In 2008, Sukanto Tanoto held his 60th birthday party. It was an exceptional event but beyond all the food and performances, that day was truly a celebration of the man himself. It was a night where many of Sukanto’s close friends and colleagues shared testimonies about the birthday boy, revealing many sights of him that were not known to others. I remember hearing one testimony by whom I believe is Sukanto Tanoto’s good friend who has a friendship that stretches back all the way to 35 years ago. He shared that back then, Sukanto Tanoto was just a “start-up” entrepreneur.
This friend knew Sukanto Tanoto ever since he had nothing. He recounted an experience where he was invited to visit Sukanto Tanoto’s company back in Medan. At that time, the stairs that he took to go to the small office was very noisy with creaking sound, and the whole atmosphere was dark, hot and grotty. However, one could sense that there was already a vision there and an “entrepreneur”.
This friend also visited the plywood factory. He mentioned that the factory gave a sense of the business acumen and there was already a strong presence of cost savings. Though the size was small, but there was already a sense of recycling ideology and building up of the technology capacity in preparation for future business expansion.
However, Sukanto Tanoto is ambitious and Riau was too small for his appetite. He then went to China with the energy of the Titan and achieved success but when Asia meltdown came during 1997, he faced a huge problem in all his business operations.
More than that, the tragic departure of Polar, his brother, was a devastating experience for him. Despite every hardship displayed in front of him during the same period of time, Sukanto managed to bounce back. That is why this friend of his mentioned that Sukanto has the highest RQ of all the leaders he has met. This is what scientists call the “Resilience or Adversity Quotient”, i.e. the capacity to bounce back.