I believe that many people have found opportunities or have been given opportunities before. But how do we turn those opportunities into a ladder to success? This is a question many have tried to answer.
At Ngern Tid Lor, an organization that believes in creating opportunities, we are also trying to find an answer to this question by inviting our regional leaders to participate in the annual Branch Leadership Offsite Workshop. The activity aims to develop the leadership and encourage them to share success stories to learn together. Surasit Onkong, General Regional Manager-BW, is one of these leaders and a role model who seizes opportunities to achieve his goals.
Ready to Learn and Ready to Change
Surasit advised his colleagues who want to grow in their career that when there is an opportunity, they should be ready to catch it learn from it and ready to change. He talked about his experiences from working at a provincial finance company to at a lawyer’s firm to acting as a mayor’s secretary. None of these seemed to be a success.
After he moved to Ngern Tid Lor, Surasit has been given many opportunities and lots of advice, which allowed him to grow from a credit officer to a branch manager in just 2 years.
“Natpitsanu Deerat, General Regional Manage-N, has given me opportunities and taught me since I started working at Ngern Tid Lor. Not only did he teach me about work, he also encouraged me to talking less, listening more, which has been key to my career growth.”
Another lesson learned for Surasit was when being unpunctual for an interview, which set him back from being promoted to be an area manager.
“I grew up and mostly worked in the province but rarely came to Bangkok. I arrived late for the interview because my taxi driver went the wrong way. But I was given another chance a year later. This taught me to plan my schedule to arrive early.”
Being Courageous to Face Problems and Challenges
Shortly after becoming an area manager, Surasit was given the opportunity to take on a challenging task which was helping solve problems for the Ngern Tid Lor’s branches in Nakhon Sawan.
“At that time, no one wanted to go to Nakhon Sawan because all the branches were performing poorly and had high attrition rates. However, I decided to go because I wanted to try to overcome the challenge. Thus, I became the 8th area manager of Nakhon Sawan in the past 8 years.
I soon realized the first problem. The young manager trainees were not reaching out to customers but sitting in their offices waiting for customers to come to them. Also, their branch management skills were not as good as expected. Another problem was that branch employees had no teamworking abilities, meaning they were failing to meet the sales target. When the target was not met, they earned little or no income and many simply quitted. All of these were caused by inadequate training, which meant many employees were letting opportunities to grow slip away.”
Building a New Perspective
After the problems were realized, the strategy Surasit used was ‘to build a new perspective.’
“I started to invite employees to go out and talk to customers. Moreover, I suggested ways to help them find more customers by taking them to meet the Krungsri Bank- branch managers to ask for cases rejected by the bank. My duty was to create learning opportunities for employees, help them meet targets and grow in their career.”
Despite having only 2 months to help 3 branches to get them out of lacking management skills and inadequate employees number, Surasit could eventually help them achieve their sales targets.
Motivation from Learning about the Success Stories of Others
Surasit also told us that “Another problem of Nakhon Sawan was that many employees had worked there for over 10 years, but no one was promoted to branch manager. I found out that this was because they believed that nobody even the managers could not meet the sales target, especially at the Chum Saeng branch.
So, I hired a new young blood manager, who had previously been a manager of a pre-wedding studio, and told him to just do as I suggested. Later that year, the Chum Saeng branch scored a B Grade for KPI and employees earned five-figure incentives.
Moreover, I created opportunities for branch employees to achieve sales targets and increased their income one branch at a time. When the number of successful branches had increased, other branches felt motivated and became more active. When everyone saw that they too could accomplish this and earn more income, they started to see opportunities and were motivated to grow.
I always told them not to underestimate themselves. I believed they could do it if they had the same perspective and confidence.”
Passing on Opportunities to Succeed Together
As a result of his “turning opportunities into success” approach to Nakhon Sawan branches, Surasit was awarded the best % Achieve Car, Pickup and Truck Title Loan and ‘Outstanding KPI Area Manager’ in 2020. He was also voted to be ‘TIDLOR Role Model for Thirst for Wisdom and Self Development’ for consecutive 2 years.
“For me… these awards are my pride. One of the people behind my success is Somrak Ratanamahasakul, Senior General Regional Manager of CN, who always taught and guided me. Thank you. Another thing that makes me happy is that no branches in Nakhon Sawan has ever failed to meet the sales target since 2020. Today, the Nakhon Sawan team manages a way to achieve incentives and KPIs. There are several young colleagues have called and sent messages to thank me, which I have to thank everyone in Nakhon Sawan team for as well because of their trust and collaboration to achieve this success together.
Looking back, I believe no one likes having a nitpicking boss, but I believe that if you understand what you are doing and practice it often, your performance will be getting better. I was able to grow to what I am today because I had a boss guiding and pushing me as well.”
Surasit’s last tip for turning opportunities into success is passing on opportunities to others. When you pass on opportunities, you will broaden the general circle of opportunities and help others to succeed faster.