Domhnaill Hernon, Global Lead Cognitive Human Enterprise, EY
Domhnaill Hernon is an award-winning technology, innovation and creativity executive. Domhnaill received an undergrad in Aeronautical Engineering, a PhD in Aerodynamics from the University of Limerick, and an executive MBA from Dublin City University, Ireland.
He is the global lead and co-founder of a new initiative at EY to create the Cognitive Human Enterprise. This pioneering new approach combines massively multidisciplinary collaboration and full-spectrum diversity to maximize organizational cognitive flexibility.
Prior to that, he founded a new initiative to fuse art and engineering/science to develop solutions that humanize technology while at Nokia Bell Labs.
Domhnaill's work has been featured in Wired Magazine, Times Square, SXSW, Nasdaq, MWC, Ars Electronica, TEDx, and Inspirefest, to name just a few. He also advises innovation and cultural programs globally.
What is your favourite social media platform, and why?
Personally, I use a couple of social media apps that provide short and visual information because they cover all of my creative interests. I like being able to scan through the content very quickly at a high level, and from there, I can dig in deeper if I so choose across other longer-form platforms.
Professionally, LinkedIn is the best network for my work – the content that I share on LinkedIn has always resonated much better than on any other platform.
Tell us about you and your current role or area of interest.
I co-founded a new initiative called the Cognitive Human Enterprise with EY’s Chief Customer Success Officer (Edwina Fitzmaurice). The mission of this organization is to invest in massively multidisciplinary collaboration and full-spectrum diversity to create the most cognitively diverse teams and organizations imaginable.
I believe that it is only when you bring together the breadth of humanity that you can even start considering solving some of the biggest challenges ahead in society. My work focuses on purposefully fusing the worlds of art and technology to ensure that we build a better working world with humans@center.
What do you like about your career or area of focus?
I learn every hour of every day. I get to work with great people from all over the world with diverse lived experiences. I get to develop technology that has the potential to positively transform society. And for me personally – I get to be always at the absolute leading edge in new ways of thinking and building to create positive change in technology, business and society.
What is the best advice you have ever received?
"Turn your frustration into a challenge."
Earlier in my career, I used to get very frustrated with how I perceived others delaying progress, and I found it very difficult to disguise my impatience. One of my long-standing mentors advised me to turn my frustration into a challenge. This helped me considerably because I was (and still am) very motivated by challenges. That was the initial mental trick to cause a reframing which helped greatly.
After that, I spent a lot of time getting to know different people, understanding their perspectives and lived experiences, and deeply understanding their motivations. When I did this, I realized that there was immense value in their approach. If I could find a way to overcome our initial communication barriers and be more tolerant of different approaches, the potential for high-impact collaboration was almost always present.
What inspires you, motivates you, or helps you to move forward?
There are a few things.
Helping others reach their full potential. I find a lot of people can get in their own way, and they allow the noise to dominate their thinking which only adds complexity. I love helping others remove the noise, detect the critical aspects of what is important and then take action to have an impact.
I like being able to clarify complicated topics to a broad audience. It's something I worked on earlier in my career. I also like helping others bring clarity to their work and how they present it to others to have an impact.
I like being provocative in my thinking and storytelling, and I love the reaction when you help someone see something known to them in a completely new light.
I love bringing humanity to tech!
What are you proud of in your life so far?
I can only hope that my efforts to be a good leader who helps people reach their full potential have had some impact. Then, when I am on my death bed, at least I can be proud that I tried my absolute best to be that person.
What is your preferred way to meet new people/network?
I love meeting people in all ways possible, but my best conversations have been curated by someone that knows me well and introduces me to someone in their network because they have a sense that both of us would vibe
Often in these examples, a lot of the upfront getting to know each other is removed because you leverage the mutual trust each of you built up with that other person that introduces you.
What skills or qualities do you feel have helped you?
Openness to new ideas and willingness to collaborate to take ideas further across disciplines. Also, I get a vision somewhere in the back of my mind for what change has to happen, and then I make it happen… I won't let anything get in the way of that vision. At times I might not be able to move at the speed I would like, but I will never stop.
So, being resolute is critical when you are trying to create new things. I often share with people my philosophy on what I call being "strategically ruthless". It comes back to a couple of things I've said elsewhere here – knowing where you are going and why, removing the noise that will try and get in your way, and being sensitive to changes such that you can tweak or change direction as needed and then don't let anyone stop you.
What do you wish you had known when you started out?
I tend to not look back like that, as I truly believe that I am who I am today because of the entirety of the journey I have been on and all the decisions (good or bad) I made on that journey that enabled me to learn and grow.
However, I do think a lot about how I was trained in college doing Aeronautical Engineering and how most of the folks from the STEM subjects are trained and expected to create value in the workplace often lack the human-centric perspectives of those in the humanities and the arts.
This massive knowledge gap needs to be filled with urgency in our education systems.
Who do you most admire in business, academic or creative circles and why?
I admire the people who go out of their way to help others where possible… the ones who break down all the walls within the organization to help others succeed. Unfortunately, they are almost never the ones most visible on the outside but critical to the business's success on the inside.
Personally, I am inspired by movie directors and how they can craft such immense experiences for such broad audiences. I think that it is a gift to be able to move so many people with your vision.
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 come from a very musical family in Ireland, and I play traditional Irish music on the fiddle. So, music played a critical role in my life, especially in my teens. But I also love/hate golf. I love the challenge of it and how I know I will never better it, but I also hate that I get such little return from my efforts in trying to get better!
Has the pandemic had a positive or a negative effect on you and/or your business, and how have you managed it?
I feel very lucky and privileged to say that the pandemic has been a positive for me in many ways. Luckily none of my family or friends was badly affected by the pandemic, and everyone is healthy, and that is most important.
On the professional side – I changed jobs in the summer of 2021. I worked remotely for six months before the pandemic hit, so that didn't change anything for me, but all my travel stopped, which was beneficial. That also meant that I had more time with family and more time to think and be creative in my work.
The pandemic helped me better understand the importance of time in trying to be truly innovative and creative and that we need to give ourselves ample time; otherwise, it will only create incremental gains.
Any leader reading this that expects their people to be truly innovative and creative and doesn't enable them to have time to think is doing their organization and people a great disservice.
Do you have a mentor, or have you ever mentored anyone?
I have a few close friends and advisors who always offer the sound council. These are people that I will chat with regularly and share what is going on, and they offer advice given how well they know my personality and my interests!
My closest advisors were of immense help during my lengthy search for the perfect opportunity before I moved jobs recently. I love mentoring – I do it as much as I can and wish I could do more. Maybe closer to retirement, I can make it my core responsibility.
What advice would you have for someone looking to get into the same area of work or interests?
Understand your primary motivations for wanting to do this type of work. Always be open to new ideas, new ways of working and especially new people from all walks of life.
Get very comfortable with change and gargantuan levels of uncertainty. Operating within an uncertain environment should become second nature; nothing impactful was ever created being satisfied with the status quo.
What do you feel is the most common reason for people failing or giving up?
An inability to navigate uncertainty and allowing the noise to get in the way of progress. Life can be very challenging at times, and there is always so much noise that can get in our way. You need to deeply understand yourself and the reasons why you are doing something. And you need to chart a path to success, pay attention to the signals and be ready to tweak or pivot in time.
You need to always operate in the sense of heightened awareness of your environment to be able to make the right decisions at the right time, it is tiring when you are not used to it, but it can become second nature with practice and guidance.
Is there a phrase, quote or a saying that you really like?
“Go where you are rare” is a saying that I heard a collaborator of mine (Sougwen Chung) say. I find operating in those rare spaces can enable you to create unique value.
My father always says “what’s for you won’t go by you”. In other words, there is only so much you can do, and you have only so much control over life.
There are a couple of other quotes that resonate with me such as “plans are useless but planning is indispensable” attributed to Dwight D Eisenhower and “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” attributed to Mike Tyson. Both of these quotes refer to the importance of process over outcome.
What companies, brands, or institutions do you like or do you think are getting it right?
I joined EY (formerly Ernst and Young) because I got a strong sense of the organization's corporate and leadership culture and how EY people make serious investments and lead the way in business doing good for society.
That sense has only grown stronger since I joined a few months ago; whether it be the environment, neurodiversity, Humans@Center, or how people across the organization come together every day to help each other – it is a special place to work.
How do you define success, and what lessons have you learned so far that you could share with our audience/readership?
Many of my decisions are based on an "on my death bed" scenario. I know it sounds morbid, but it really helps me. I project my mind into my future self as I take some of my last breaths in this world, and I think about the decision I need to make or my impact as best I can through that lens.
Whenever I am asked about what success means to me, I think about the question through that lens; I always think about the impact I've had on the people I work with.
Did I help them grow? Did I help them find ways to navigate through the noise? Was I kind?
And I view success as the roots of a tree… did I help shape that person to become all they could become, and did they embrace that ethos of helping others and expand it within their own sphere of influence?
Although I would never know the true impact, that is what success means to me. My impact might be felt broadly, and most people have no idea who I am.