General Manager for Pakistan and Afghanistan, The Coca Cola Export Corporation, Mr. Rizwan Ullah Khan inspired the audience with his very interesting account of his professional journey at the 10th session of the popular, Leaders at LUMS series on December 7, 2018. Dr. Arshad Ahmad, Vice Chancellor, LUMS, opened the session by introducing Mr. Khan and handed over the stage to Mr. Adeel Hashmi, the moderator of the talk, for further proceedings.
Answering Mr. Hashmi’s question about the challenges faced in Pakistan for doing honest, clean and uncorrupt business, Mr. Khan shared details of the clean and corruption free business practices that Coca Cola Export Corporation follows in Pakistan. He elaborated that The Coca Cola Export Corporation is a signatory to anti-corruption laws in Pakistan; the company is proud of paying 100% local taxes, abides by every single food and labour law in the country and has set a high standard of following environment protection regulations by introducing waste water treatment measures. The only challenge that he finds difficult to overcome is in the public policy domain. In this regard, he urged the government to create policies, rules and regulations in a way that they facilitate in attracting Foreign Direct Investment for the country. This, as per him, is a neglected area and the government needs to devise a solid policy framework so that Pakistan could receive its due share in the trillion-dollar worth of investment going around in the form of FDI globally.
Talking about existence of big players as a potential entry barrier in the beverage industry, Mr. Khan said that the beverage industry welcomes competition as it will them help improve as an industry. He further said that opportunity for new entrants is always there as Pakistan is a growing market and only those delivering quality service will survive in the end.
Mr. Hashmi asked Mr. Khan about his experience of working with the Punjab Board of Investment and Trade, to which he replied, “I love Pakistan and I wanted to attract investment, so I volunteered for the government job.” Mr. Khan shared that by using his expertise he managed to hold investment conferences in Malaysia, China, UAE and North America and identified a capacity gap in the public sector as a major hindrance and stressed on the need to provide international exposure and training to public sector employees to make them learn international best practices carried out in public policy domain.
His urged the youth in the audience to take charge of their lives and not depend upon others to guide and lead them. He stressed on the need of understanding one’s self fully and believing in one’s abilities and strengths. He said, “The moment you believe in yourself, you will become confident and once you become confident, you will start to take ownership.” He urged young leaders to take the lead and have a positive approach if they want to excel in their lives.
Expressing his thoughts about how LUMS grooms its students, he said, “If you want to be a follower, this is not the right school (for you), because this institute does not produce followers. This is the environment that creates leaders.”
He advised the youth to find the right group of people and stay around them if they want to succeed in life. “If you want to be successful and rich, make sure that people around and under you are rich and successful. If you want to be an intellectual person, make sure people around you are intellectuals.”
The best quality of a leader, Mr. Khan said, is flexibility and prudence to understand when to step back. He elaborated by saying that if, as a leader, you are not willing to listen to others, you are not only creating doom for your followers but you are creating a big hole for yourself.
Dr. Arshad Ahmad, in his ending note, thanked the guest speaker for the wonderful talk and expressed his gratitude. He praised Mr. Khan for his honesty, integrity and passion and expressed the hope that the leadership attributes shared by him will prove to be useful for the students. Dr. Ahmad also took this opportunity to thank Coca Cola for their support in constructing the state-of-the-art Aquatic Centre at LUMS.