An insider view of growing with Big Blue

Though, if you asked him, Thanwa would give the credit to luck. "In 1994, IBM was not so good worldwide. We had to lay people off and lost hundreds of quality personnel here. I decided to stay on and so was promoted," the humble country general manager of IBM Thailand said.

But, certainly, the Big Blue did not back the wrong person. Thanwa had often taken on challenges and responsibilities in new areas where IBM was in a relatively weak position and he always exceeded the company's targets. In 1995, he received the "Golden Circle" award - an honour reserved for the top 5 per cent of IBM's best sale performers. The young IBMer was also made the president of IBM Hundred Percent Club, from among thousands of sellers across the Asean/South region. This made Thanwa the first Thai to earn that honour in 12 years.

And just before Thailand fell into its worst economic crisis in decades, Thanwa was sent to Singapore to become a regional segment manager in 1997. In time, he was promoted to be the regional sales operations executive in 2000 and, later, the communication sales leader in 2002 before he came back to Bangkok as the chief financial officer.

Thanwa said he could be the chief financial officer of IBM despite having no formal education and work experience in the area because of IBM's matrix management system, which has a regional office with a good backup system. Having been the finance chief for three and a half years, he came back to take care of the hardware business in 2006 before being appointed the country manager in October last year.

Growing up in Buri Ram, a poor northeastern province, Thanwa had wanted to study civil engineering and took the entrance test to join the King Mongkut Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, only to learn that the university did not offer a civil engineering programme at that time. Thus, he chose computer engineering. But Thanwa's dream was to be a pilot.

Soon after graduation, Thanwa applied to be a pilot. But while waiting for the results, he applied for a job at Toyo Engineering, a Japanese construction company that sent him to be trained in Japan for two years. Thanwa passed all tests  except for the last one, the psychology test.

"I have to say thank you to them. I'm scared of aircraft. Now every time I am in the passenger seat, I'm not so confident. I'm not sure whether this feeling would have gone if I were the pilot myself," he said.

His two years in Japan helped Thanwa learn some Japanese and when he quit Toyo to join IBM in 1990, his first job was to take care of Japanese customers.

Thanwa said he treasures teamwork as an important element of success. Having a high-calibre team is key to success, he said.

"I don't worry about technology. IBM has invested a lot in laboratories and research and development. My focus is on how we can have good and high-calibre staff members who will help our clients succeed," Thanwa said.