SURVIVAL MINDSET
AP Thailand’s Anuphong Assavabhokhin embraced fresh ways of thinking to turn around the property firm.
The core values and goal that AP Thailand chief executive Anuphong Assavabhokhin embraced three years ago, including an outward mindset and design thinking, should help the property developer survive the coronavirus crisis. “The impact from Covid-19 will be critical because it is not a domestic but a global crisis,” he says. “In a crisis, if a company doesn’t have core values and goals to stick with, it will be in trouble because everyone will work aimlessly just to tackle immediate problems.”
Mr Anuphong, 58, adopted an outward mindset in 2017. The psychological training programme was popularised by Terry Warner, an American scholar who founded the Arbinger Institute, a global training and consulting firm.
“AP back then had a crisis. It had no growth for three consecutive years,” Mr Anuphong says. “The situation was so bad that my partner [Pichet Vipavasuphakorn] and I had a big argument.”
FATEFUL MEETING
Mr Anuphong was introduced to Mr Pichet in 1991 by his mother, Piangjai Harnpanij, then one of the most prolific landlords and developers, after he told her of his aspiration to start his own property development firm.
Mr Pichet had previously worked as a marketing director at a securities firm that managed Mrs Piangjai’s portfolio for several years. With a guarantee from his mother, Mr Anuphong founded Asian Property Co with Mr Pichet.
Mustering initial capital of 250 million baht and 20 staff, the company in 1994 launched Pathumwan R esor t wor th1 .9 billion b a ht on Ph aya Th a iR oa d in the Ratchathewi area. It was one of the first condo projects near a skytrain station.
But the 1997 financial crisis almost shattered their dreams, as Asian Property nearly went bankrupt with soaring debts. The firm had to spend a few years to clear all debts before resuming business in 2000.
That year it merged with PCM Plc, a maker of precast concrete floors whose major shareholder was Land and Houses Plc, the SET-listed developer controlled by Anant Asavabhokhin, a property tycoon and Mr Anuphong’s elder brother.
The merger aimed to get a backdoor listing on the Stock Exchange of Thailand. Asian Property also changed its name to Asian Property Development Plc, before changing again to AP Thailand Plc in 2013.
After the listing, the company’s revenue jumped from 1 billion baht in 2001 to 12.42 billion baht in 2009, the first year it topped 10 billion baht.
AP enjoyed consecutive growth in revenue until hitting a historical peak of 23.14 billion baht in 2014 and declining to 22 billion baht in 2015 and 20.25 billion baht in 2016.
Mr Anuphong says his and Mr Pichet’s working styles had been moving in different directions, triggering conflicts on many issues.
“I was unhappy to get up in the morning to go to the office, until I found the outward mindset theory discovered by Mr Warner, who came to coach us,” he says. “We spent six months fine-tuning. Now I can say no one can beat us.”
Outward mindset development can help transform business and professional relationships and enable a large company with more than 2,000 employees like AP link multi-generational staff — X, Y, Z and baby boomers — and bring old and new worlds together.
“Many of us operate from an inward mindset or a narrow-minded focus on self-centred goals and objectives,” Mr Anuphong says. “The outward mindset helps us see people as people, not objectives or obstacles to the goal.”
INSTANT RESULTS
The first impact Mr Anuphong saw from the outward mindset was his own happiness at getting up early in the morning, eager to go to work.
One of the biggest changes was that he became a good listener.
Before, when a staffer delivered a presentation to him, he would cut it off on the second slide and say: “Stop, that’s enough. I know it. I understand it. No more presentation.”
After he embraced the outward mindset, Mr Anuphong began listening until the end of presentations and asking questions stemming from his own curiosity.
“The outward mindset teaches you to stop thinking or feeling of superiority,” he says. “We should put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, be empathetic, open-minded and accept each other’s identities.”
Mr Anuphong says this thinking process was put in place at AP during the last few years and is the best tool to help different generations work together. It led to two of AP’s five core values: put people first and build together.
The other three — progress with purpose, go beyond and be innovative — are from design thinking, a process Mr Anuphong learned from Stanford University.
In 2017, he asked the university what the company’s values should be and what the company should deliver to society.
Through workshops, market surveys and interviews with him and Mr Pichet, the institution found that they wanted to deliver a good quality of life to customers.
“We are not only in property development, but also property management, property broker, contractor and repair team,” Mr Anuphong says. “This brought about the goal of providing quality of life before transforming into empowered living.”
The core of design thinking is a belief that people can create innovation if the process is right, unlike typical thinking that says those who create innovation are simply creative people.
“In the world these days, a surviving company should always have development, and that development must follow disruptions with innovation,” Mr Anuphong says. “Employees should take part to innovate and build quality of life for customers.”
With the five core values and the goal of empowered living, he’s confident that AP will survive the virus crisis.
“In a crisis, homebuyers want to buy a house from large developers with a reputation and a strong brand,” Mr Anuphong says. “Behind the scenes of brand-building are the core values and the goal. AP will survive this crisis that is likely to last at least six months and may take up to a few years to end. We will be stronger and larger, depending on how well the staff maintain the core values and the goal.”
Many of us operate from an inward mindset or a narrow-minded focus on self-centred goals and objectives. The outward mindset helps us see people as people, not objectives or obstacles to the goal.
ANUPHONG ASSAVABHOKHIN
CHIEF EXECUTIVE, AP THAILAND PLC