Redesigning Resilience in Indonesian Business: The RenDanHeYi Transformation at Fajar Benua Group
In 2024, Fajar Benua Group faced an unthinkable loss. Its CEO, and the only successor to the founding family, died suddenly in an accident. At the time, the business was already struggling with the aftermath of COVID and liquidity challenges. The moment called for stability and renewal. It also called for courage.
This blog post is part of 80+ case studies of progressive organizations we created for the ZeroDX awards 2025. These organizations embody the principles of RenDanHeYi in their work structures:
Zero Distance to customer: Decision what to build is based on insights from the marketplace
Autonomy: Small teams with full decision-making autonomy enable speed in execution
Shared Rewards: Everyone in the micro-enterprise participates in its financial success.
Pande Kadek Yuda Bakti, then Chief Strategy Officer, was appointed CEO. He wasn’t from the family. He had worked his way up over 20 years, from entry-level sales to senior leadership. But more than experience, he brought a new way of thinking shaped by what he had learned through the Corporate Rebels Academy and Haier’s RenDanHeYi model.
Long before the crisis, Pande had been asking himself a tough question. Why did so many average-performing employees become successful entrepreneurs after leaving the company?
“They are not the ones who always get employee of the year,” he said. “They are just standard employees. But when they are out, they’re able to start their own businesses. Is there something else that drives them?”
For Pande, the answer lay in ownership and the systems that support or suppress it. That realization drew him to RenDanHeYi, and specifically to Haier’s story. “I started my journey searching about RenDanHeYi and then ended up in Corporate Rebels Academy, right? Learning more about RenDanHeYi.”
Indonesia, with its population of over 275 million and spanning more than 17,000 islands, is the fourth most populous country in the world and Southeast Asia’s largest economy. In 2024, its nominal GDP reached approximately USD 1.5 trillion, placing it within the top 20 global economies and among G20 members. Despite this scale, Indonesian workplaces still reflect strong hierarchical traditions and collective values shaped by decades of centralized governance and deep-rooted community norms. “Implementing change in Indonesia is always difficult,” Pande said. “You can’t change by force.”
So instead, he began with two pilots in the Strategic Planning and Maintenance departments. Both were cost centers. He and his team transformed them into profit centers, each with its own P&L and the task of treating the rest of the organization as clients.
“We changed these into profit centers. Instead of the department serving the company internally as part of their job, now they are serving the company as their client,” he explained.
They were also given external revenue targets and empowered to generate business beyond the group. “My goal was very simple. I should have these two departments without cost.”
The strategic team even adopted a holacracy-inspired structure and used RDHY’s layered target system: bottom line, middle target, and leading target.
Pande paid close attention to cultural barriers. “In Indonesia, people mostly prefer to walk in a group. They don’t want to be seen as different. It’s a very community-based model,” he said. “Power distance is very high. Totally different from Europe.”
This is why, rather than announce a sweeping organizational redesign, he chose a “chef à la carte” approach. Pilots came first, proof through results followed, and then expansion continued gradually.
After the pilots gained traction, 2024 became the year of expansion. Pande introduced RDHY principles to the sales division, rolling out the transformation to 11 branches. Why sales?
“The first thing that can make an impact is changing the unit that has direct contact with the customers,” he said.
Each sales branch became a self-managing business unit with full control over its P&L, operations, hiring, and decision-making. The shift in mindset was immediate.
“They manage their P&L by themselves. They manage their cash in and cash out. We give them the authority to manage their unit as a company.”
Across branches, employees began to show visible pride and ownership. Instead of being told what to do, they now had the space to lead. Employees started challenging internal inefficiencies, calling production directly to resolve bottlenecks, and showing initiative beyond their formal job scope. “Before, no one cared after they sent orders to production. Now they call production directly: ‘Hey, where is my order? I want this finished.’”
Even during tough moments, like salary delays caused by post-COVID liquidity, the change in attitude was evident. “They coordinated internally to make sure they could collect the accounts receivable to pay the salaries of the business unit,” said Pande. “That level of initiative had never happened before.”
As RDHY scaled, Fajar Benua’s structure shifted. Middle management roles faded through natural attrition, and Pande began leading differently. “I don’t control access to the company’s money because everybody holds the money. They don’t come to me for decisions. They come to me for feedback.”
Weekly check-ins replaced top-down reviews, creating space for dialogue, reflection, and shared learning. Employees were no longer asking, “What should I do?” Instead, they were proposing solutions and setting their own goals.
The impact on morale was tangible. “This model has already helped us to return to our faith. Not just improving the company’s performance, but also motivating people to achieve more,” Pande said. “Now they’re not asking, ‘How do we survive?’ That’s not their mindset. Their mindset is, ‘We should achieve the leading target.’”
On May 9, 2025, a new milestone was reached when the manufacturing unit JEIL Fajar Indonesia agreed to adopt the RenDanHeYi model formally. “Production is very complex,” Pande acknowledged. “But we started the journey today.” The model has been tailored for manufacturing complexity, with financial control and profit-sharing introduced alongside a strong emphasis on transparency.
Transparency itself has become a cultural cornerstone. “When people know what’s happening, they’re never silent. There’s a need to take action when they know what’s going on.”
This trust in people’s capability was reinforced for Pande during his face-to-face meeting with Zhang Ruimin at the 2024 RenDanHeYi Annual Meeting in Qingdao. “That moment impacted me deeply,” he recalled. “I asked him how everyone can be a leader because, naturally, that is not always the case with different people”. “He said to me, not everybody is meant to be a big leader, control organisations, but everyone can at least lead themselves.”
Today, Fajar Benua is positioning itself as a digital supply chain coordinator. Over 500 suppliers are connected through a shared digital platform. The company is no longer just a manufacturing and trading group. It is becoming a network of empowered micro-enterprises united by customer focus, shared data, and real accountability.
“All activities are now monitored through a digital platform,” Pande said. “The control we have now is not in decision-making, but in the process and the result.”
He didn’t inherit a system. He rebuilt one slowly and respectfully, grounded in trust. What began with two internal pilots now stretches across sales and into production, guided by RDHY’s principles: P&L ownership, decentralization, transparency, self-management, and safe enough to try decision-making.
“I feel proud,” Pande reflected. “This transformation is not just about turning around the company. It’s about building a better company where people have the chance to grow, contribute, and lead themselves.”
