Fintan Mc Kiernan, CEO at Ideal Systems SEA
Fintan joined Ideal Systems Group in 2011 to establish Ideal Systems in South East Asia (SEA) which now has over 100 staff in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Jakarta.
Ideal Systems SEA have built broadcast studios, facilities and systems for leading broadcast operators including RTM, Sony Pictures, Fox Sports, Astro, Globecast, Encompass Digital Media, CNN, Metro TV, and SingTel.
In 2014 Fintan started "Ideal-Live", Ideal Systems' sports production division which now produces over 300 live football matches a year. Fintan launched Ideal's pro-AV division in 2017, which currently supplies AV services to over 20 Government Departments as well as the Corporate sector.
Fintan is a member of the Asia Broadcast Union's Engineering Excellence Awards panel of judges. Before joining Ideal, Fintan established OmniBus Systems in APAC (Now Grass Valley) and has worked in broadcast technology roles in the US and Europe.
He is also a regular contributor and speaker at broadcast industry events in Asia including SMPTE, ABU and Broadcast Asia.
“I believe in failing fast and moving on, if it's not going to work, don't flog a dead horse, learn and move on. I'm driven by the notion that we can harness new technology to make things better, make our lives better and make the world a better place to live.”
Fintan Mc Kiernan
Fintan Mc Kiernan, LinkedIn
Tell us about your current role and what you like about your current career/role or areas of focus.
What I really like about my current career is the excitement of building a business in Asia, and the challenges involved. Not least managing unforeseen issues like Covid-19 which keeps my role dynamic and interesting.
I joined Ideal Systems in 2011 to start their business in South East Asia (SEA) by establishing a new hub office in Singapore. At that time Ideal Systems was a broadcast media technology service company with an HQ in Hong Kong and offices in China and India.
Today, after nine years, from starting with a laptop and working out of Starbucks in Singapore, my team consists of over a hundred people working out of our offices in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.
And our scope of the business has expanded to include cloud services, software development, live sports production and Pro AV technology services for corporate and government and medical sectors.
What inspires you, motivates you, helps you to make each day count?
I have a bit of inner geek, so science and technology inspire me and what we can do with emerging technologies. A bit of geek is a good attribute to have for my work.
A lot of my role is looking forward to where our business and industry are going and trying to reverse engineer that future to see what nascent technologies today will make a big impact tomorrow so we can stay ahead of the curve.
On the personal side, I remember being a teenager and learning the meaning of Latin phrase "Carpe Diem", and it really resonated with me, I think I even printed some letterhead writing paper with "Carpe Diem" incorporated like a coat of arms motto, of course, this is when teenagers still wrote letters!
Although I dropped the motto in 1989 when the phrase went mainstream after being featured in the Robin Williams film Dead Poets Society. A few years after that I had a major motorcycle accident in Tokyo which was nearly the end of me, but after fourteen operations I was put back together pretty well and got back to life as normal.
However, I did notice after the months laid up in the hospital, that the term Carpe Diem did not just resonate with me anymore, but faced with the reality of my own mortality I had become the embodiment of Carpe Diem, that stuck with me very much to this day, to make every day count, because tomorrow is not promised.
I was never shy, in fact, I was always pretty extroverted, but after the accident that got amped up to ten, still being alive was my motivation. In hindsight, I guess I had an acute realisation of the value of life, something that many take for granted.
Outside of your professional work area, what hobbies or interests do you have or what other areas of your life are of real importance to you?
I guess when you run your own business, the work/life balance blurs a bit. But I do try to have some not work-related activities. They change with my environment, when I lived in Kuala Lumpur for example, I did a lot of hiking in the jungles and mountains. In 2010 I organised a group to climb Mt. Kinabalu, which is one of the highest mountains in Southeast Asia.
Afterwards, we went to visit some of the schools that we had raised funds for, that was heart touching and heart-wrenching simultaneously. But I do urge anybody who gets the chance to support a charity to try and see the other side, witness what the charity actually does in action, to do so will change you, it will make you a better person, and with me, there is lots of scope for that.
When it comes to your life chosen career, is there a phrase, quote or saying that you really like?
Well, I'm not sure I chose my career. It chose me, I think. I'm also not sure I have a favourite phrase or quote, but I have a word. It was the title of an Otis Redding song from 1965 that Aretha Franklin made famous a couple of years later, "Respect". This is a big one for me, respect for others, respect for differences.
I think if you do a root cause analysis of many of today's problems it will come back to respect or lack thereof. I have built and led a very diverse team of people with different religions, ethnicities, cultures, and orientations. The fundamental principle that makes my team work so well together is respect. Not just my respect for them or vice versa, but mutual respect between everybody in the entire team.
This is particularly important in a services company. We don't make anything. We don't have a tangible product; our people are the product. That team needs to be effective, Asia is a hyper-competitive market, the effectiveness of your team can determine your competitiveness, ultimately can determine if your business survives. A team built on respect will collaborate, better synergise their abilities and ultimately if we are lucky and a bit smart provide us with a competitive advantage.
What are you most proud of in your life?
The people in my life. Family, friends and colleagues. Over the years, I have had the honour to work and play with some incredible people across the globe, that rich experience weaves a great life tapestry, one that I am proud of.
What do you wish you had known when you started out?
Ha! This is a difficult question, if I had a time machine and went back to the future style to a younger me to give some advice, most likely that advice would change the direction of my life and thus I would be in a different place right now, this is the time travel paradox.
For me, I guess I'm lucky as I really wouldn't like to change my life, every aspect has led to the next stage of development and it’s been an incredible journey so far, hard knocks and all.
In fact, sometimes the hard knocks have been the best learning experiences. That said, one thing that I would do differently, and I urge all young people starting out to do if they can, is set up a rainy-day fund and try to save a little from a young age.
For most of us, we never feel we have enough money, but again for most of us, we could have one or two less Starbucks coffees in a week and set that money aside. Invest that in a way it earns some interest, savings account, building society, stocks if feasible, keep adding a little and if you start this young enough it will turn into a considerable amount.
Become financially aware, they don't teach this in school, but there are lots of books, like Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki. If you don't read many books, then the ones that you do read need to count. Perhaps you never have that rainy day and well, perhaps you do, but you can't go back and start that when you are older, even if you have a DeLorean.
Who do you most admire in business, academic or creative circles?
Wow, so many people, I'll keep this answer mainstream, so people know who I'm talking about. I'm a businessperson, and I guess business is my hobby too, so I tend to admire a lot of businesspeople. My business hero's du jour are people like Henry Ford, Elon Musk, Reed Hastings and Ray Kroc.
The commonality between them is their innovation, persistence, and determination; in each case, they have created an empire or empires in entirely new markets. I love that, and I love that they invented or created the market.
By definition, they are leaders, because they had nobody to follow; they wrote the book because there was no book. That sort of blue-sky thinking and beating insurmountable odds, to me is amazing.
On the other side, and this harks back to spending the best part of a year in hospital, I have a huge admiration for nurses and caregivers around the world, they literally do the heavy lifting in our society, almost always underpaid and all too often underappreciated, they are angels that walk amongst us. Respect nurses and caregivers.
What companies, brands, or institutions do you like or do you think are getting it right?
I think green energy like solar, wind and tide is vital for the future of our planet. We must get off our carbon fuel addiction. New and emerging companies in this space should be confident of a great opportunity in a growth market that is also doing some good.
Tesla is an obvious one here, not just for killing the market for internal combustion engines in vehicles but for advancing battery technology, this is where we can make great leaps in the near future.
We can create massive amounts of green energy, but until we can store it and distribute it when we need it, we will still be burning oil and our planet.
What is the best advice you have ever received?
Never buy a cheap motorcycle helmet.
What drives or motivates you each day in a work environment?
Innovation. On a good day, we design a new system for a customer; we get to feel like an inventor.
I'm driven by the notion that we can harness new technology to make things better, make our lives better and make the world a better place to live.
What are your thoughts on the future of social media?
This is a divisive topic as there are good and bad aspects to social media. One could easily do a full thesis on this answer alone, but I'll keep my response brief.
Are social media companies good or bad for society? Is social media changing society? Is social media an actor for positive change, or does it impact us negatively? My guess is it's all of the aforementioned things, and some.
I think social media is a bit like a hot coal in a fire, it’s warming and comforting, but you need to handle it sensibly and with respect, use tongs and a fireguard if you leave the room, it could burn you, and it has the potential to burn your house down. But that does not mean it's not nice to have a warm fire on a cold winters' night.
For business, though, it's essential, the effectiveness of targeted social media advertising and marketing is getting better all the time and is a key part of companies marketing mix.
What is your favourite social media platform, and why?
I'm not a big user of social media and don't personally use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram. I use LinkedIn on the basis it has a business networking bias, although some days, I feel it is turning into Facebook or YouTube, kittens and all!
For business, I use targeted marketing with Google and Facebook and leverage their algorithmic targeting and positioning of our adverts to best effect, we review, revise and recalibrate our social media marketing on an ongoing basis.
Do you have a mentor, or have you ever been a mentor to anyone?
Both, for my mentors, I look at whatever it is that I'm trying to achieve and see who is doing it successfully already. Then I analyse how they are doing it and see if I can adapt and improve what they are doing to help me achieve my goals.
I call it stealth mentoring; they don't know they are mentoring me. The key for me studying a mentor is to ensure they have common values, not just common goals. Where I feel I can offer constructive advice, support, direction and where people are receptive, I mentor too. This usually takes the form of helping people to think more outside the box.
How do you network? What is your prefered way to network?
Before Covid-19, my primary networking was done at trade shows. I'm definitely a people person and meeting face to face with key suppliers, and customers is essential for me. Since Singapore essentially closed to international travel since March and due to tight movement restrictions, my networking has moved largely to Zoom calls and webinars.
Covid-19 has massively catalysed the use of video conferencing, and in fact, I have found that it's proving even more efficient than travelling to trade shows. With video conferencing, I get one-to-one meetings that are virtually face-to-face, and unlike on the floor of a trade show, the participants are relatively undistracted.
No time wasted on flights, taxis and hotels, no jet lag, I can use the saved travel time to be more productive on other things, it's been a good experience. I think for a lot of companies there will be a big rethink about how they operate, about work from home, video conferencing and business travel.
What advice would you have for someone looking to get into the same area of work?
The pace of technological innovation is increasing, and therefore the opportunities therein will increase too.
Migration to Cloud-based systems is only starting and has a long way to go for both the broadcast TV and pro-audio-visual industries.
If anybody is getting into an industry or a career, getting into a growth industry is like swimming with the current.
What do you feel is the most common reason for people failing or giving up?
People give up because they are afraid to fail; they are afraid to go too far down the rabbit hole in case it's a dead end.
I think we are all bred to be afraid to fail. From a young age, when we are in school, a fail is the end of the world. It sticks with us, fear of failure.
Therefore many people take the route with less risk, less opportunity to fail, if you don't try, then you can't fail. That is the failure, not trying, not taking the risk.
Failure for me is not a bad thing. It's a good thing, it is learning; the key is to keep trying, either the same thing in a different way or something different.
Even today I fail regularly, I will try new business initiatives, not all of them work, some will fail. I believe in failing fast and moving on, if it's not going to work, don't flog a dead horse, learn and move on.
How do you define success, and what lessons have you learned so far that you could share with our audience?
I guess for me there are two types of success, business success and life success. Ultimately success is achieving both simultaneously.
The common misperception is that success is all about money, I know plenty of wealthy people who are not even slightly happy. I know plenty of wealthy people who are not healthy.
Monetary success is very different from success. For me, success = Happy, Healthy and Humble.
I can see a few people that know me laughing at the last one, but humbleness, humility and respect clump together to make a person better and make the people around them better.
Not everybody is humble all the time, but we can try to be humble all the time, remember what I said earlier, failure is good so that you can fail a bit too, but keep trying.
What skills do you feel have helped you to become successful?
Humour and Zen. Over the years, I have defused many deal-breaking scenarios with a timely injection of humour; life is serious enough, lightening the mood is always good.
The ability to be Zen on demand. I pull this one out every now and then, it always catches people by surprise, in business, as in any situation in life, sometimes things go wrong, sometimes things go terribly wrong and sometimes it's a calamity, this is where having Zen on demand is a game-changer.
Just at the point when everybody is panicking, the chickens have lost their heads and are running around, that's when I hit the Zen button. Deep breath, sit back, relax, and switch from stress mode to becoming cool, calm and collected.
When you do this, when you keep your cool in times of duress, it calms the people around you. The chickens stop running and re-capitate themselves, solutions, workarounds, b-plans emerge, and before you know it, the fire has been extinguished or at least brought under control.
Anything else you would like to share with our audience?
Looking back, I guess this was an alternate answer for the fourth question.
I like watches, and I have a few, not enough to make me a collector. My favourite is an Italian watch made of bronze with the bezel inscription "Memento Audere Semper" which was the motto of a special elite diving unit of Italian Navy in WWII.
It essentially translates to "remember to always be bold [daring/brave]". I really like this motto, for business and life. Its essentially the inverse of "there is nothing to fear but fear itself", but the latter term tells you what not to do, my watch reminds me what to do or at least what to try and do.
Is there anything new that you are working on or involved in that you would like to share?
Always! On our broadcast technology side, we are working on some industry-leading cutting-edge cloud technology that radically changes television broadcast video workflows and operations. This will have many applications and will fundamentally change the technology that broadcasters use globally.