Simon Tsui VP of international information technology, Asia-Pacific, for Time-Warner Hong Kong
CWHK: Tell us about your specific role within the Time-Warner organization.
Simon Tsui: Time-Warner Hong Kong is a shared-services division within Time-Warner–we support a few of the divisions of Time-Warner in Hong Kong and throughout Asia-Pacific. Turner and Time Inc are our major constituents, we also serve Time-Warner corporate staff in Hong Kong and Warner Brothers here at our Hong Kong offices.
When you look at Asia-Pacific, Hong Kong is a relatively small market. The location and ease of entry/exit on an international level is why we have our headquarters here. Within Time-Warner we’ve got about 600 employees in Hong Kong.
CWHK: So within Time Inc, you have Time Asia…what else?
ST: Time Asia, Fortune Magazine, and the customer service of Time Inc: a separate organization called TW4. They handle fulfillment for other magazines.
CWHK: Time Asia, like our publication, started in an era when print-publishing was king, Fortune Magazine also. What are you doing now that the print landscape is changing?
ST: In the States, a lot of Time-owned magazines like People and Sports Illustrated have iPad-versions. People still crave content, it’s just the medium of delivery has changed.
CWHK: Apart from devices, the local audience seems to crave for content in their local languages.
ST: Yes. One of our new products is CNNgo, which was first launched in English. But now we’ve got simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Korean and Japanese. In the media industry we’ve seen a change in terms of viewer-preference. When Turner first came to Asia it was a big export business–CNN, Cartoon Network–we basically transferred the US programs to Asia. Now it’s localized–cartoon-series might have multiple languages that will be selected depending on the locale.
CWHK: But while Netizens prefer localized products, English is still the main means of communication in the business world.
ST: I have to thank my father for helping me learn English. He used to work at an Indian company, and recognized the global importance of English. So when I was young, while all the kids were watching Sunday morning cartoons, I would be with my dad reviewing and practicing English. I think my English ability has helped me greatly in this job. Language helps you build relationships–if you can’t communicate fluently, there’s always going to be some sort of barrier. And I tell my staff this–in our environment, English is very important.
CWHK: So when you came back to Hong Kong after your BA in Canada, what did you do?
ST: I didn’t really know–I would look at the Classified Post and realize I didn’t have the qualifications for these jobs! But I applied anyway and eventually got a job doing pre-sales for an Apple Center. After that I changed jobs a lot, mainly in sales and marketing for software on the Macintosh platform, and eventually was hired by Turner in ’94.
CWHK: What was your job back then?
ST: Systems engineer–back then there were only two people in IT: me and my boss. Every couple of nights the database would become corrupted and I would need to work with someone in the US to fix it, so I was working until 10:30 almost every night. The important thing for me is that I didn’t waste time working those hours, as I got to know people in the company and build trust.
While it’s been a slow process to become department head, it’s been a satisfying one. The company has continually expanded over the years, and I always need something new to keep me interested.
CWHK: You now sit on the Turner board. Is there anything you do to get the business guys interested in IT?
ST: It’s a slow journey. While we may spend time talking about social networking and all that, at the end of the day creating a viable business is what counts. But one of the initiatives we recently started is called “Business Liaison.” If a department is interested, we’ll insert one of our senior staff into their regular operational meetings. The purpose is to understand their everyday problems, and from those conversations, we learn where we can help.
CWHK: Do you see more interest towards business from your team? Do they see the value of understanding business?
ST: We do. We have an annual customer-satisfaction survey and one question is how IT is perceived: do you see us more as a problem solver or equipment-provider, up to a strategic partner.
Our IT team’s slogan is: “business-focused customer partnership,” there’s nothing IT about it. It’s really easy to hire technical professionals, but difficult to hire business people with a technical background, because if their focus is business, they won’t study tech in the first place.
I think the staff sees its importance–the problem I have is building enough traction for them to do something about it. There’s often resistance–IT people are busy, and I often hear them say: “I don’t have time to spend hours learning about what that business does.” My response is that being business-focused doesn’t mean you have to spend hours sitting with the business understanding it. If you show you’re interested in what they do, you become more valuable, and you don’t spend as much time as you think.
For the same reason, I don’t want to outsource our help-desk, because if done properly, our help-desk is a great place to be in touch with our business. Inherently, IT people are introverts–we’re more reactive rather than going out and learning new things. I put a lot of effort to educate my staff on the importance of help-desk and the importance of these touchpoints.
CWHK: I’ve heard others talk about the importance of bridging the IT-business gap. Do you ever get the staff together and try to aggregate what they’ve learned through this process?
ST: Operations has always been resistant to change, so it is one area where we’re trying very hard to achieve a broader mindset.
We use the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type) personality indicator here and many technical folks are what we call “sensing” types: very detail-oriented, but not as good as seeing the big picture.
So in addition to presenting them a big-picture concept, I try to add something concrete. We encouraged our staff to write down what they’ve accomplished, how they achieved it and we use it to demonstrate how that fits in our list of “IT Values.” Through learning this experience from others, the sensing-type staff has better understanding of how their work fits in a bigger picture. But sometimes when I’m talking with sensing-type people and they’re not quite getting it, I need to rephrase what I’m talking about.
In the past, if you were management, the staff had to listen to you. But now–at least in our company–that’s not true anymore. In management you have to listen more, and act differently with different folks, so actually…the days of management being tyrants are gone.
