Ep. 250: Yerbol Orynbayev - Lessons in Crisis Management and Restructuring

Welcome to the Count Me In Podcast! Join host Adam Larson as he chats with the insightful Yerbol Orynbayev, a seasoned leader with a wealth of experience in both the public and private sectors. Yerbol shares compelling stories and lessons from his remarkable career, including his tenure as the deputy prime minister of Kazakhstan and his pivotal role in restructuring a major bank. His candid insights and practical advice are sure to inspire aspiring leaders and entrepreneurs. Tune in for an engaging conversation packed with real-world insights and takeaways!

Full Episode Transcript:
< Intro >

Adam:            Welcome back to Count Me In. In this episode, we have the privilege of interviewing Yerbol Orynbayev. Who shares his extraordinary leadership journey, and the impactful lessons he's learned. Yerbol's experiences range from serving as Deputy Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, to transforming the Jusan Bank from near bankruptcy to achieving $1.2 billion in profit.

Throughout the episode, Yerbol sheds light on the crucial decisions and strategies that were pivotal in leading the bank to success. His insightful advice on leadership, vision, investing in people, and embracing failures provides valuable lessons for aspiring leaders. Join us as Yerbol shares his invaluable wisdom and experiences, on navigating crisis and driving change.

< Music >

Yerbol, we're really excited to have you on the podcast. I'm just really excited to chat with you, about your leadership journey and the different paths you've taken, and you've had quite the leadership journey. What drew you to the different positions that you've taken, and what are some of the lessons you've learned along the way?

Yerbol:           Adam, first of all, thank you very much for this opportunity to share my experience about Jusan Bank story, with you, with your program. I worked for the government of Kazakhstan for quite a long time. I resigned in 2015. Before that time, before my resignation, I served as the deputy prime minister and handled economic and then social responsibilities. And, so, in 2018, when I was already with the private sector, working on my own business. I received an invitation from the university, which asked me to help them to set up the investment division of the endowment fund.

So it was a very exciting proposal. I believe they decided to focus on me and then send this invitation to me because during my time with the government, I served as a board member of the National Bank of Kazakhstan. The board member of the Agency for Supervision of the financial organizations. I also, successfully, set up a western-type university in Kazakhstan. So a lot of people knew me very well. So they said, "Okay, why not, after one successful story, one successful project, let's offer him this opportunity."

So in 2018, I started this journey, the Jusan Bank with other banks, and I had this great opportunity to create the investment division of the endowment fund. So that's how I started this particular journey with the Jusan Bank, with its restructuring, creating a new business model based on the ecosystem.

In terms of the lessons, actually, it was very interesting and enriching experience. I learned very valuable lessons. One of them is that you should really understand your business, and then your customers. And, then, currently, there is a great shift, all over the world, in terms of the customers' behavior. New technologies like AI, digitalization, increased computational capacities, and also the new generation of customers, they have completely different preferences. So these two trends kind of changed the whole landscape. 

So you have to understand your clients, you have to understand your business within/out, know your customers. Because if you don't know you cannot lead, and you cannot restructure or do some right things without this really deep knowledge and understanding the main foundations of your business. 

The second lesson I would say that, dream big. What I learned, in reality, with great vision, with the right team, with the right strategy, with the right implementation plan, you can achieve a lot. So dreaming big it's very important. 

The third lesson I would say that always have an exit strategy, especially when you're dealing with the big structures. Together, the whole system, I managed about 10,000 employees. So this is quite big, the price of the mistake could be very high, but you cannot stop development. You have to still innovate. You still should align your business, product, services, in line with the current demands.

So you should innovate, you should do something new, but exit strategy is very important. This is your hedge, that makes sure that the whole structure won't collapse if something goes wrong, this is very important. 

Trust your team, I think team is very important. The quality of the people you are working with, their professionalism, their ethics are very important. So as soon as you set up your team, you know that you can trust your people, just let them perform. And in the banking sector, this is more important than even others because teamwork is incredible, this is very important.

I didn't see a person who can just, in one phase, cover all requirements of the banking. You need a strong CFO, you need a strong risk manager, you need a strong chief information officer, so you see this is very complex. Then you can, together, compile the team, or the professionals, who can work together, who can share the same vision, who has very good ethics, only with this one you can proceed.

So this is a very important lesson. If you are unsure about your team, don't start. Because alone you cannot perform, you cannot achieve. So I would say these are very important lessons I learned from my journey with Jusan.

Adam:            I think those are some amazing lessons. And maybe as we have this conversation, we'll be able to see how you came to those lessons at Jusan, as we talk through that journey. So when you first stepped into that challenge, they said, "Hey, we want to bring you on the Jusan Bank." What was the atmosphere like? What were some of the challenges and the immediate hurdles that you saw that you had to jump over, as you started that new part of your journey?

Yerbol:           This, actually, was very interesting. So when I took the reins of the bank, the situation was pretty horrible. So I had a feeling like starring into the beast. I just give you one example. The bank's auditors, KPMG, they came to us, after we purchased the bank, and then told us that they won't be able produce any audit report.

They said, "We have access to the accounts, but the accounts are a mess, documentation is such a mess, so we just even cannot interpret them." And the bank did not have people who can interpret and work on this one. So can you imagine?

So 2018, the year they audited, was completely a failure, and according to the regulation you still proceed because the public, the regulator, would like to know. So this is one of the example how the bank was managed. Also in terms of the business and the morale of the employees, it was a complete mess. Two year...