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7 Questions with Azaam Marikar
helps you in your leadership.
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Jonno White
7 Questions with Azaam Marikar
Name: Azaam Marikar
Current title: Chief Growth Officer | Managing Director
Current organisation: Northwood Consulting
At present he is the Chief Growth Officer at Northwood Consulting. My educational background is in finance and marketing.
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1. What have you found most challenging as a CEO or executive of a large enterprise?
Managing scalability. Hiring the Right Talent and Staying Competitive and Creating Growth.
2. How did you become a CEO or executive of a large enterprise? Can you please briefly tell the story?
My career spans 10+ years in which I started as a personal banking advisor for HSBS. During my initial years, I was highly involved in B2C sales of financial products. Sales helped me experience the world of achieving targets on a monthly basis. Starting from an international bank and 8 years down the line heading business development for Sri Lanka's largest conglomerate has been very challenging and exciting.
I joined Northwood Consulting in the capacity of a Co Founder.
3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?
My work day starts by 7am and ends by around 9pm. Since we service clients across time zones I have never had a fixed work routine. My usual day starts with responding and prioritizing email communications, structured 30min team update meetings, structured client meets, and updating my weekly personal KPI list.
4. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?
Appreciate everything that is given to you.Life gives something good to a leader not for personal use but to share with others.
5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?
Think and Grow Rich. The book is considered as my business bible.
6. How do you build leadership capacity in a large enterprise?
If someone tends to apply the same approach to every problem, that may be a sign they’re not ready to progress as a leader. While history does repeat itself, not every business problem is the same, so being able to look critically at a problem is a key leadership skill.
I look into each individual's ability to reflect on better ways to solve problems. When looking for future leaders, I look at, “Can this person use a problem-solving method or process? That is, can they deduce about how a problem should be solved, even if they don’t know the exact solution? Or are they good at solving discrete problems, and that’s it?”
7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a CEO or executive of a large enterprise so far?
During the COVID panadamic and prior to that we faced a devastating terror attack in the country which impacted business. 2 years of struggle made us innovate and re-strategise our approach to the market. Coming out stronger than where we stood 2 years prior is my greatest achievement.