Leadership, Governance and Accountability - Mr. Sirajuddin Aziz

He appreciated BLC 2018 and thanked Mr. Talib Kareem, Mr. Shiraz and all the faculty members of Iobm for the invitation to be a part of these proceedings. It’s a great service done to the community and to the business environment to be able to organize such facilities where one can share experiences and views.  It allows generations to have a thought in mind where are we and where do we head both as an individual and as a society.

He stated that Governance and Leadership with the elements of morality and ethics are essential. Governance is a subject that has been widely spoken about internationally and in the context of our country, we blame everything and put all burden on “governance.

Leaders of substance have always had something beyond of what they can perform i.e. a very strong ethical, moral and spiritual foundation of thought on which they build their lives.

While speaking on corporate governance he shared various examples to insist on the alignment of internal behaviors with morality and ethics. He talked about Mr. Jinnah, his commitment and his principles of honesty and integrity for receiving money only for what he has performed.

Move over, he insisted that Personal Behaviors are essential to have rule of governance. He emphasized that leadership is all about personal behaviors – teach yourself generosity and sense of justice. Compassion is a virtue that leadership must possess.  

The dilemma in many people minds is that what it that takes to have good governance? He said that you can’t have principles of bad governance – we can only have principles of good governance- Internalization of governance standards in you is important – Fear factor works only to a degree. You have to be fair within your own self. You don’t need to break the traffic signal if there is no one – you have to be fair in yourself.

We as a nation, we have come up with legislative formulas for putting in good corporate governance in place; we have the SECP for putting up corporate code of governance. At the end of the day it’s just one element called the conflict of interest. Always see if doing certain acts is following governance or not? In any activity you indulge in, in your lives, at home at workplace; you find a conflicting with the standards of your thought process that has built as a result of your upbringings based on social principles, religious principles and the principles that you learn from others if it is conflicting then do evaluate to see whether it is legitimate to do such an act, whether it is permitted by to remain in conformity or non conformity of your own beliefs or not.

Make your ambitions positive because they are the root cause that takes you to do things beyond the scope of acceptability of norms, modes and cultures. Ambition is a great thing to have it. Every single individual should have ambition regardless of age and must remain confined within the context of legitimacy.

He shared an inspiring example of Federal Republic of Germany chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany who walked alone for a speech and left the stage in applause with nobody walking behind her. It is the governance of leadership. Concepts of personal ethics, personal morality and personal spiritual standards are required and if we can’t manage then people can’t operate.

CEO alone isn’t responsible for the misdoings. The board is responsible for having chosen a man who would not look at his natural surroundings to do achieve something outside the scope.

“I am banker by profession and I emphasize on doing true promises. Extraordinary profits come from extraordinary efforts and those extraordinary efforts are largely to harbor outside the scope of legitimacy.”

Honesty is a difficult currency to deal in but it is a worthwhile root to adopt in life. Faith demands highest standards of ethics, morality, grace and decency. We as a community don’t need to have code for corporate behavior and social behavior in fact we are supposed to teach the world the code of governance, we have instead become slaves to their codes and there are based on our noble religion.

Humayun wrote his principles of governance and he wrote that rotation after every 2 years at any position is important because the longer you allow an individual to occupy a certain place he will start influencing he will be start compromising on administration.

He concluded by saying that it is the usage of the office and those who occupy office that if they are depositaries of volcanoes how can you expect any flowers to bloom around them. Change them and that’s what we require to do. We need to move away from a culture of power. Arise and stand for your rights and speak out your minds. We must all try to adopt truthfulness.