Newsletter: The Faith-Conscious Leader

Reflections on faith, leadership and impact.

  • Mission-Driven Strategy: When Faith Reframes People, Purpose & Profit

    ByHasannudin Saidin
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    – How Muslim leaders can translate mission-oriented frameworks into faith-conscious strategy

    REVISITING AUTONOMOUS KNOWLEDGE

    In my 1st Tuesday previous article, I challenged us to unlearn defaults entrenched by coloniality and to generate autonomous knowledge rooted in Qur’anic guidance and Prophetic practice.

    Today I pick up that thread through the lens of strategy frameworks which already exist in the secular world and explore how they might be re-interpreted and re-grounded for faith-conscious leaders.

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  • Beyond Whining: Faith-Conscious Action in the Face of Bureaucracy

    ByHasannudin Saidin
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    – How redha, sabr and ikhtiar transform frustration into purposeful initiative

    THE “BANE” OF WORK PROCESSES

    Almost every professional faces it: the bane of bureaucracy.

    Procedures pile up, approvals drag and paperwork feels endless.

    In a conversation (8½-minute video below) in 2023, I spoke with Dr. Nadiah Suki, an academic whose work life sometimes revolves around forms, reviews, ISO checklists and audits. Yet, instead of loudly complaining, she has learned to view these frustrations through a faith-conscious lens.

    I encourage readers to watch patiently! It’s longer than my usual clips, but worth it. What unfolds is a journey from irritation to insight and finally to initiative.

    Read More “Beyond Whining: Faith-Conscious Action in the Face of Bureaucracy”
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  • Between Noise and Stillness: Faith-Conscious Clarity in a Distracted World

    ByHasannudin Saidin
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    – How silence and reflection restore focus in noisy leadership

    THE MORNING QUIETNESS

    In this edition, I begin with a sunrise, the serenity of morning quietness at a beach in Besut, Terengganu in 2022, recorded just after Fajr/Subuh (Break of dawn).

    (If you can’t view the video above, click here.)

    That early stillness carries a spiritual rhythm. It is the pause before my day’s activities, the space before my mind fills with noise. Remembering the beach sunrise, it is a moment when heart meets horizon.

    Modern life rarely allows that silence. Actually as leaders, we need it a lot. The ability to pause, listen inwardly and find clarity amid noise is a difficult leadership discipline.

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  • Leadership in Adversity: Lessons That Endure (Part 1)

    ByHasannudin Saidin
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    – Learning from the Prophet ﷺ and from our own journeys through challenge

    THE PROPHET ﷺ AS THE HALLMARK OF LEADERSHIP

    I chose Leadership in Adversity as this week’s article because this year had me face four months of adversity, i.e. my sickness, before I got out of it. View video excerpt below from The Bypass Files:

    (If you can’t view the video above, click here.)

    Then I wanted to check how our Prophet ﷺ dealt with adversity.

    Read More “Leadership in Adversity: Lessons That Endure (Part 1)”

  • Reforming Strategy: Towards Faith-Conscious Knowledge and Practice

    ByHasannudin Saidin
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    – Why Muslim leaders must unlearn defaults and generate autonomous frameworks of strategy

    UNDER ATTACK, OBVIOUS AND NOT SO

    The attack on humanity of late has me lost for extremely negative adjectives. We awaken and we don’t want to allow the way of the perpetrators to go on. We find in our ways, big or small to counter these madness with what should be absolute right.

    For both the blatant transgressions that are reported and streamed on our daily screens, and the “silent killers” that over the decades we allowed ourselves to be programmed with, we want to find and implement better ways.

    In Edition #1, I lamented on the silent killer of coloniality: the unseen continuation of colonial mindsets in leadership and strategy. Over our professional lifetime, colionality continues in the way we define “success,” “progress,” “business” and “strategy” today. Like a fish in water, we swim along not really aware we are in water.

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  • “What’s in a name?”: Examining the leader’s identity guided by their name

    ByHasannudin Saidin
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    – Finding purpose and inspiration in the names we carry

    MY NAME IS HASANNUDIN

    Not everybody knows the meaning of the name their parents gave them. How important is that?

    In the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, the expression “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by another name would smell as sweet” argues that it doesn’t matter.

    To me it didn’t really matter for a long time, until I dug into the meaning and gave it my heartfelt interpretation:

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  • Getting Things Deen: Faith-Conscious-izing GTD

    ByHasannudin Saidin
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    – When GTD meets deen: unlearning secular patterns, striving for faith-conscious productivity

    PRODUCTIVITY BOTTOM-UP OR TOP-DOWN?

    David Allen’s GTD® (Getting Things Done®) methodology has been beneficial for me for two decades.

    GTD’s 5 Steps, with all the techniques and tools I’ve been using, have systematically helped me manage overwhelm and stress, truly, i.e. in cruising to try finish more than a hundred (!) to-do tasks at any one time (GTD calls them Next Actions) at the “runaway level.”

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  • Rewire, Refire, Renew: The HEART of Leadership

    ByHasannudin Saidin
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    – From Setbacks to Sustainability Through Inner Mastery

    LEARNING FROM SUFFERING

    Leaders need to drive results, but how do they sustain? Without renewal, even the most talented leaders run out of clarity, resilience and purpose.

    I experienced this truth first-hand through my (urgh…, major!) bypass surgery earlier this year. What seemed like a setback became a framework for rethinking leadership. Out of that personal journey, I shaped the HEART Framework, a way to build resilience, patience and clarity through inner mastery, which I offer as also applicable in the organisational setting.

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  • In Search of Excellence: Ihsan or Itqan?

    ByHasannudin Saidin
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    IN SEARCH OF THE RIGHT WORD

    From the 1970’s I have been reading a lot, and in 1982 I picked up the book In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman. It became a business classic that shaped management thinking for decades. “Excellence” became a benchmark for organizations seeking to outperform competitors and sustain growth.

    Forty years later I discovered the profound word that signifies an internal state for excellence, and the word is ihsan. The word takes on a spiritual lens. Beyond efficiency, KPIs, or customer satisfaction, ihsan asks: how do we bring beauty, sincerity, and God-consciousness into our work?

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  • Realize Mortality: You Only Live Twice

    ByHasannudin Saidin
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    YES, I START (THIS NEWSLETTER)

    I struggled to publish this edition #1 (yay!) of The Faith-Conscious Leader newsletter, intended to be launched on the 1st Tuesday of this month. Today is already Saturday. Better late than never, so here goes. 😌

    After partially drafting edition #1 on Tuesday, my next 3 days were sad days of two deaths of loved ones: my brother-in-law, Zainuddin Zaini (Abang Din) and my cousin Faizal Sohaimi‘s wife, Emily Cheong.

    The common epitaph I heard from most people at the two funerals was a simple phrase. “Abang Din was a good person.” “Emily was a good person.” Masha Allah, that to me is a pinnacle of having lived: to be remembered as a “good person”! Within that phrase lies layers upon layers of virtues, achievements and impact to others and impact to the world, unique to who says it.

    I can’t go back to finishing the original draft of the newsletter edition (will keep it for a later edition). I feel compelled to write anew, on living this life in this world, dying, and then living again the second time in the hereafter.

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