Tamara Abed heads BRAC Social Enterprises, including Aarong and BRAC Dairy. Operating several first-of-its-kind business models in a country with a dearth of information is no easy task. Few in Bangladesh are better equipped to address such high-level decision making. In conversation with Insights Series team, Tamara Abed discusses how she views strategy, decision-making, and the role of intuition in the mix.
Insights Series: What does intuition mean to you?
Tamara Abed: Intuition, as classically defined, is gut feeling. It is a moment when something clicks. It is not really something that you necessarily think about very deeply or derive from a conscious process of thinking. But when it does click, you know it feels right.
Insights Series: How is it different from hard fact based decision making?
Tamara Abed: Intuition is different from a more structured, fact-based process of decision making in terms of conscious versus the subconscious. For fact-based decision making, you would ask certain questions and expect answers in factual terms: that’s a more analytical process as opposed to the more sub-conscious process of intuition.
Insights Series: Tell us about a time when you were confronted with a situation where you had neither sufficient facts to make an informed decision, nor the luxury of time to collect hard facts, and had to make a decision based on intuition.
Tamara Abed: In terms of people, you get a feel for what role they might fit well in. It is especially trickier in cases where the role is not very technical, and requires more frequent usage of soft skills. Sometimes, you just know who the right candidate is for such a role. My current marketing manager in Aarong was previously working in social compliance and producer relations. I struggled to find the right marketing manager for a long time, and it just so happened that I thought this person would be ideal for marketing. I intuitively arrived at the feeling that he would be great for the job, and it would be a big leap of faith as he did not have any academic background or experience in marketing.
Insights Series: How has that decision panned out?
Tamara Abed: He is actually doing brilliantly now. Even his previous role was not very well-defined, but I saw this person learning, as well as building the department with new ideas of what could be done. I found in this person the ability to learn and evolve, which he translated to his new role as well, and it has since proved to be a great decision to have placed him in his new capacity
Insights Series: That’s great. How about an instance where you made a decision based on intuition that did not work out well in the end?
Tamara Abed: A space in Bashundhara City was offered to Aarong a considerable time ago. At that time, we had outlets in the nearby Moghbazarand Dhanmondi areas. We had also bought a piece of land where we would eventually open a second Dhanmondi outlet. So I thought having an outlet in Bashundhara City would not add much value, as there were too many other Aarong outlets in close proximity. Afterwards, some other fashion outlets opened shop in Bashundhara City. Much later, we opened an outlet there. Looking back now, I think if we had taken it back then, it would have been a very lucrative outlet. I think we lost years of sales there, and if we had that outlet, we probably would not have opened a second outlet in Dhanmondi.
Insights Series: Did that experience bring any learnings?
Tamara Abed: I learnt a great deal from this experience. When JFP (Jamuna Future Park) was newly opened, most people were apprehensive about renting any space there. I felt that it was an opportunity not to be missed, especially considering the number of people living in Bashundhara R/A, Nikunja, Uttara etc. So I acted intuitively and opened an outlet there. It worked out really well, as they were delighted to offer us space, and that too for a great deal, since Aarong would bring significant brand value to the mall, encouraging other retailers.
Insights Series: Moving from intuition to innovation, what in your opinion, is the most innovative ideathat your organization has pursued over the course of its history?
Tamara Abed: At BRAC, there is a significant amount of both product and process innovation. There are incremental innovations in terms of improving a process, as well as disruptive interventions that completely change the game. In the late 80s, BRAC decided to make cold packs out of banana peels to store and transport poultry vaccines without breaking the cold chain. It was very disruptive at that time.
Insights Series: Can you tell us a bit more about it? How was the innovation scaled?
Tamara Abed: When we started working in poultry in the late 80s, some of the chicken were raised by rural women, whereas others were imported. The latter required vaccinations. A lot of the vaccines would not have the right efficacy, as the cold chain would be broken due to malfunctioning fridges. It was then that BRAC came up with the idea. Bananas were widely available in villages across Bangladesh, so it was a very inexpensive and readily scalable solution to maintain the cold chain using local resources available abundantly in rural areas.
Insights Series: Real innovation is often marred with high degree of risks. How do you create and encourage a culture of innovation in your organization and factor in the high risk dimensions?
Tamara Abed: Innovation is one of our core values. You would never lose a job in BRAC just because you tried something innovative and failed in the process. There is a culture of accepting failure, otherwise you cannot have a learning organization. So we encourage talking about our failures with a certain degree of comfort, just as much as talking about our successes, and we ensure that we extract learnings from these experiences.
This article was written in 2018.
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