I took over as head of treasury and a country senior team member in the then ANZ Grindlays Bank in early 1988 and since then worked as a senior executive in three global banks at home and abroad.

I had the great privilege and honour to have been the Bangladesh chief executive officer of a very prominent global bank for several years. In fact, I was the youngest CEO of a commercial bank during that time. Even at the present, I am the country managing partner for another highly reputed global firm's Bangladesh entity.

Now when people are attributing so many credits to good schools, academic background, how we were groomed up and what we learnt from the various organisational legacies for their fortunes, I look back and ask myself, what is it that enabled me to attain such positions? What qualities, strengths, capabilities, and skills are required to be able to succeed and rise in banking and professional life?

COMMITMENT

No matter what position you may hold at a company and no matter how high or low that position may be, commitment to your post is essential. One must make their job role as their highest professional duty and take full ownership and charge of it.

It is our responsibility to constantly try to enrich ourselves with knowledge and experience while also providing true and real value to the overall organisation. There simply isn't any alternative to hard work and dedication. We must be committed to our own success as well as the success of our institution.ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The notion that the entrepreneurial vision can only be attained by starting and developing one's own business enterprise is outdated. In my experience, each employee within a business organisation can individually have an entrepreneurial vision from very early on. Hence, I believe it is important to develop skills with an overall entrepreneurship mindset right from the start. For example, from a banking perspective, even a junior level manager could consider their role as their own sub-business while subsequently growing and enhancing their skill sets.

Simply mechanically completing one's designated tasks is not really going to yield much success but rather having an overall vision of the company from early on and then working based on that at an individual level has been one of the keys to my own positive career progression.

As a banker, I always enjoyed working with local entrepreneurs and made it my firm conviction that by helping them succeed, I would also be contributing to my own success. The primary reason I moved up the corporate ladder was because those entrepreneurs who I helped and nurtured also grew and succeeded themselves. So, the way of thinking must be that we can all grow together.

BUILDING THE MARKET

I recall that sometimes I would be assigned to a sector for which there was no real presence or footprint in the market. That is, such a business opportunity didn't really have a demand or market in Bangladesh. Hence, it was upon me to go out there and create the market and I was able to achieve this by constantly interacting with my clients and senior colleagues abroad, while educating myself on the financial or business product which I needed to create the market for and how it would create value for all stakeholders.

Being able to plan and create strategies is essential in such circumstances. Strategic thinking is not something that is only required by high-level business leaders, but it is something a business professional must acquire and develop as early as possible because some sort of strategy or other is always required when dealing with new situations.

Again, commitment is vital because one must truly believe in what they are trying to get their customers to embrace otherwise it will be impossible to convince others of the same. Constantly being engaged in new and never done engagements will make a business professional a trendsetter and a natural leader in the market and others will begin to follow them.

WORKING WITH REGULATORS

Since Bangladesh is still at an early stage of its development journey, the regulators always have and will continue to play a crucial role in shaping and guiding businesses and their objectives for a long time to come. Thus, it is important to also have a very close and mutually beneficial relationship with the key regulators in one's profession.

If the regulators are on your side and if they value your input and opinion then they will also respond to your professional needs in a favourable manner. Therefore, I would advise any new young business manager to start growing and developing relationships with the regulators in their profession.

One must also treat the regulators with the same level of respect and dignity as one's own business clients. In my case, I was able to create great relationships with various regulators starting from the very early stages of my career and what I noted was that as I was being promoted, so were my regulator friends.

Therefore, later in my career, I was able to leverage those precious relationships which I created early on, into mutually beneficial circumstances. I have also noted that most of my clients always wanted to determine how my own relationship and connection with applicable regulators are before they decided to proceed.

DON'T BE AFRAID OF A CHALLENGE

My career included many "firsts". That is, I was able to accomplish something which was never done in Bangladesh before. The only reason I was able to do this is because I have learned to embrace challenges instead of resisting them.

One must look upon challenges in a favourable manner because it is only when faced with challenges, we grow and develop the most. Our adaptive capabilities are further strengthened and our ability to deal with difficult situations by employing creative problem-solving skills are boosted.

The better you are at facing challenges the better you will be at solving the problems of your clients and stakeholders. My own nature is to never say no to any challenge because I believe that in challenging times is when I do some of my best work.

Furthermore, as one rises in their career path, risk and crises management will become more and more prevalent because all businesses face crises and must take risks and these directly correlate to how well equipped one is at being able to handle challenges.

BE DEPENDABLE

Very often just pure talent isn't enough. Just because a professional is highly talented does not also make them dependable. I have come across plenty of highly talented individuals throughout my career but some of them were not always dependable.

I personally value a person who is dependable more than someone who is very talented or skilled because it is unsure whether the latter will complete the task on time and with good quality.

I believe that most business leaders also have similar thoughts on this. So, it is important for new professionals to establish themselves with the reputation of being a dependable person from an early stage. When the leaders think of you, they must also believe in their minds that, "Yes, I know that this person will get the job done".

LEARN AND EDUCATE YOURSELF

There will never be any end to the educational and knowledge acquiring process, as they say, knowledge is power and this could never be truer than now in the business world. The more you know the more power and advantage you have. This doesn't necessarily have to be only in the form of formal degrees.

I personally never limited myself to only learning the requirements in my field, but I constantly strived to keep on learning and gaining knowledge from anywhere I could. I noted that the more I knew the stronger and more confident I was in my professional dealings as I was able to provide informal but valuable input to those I worked with. This by itself created additional value for me as a professional.

The author is a partner at PwC Bangladesh.