My Career Journal: in Pursuit of Servant Leadership Philosophy

Today, I helped to edit a career journal written by my co-worker. He wrote mostly about his professional achievement, and boy, it’s a mountain. And it led me to question, what did I’ve achieved in life?

I’m operating a small company — not really an achievement, but while doing so, I get the bus driver seat to experiment many concepts.

Lately, it is Servant Leadership philosophy.

What is servant leadership?

I got introduced to this concept while learning about Scrum. FYI, Scrum is a method in software development. Basically, it divides the dev team to three main roles. One of them is Scrum Master, which apparently is a Project Manager, but without the responsibility to meet clientele — it is assigned to another role, Product Owner. So, Scrum Master practically didn’t have to deal with another people bulls beside the Scrum Development Team. The trade off is that Scrum Master needs to be able to detect and to resolve any impediments to the Scrum Development Team. Hence, Servant Leadership philosophy was introduced. Scrum Master exists to serve the team while they’re trying to serve the company purpose.

It kinda suited my persona while operating a small business. People often describe me as ‘naturally kind guy’. But it’s a facade. No one is born ‘naturally kind’. According to Sigmund Freud, human are naturally nasty. We are born with initial 'id' that is no different to animal, carnal sins, glutton, etc. As we grow older, these 'id' are being compressed by 'superego’, a set of rules in society such as religion, culture, ethics, moral values, etc. It resulted to 'ego’, a set of actions that we show in public. By Freud’s theory, I am not naturally kind. I just held back. My set of professional experiences formed a ‘superego’ that build me as I am.

So I’d like to write my own career journal. It’ll mostly describe about my ‘superego’, displayed on chronological order, as a self-reminder that to me, Servant Leadership didn’t come naturally, and shouldn’t be taken for granted.

I also highly recommend you to write your career journals. After all, writing is healing.

Twelve years ago, I started as servant.

After high school, since it’s IT vocational, it was easy to find jobs. The problem is, I don’t really see myself as IT person, programmer, or network admin. I’m more of a journalism nerds, I used to be the president of the school magazine club. Therefore, even though that there are many vacancies, not a single one of it was suited to my callings. But it’s peer pressure. One way or another, I need to find a job. So I just randomly pointed my finger, and it landed to a vacancy as Customer Service to Jagoanhosting, a newly created web hosting provider. And that is the start of the first and the longest gigs I had.

Jagoanhosting used to be a 7 people small company, almost like a family. I joined as the #7. Even though that they are dealing on internet industry, they are retailer and B2C. They had 5000 customers. So the workload is crazy. Per day, I had to chat with 20–100 person, while answering phone calls, activating hosting and domain orders, and also doing troubleshoots — from as simple as changing nameserver, restoring backups after they’ve been hacked, to accessing people scripts to find possible bug. Joomla used to be very demanding since the connectivity had to be configured manually at the script.

I was trained to multi-task when several studies are debating that multi-tasking is not possible.

On my third year, we climbed to the top 7 web hosting provider in Indonesia. But we had higher aim. Therefore, expanding to Jakarta comes naturally. Two people got selected, a server admin, and a public relations. I got selected as the public relations, and we had to move from Surabaya to Jakarta. Back then, I was already on my fifth semester of a community college. But I chose to sacrifice it, a decision which I still regret to this day, because it turns out that Jakarta representative office only lasted for 1 year. We had to yield back to Surabaya after it deemed as failed move. Looking back, I believe that they lacked quantitative and measurable goal. They want to climb higher ranks, but they didn’t really count how Jakarta representative office should contribute to the spike. So there are no action plans whatsoever.

But personally, living for a year in Jakarta is a very developing experience. I got to interact with startup ecosystem through Startuplokal community, attend the awarding night of Sparxup, and personally meet with .id domain organizer. So, after I moved back to Surabaya, I found my new callings at public relations. Hence, I decided to enroll once more to uni. This time, it’s not IT, but communication studies.

At work, public relations tasks are also piling up. While still working as Customer Service, I also wrote hundreds piece of articles to Komputek weekly magazine. We also volunteered to help organize two national scale IT festival, Google Business Group seminars, and also traveling around Indonesia to do blogging workshop to Telkomsel student group. I got to travel to Purwokerto, Surabaya, Lombok, and Bali.

Then, my gigs at Jagoanhosting end after 5 years long running.

Being part of their team is not easy, and didn’t really rewarding financially, but it’s very good for personal development. Danton Prabawanto is an amazing leader. Not many people capable to encourage a genuine sense of kinship and family environment in workplaces that is very highly pressured. I’m proud to learn intrapreneurship from him through all of those serious small talks we had during the 5 years of my gigs there.

Eight years ago, self manage

1 year prior to Jagoanhosting ask me to resign, They shifted me to manage mediabisnisonline.com, a blogging platform which Jagoanhosting used to leverage SEO and soft selling approach. I delivered mediabisnisonline.com to the top 200 Alexa rank in Indonesia, back when Alexa ranks matter. It is the first time I work independently. The last position I hold there was Associate Content Editor, which by definition is the sole and self managing content editor, working cross departments. KPI is also started to be introduced during these time. Thankfully, they hired professional management consultant to give a proper 3 months crash course that the transition is seamless. It’s a wonderful experience to witness how the ragtag management of a small business evolved to be a more properly managed structure.

After a year, my gigs at Jagoanhosting finished. Then I got recruited by Adhika Dwi Pramudhita to work at his news outlet, Studentpreneur. My KPI was to write 6 pieces of daily news and entrepreneurial tips, with 200 words min. I struggled a lot. I learn the hard way to do better at time management, to balance between college classes and my KPI. Some of the months, my KPI fulfillment only hit 70%. And when my ideas runs dry, some articles I delivered was straight up translated from entrepreneur.com, with only a little bit of modifications. I often got caught red-handed, they can easily find another similar piece of articles on several bigger media outlet. In my defense, apparently bigger media outlet also stealing articles from foreign media, but theft is theft, and it shouldn’t be tolerated. So I started to schedule myself better. I wrote bulk articles as inventory for the upcoming week. I also started to take more interview assignment since it weighed more at KPI scale. I got to talk with many local entrepreneur, and several foreign startups, Priceza from Thailand and Zomato from India.

Also during this time, I personally got the chance to do small talk with Porter Erisman, ex-VP of Alibaba and the creator of Jack Ma documentary film. Several of my writings also got placed to the most popular section of Yahoo news, back then when Yahoo was a news aggregator.

One year has passed, and I decided to terminate my contract, since I feel the need to maintain my GPA.

But then, several months after the termination, I got invited by M. Gufron Effendy, my ex-colleague at Jagoanhosting, to join his startup team, Bixbox. They are looking for a UX writer, while I am a copywriter, so this is a new and uncharted area to me. Literally, my tech startup gigs was started there. I am forever thankful to Taufan Aditya and Glend Maatita to the opportunity handed.

Apparently, working at startup can be very lax. Without supervision, you will need intrapreneurship to find tasks that you can contribute to the company. I was studying filmmaking at college. I was the vice president of the in-campus indie film community. So I offered to create video ads for Bixbox. They love the result.

My line of works suddenly got expanded to any creative needs. I was their one person army, doing odd jobs. They want event documentation, mockup photo of the product, founder interview video, and at one time, they also want a mafia themed photo shoot that I go on shopping spree for the perfect property, studio, etc. While highly demanding, it also push my creativity to the new heights.

A year later, they decided to shift Bixbox after it failed to catch any tailwinds. An idea was proposed to create a programming bootcamp — it is a rising trend globally but only a small amount of competition in Indonesia. So they create Refactory. But the trade off is that we need to relocate from Surabaya to Bandung.

Four years ago, managing small team

At Refactory, my line of work got expanded tremendously. I have to handle all creative works and all of the event organizational tasks. At certain points, when the works are getting overwhelming, I remember working 70 hours a week. At sunday, we also have to teach programming to elementary students. While it’s mentally satisfying, but it’s also physically exhausting.

But they sensed that my works gotten overwhelming, so they formed a creative division comprised of 2 other graphic designer and 1 digital marketer. With helping hands, we’re unstoppable. We pulled off many feats, contributed hundreds of video and thousands of photo during bootcamp.

We also organized several graduation party to students. And created a national scaled IT event, Devsummit. I had to travel to Yogyakarta and Jakarta to cover the roadshow, surveyed the potential location, and negotiate with Sasana Budaya Ganesha Bandung as the venue provider.

Since two and half years ago, serving people

Two years has passed, but at that time, I still haven’t finish college yet. Then I got invited by Nurcahyo Alhidayah to create a software house, of which i accept, since it offers more flexibility for me to finish my college than Refactory.

Then, Aniqma is born.

It is another opportunity which is way over my wheelhouse. My years of experiences was on B2C, and now, suddenly it’s B2B. I easily lost sight of what to do. So I enroll to many courses about brand and Scrum. At my own expenses, I go to Jakarta to attend Marcomm workshops, buy more books about brand consulting, and attending Tech in Asia’s events.

Among the four founder, at first, I got the easiest end of the straw, which is brand needs. I create the identity, manage website, proposals, social presences, community relations, and also doing user research and business analysis to the flagship product ideas. But shortly after everything has been finished, I realized that the operational aspects were lagged behind. When its time to write tax report, there are no administration documents whatsoever. So I volunteered to do the due diligence. At first, it was only out of guilty consciences. But while I learned more about Scrum, I stumbled upon Servant Leadership philosophy. Never did I realized that the odd jobs I’ve been doing since the earliest day of the company formation had a name.

From the overseeing office renovation, setting up internet, and at one time, tend the sick employee that is living alone in Bandung — and we’ve been good friend since then, even though that he’s no longer our employee, to learning first hand about HR and Finance, and also writing tax report and managing employees insurances.

After a year, we moved the office to a more appropriate location. Again, I set up the environments, and also do several odd jobs such as purchasing pantry needs, tea and sugar, water gallon, and overseeing gardener. We also need to update our address to the banks and insurances.

Aniqma is 24x5 commitment. Therefore, at Saturday and Monday, my body just shut off to sleep. It might sounds exhausting. But startup by definition is about efficiency. When you manage operations and also doing finance, you kind of becoming more understanding to your company positions, that to demand more will only put strain to the budget.

Lately, my works become easier after we hire a new finance admin. One of the wonderful acquaintances I’ve met, Bintang Sitorus, perfectly describe this situation.

“When you’re already capable to delegate small tasks, then you can start to move on to the bigger tasks.”

Theoretically, every servant leader should works their best to clear any impediments on the team, so that in turn, the team could utilize their potential to do whatever it takes to help company reach it’s goal. Basically, you’re taking care of your employees and co-workers while they’re taking care of you. But I believe that this operations should be started from the most basic tasks, and slowly, move towards the bigger tasks. This way, servant leaders can draw the perfect picture of the company positions.

This mindsets kinda help me to get through difficult times, which happens so many times while running a small company.

The future

So what did I’ve really achieved in life? It’s true that I might not have much, but I think that I already have all the things I need in life, a raison d’etre. And I intended to pursue the servant leadership philosophy to the farthest destination I can, and to the highest height possible.

And that’s all of my career journal folks.