Surface-level reports can hide operational reality, especially when bad news gets softened, delayed, and reframed before it reaches senior leaders. Salih Ahmed Islam, head of internal audit at Floormar, explains how 25 years in audit and enterprise risk taught him to spot the gap between what organizations say and what is actually happening on the ground. His core framework is simple but demanding: go to the field, ask better questions, and trace problems back to their root causes before comfortable stories replace the truth.
What You’ll Learn
- How to tell whether an organization is healthy by observing behavior, not just reviewing reports, dashboards, and KPIs
- Why empty shelves, slow-moving bad news, and silent meetings can reveal more than polished presentations
- How information gets simplified, softened, and reframed as it moves up the organization
- Why root-cause analysis matters more than fixing symptoms when controls or processes are failing
- How senior leaders can create space for uncomfortable truth and reward honesty instead of punishing it
Key Discussion Topics
- Salih’s career across steel, energy, construction, consumer goods, and global retail
- The difference between performance on paper and reality on the ground in retail operations
- What store audits reveal about inventory flow, warehouse issues, and execution gaps
- The role of internal audit as an ally of the truth inside organizations
- How fear of consequences and presentation pressure distort information before it reaches leadership
- Why open leaders and transparent systems are more likely to surface real problems early
- The questions a new senior leader, investor, or partner should ask to test whether they are seeing reality or only a version of it
Guest Background
Name: Salih Ahmed Islam
Bio: Salih Ahmed Islam is the head of internal audit at Floormar, a cosmetics brand operating in more than 100 countries and over 1,000 stores. He has more than 25 years of experience building internal audit and enterprise risk management functions across multiple sectors, including retail, steel, energy, construction, and consumer goods. His perspective is valuable because he has spent a career testing whether organizations work in practice, not just on paper.
Follow Salih on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/salihislam/
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About Business Unbound
Every week, your host, Florian Haufe, dives deep into conversations with visionary global leaders to bring you insights, inspiration, and the real stories behind success.
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