Champion Story 01 | Kin Lee-Yow
Recorded on November 26, 2018
Biography: Kin Lee-Yow has over 25 years of experience in the technology field. He started his career at Royal Bank of Canada where he was part of the team that launched the Bank’s online system. He led the technology team that built the retail internet presence at Sears Canada. At Moneris Solutions, he was the head of Infrastructure and support services and the General Manager for their white label ATM Gateway services. In March 2012, he joined CAA South Central Ontario.
Kin is the CIO of the CAA Club Group, which is a merger between CAA South Central Ontario and CAA Manitoba. During this period, Kin successfully led his team through several large technology implementations such as SAP, Avaya telephony system, Guidewire property & casualty system, and the replacement of the Emergency Roadside system.
Thank you for doing this interview. To start off with, could you tell us more about who you are and what you do?
My name is Kin Lee-Yow. I grew up on a tiny island called Mauritius and I came to Canada when I was 19 years old. I studied at the University of Waterloo, computer science, math, and business administration. For me, I was always trying to look at how I can use technology in business and apply them together to make things better for people.
My role here at CAA is the chief information officer. All the technology that we have for all our different lines of business, home and auto insurance, travel medical insurance, emergency roadside, and travel, the technology is under my purview. If somebody's booking travel through CAA and we know where they're going, let's just say they booked a trip to Japan and are approaching Japan. If there is a disaster in Japan, our travel agents would look at the customer list and find out who's actually traveling to Japan, who's actually in Japan, and try to get in touch with them to ensure that they're okay, and if they need to make an arrangement, other travel arrangements, and so forth.
Thanks for sharing that. You were mentioning earlier about how your journey growing up in Mauritius, coming here, and having this passion for what technology can do. What inspires or drives you now?
It's helping people. It's also seeing people develop, where they grow from not knowing something to flourishing and being successful. I started my days at RBC, where somebody just approached me and said, "Kin, I work in the operations center, and I wanted to learn about the internet thing. I'm willing to spend extra time with you." I said, "By all means, come and learn." This person now is very successful in the security realm and is doing very well.
To me, that is the one thing that I am more proud of. The people you help along the way are the ones who are grateful for you and who will come and help you. I don’t expect anything personally from them in return, I just want them to pay it forward.
I love your commitment to helping other people. I know when I started off on my journey, it was important for me to find mentors and people who I could count on and learn from because much of that knowledge comes from people like yourself.
When you look back on your own journey, as a person and as an executive, what was or who was an influential person in your life?
For me, my dad definitely was a very influential person. He drove me in trying to accomplish what I can. Knowledge is pretty much everything that you need to have. He passed away when I was 18, but that message never left me. Each time when I get into challenges and all that stuff I ask how do I get to move things again? How do I get up? How do I reposition myself? How do I keep learning? How do I grow my knowledge? But it's really about the desire to do more. There's a component of that desired piece to achieve.
As you go through the experience through life, when you have kids, the realization comes into play to say, "You know what, what you're really working for is not for yourself. It's actually for the next generation." In my case, it's the kids. You know, I joke around and say I work for my kids. But I do because if something happens to me, they're the ones who are benefiting from everything. It is what my dad instilled in me to say, "This is what you need to drive for."
I appreciate you sharing that with me about yourself and your family. When you lead as somebody who's at the head of your organization, how do you see leadership now? What is that like for you?
Leadership now is different from when I was growing up. You watch other people do things, you sort of say, "You know what, I want to be the head of this company. I want to be able to be at the top." Then as you progress through your career, I was looking at things like, "You know what, yes, knowledge is power, so I'm going to hold onto that knowledge as much as I can without sharing it." But as I went through that whole process, I found out that the more you hold knowledge for yourself, the more you actually make it a disadvantage to yourself. Then the more you actually share the knowledge with others, that's when you start moving in your career.
There's something quite logical about that, in the sense that if I share knowledge with other people, that means other people can start doing that work. That means it gives me time and opportunity to actually go and seek other avenues, as opposed to say, let's say, "You know what, I'm the only person who knows how to do this, so guess what? Everybody's coming to me to get that stuff done." Well, if that's the case, then that's the only thing that I will be able to do because everybody wants me to do that. But if you really want to grow into your career, you need to be able to say, "You know what? I'm going to share it all, and I want to actually help people.”
When I tell people that, they say, "Are you crazy? You're going to get people to take your job." I said, "Actually, I want people to take my job." If I have that character, that means if people can take my job, I have to move to another place that will be on my own terms, but keeps me on my toes, to say I need to keep improving. If I'm doing really well here and these people want to take my job, they can go outside. By going outside, it would then end up creating a good network, because now I've helped them to succeed.
My leadership at this point is I keep telling my guys, "You want to take my job, here's what you need to do," as opposed to saying, "No, no, no, I won't tell you what you need to do."
When I was running my first startup and hearing advice from people, people who were young founders, the mentality that we had going into the industry was that we always had to put on armour and protect ourselves. I want to create, but I can't tell others about it because I'm scared people are going to steal my stuff or betray me.
When you tell people about the idea of this “giving” mindset, what's the advice that you give when people come to you and say, "Hey, actually, I have this fear. I hear what you're saying, but I'm really scared to share because I've been burned before or I might lose my job"? How do you coach people or lead people through that?
In the case of an idea of an innovation component, there has to be some confidentiality around that, because ideas can be copied very easily. Leadership ideas should be shared as to how you handle things. If there's an idea in terms of how I would look at making things better from a technology standpoint, then yes, a certain level of confidentiality is attached, because people will copy them very easily. We have to be able to distinguish between the two, which is an idea for a product innovation versus an idea for leadership. Leadership should always be shared.
The other root of all this component is money. Once you start growing up, the one thing that you envy is to sort of say, "Hey, I want to succeed. I want to make billions of dollars." But if your sole purpose is just to make money, then I would say it's not a good thing. Your sole purpose should be, how do you actually grow and be able to contribute back to the community?
As you go through life, you learn a whole bunch of different things. Everything that you have with you, when you're gone, you can’t take any of it with you. You may have a billion dollars and you can take zero of that. But the thing that you can or pass on, is knowledge.
Something that came to mind to me when you said that is when we met, I had shared with you my personal story about losing my only sibling. When he passed away, people weren’t talking about how much money his company was making. People weren't there to talk about, "Oh, this was his fancy title as his company. Look at all these shiny things that he did with his career."
What stood out to me is when they would share, "Hey, I want you to know how your brother made me feel. He made me feel seen," or "He was there for me when I was having a low point in my life." People were just sharing all these beautiful and personal stories, not about money, but about the impact and how he made people feel.
People need to look at, how to help, how to do other things, and put that as a first priority. Then the money piece will come. You know what, the people will help. But if you have the piece where you put money as your first priority, I personally think it's the wrong thing to do.
Innovation is such a wanted thing. People who are up and coming in the industry, who are starting their career gravitate to companies like yours. At the same time, people are feeling, "Hey, I feel burned out. I want to be able to tell my company that I'd like to start a family, but I don't know how to have that conversation.”
For you as a leader and as a person, what do we need to do as an industry to support people with mental and emotional health?
That's a very big question. The piece about the topic of mental health is actually fairly new. It's new in terms of being recognized as a mental health issue, as opposed to just somebody who's mentally sick. That's probably what people had before. People have to be able to recognize that. The organization has to have avenues for people to say, "You know what, I'm feeling stretched out. I can no longer do it.”
It's both ways, if the employees are looking at it and the employers don't recognize it, then it's not good. But you have to have the balance between the two, where the employer actually recognizes it, and the employees have to recognize it because it will help.
The piece that goes against that is competition, where everybody's trying to drive to get things faster and faster. When I look back at it, I say, "Well, who's actually driving the need for things to get faster and faster? It's us." Not the executives and all that stuff, but it's us, consumers. We want things to be faster. It creates that whole demand where everybody wants things to be done faster.
If you're working in an organization and if you can't stay up in that realm, people will say, "I'll find somebody else who can do it faster for me." Now you get stuck into that loop that says, "Okay, well, if I can't do it, somebody else is going to do it, so I'm going to burn the midnight oil.” It’s a vicious cycle. I don't really have an answer for that one. For people, it's that they need to realize and talk about it more and start taking steps. We have the same thing here. We have crazy hours. But I do keep telling people, "You have to take breaks." But some people do and some people don't, because they're so passionate about what they do.
It's a tough balance. I call it a balance, because I may work 60 hours a week, somebody may work 70 hours a week, somebody may work 50 hours a week, and our productivity may be the same output, because a person who works 40 hours works smarter than I do, and a person who works 70 hours a week may work slower than my pace because we're all different. The challenge we have is, people tend to measure output the same way that we think about a computer.
A computer’s output is always measured by the speed and performance of the CPU, assuming it's the same program. You put in a faster CPU, it can run faster. But that's a machine. People don’t work the same way. We're all different and unique, and our ability to learn and our output is different. That's the piece that has value in what people have to look at, not just the fact that says, "You know what, yeah, this person can do it in two hours. You should be able to do it in two hours.”
It's a fine balance between those components and having the external ‘forces’. The external forces are the consumers. Consumers drive things faster. When I was growing up, my mode of communication was sending letters. You know what, you're sick today, and then you're writing back to your parents or your friends to say, "I don't feel well and all that stuff," and then a month goes by, you get a response back that says, "Hey, how are you feeling?" You say, "But that was a month ago." But that was 25 years ago. Now can you imagine sending an email and somebody responds to you after a month?
I'm laughing because that's such a good point. I grew up in a generation that has been privileged to have social media and email, and I remember email growing up as a kid. It wasn't the fastest email, but we still had that.
This idea of when you had to write a letter, then physically go to a place to mail it, and finally waiting for the mail to come back to you… It's such a rarity in our society to have moments like that.
But that's the reason why email today is also not good. People crave that instant. That's the reason why you have instant messaging and chat. Constant craving for instant gratification. It's good, but it also has its toll on people.
What I've seen in the last 15 years, is that so much of mental health and emotional health is not solely on the individual. The rates for burnout are getting worse, but it's a reflection of our systems. It's to do with the structures that we have in society and having an open dialogue amongst each other about what's really happening.
It's a vicious cycle because all that stuff starts with the consumer. Can you imagine if you go online shopping and you can't place your order? You get upset. Well, guess what? That implication means somebody out there has to be always watching and making sure that the shopping cart or technology is up and running. If it breaks and that person is not at home, they're not at work and on the road, they have to really get onto the system to actually fix it. It creates pressure on people.
Then if you have somebody who comes up with another idea to do this, that means this other company has to either work harder to compete or become obsolete. Now from a mental health standpoint, it's really for people to recognize. The demand won’t ever go away, because this is what has been created, and people want things faster and faster.
When you mentioned consumers, I was thinking about myself. I'm a founder, but I'm a consumer of services for other people's companies. There's this complex relationship because, for you and I, we're creators but we’re also consumers when we're with our family or friends.
I want to hear your perspective on what we can do. We're human and you mentioned we don't work like machines. We have pressures we experience from friends and our society, always being on the go. How do you protect yourself from all of that? How do you stay grounded and take care of yourself as a leader?
Innovation is really about understanding what the objective is, and then once you understand the objective, you find different methods of doing it. For example, if your objective is to go from Toronto to Montreal, and you said, "Yes, that's my objective," then you can actually walk from Toronto to Montreal, you can bike from Toronto to Montreal.
Actually, it was the other way, Montreal to Toronto, because Toronto was further inland. As people say, "Well, yeah, we were walking," and then said, "Hey, you know what, I can actually climb on that four-legged animal, and it will make me get there faster. You know what, the four-legged animal can only take a maximum of two people. Let's build a little cart behind it. There's something that people have just invented called wheels. We can put that together. We now have a chariot or a cart." But it's not fast enough, "Well, is there a different method of going there?" "Oh, yeah, you know what? There's somebody who's invented a train.
Each time there's a different methodology that people use to actually achieve the same thing. The objective still hasn't changed. It's to go from Montreal to Toronto. But, the way that they're doing it is different. If we invest time in terms of understanding what the objectives are, then we can find different methodologies.
As to how I stay grounded, it's by getting other people to do the work that I'm supposed to be doing so that from their piece, they get the benefit, but it also allows me to step out, to learn, and to reflect on what needs to be done, and to really go keep finding what the objectives are. Because if I do the day-to-day same thing over and over again, and then try to do the strategic thinking and do all that stuff, I will get burned out. The piece is that if you can segment your work, grow your people, get them to do the work faster in the same idea it will make things easier.
I'll give you a perfect example. Creating user ID, username, and password. I was talking to my team and I asked them, "Okay, so how long does it take to create a username and password?" They said, "Kin, on all the system and all that stuff, a new user comes in, it takes us about 20 to 25 minutes." I said, "How about if I change that to zero?" They looked at me and said, "That means ... Are you getting rid of us?”
I said, "No, I'm not getting rid of you, because ... Let me ask you, what is the objective of the ID management team? A lot of times, people think that the ID management team, their objective is to actually create usernames for people." I said, "No, the objective of an ID management team is to actually ensure that the user has the right access to the system." Then I asked them, I said, "Okay, so how many times do you actually do your job, which is to ensure that the user has the right access to the system?" I said they do that twice a year. The rest of the time, they're creating users for people.
I said, "That's not your job, because it's very mundane and automated and repetitive. If I can automate that, it actually allows you time to actually do your work, to say, 'This person is here. This person should have access to the system. This person is no longer with this organization. That means ... So let me go and verify that.' If I can get people to shift and think of the objective, then that will help them grow. As opposed to, "My God, my job is to create user ID every day. Somebody leaves, I have to follow up after them, find out this." It's unnecessary stress.
That to me is the key point. If people are understanding more as to what the objectives are, then we can find a solution. But the problem is, a lot of the time people don't understand the objective. To me, having that question about objective and methodology is what I define as innovation.
I feel a lot of people who are looking at this can learn from you, mentioning giving ourselves time to reflect and to really sit down and have a dialogue with other people about what it is that we're working towards.
I call it the north star. What's the point of just running as fast as you can, if you don't know where you're running to? We can be tough on ourselves because we want to keep sprinting, without giving ourselves time to rest and to say, "Hey, maybe I should go talk to that person and ask where we're heading to next."
People have to work smarter. You definitely need to have the north star. The perfect analogy to that is, why are you running? Why are you not driving? Why are you not flying? Why are you burning the energy to run? Do you know what I'm saying? There is not just one way to get to a north star. There are multiple ways. The multiple ways are multiple methodologies.
For people who feel that they want to have this conversation and they don't know how to, what's the advice or suggestion that you would give to people who want to have this conversation, but don't know where to start?
My best advice is to have that conversation with somebody that they trust to see what kind of idea they are trying to convey. Then to take the effort, take the courage to approach the boss or the investor after that. But do talk openly to someone who they trust and be receptive to getting feedback. Talk to somebody who's going to be critical of you as opposed to somebody who's going to say yes to everything you're going to say because then that's not really supporting you.
That's such a beautiful way just to end this interview. For people to reflect: what does it mean to be really supported? So much support is not necessarily about pandering, but about communicating honestly.
Knowing that the person that you've trusted with that information is somebody who is willing to tell you the truth. They're willing to give you feedback that you need to hear so that you can do what is actually important.
The truth, like that movie, says, the truth is hard to handle. The truth is hard to hear. Can you handle the truth? It's tough, but you need to know the person who can actually be able to tell you the truth.
With something like mental health right now, you mentioned this is such a new era for us. People were brave enough to start the conversation. If I were to talk to my grandparents, for example, there was no such thing as talking about mental health.
They'd say you're crazy.
Yeah. You would get judged and ridiculed back then. It is because of people who had the courage and who trusted enough in themselves that said, "Hey, you know what? I can be honest enough with somebody and I can still be in my power. I'm strong enough to receive this feedback because I know that this will make me a better person."
I absolutely love our conversation today. Thank you for sharing with me, Kin.
You're welcome.