Alumni Spotlight Stories: Teo Lay Lim

Lay Lim is the Chairman, Accenture Singapore. Ever since she joined Accenture in 1988, she has held several leadership roles, including the setup of Accenture’s Customer Relationship Management service line, Asia Pacific managing director for the CRM Service line, Geographic Unit Managing Director of ASEAN, and the Country Managing Director of Accenture Singapore. She also spent two years in Shanghai to establish the practice in China.

In 2007, she returned from Shanghai to assume the role of country managing director for Accenture. Her passion for building new businesses led her to also assume the APAC leadership role to startup two new practices — Analytics and Sustainability Services.

Outside of Accenture, Lay Lim has served on the Boards of Singapore Land Authority and the Council for the Third Age. She currently serves on the Board of Advisors for the School of Information Systems at the Singapore Management University and she is the co-chair for the Modern Services Sub-Committee on the Committee for Future Economy. Lay Lim is also one of BoardAgender’s Champion of Change, supporting and promoting gender-balanced businesses in Singapore.

Q: Could you share more about your role and yourself to our readers? Do you have a tagline that best represents you? Could you share with us your experience as a Senior Managing Director, Accenture and a short summary of a normal working day for you?

I play different roles in Accenture. As Country Managing Director of Singapore, I must make sure that the Singapore business grows with the right strategy and is tackling the right market. Accenture focuses on services, ideation, solutioning and execution of projects for clients. We work with the right clients and ensure that we stay relevant to their priorities. As the Geographic Unit Managing Director for ASEAN, I provide leadership within the region to ensure we have thriving current practices.

My typical day is a balance between internal and external priorities. Internal matters include talent and leadership development initiatives as well as growth and strategy initiatives necessary to develop our practices and markets, for example investments in developing Centres of Excellence, or Innovation Centres. My externally facing time also includes meeting clients, industry leaders and government leaders, to ensure that we are in touch with things that matter most to our clients and markets, or serving on committees, to contribute back to the country and various organisations.

While these are important, what is equally important and which I enjoy very much, is spending time with our people. We are an extremely diverse company, and so it is important that we constantly tap in to what our people want from their career experience. For example, because more than 70 percent of our workforce are millennials, we created a millennial taskforce.

Q: What made you decide to pursue a Business degree?

For as long as I can remember, I have always been very interested in what goes on within the four walls of the world’s most successful organisations. So a business degree naturally equipped me with the foundation on which to pursue this interest.

Q: What was your first role when you graduated and how did you realise your passion?

When I graduated, I joined IBM. It was one of those great companies that the time, always referenced in books and case studies. It did not quite matter to me what role I had; it was simply enough that I had an opportunity to be part of the organisation. Through the 18 month traineeship program, I acquired knowledge in computer technologies – how hardware systems were constructed, and powered, and configured. I also learnt sales skills. Both skills sets entirely new to me, and which I have valued all through my career. It gave me the confidence that I could learn anything, if I applied myself to it.

At the end of the traineeship, I decided to take on a sales role. And it was because of this role that I met consultants from Arthur Andersen, and I discovered the world of consulting. After I had spent two and a half years at IBM, I decided that consulting offered me a lifetime of learning, and so I literally crossed the street (Shenton Way) and joined Arthur Andersen, which evolved subsequently to Andersen Consulting, and then Accenture.

I believed then, as I still do now, that as a young rookie, there is nothing not worth doing. It is a matter of figuring out what you will take away from each experience, and have that be the stepping stone to opening the next opportunity for yourself. I have often used Lego bricks as my metaphor – every assignment you get, you collect some bricks. Some you will discard, because you will not want them in the future, and others you will keep. And on your journey through your career, you will build a collection of assorted bricks, which you will use, multiply and reconfigure.

So some roles I took set the way for me such as equipping me to put myself forward to startup the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) practice. That brought me to China for 2 years, where I was based on Shanghai. So with the brick metaphor, I collected bricks which gave me functional knowledge, industry knowledge and experience working in different countries.

Q: What were some tough decisions you had to make?

In consulting, every client engagement is a unique opportunity to learn and acquire experience. No two clients are the same, and no two assignments are ever the same. So if you don’t take it up, you are choosing to forgo the experience.

So I have had to make these decisions all through my career. Like when I first made manager, I chose to take on an IT Strategy project instead of taking a two week vacation, because I had not done that sort of project before. (And I went for my vacation after). Or when I had the opportunity to lead part of a global project, which took me to Paris, Hong Kong and Seoul over a 12 month period, 2 years after I got married. All of these were choices I had to make.

Q: How did your leadership style change as you progressed up the ranks?

As a junior team member, attention to detail, being thorough and being a fast learner are important. For me, it was important that I made sure that whatever I delivered was the best possible standard I was capable of. That way, when my supervisor made changes, I could learn something, because it meant there was a better way to do it, or there was something I did not think of. If you do a shoddy job, your supervisor wastes time rectifying something basic, and you won’t learn as much.

As a manager, you have to lead a team. You must be able to teach others, even if it means taking a bit more time than doing it yourself. In consulting we build teams and ‘pyramids’ of people, and I’d you cannot train others to be competent to take your role you cannot move up to the next level. At Accenture we call that role ‘People Developer’s.

As I progressed to become a managing director, my role focused on the growth of the business. Business can equate to one client, a portfolio or multiple product lines. Expectations have evolved and the goal now is to grow the business as I have become an owner of the business. Growing the business means is important because that creates opportunities for growth and progression for the people you hire. One of our core values – Stewardship – means we must all leave the company a better place than when we joined. So having a mindset of growth is important as a Managing Director.

My own leadership style is to hire the best people, and then empower them to do the job you hired them for. It means trusting them, and definitely not micro-managing once they have earned that trust. It also means acknowledging that there is no ‘one way’ to do things, but rather a diverse team will bring different views, and collaboration will ensure that things get done with a holistic consideration of different perspectives.

Q: With Accenture being in the Service Industry, how do you foresee the challenges ahead given a growing sharing economy?

The nature of consulting is changing. The term VUCA (Volatile, Uncertsin, Complex and Ambiguous) could not be more true today. With industries being disrupted, the old world of consulting in which there is one right answer, or one best practice, may no longer be true, or sufficient. And when we work with market leaders, they need to create the next practice.

So we now have methods which are built around design thinking, innovation and co-creation. It is about methods which are agile, apply analytics to generate insights for decision making, then prototyping, and experimenting. And a mindset which accepts failure – failing fast being the criteria – so that we iteratively get to a better outcome.

Q: Do you have any advice for people keen to step into the technology space?

First, let me speak to the hard skills. Technology changes at accelerating rates, so you need to be comfortable with change, and you need to have the appetite to be a continuous learner. You need to be intellectually curious and be open to new technologies and developments.

But I think the biggest mistake people in technology make, is presuming hard skills alone will carry you. It does not. EQ is sometimes the most underestimated success factors in the tech world. It is all about the ability to network, build networks, create synergies, operate with diverse groups of people very different from yourself.

Above all, one very crucial skill is communications. Communicating well makes the difference between whether or not others will listen and understand your ideas and designs, and be influenced to accept your proposals or support your requests. It makes a difference between people who will remember you, and what you have said, or that you are forgotten immediately after. So whether you are a startup pitching to investors for funding, a technical architect convincing your team leaders of the elegance of your design, or one voice on a large team who wants to be heard, communications will make the difference between whether you get what you want … or not.