Leadership DNA of Real Inbound Consulting

By Gerald Yap, Founder and Director of Real Inbound Consulting Pte Ltd

As the founder of Real Inbound Consulting Pte Ltd, I often face (and ponder) the question: What is the leadership DNA of this business and organisation?

Below are my thoughts that shape how the company is managed and lead, day-to-day. Each section is led by a question, followed by my thoughts in addressing the question. I hope that this can be helpful to other founders and CXO's of small, growing consulting companies.

1 - What are the top three leadership traits I hope to embody as a leader?

1. Strong focus on our Mission as a rallying force

As a leader, I see the importance of imbuing my team with a strong sense of mission, to guide why and what they do every day. This is critical in giving them the opportunity to make a positive impact to the world with all their time they spend working under my company.

At RIC, our mission is to ‘help businesses plan, implement and secure grant financing for their growth projects - so that they can better create positive impact on the world’. This means that we help businesses with critical projects like overseas expansion, new technology development, automation and digitization – ultimately helping good business unlock the next stage of growth and impact.

When my team sees their work pay off for each client in the form of a completed project with grant financing successfully secured to fund the project – they see meaning in the role they play in making the world a better place by enabling good businesses to make their impact.

Today, guided by this mission, we continue to help businesses commercialize new technology, expand overseas, digitalize operations, and automate production lines. Importantly, we also support clients in securing grant financing that supports the above-mentioned initiatives and projects. This has enabled us to serve companies across a wide range of industries and growth-stages (SMEs, MNCs, start-ups), and handle projects of value ranging from USD thousands to millions.

2. Emphasis on aligning interests

I always try my best to align interests, be it that of my employees clients or business partners. When interests on both sides are aligned, the outcomes can be multiplied.

With my employees, I ensure that their compensation is tied to the outcomes they achieve as a direct result of their work in their specific roles. While this type of compensation is easy to structure for sales roles, it is relatively harder to structure for operational and administratively roles. However, I ensure that even such roles are incentivized correctly with variable incentive components closely tied to very specific outcomes; and this entails making the effort to come up with creative compensation plans tailored for each person. This is the best way to draw out the full potential of our people and help them see what is possible for themselves.

With business partners, its straightforward- always design a deal such that both sides win. I’ve learnt that a deal that is ‘lobsided’ always leads to an undesirable outcome, eventually wasting time and energy on both ends, along with a soured relationship. As such, I always ensure I understand clearly what the other party is looking out for and how I can cater to their interests, before thinking about how I can achieve mine.

With clients, reaching an alignment means that I clearly understand what they hope to achieve in their business as a result of using our service. Armed with that knowledge, I try my best to give them more than what they expect. Once we deliver on this, we make them strong advocates of our business and our greatest salesforce. This mentality and way of doing business has contributed greatly to our company’s growth over the last eight years, allowing us to serve over 400 businesses and continuing growing based on word-of mouth referrals. A funny example was when RIC managed to secure a global telco client which we raised grant financing of over US$5M for, simply via word-of-mouth referral by someone whom we did not even know about before! This was very encouraging for us, as it meant that word of our service has spread well. We only have our happy clients to thank for that. This case reinforces our belief that we need to do everything we reasonably can for clients to feel that they got a lot more value than what they paid for, and for us to continually exceed expectations. The benefits from this extend way beyond a single engagement.

3. Focus on developing people

I see my employees not as people working for me, but people working with me. They are the most important stakeholders in my business, even more important that clients or partners. They are parting with a significant part of their lives (in terms of time) to grow the business with me. As such, it is my moral obligation to develop them, help them grow as a person, gain new skills, and achieve fulfilment at work and in life. Even if they were to leave our company eventually, I want them to leave in a ‘much better state than when I have found them’.

To facilitate such efforts, I make it a point to have one-to-one sessions with my employees each working day to give them consistent coaching and help them prioritize their work. I often invite my employees to suggest what type of new skills they would like to pick up, and would try to find the budget to sponsor training programs that they propose. I also share industry readings and self-development books with them on a frequent basis. These are some examples in which I try to incorporate people-development as part of the day-to-day running of the business.

I believe that part of developing people is to ensure they enjoy the process of working and learning under the company so that they stay with us for a meaningful length of time. Hence, I do what I can to give them flexibility in where and when they want to work (flexi-location and flexi-time) so as to make the day-to-day grind more enjoyable. An example - we have recently started experimenting with a subscription service which offers access to a wide range of beautiful co-working spaces; which means our employees can choose to work in any co-working office on any day, enjoy the variety of different work environments and not be bound to one single place of work. It is my hope that this makes my team’s work more enjoyable on a day-to-day basis, which gives them one more reason to stay with us longer and continue to grow under the company.

2 - What were some examples where I was required to demonstrate decisive and creative leadership skills?

1. Leveraging outside expertise

I would like to think of leadership as not something done or executed in a silo, but best practiced leveraging the wisdom of a larger network of practitioners. As such, I often rely on an ‘informal advisory board’ of competent advisors, leveraging their experience and connections to help us grow. Such advisors have been critical in helping us connect our clients to funding sources like investors, banks, government agencies. More importantly, they have also contributed technical knowledge to help RIC deliver successful consulting projects to clients in niche industries and with uncommon requirements. As example of how I leverage such outside wisdom is my involvement with EGN, where I am part of a peer learning group consisting of fellow business owners. EGN is a trusted worldwide network of professional peers with a shared ambition of making each other better (https://egn.com/).

A good example of how such outside expertise was leveraged to our advantage would be time where RIC was helping a NASDAQ-listed company enter the Singapore market with a product that had a comprehensive set of technical features. With the help of advisors with the relevant domain knowledge with similar types of products as well as the right connections into the relevant government authority, RIC was able to help the client have their product pre-approved by the government for fast-track grant support for the benefit of customers looking to buy their product. This aided the client significantly in accelerating their product roll-out in Singapore.

2. Making quick decisions, even when there is incomplete information

In the management consulting industry, clients often need answers quickly, so it's important for me as a leader to be able to make decisions under pressure. This doesn't mean making rash decisions, but it does mean being able to weigh the pros and cons of different options and make a decision in a timely manner.

I recall a time where we were supporting a hotel brand operator client in securing grant funding to implement a centralised hotels management platform for multiples properties globally. The funding agency approved the grant funding, but at a level of support that was lower than expected. Whilst RIC has technically fulfilled its obligation to raise grant financing, we saw an opportunity to put in the extra effort to ensure our clients’ get the full value out of our engagement. In short notice, we made the decision and commitment to appeal for the client for higher grant support, and quickly prioritised putting together a report specifying all grounds for appeal to justify a higher support within a couple of days. This was done without complete information on why the funding awarded was lower than expected – to get this transparency from grant agencies was notoriously hard, and even if we did manage to get it, it would have taken weeks; when the window to submit an effective appeal would have closed by then. Upon submission of the appeal and after multiple rounds of to-and-fro with the funding agency, the grant support was eventually revised to be much higher than what was initially offered. This episode gave us the confidence and conviction that we will always have the ability and options to achieve a desired outcome for our clients despite challenges, if we are willing to make quick, calculated decisions even in situations of incomplete information.

3. Being willing to take risks

Innovation is essential in the consulting industry, and that often means taking risks. I try my best to instil a culture of not being afraid to try new things, even if they're different from what we've done in the past.

This idea permeates down into the types of clients and projects we take up. We are always receptive to taking on projects that push the technological frontiers of industries, where there were no proven precedents of success; but it done right, can set new standards and result in huge payoffs both for the client and us. Such projects typically relate to the development and commercialisation of deep-tech offerings, which includes new technologies in the areas of Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), Biotechnology, Robotics, Advanced materials, Electronics and semiconductor manufacturing and Web3 and blockchain technology, and Renewable Energy.

An example of this would be a time when we took on a project from one of our clients, which is a developer of large-scale offshore renewable energy projects. They were looking to develop a new technology relating to offshore floating solar farms, back in a time where such a technology has not yet been validated or proven to be commercially viable. RIC took a calculated risk of taking on this project. We started off by supporting them with the R&D of a sub-component of the new offshore solar floating platform technology, and subsequently raising grant financing for them to build a prototype. We were then brought in to do the same for other R&D projects of technologies further down the development roadmap. The technology turned out to be a success, with it being featured as the largest offshore solar farm in Asia at the time of its launch. Thereafter, we helped commercialise the productised technology in overseas markets like US and Korea, along with helping them secure multiple grant financing rounds to fund the expansion. Currently, we are still engaged with this client, exploring potential in helping them raise project financing for the offshore renewable projects they are looking to develop. This type of engagement is what keeps the RIC team passionate about what we do, and serve as a constant reminder to us to never stop taking risks.

3 - What are my 3 key achievements as a leader in the last 5 years?

1. Earned our company global industry recognition and awards

Including:

• 'Top 10 Most Promising SME Consultants in Asia 2023' by Asia Business Outlook
• ‘Best Management Consultancy 2023 – Singapore’ by Wealth & Finance International

Online references:

- https://www.asiabusinessoutlook.com/services/ranking/top-10-sme-consultants-from-asia-2023-rid-133.html

- https://www.realinboundconsulting.com/why-us.html (for the certs) (online listing for the second awrd is not out yet as its very recently awarded)

2. Attained the Singapore Certified Management Consultant, a certification by world-leading certification body TUV SUD

This certification is awarded in accordance to Technical Reference for Management Consultant (TR 43:2015), which sets out the acceptable professional standards and practices for Management Consultants.

It is accredited by Singapore Accreditation Council (SAC). It is also recognised by Enterprise Singapore, the leading government agency in Singapore for enterprise development, for management consultancy excellence.

More info here.

3. Attained educational qualifications that enable me to lead my team better and enhanced my industry competence

Including:

• Advance Certificate in Supply Chain Management by the Supply Chain and Logistics Academy (Singapore)
• Advanced Certificate In Training and Assessment by NTUC LearningHub

Conclusion

This articles serves as a means to take stock of my learnings, achievements and areas for improvement in the journey of building RIC. I hope it can be helpful in whatever ways to anyone reading it.