Mr. Noman is a double MBA. He completed his first MBA from Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka. The most prestigious business school in Bangladesh for the last 53 years. A gold medalist he graduated as the valedictorian of his batch with record CGPA. He completed his second full time MBA program from Canada, Schulich School of Business. Schulich has been consistently the number 1 business school in Canada. Mr. Noman also holds a bachelors and masters degree in English Literature from University of Dhaka. He started his career with IDLC itself and later on went to work for Citibank N.A. the global financial giant. He worked for both Citi Bangladesh and Hong Kong. Eventually he ended up in Academia and also established Sapien; the premium strategy consulting & training organization.

A Strategy & Innovation Consultant and Management Development Expert

Mr. Noman has undertaken numerous strategy and business consultancy projects both in the public as well as private sector at home and abroad through Sapien. He headed consultancy projects with The World Bank and The United Nations. A strategy consultant, Mr. Noman has assisted national institutions like Bangladesh Police and the Micro Credit Regulatory Authority, Bangladesh to develop the respective organization’s strategic plans. He has undertaken research as well as published in the areas of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in Bangladesh and the Banking sector. He has provided strategy consulting services to numerous leading local & multinational business organizations. Mr. Noman is by far the only expert in Bangladesh now in the areas of Complexity Strategy & Design Thinking. Mr. Noman has arranged/conducted training programs for leading organizations both in the public (as well as private sector. He primarily focuses on management development programs in the areas of Business Strategy, Leadership, Managerial Communication, Sales, Customer Service and Innovation. He is a pioneer in the area of Strategic & Design Thinking in Bangladesh.

Why Sapien?: Ensuring quality in an underserved Sector

Sapien is primarily engaged in providing Strategy consulting and advanced level training programs for the Bangladesh corporate sector. There has always been a need for quality strategy consulting services here. But the sector is mostly crowded with development sector consultants who understands little of the business sector. I have been engaged as a strategy consultant for many years now. This motivated me to offer my services in a more scalable model and hence Sapien was born. I am a management development professional with global exposure and certainly my exposure can be utilized to support the local business community to reach global standard. This definitely has been a key driver.

The local training industry has always been underserved. Specially by trainers whose education background is terrifyingly weak. They were mostly based on Google search. As a result, they were failing to make any impact on the participants apart from delivering useless motivational quotations. This made me come forward to design and deliver knowledge based programs that would make an impact. The industry was also feeling the heat of intense competition and wanted impactful programs. Consequently, I decided to blend my academic exposure and work experiences to design and deliver programs that would actually make an impact.

Modality of the product portfolio

Sapien provides various management and strategy consulting services as well as customized management development programs. Specially for financial institutions Sapien delivers premium programs in the areas of Selling Financial Services, Customer Service, Communication & Leadership series as well as advanced level innovation programs. Sapien also provides specific functional programs like Business Negotiation, Presentation Skills, Collection Techniques & Sales programs. FIs traditionally has been focused on technical programs but with rising competition these capacity building programs that Sapien provides will certainly enhance the employees’ managerial skills.

Evolution of Corporate training

The corporate training culture is excellent at the moment. Many organizations are getting themselves involved in the process. entrepreneurs and top management are quite aware about the emerging competition and quite interested to develop their human resources. However, our managers are still not engaged enough to retrain themselves to face the challenges of the new millennia. Individual managers must come forward with aggressive learning intention to upgrade themselves. Otherwise they will lose their jobs as well as upward movement opportunities to regional managers coming from neighboring countries.

Some of the largest and oldest FIs have been great in investing in developing their people. Though Sapien has always been a premium service provider this has not been a factor at all. FIs have been very enthusiastic to pay premium for a quality program. This shows how eager the top management is. However, the middle managers who are supposed to facilitate the communication are not yet that eager. The bottleneck has never been the top management; it has always been the middle level. They need to come forward more aggressively to pursue learning and development and present the case to the top management.

Calculating ROI of training

It is not possible. It has never been possible. It is one of the biggest misconceptions. It is never possible to calculate ROI on education in the short term. They will only see the value in the long term as the workforce becomes increasingly capable, motivated and engaged. It is also a great misconception that one or two programs will bring any visible changes. It is a ongoing process. Organizations must keep the training as a regular activity to see any changes in the long term. Consequently organizations must develop long term partnership with trainers who have very strong global educational background as well as global work experiences.

Teambuilding is the Key: Right Methodology is a must

Training programs certainly helps teambuilding capacity of any organization. It primarily comes as groups engage with each other in a neutral context. Also as they discuss simulated business cases it helps them to think together without any conflict. This also makes sure everyone develops some common vocabulary. However, organizations must be careful not to hire activity based low cost trainers. Such meaningless activities actually harm mutual congeniality and may also irritate some employees. Putting activities in a business skill development program is tantamount to fraud and does nothing other than waste trainees’ invaluable training time. Undereducated trainers also use activity to just pass time rather than deliver high end knowledge. As a result teams of trainees go back with an illusion of learning and soon becomes disillusioned as no real impact is experienced. This only frustrates them.

Stumbling Blocks for Sapien

Actually I faced no difficulty at all. The need for quality strategy consulting and training program was so strong I quickly established Sapien as the premium service provider. Within just two years of operation Sapien became number 1 by a distance. My vision is to make it scalable at a national level so that Sapien can cater to the entire country. I am envisioning some international collaboration to make it happen.