Young Corporate Malaysians - 7th CEO Series of Talk

[hanxue]

Caveat: This is my first time attending a YCM event, and I missed out the first part of the talk.

Details of the event at:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=16315470836

Directly pirated from facebook group:

Dear Friends,

Every fortnight, Young Corporate Malaysians (YCM) organize talks with the movers and shakers of the Malaysian corporate world, inviting them to speak on various issues.

For the CEO Series No. 7 we are proud to invite and inform you that we will be hosting Mr Lim Beng Choon, the Country Managing Director of Accenture, Malaysia. His details are as below:
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Professional Background:
Beng Choon is the Country Managing Director for Accenture Malaysia. In this role he is responsible for business growth and profitability for the Accenture?s engagements in Malaysia. Beng Choon also leads Accenture?s Business Consulting practice within the Resources industry group in Asia Pacific. The Resources industry group includes Oil & Gas, Utilities, Chemicals, Mining and Natural Resources. Countries covered by his responsibilities include Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. In this role he is responsible for developing Accenture?s growth in these industries and ensuring that Accenture?s projects provide value to our clients.

Beng Choon has a BSC Hons in Mathematics & Computer Science from The Australian National University. He has been with Accenture for 24 years working in USA and Asia. He is based in Kuala Lumpur.

Client Experiences:
In his client facing role, Beng Choon drives specific client engagements as well as provide subject matter input on oversees engagements around the region. His focus has been development and implementation of strategies for improving business performance. This usually involves capability building bringing together IT, process and human performance aspects.

While he has worked across many industries including Government and Manufacturing, he has recently been engaged with National Oil Companies in the region such as PETRONAS and PTT as well as Multinationals such as Shell, Exxon.
Beng Choon has also been engaged on utility clients such as Tenaga Nasional and Singapore Power and in the chemicals industry with BASF.

Functional Expertise:
Financial Reporting
Materials Management and Inventory Optimisation
Maintenance Management
Shared Services & Outsourcing
Knowledge Management
Change Management

Industry Expertise:
Energy
Utilities
Chemicals

Information Technology Expertise:
IT Strategy
ERP Implementations
Program Management for Global Implementations

My take away:

• Due to competitive environment, attracting and retaining the right talent is crucial for long-term success
  • Mexico has an education program to meet multi-national's workforce needs
  • Singapore has innovation centres, some bio-medical / pharmaceutical firms are setting up research centres there
  • In windmill industry, efficiency increased by 100 times (i.e. 10,000%) in last 5 years
  • find the best talent, leverage global environment as a competitive advantage
• Multi-polar leadership: Agile, Sensitive, Collaborative & Externally Focused
• All about TRUST
  • When your partner in China / Thailand / Korea speaks in the local language, you need to have faith they are acting the the best, shared interest
• Porous leadership
• Strategic Talent Management; Talent Multiplication
  • Not just adding more people, but superior level of effort, creativity and business returns
  • Take advantage of each location's strong points (i.e. cost, technical knowledge, geological advantage)
  • Have multiple workforces/workstreams to leverage scarce talent
• Leveraging Talent
  • Example: When you have a project to complete, you cannot do all the work by yourself. You find 3 capable persons to assist you. These 3 persons may not have all the necessary skills, but each of them in turn knows 3 other persons, ad nauseum
  • Example above will work provided there is a structured organization and high quality talent
  • Therefore it is important to have the necessary training, and Talent Development Engine
  • Accept reality and adapt your approach. For example, India has low cost talent, but high inflation (~16%) and attrition rate (~40%). Hence the focus on re-training quickly
• Structure is important for business continuity, stability, and prevent nudging / power-struggles
  
• Leverage Scarce Talent
• Positioning in Market : leveraging your core competencies, understanding your clear, distinctive advantage compared to competitors
• Performance Anatomy
  • Culture
  • "Carrot" factor to encourage excellence
  • Example: A firm like Accenture is focused on technology, all the way from the leaders to the consultants
• Optimizing Workforce
  • Different workforces exist. For example, for consulting engagement the processes/business involved is very different between Telco billing and Utilities billing. Therefore, have the right talent (knowledge/experience) that can speak the same language as the client
  • Another view of workforce: Customer Relationship Management, Sales management, Finance, Performance Reporting
• Advantages in Malaysia
  • Focus on education. Twinning programmes
  • Attracting top universities to set up campus
  • (Please contribute, I miss out first part of lecture )
• Challenges in Malaysia
  • Lack of innovation push
  • Brain drain: losing talent to other countries
  • What is Malaysia's value proposition?

Question and Answer
Q: What are the most important skills to attain?

A:

1. Focus on what you are currently doing
2. Whatever you do, do it very well
3. Have self-discipline

An example of doing well is a simple task such as photocopying. It may be a simple task, but some people will make a copy which is crooked. Another person may ask what exactly is needed, for example stapled, bound, etc; after that producing a very good copy. In this case, the latter person does a much better job, and has potential for leadership.

If you are not going what you love, move on to another position/organization that offers that opportunity.


Q: What is the most challenging experience you have faced?
A: People problems.
Usually technical problems can be overcome with the right person with right skills.


Q: It is said that consulting firms grow during economic downturns
A: During the dot-com bust, Accenture actually had to lay off people. However, the effect is minimal and there is much resilience due to[*]Outsource[*]Selective clientele

Q: What are the top 3 books that you recommend?
A: It depends on what you are looking for.

For finding out the direction of your life, try Road Less Traveled

For Malaysian current issues, try Zaid Ibrahim's In Good Faith

For experienced folks who want to find meaning / challenges in life, try The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge


Q: Comments on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
A: Having the Asian/Chinese education viewpoint, it is like Yin and Yang: currently the focus is on out-and-out capitalism, so there tend to be an opposing and balancing force

In addition, CSR can be a good attraction point, as we feel nice to be working in an organisation that is responsible

Q: I have always known you to work long hours, sending out emails at 3 am, etc. What keeps you ticking?
A: You are only stressed when you are doing something unbalanced. If you enjoy your work, basically you will not have any issues of work negatively affecting your life.

Sometimes you also need to take a break to rejuvenate.

Find good people to work under you. As a result, they can perform 10 hours of groundwork, and you only need to spend 1 hour to set the direction and do the polishing.

Organisation that is structured will be naturally have business continuity.

Leverage talent.



These are my questions:
Q: My organization has a strong brand, which is used as a leverage to attract talent. In addition, another strong factor is the good benefits and compensation package.

The problem is with all the talent we have in this division, the results are mediocre and ROI is poor. There is a lack of "energy", and the focus is too much on cost reduction rather than revenue generation.

How can we apply today's learning to solve the problem?

Could it be due to soft factors such as leadership and motivation, or on performance measurement, metrics and balanced scorecard, etc?

A: If I can answer the question in 5 minutes then I would be rich ;)

There are many factors involved, including leadership etc. Mostly it is down to people.


Q: My understanding is when you go up in an organization, you need to be more effective and contribute upwards. In addition, you will spend a larger proportion of your time engaging stakeholders and on people issues. Is that true? To what extent?
A: There are basically 2 tracks in most organizations: technical or management.

If you focus on technical, you can develop your competency and get paid highly, for example a doctor.

On the other hand, if you have the leadership skills, there is a lot of opportunities. If you can leverage other people's skills, you can achieve even more, and to use the analogy, get paid more than a doctor.

[chenchow]

Thanks, hanxue for your sharing! Definitely hope to see more ReComers attending such learning opportunities!