet while striving to work his way up. This challenging environment outside of his father’s domain of control and security was the ideal incubator for Omar to develop his sense of humility.
Omar was under the impression that he had to carve out his own destiny. He never had the sense of security and stability and was unaware that he was going to join his father until he received the offer in 2007.
Being in a large corporate environment, Omar was exposed to the various types of leadership styles of his superiors. He found that many did not resonate with him, but he also discovered some that he idolized. The ones he admired and respected left a deep impression on Omar and nurtured his maturity as a leader.
Growing through Challenges
Omar’s journey to CEO of Flowco gained traction after the passing of his father, the founder of Flowco Malaysia. These were very trying times for Omar, and he was challenged in a professional and personal manner. On the one hand, he had to attend to and console his grieving family and on the other he had to take over the reins of the company.
During the decade that Omar had been at the steer of Flowco Malaysia, there were numerous challenges facing the company. Regardless of the severity of these challenges, to date, Flowco has managed to overcome them all. These challenges seem to feed the success of Flowco as every challenge that they have had to overcome leads to the evolution of the company in some ways.
Flowco Malaysia became the company that his late father had envisaged so many years ago. After 10 years, Omar believes that now is the end of one chapter of the company, and the beginning of another exciting one.
Keeping Customers Abreast of New Solutions
Flowco has always been customer centric. This is especially important when operating on the consumer retail side of the business, where public expectations and requirements on the quality of service are enormous factors for the satisfaction of our customers.
This is why Flowco is positioning itself as a maintenance company first, above all else. Constantly improving our service level delivery is a perennial task for Flowco and being able to offer something better by adding value to our customers with innovative ways of doing the things, is one of the vital objectives that we strive to achieve.
Enhancing Effectiveness
Flowco Malaysia prides itself as a company that contributes to the future financial sustainability of its customers by keeping them informed of what is happening in the markets. The company identifies the needs of their customers and tries to match their demands with appropriate new products and services that arrive in the market.
As a maintenance service provider, Flowco Malaysia was the first in the industry to digitalize business operations that only enhanced its own efficiency but also transferred benefits to its customers. The improvisation led to improved management and overall effectiveness in meeting key deliverables of its service contracts.
Fine-tuning to Global Trends
Flowco Malaysia’s ability to differentiate themselves stems from the desire to be a leader and staying ahead of the curve. History has shown that they are very efficient at predicting what the market will do next, but this is not a coincidence.
There is no guessing involved, but their accurate predictions are underpinned by meticulous market observations, global trends identification and past experiences. They carefully deduce how customer will be affected within their own local niche.
Flowco Malaysia continuously plays an advisory role to its customers by using its own inferences as tools to help them. Omar thinks that this strategy is an example of mutualism as the advice Flowco provides, serves as a complementary addition to their existing strategies.
Leading with Tolerance and Respect
Omar is a proponent of breaking down barriers between ranks. He is affirmed in the belief that barriers should be minimized, and that mutual respect and acknowledgment of organizational contributions should be present instead of entitlement and delusions of grandeur.
Malaysia is known for its diversity and Omar puts in maximum effort to ensure that diversity within his organization is acknowledged, respected, and valued. He thinks that the world is already a very sensitive place, and that Malaysia is not excluded. He believes that there should be no discrimination regarding race, faith, sex, culture, etc. and that everyone should tolerate and respect each other’s differences.
This company value is what’s most important to Omar and, according to him, deserves the most energy to grow due to its relevance to company survival.
Successfully Managing Difficult Situations
Flowco has faced numerous obstacles in the past and if one thing is certain, it is that they will be faced with numerous more in the future. Omar believes that if they are serious and passionate about their work, they will find a resolution every time.
Omar’s recipe for dealing with challenges entails a great deal of patience, trust in the established processes and believing in yourself, no matter how great the external pressure is.
Appreciating the Contribution of People
Omar believes that one of the pivotal points of success of an organization is the employees of the organization. Flowco Malaysia supports and invests in its people and empowers them to deliver beyond what is expected. The return on investment is immeasurable.
Omar is incredibly grateful for the people in the organization, and he knows very well that the company would not be as successful and would not receive all the accolades it did, had it not been for the employees of the organization.
Emphasis on Scaling Up
Omar is firmly assured that the future success of the company would depend on digitalization. The traditional brick and mortar business is bound to be around in the future, but there would be a greater emphasis on scaling up and the influence the organization would have on not only its customers, suppliers, and industry as a whole.
Having a Healthy Growth Mindset
Omar and his team are on route to chart out a new legacy. He sees himself as being fortunate to be surrounded by a team who shares his vision. They not only have a healthy mindset regarding growth of the company but also on a personal growth level too.
There are many attainable goals that Flowco is hoping to achieve within its current position, but it strives to achieve more. Omar hopes that by the end of this decade, Flowco Malaysia will be the number one preferred partner of petroleum marketers in Malaysia and the region. It will be a daunting task, yet attainable as they will leverage the fact that they have been the petroleum marketers’ most trusted and preferred partner since 1994.
Being Relevant Sustainably
Omar advises aspiring entrepreneurs to focus on finding their niche and complement the industry by being original and not a copy. Being original is the key to staying relevant according to Omar. What works for one doesn’t necessarily work for others, and originality is the key to long-term sustainability.
Your opinion on “The evolution of the Role of CEO during Pandemic”
As if the modern business environment was not challenging enough, out of the blue appeared the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has had CEOs all around the world up on their feet and challenged their abilities to the maximum. Navigating, managing, and staying on top of an unprecedented event with no reference to any case studies or past success stories whatsoever, left many CEOs with limited options and they had to execute every single play they knew in their playbook to weather this storm.
Many companies are still not out of the woods yet, and we are still seeing many companies fighting for survival. CEOs are tasked with tough decisions that they never had to face before. Although professional by trade, they are still human in nature. CEOs feel the repercussions of these decisions, especially when they impact the employees. But in the bigger picture, it must be done to ensure the survivability of the company, and they must live with the burden of these decisions.
I predict that whenever we come out of this, many CEOs whose companies survived will have more perseverance, wisdom and resolve within them. And the fact that the company would still be operating, would be a testament to that CEO’s capabilities of successfully steering a company during extremely turbulent times.
In my modest opinion, this pandemic is exactly the kind of challenge that most CEOs dream of and live for. Facing this epic challenge, standing up to it and emerging victoriously is the kind of accolade that no other CEOs in the past can boast about. This achievement is quite unique and something to be extremely proud about.
“Flowco Malaysia is a leading downstream retail oil & gas equipment supplier and maintenance service provider company in Malaysia.”
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