Eugene Yeo, CIO of MyRepublic and finalist of TM Forum's 'CIO of the Year' Excellence Awards, discusses his role as a leader in nurturing the right culture to embrace change as part of the company's digital transformation journeyHow would you describe your organization’s enterprise-wide digital transformation strategy?
We believe that culture is at the heart of any successful transformation, be it digital or otherwise. At MyRepublic, we work hard at ensuring our organizational culture is aligned to embracing constant changes and early adoption of new technologies in order to drive improvements in overall customer experience.
What targets does your organization have to guide this strategy?
We mainly focus on customer experience score improvements to measure the success of our transformation programs.
What’s the biggest ‘win’ you’ve achieved so far?
The biggest ‘win’ we have achieved thus far is in fully automating our entire order-to-cash journey for fixed connectivity services, which led to a marked improvement in both customer experience scores as well as cost to serve. You can read more about what we’ve achieved
here.
What are the biggest challenges you face in achieving your digital transformation aims?
The biggest challenge we face as a company is the constant balance between maintaining existing operational stability whilst pursuing constant change and improvement. As a fast-growing company, there are multiple fronts where we need to invest resources and manpower to sustain rapid growth. As such, the need for leadership alignment in order to seek the right balance is critical to ensure we can achieve our overall goals.
Leadership is clearly paramount, but what makes a good digital leader?
I believe that each leader has his or her own approach to leadership. For myself, it boils down to embracing a “fail, but fail fast” approach. As with any change, particularly with the adoption of new technology, there is always a risk of making mistakes. To drive innovation and change, there has to be an organizational culture of accepting risks, mistakes and failure in order to learn and evolve towards something better. As such, a good digital leader needs to understand, accept and embrace this.
Digital transformation is not just about changing processes and technology; it also involves a shift in organizational culture. How is your teamwork changing and what’s your role as a team leader?
Organizational culture is the critical success element in digital transformation. Many transformation projects or initiatives fail mainly because of resistance to change. I feel my role as a leader is to create and nurture the right culture that embraces change as part of the overall journey.
In terms of the wider societal impact of digitization, what are you looking forward to over the next decade?
I’m looking forward to a society where people no longer need to waste precious time queuing up in order to do things. With more business processes becoming digital, it allows for enhanced self-service capabilities instead of needing to queue up at a shop.
In terms of the wider societal impact of digitization, what concerns you?
My concerns with the impact of digitization stems from 2 areas:
The first is in the area of social interactions. With more time spent interacting with computers and machines, there is a risk of losing the physical interactions between people. For example, the side-line conversations with a cashier go away when you are interacting with a kiosk instead. I personally feel that such interactions are what makes us human.
The second concern is in the area of security. As more processes get digitized, the risk of hackers causing high-impact damage becomes higher. For example, connected self-driving cars would significantly reduce the time wasted in driving to commute. However, it also exposes society to a significant risk if terrorists manage to gain control of multiple cars.
What is the next big idea you are working on?
The next big idea we’re currently working on has to do with how we can leverage on alternate business models in order to provide basic connectivity for free to end customers.
Describe a typical day.
A typical day at the workplace for me includes driving cultural and objective alignment with various stakeholders, reviewing progress of current workstreams with team members, reviewing internal processes to drive more agility, on top of the typical mundane tasks such as replying to emails.
To meet more digital leaders and read about their transformation journeys, go to https://www.tmforum.org/face-digital-leadership 
