Boardroom consultant wants to be bionic man

SPENDING his youth in Malaysia and Singapore was an experience that Boston Consulting Group (BCG) managing director Vincent Chin credits with some of his professional success.

“One advantage of living in Singapore in particular – but I would say that also of Malaysia – is that we tend to receive our information in a more global way,” Chin, a senior partner with BCG who was the first Asian to lead the firm’s global public sector practice, told The Business Times.

While his work has taken him across South-east Asia and to Switzerland, he grew up in Melaka, before attending National Junior College and the National University of Singapore (NUS).

“Growing up as a kid reading local papers with a regional perspective, being in a region where none of the economies are superpowers, and… with good facility in the English language allowed me to become a global citizen much more readily than elsewhere.”

And the importance of such cultural connections – the human touch, as Chin put it – is a thread that runs through his approach to clients, colleagues, leadership, and life.

An optimist for Asean

Calling himself “an optimist for Asean”, Chin has long hailed regional integration in his native South-east Asia, including the Asean Economic Community (AEC) blueprint for a single market.

Since the AEC went live in end-2015, “I do think that Asean is a more united market, with better human capital and a good relationship with the various superpowers”, he told BT.

Even so, he noted that countries worldwide are facing the same challenges on a global scale – such as climate change, and the need to reskill workers amid rising digitalisation.

“The problems are the same, but the answers need to be customised based on the starting point and capacity of the country,” said Chin, whose experience in public-sector consulting includes economic transformation schemes and projects involving sovereign wealth funds.

He added that “where we want to help is not just in designing the solution, but in helping governments enact the solution”, as some countries need help with that implementation.

While he noted that there are still jobs that cannot be fully automated, he added that companies will have to reskill human workers in those roles to tap technology such as artificial intelligence.

“Today, the right vision for the world is not technology. The right vision for the world is bionic,” Chin elaborated, calling for “societies and companies and countries that can really marry the best of high-tech and high-touch” as the way that “truly uplifts the potential of the human lives”.

“How to create a truly flourishing bionic world” is part of Chin’s philosophy of the world, he said, having earned an undergraduate degree in computer science from NUS – where he focused on information science, which he described as “how to interpret data and turn them into intelligence” – and a masters in business administration from the University of Edinburgh.

“And when I say flourishing, I mean mass flourishing, not just flourishing for a certain sector,” Chin elaborated. “Because again, the whole trickle-down economics has to be rethought – it is going to become a whole-of-society economic development game that we need to play.”

“Think big thoughts”

The ability to work on such visions drew Chin into consulting in the first place, he suggested.

He had said in an interview with The Straits Times back in 2013 that he did not mind having to report to a manager when he started at BCG, despite having already been a team manager before.

“It’s a disposition – I always wanted to think big thoughts,” he told BT, when asked about his comment in that interview, where he said that he made the job switch as “I wanted to be in strategy, to be in the boardroom”.

Chin began his career at Singapore Airlines in 1990, before joining professional services firm Accenture, which was then known as Andersen Consulting, in 1996. He came to BCG as a principal in 1999.

Chin told BT: “From a very young age, I was just more interested in the big boardroom issues, and I think I purposefully went out to search for such jobs… I wanted to do something more than just operational, so I went to consulting because I think in consulting we solve big problems.”

Though his computer science background had helped him at information technology-focused consultancy Andersen, he added: “I really want to get beyond technology, into big boardroom issues – which is about people, which is about products, which is about markets.”

In his years at BCG, where he said he purposely sought out such projects, Chin’s leadership stints included managing the Malaysia team, and later running the whole Asean business.

Most recently, he was just promoted from global leader of BCG’s public sector practice to its global vice-chair – a role that he said gives him “a lot more free rein than in the past” as his successor handles day-to-day operations even while he remains involved in strategic decisions.

“You always create this healthy tension between long term and short term, and between topline growth and cost management. We balance that very well, and I think that’s one of the reasons why we keep the company growing,” he said, while lauding “the latitude and free rein to think bigger ideas, seeing around the bend” that he finds in the company culture.

“Then, of course, in managing the company, I also took the strategic perspective and I think that is recognised by the leadership of the firm,” he added.

In fact, Chin’s successor summed up his leadership style by saying that “Vincent led with boldness and kindness”, Chin told BT, before musing on those qualities: “Boldness because I set the vision, I have the programmes; and kindness because I understand each one” of his staff.

“Everybody screws up… But if you fail in a big way, and you’re really already feeling pretty low about yourself, actually you need someone who’s there to give you a redemptive moment,” he said, calling that moment “sometimes the ultimate arbiter of faith and loyalty”.