Chris revisits the key points made by Asesh Sarkar, adds his own insights and gives listeners some suggestions for practical actions they can take immediately to help them get where they want to go.
Welcome to every one of our Perspectives from the Top community of listeners around the world to “Reflections on the Top”. “Reflections” is to help you get the best from the series by me reviewing the key insights from our latest guest, Asesh Sarkar, CEO of Salary Finance.
Salary Finance is a fast growing FinTech which enables employees to receive wage advances to help them pay off their debts faster and save towards their financial goals in both UK and US. Its been featured twice by Forbes, as one of the leading socially responsible startups, and as one of five fast growing businesses to watch. It’s has also become a Harvard Case Study. Salary Finance’s offering is especially important when its a challenging time for people financially. Across the UK and the US, its platform is used by 500 employers and available to around four million people. Asesh also Chairs the trustees of financial education charity MyBnk.
Asesh started his career in consulting with PA and later on became a partner before starting Salary Finance.
What I really liked in my interview with Asesh is his journey as a self confessed introvert through the world of consultancy into leading a social enterprise that is having a significant positive effect on the lives of millions of people across the world.
When reflecting on who had influenced him Asesh talked about his first boss and what that boss did day to day, gave him autonomy, listened to him, valued him, treated him with respect, gave him flexibility in his work. But this is so important. I have seen so many successful people who had a boss like this early on who helped them build their own skills in getting the best from people to really accelerate their career success from the start. This confirms the power that you have if you're a leader listening, how by doing those critical day to day actions not only get the best from your people now and be successful yourself but also you have the opportunity to create the next generation of leaders. Within that also if bosses don’t do these things they become key drivers of people leaving organisations, they powered the Great Resignation and so they are vital to not only getting the best from people but keeping them from from leaving.
The early part of Asesh career was in top consultancy firms, which is a demanding place to work both intellectually and practically. As he said these organisations, and other professional service firms, often have a project based structure where individuals and teams move around between different projects as they come in, are worked on, and then completed. So this is an environment where it's not only about building positive relationships with clients and their people but also about building positive relationships with the people you may be working with on different projects where different people will be brought in because of their specific areas of expertise. So this is a much more dynamic flexible structure to work versus in a traditional formalised organisational structure, where you may even have a number of different bosses over a year, even if you have one individual boss who overseas your work and development in a coaching type role.
This culture, as Asesh said, is one where you often expect those who are extrovert and perhaps with good networks to be the ones that flourish. But Asesh, because of his love of collaborative working to solve problems and create new ideas, despite his naturally introvert nature, became very effective at creating authentic relationships with people with whom he worked, be they colleagues or clients. His subsequent success absolutely demonstrates the power of reaching out, collaborating, and working in partnership which we have so often spoken about as an enabler of success. This approach permeates the whole interview, his proactively building trust based relationships not transactional ones.
And he specifically mentioned this approach in contrast to that he has seen taken by other people which is a more self focused transactional approach to getting things done. Now I'm predicting that regular listeners to Reflections will know exactly what I'm going to say because this just goes to the heart of the difference between a “me not we” culture or attitude and a “we not me” culture or attitude. In the end success is much more likely long term using “we not me”. But Asesh experience also beautifully confirmed that you don't have to be some highly demonstrative high energy extrovert to get places in organisations. You just have to be good at reaching out to other people to work together for mutual success.
Maybe that’s a question worth asking yourself. Of the relationships I have with people at work which are trust based and which transactional ? And would I be more successful if I deepened the transactional to trust based. If you want just do a list of all the people you interact with and assess each.
Some interesting comments on his perspective of the different type of leaders that he had seen in business - those who were very good in collaborating and working with their people to create an environment where those people could give their best performance and those who had a natural entrepreneurial ability to do business but not so good with people. Now I agree with that analysis to some degree and most of you listening who have be in organisations for any period of time will have seen this - people who are naturally very good with people and those who are really focused on delivering the next level of business or technical performance. What we pick up here is about a natural ability in a specific area but as Asesh said in a successful organisation you can't have one without the other. The great business idea without people who want to make it happen is useless, equally inspired people without a clear vision and plan won't get anything done.
He said that in his experience he has this natural business focused brain and that his weaker area is in working collaboratively and building inspire teams. I'm not so sure about that because his comments about, despite being introvert, his ability to build positive relationships to collaborate suggest to me that is also good at getting people behind the ideas he has, which is confirmed by the success that he has achieved.
His move from the world of consultancy into creating a start up some of you listening might view as a drastic change. But it was something that wasn’t total new to Asesh as whilst in the world of consultancy he was asked to set up a new part of the business which was essentially a start up inside the wider organisation. So I suspect perhaps that was a little bit of a taster which enabled him to have perhaps more confidence in moving into creating a social enterprise.
It's interesting that Ashish said that he had always thought that there was an unnecessary division between the not-for-profit world and the commercial world in terms of what could be done to create a better society and his belief that it was possible to combine the two, ie deliver significant social benefit but also achieve commercial return. But the insight required to realise how to make that happen came from 4 years inside the financial services regulator world. This enabled him to see how the industry operated and how that legacy process created profits for banks but with what many would consider to be significantly negative social impacts within society. Fact that the low paid and young are charged the highest interest rates when they can least afford it, and thus increase default risk, whereas those who are higher paid and older are charged less when they could afford more.
His analogy was simple. What would we say if we heard that a sandwich shop was charging older more wealthy people £1 for a sandwich but that when someone who was younger on low pay came in they would be charged £10 for the same sandwich. As he said that might make sense for the profit margins of the banks but it doesn't make sense for wider society. Now at this point it would be easy to get into a detailed discussion of risk pricing and how all of this interest rate differential works but if you're interested in that there is more detail available on the Interne. This inconsistency became apparent to Asesh when he discovered the challenges that his children's nanny was having servicing the debt which she had which was at a substantially higher interest rate than he would have paid, despite the fact she earned significantly less. So he paid off her debt and she repaid the capital overtime. In that moment he saw true transformation in her as a person, happier, more relaxed, better at doing her work. This was his moment of revelation.
So with the choice between investing in the consultancy partnership or doing something in the area of social enterprise Asesh took the choice, so well set out by Ruth Gotian, commenting on advice from her mentor to not just do something interesting but to do something important, to set up Salary Finance. This was back in 2015 when the idea of social enterprise and being a social entrepreneur was in its infancy.
His idea was so simple, that Salary Finance takes over the debt of employees at a much lower interest rate and that repayments are agreed to be taken out of their pay by their employer. As a result of this many employees are now paying only 25% or even less of the interest that commercial banks and other lenders were charging them. The impact of this on their lives cannot be underestimated. And there is significant evidence that any employee who has debt which is putting them under stress is also negatively impacting their ability to give their best at work.
Salary Finance has since flourished growing from just Asesh to a team of 320, attracting some of the best talent on the market to provide a great job with a real purpose, and delivering good commercial returns to investors as well as helping employees get out of the debt trap. People often quote win/ win situations but this is just a win, win, wing, win. Asesh works with some of the top organisations both public and commercial in US and UK, from supermarkets to hospitals, from Tesla to banks. That latter one I just find bizarre; that a major bank cannot be bothered to set up something like Salary Finance even for its own people, or offer them reduced interest rates, shows how much they really care about their people despite what they say. That said there are some banks who do offer reduced interest rates to staff, but not often on debt clearance.
But then again most of them are already absolutely aware of the impact that their high interest rates are having on people given they hold their accounts. However for some reason they have made absolutely no effort to address this problem which is seriously impacting peoples well-being, damaging their performance at work and therefore impacting the whole economy. They seem to be very focused on putting resources into creating complex derivatives and other products yet not bothered about the negative impact they are having on a significant proportion of society. Now for anyone listening who does work for bank I'm not criticising those that work in banks personally my comment is that their strategy and lack or responsibility in this area I find seriously wanting and the need for Asesh and Salary Finance confirms that.
What rather defines the difference is that when commercial organisations, banks in particular, are proudly announcing increases in profitability what motivates Asesh and his people is their ability to announce that they have helped another significant number of people get out of debt as well as being able to make a commercial return.
Perhaps that's why Salary Finance was the subject of a Harvard Case Study so soon into its existence.
To compliment Salary Finance Asesh is also involved in leading MyBnk to help young people, particularly from deprived backgrounds, with financial education so that they are able to get a credible start into the financial system. The figure which staggered me was that where MyBnk helps those going into their first social housing those who don't have support from MyBnk have a 60% eviction rate whereas those who do it's 2%. But that isn't just beneficial for the individuals and for their landlords that also makes a real difference enabling these young people to play a full and productive role in society rather than the excluded from it economically.
Interesting that whilst at the start of the interview Asesh said that he was an introvert and maybe not particularly good at interacting with people his journey to success shows that even if that's where you start by proactively reaching out two other people to build trust based relationships, to see how you can add value to others so they want to add value to you can become a very natural and powerful way to get things done. Asesh often used the word “human” in the interview which indicates to me that he deeply believes in people and their potential to grow, to develop and to be their best – both in terms of those who work for him and those he supports via Salary Finance. And that despite his description of himself as being more a businessperson than a people person I think what he has achieved confirms that if you can combine both you can get to pretty much anywhere you want to be.
So taking that for everybody listening perhaps it's worth you self assessing yourself 2 think about whether you are more the business or technical person or more the people person. And perhaps ask other people for their feedback as well. Because once you've made that assessment it then gives you a good indicator of where you need to focus your efforts to enhance your overall capabilities. Because at its most basic being successful is simply about being good at the technical or business aspects of your role but also being great with people to turn ideas into action.
And certainly when I asked Asesh what he would recommend that people do to be better leaders or better colleagues he immediately came out with the suggestion that everyone listening should just take more time with your colleagues, your team, your peers or anyone who can help you achieved what you need to achieve. To expand your relationships, to deepen those you have your relationships because these will power your future. Now that's not just theoretical. When I was global head of leadership at UBS trying to create a new global bank from seven mergers and acquisitions it was a specific part of the strategic plan to significantly expand and deepen the relationships that existed between the top 500 senior executives across the bank. And by achieving that end, which is now part of a Harvard case study, we were able to significantly increase the level of understanding and trust which significantly boosted the business generated between different parts of the organisation where it had not existed previously.
But I would just go back to Asesh first comments about the importance of everyone being able to have autonomy, to be listened to, to be valued, to be treated with respect, to be given flexibility in how you work. All of those things he got from his first boss and he subsequently proactively sought to give them to the people who work for him. That’s simply what we all want at work and if you, as a leader, can give them your people will give you their best. But they can also be applied to you even if you're not a leader in terms of how you interact with your colleagues. Perhaps as a takeaway just ask yourself if there is anyone you work with now who you could spend more time listening to, interacting with, learning from, and then learning from you, or somebody you haven't as yet been interactive but who you think would be great to do that with. So why not, this week, just reach out to one or two more people and see how much value you can give each other.
And also finally if you are in C-Suite and think that may be some of your people might be suffering in a debt trap which is stressing them and impairing their performance at work maybe you should think about getting in touch with Asesh and Salary Finance or similar organisations so they can help you become more aware of the real challenges which your people might have but which you are currently completely unaware of.
As with the previous guests and now Asesh hopefully you are seeing a pattern of simple actions you can take to be more successful. Share these interviews colleagues who would benefit so they can grow and develop with you. Certainly I will be using these powerful points in my speaking and Masterclasses in the future.
If you have any thoughts or questions connect with me on LinkedIn or via email as detailed on the Perspectives website. Don't forget to sign up to Perspectives from the Top. It's free, so you don't miss any of the great episodes in the future.
That’s it for now, so from me its onwards and upwards until our next episode.