Ep # 7 Peter Ramolete: From Fear to Opportunity: How Peter Leads His Team Through the AI Shift

Peter Ramolete has spent more than three decades in the technology industry, from programmer to consulting to leading entire outsourcing organizations across IBM, HP, HPE, and DXC. Today, as SVP and Managing Director of RealPage Philippines, he leads an organization whose core products are AI-driven workflow automation. He knows how to navigate big shifts. And when AI arrived, his first instinct was the same as most people's: a quiet, creeping fear.

In this episode, I sit down with Peter at his office for a conversation about what it actually takes to lead people through a change this big, honestly, vulnerably, and without pretending you have all the answers.

Peter talks about the three lenses he went through when AI first became impossible to ignore: the doom, the denial, and finally the deliberate choice to find the opportunity. He shares how he used the very tools he was afraid of to make that shift in under a week. We get into what he calls "human in the lead," the idea that staying in the loop is not enough and that people need to be actively directing where AI takes us, not just approving its outputs.

We also talk about the leadership behavior he believes will define the next decade: learning agility. The willingness to unlearn the formulas that made you successful, create safe spaces where even the most experienced leaders can ask stupid questions, and model vulnerability before you can ask it of anyone else.

This is a conversation about staying human at the frontier, and what it looks like to lead people there with courage, curiosity, and enough humility to admit you don't have it all figured out yet.

 What We Talked About

• Peter's origin story: from programmer to IBM to HP to leading entire outsourcing organizations, and the moment on a construction site watching his father communicate across every level of a building project that first sparked his fascination with human connection
• How struggling to be "the best" technically in school eventually led him toward the realization that his real edge was combining technical, human, and business skills, unlocked through his MBA and a philosophy and ethics class at Ateneo
• The training he and his wife took on how the brain works: the principle that humans are meaning-making machines, and how separating what actually happened from the story we tell about it changed the way he leads
• The early management lesson he learned from the one direct report who told him to stop trying so hard: "You don't need the script. Just tell me something about yourself."
• The three lenses Peter moved through when AI became impossible to ignore: doom and gloom, denial and delay, and finally a deliberate choice to find the opportunity, a shift that took him less than a week using AI itself as the thinking partner
• How he used Claude to research, pressure-test assumptions, and move from fear to a viable path forward, and why the same tool causing the disruption can accelerate the mindset shift
• "Human in the lead" vs. "human in the loop": why the passive framing of staying in the loop is not enough and why humans need to be actively directing where AI takes us, not just approving its outputs
• The critical thinking challenge with AI outputs: why polished, confident responses make it dangerously easy to stop questioning, and how asking AI what assumptions it made surfaces what it might have missed
• How Peter created psychological safety at the senior leadership level at RealPage Philippines: starting the AI learning journey together, bringing in external help, and explicitly creating a space where everyone, including leaders with decades of experience, could be openly and productively "stupid"
• Reverse mentoring: deliberately hiring a younger talent to mentor the leadership team on AI, going first as the most senior person in the room, and modeling the vulnerability he wanted to see
• The gaps holding the Philippines back in AI maturity: fear left unaddressed by leadership, communication vacuums that let doom-and-gloom narratives fill the space, and deep-rooted industry norms that reward task-specific expertise over learning agility
• Why the winning formulas that built the BPO and outsourcing industry are now working against it, and what it takes to help people unlearn something that once made them successful
• Learning agility and meta-learning as the defining competencies of the next era: not what you know, but how fast and willingly you can learn something new
• The one belief Peter wishes every leader in the Philippines would adopt: vulnerability, the courage to say out loud, "I don't know everything, and that's okay"

Episode Quote

"We needed to create a space where we could all be stupid and just ask stupid questions and experiment. Because we were stupid in this area, and we had leaders with two or three decades of experience and some ego there."
— Peter Ramolete, SVP and Managing Director, RealPage Philippines

Resources Mentioned

• "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie (recommended by Peter) - an early and lasting influence on how he approaches communication and connection across different kinds of people
• Claude / AI tools (used by Peter as a research and thinking partner) - specifically for working through the AI adoption challenge himself before bringing the conversation to his leadership team; his recommendation is to use the tools you are afraid of to figure out what to do with them

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

One of the key skills and competencies that we feel is really needed moving to this new era is learning agility and meta-learning, ability to learn. And we can take the stance that, you know, people inherently have a very strong ability to learn, but their mindset can be in the way.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Here in the Philippines, we've built our workplaces on something deeply cultural. Deference, hierarchy, don't challenge the person at the top of the room. And it made sense once. But the workforce walking into your offices today didn't get the memo and they're not interested in signing it. Human-centric leadership isn't an option anymore. It's the most commercially intelligent decision you can make right now. This is human podcast for senior leaders and anyone who wants to become one who already senses that something needs to change and are ready to do something about it. My name is Eli Harold, and on this show I sit down with people who lead teams in the Philippines, who want to build something different. Not just better businesses, but better ways of leading the people inside them, better cultures, and a better future of work. Alright, let's get into it. Three decades in tech, IBM, HP, HPE, DXD, and when AI arrived, Peter Ramoletti's first reaction was the same as most people's quiet, creeping fear. This week on Lead Human, I sat down with Peter, the SVP and managing director of Real Page Philippines, for one of the more honest conversations that I've had on this show so far about what it actually takes to lead people through a shift this big. Peter talks really honestly and clearly about the three lenses that he moved through when AI became impossible to ignore the doom, the denial, and the deliberate choice to find the opportunity. And he used AI itself to make that shift in under a week. But then he had to go back and bring his entire leadership team with him. And what I love so much about what Peter's doing is just like he is making a decision to really step into the role of modeling and going first and doing his best to steer the future and show other people the way. And I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. I found it really authentic and taught me a lot. We get into what he calls human in the lead instead of human in the loop and why psychological safety has to start at the top, why the formulas that built the outsourcing industry may now be working against it. If you lead people and you're trying to figure out how to stay human at the frontier, I really think this one is worth your time. I hope you enjoy it. And you know what? Would mean so much to me if you would let us know what you think. Rate the show, drop a comment wherever you listen to podcasts, or post something on LinkedIn about this and let us know if these conversations are bringing something to you that actually help you in your work or your leadership would mean a lot to me personally to know that it's impacting someone. All right, let's jump in and I hope you love it. Awesome. All right. So um I usually like to start with a little bit of you know background. So for anyone who doesn't know that much about your journey in in leadership, um, I know you started out in the consulting industry and I started out as a programmer.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Uh that was my very first job. I I graduated computer science. So that was sort of like a natural path. Quickly after that, though, I found myself in the area of consulting. I went to Anderson Consulting as my first job and then quickly went into IBM. Spent 10 years there. So from technical, that's where I sort of bridged into project management and then a bit more consulting and then everything else in between. So I am still very grateful about my decade in IBM. I I think I've experimented a lot in terms of roles there. Eventually I took on a different role because I want one of the realizations that I had was that in IBM I was focused on the local market. The buying patterns and the requirements of the local market are very different from the multinationals. So I wanted to tap into that and then went into HP at that time and officially entered the outsourcing business. Um, spent 16 years across HPE, then DXE, eventually led the entire organization up to a point where I realized I needed to, after like two and a half decades, um, I wanted to explore sort of outside of that outsourcing um arena and started going the software SaaS portion. So the past four years of my recent career has been on software and SaaS, which is totally different from um, but different, but at the same time, the skills can be reapplied. Um, but the models are very different, the expectations are very different. So really, really thankful that locally we have all of these options for us in this industry, um, that you know, we can move around and experience other stuff.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Nice. Can you remember some inflection points in that journey where you realized that maybe you needed to level up in leadership or where you realized that you wanted to get better at, you know, taking care of humans or that the human side of the business was something important to you?

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Maybe the earliest inflection point for me was even before I started working. There were several, right? But um, I guess the one that comes to mind right now is something that happened. Maybe I was in like high school. So my father, he's uh um, he used to be the technical executive director for a construction company. So he coordinates everything that's technical in a construction, right? So during summer in that particular year, he got me to come with him um with one of the buildings that they were building along uh Buendilla um in Makati. Um, they had completed, I think, probably like I don't know, like 12 out of the 30 floors that they were building. And I was fortunate enough to uh tag along with him, and that's when I saw him speaking with like really different people, like from the carpenters to the laborers and then the architects, the project managers. And then at some point his boss came by, and then a representative of the owner was there, and I saw him like in a span of like an hour speaking to different people in very different tones, language, even like gestures were very different. And he connected with everyone and he worked not the room but the site, I guess, uh at that time. And that was my first realization of to be effective, um, you really need to meet people where they're at. And so I started being interested in just speaking with like different languages. Before at that time, I had mostly spoken English because we had lived abroad for a while. Okay. Um, didn't even know Tagalog. That's when an inflection point I need to learn Tagalog and experiment a little bit on my um communication skills. So that was like a long time ago, but I think that was the very first inflection point about being interested in humans and different types of humans and how to communicate.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

That's a really cool story. I actually grew up in the construction industry as well on a lot of job sites, so I can kind of visualize that. And what that's a really cool opportunity for that you had that model to see. Yes. Especially with being your father.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

That's I would say he's my very first mentor. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

So you other than learning languages, what else did you do to kind of pursue that interest in people?

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Um well, I I think from an education-wise, right, after that, I was pretty intent to be the best at whatever I could be, right? But there was this like elusive like thing with me from high school all the way up to graduating college that I couldn't really find that single thing that made me the best, or I could say the number one in my batch or the number one in my group. I was always like second, third, fourth kind of thing. So I was kind of looking through it. Um, it turned out I was looking at the wrong places, like um in college and high school, like the more technical that I should be, or I could be like I needed to become the best programmer, etc. That was a dead end for me because that my brain is really just not wired to being like really technical. There was always a few people who were much better at it than I was. So fast forward when I started working, I still could not discover what I initially learned from my father, right? Eventually I took my MBA, and that's where I discovered that I could combine these technical skills with human skills and business skills. I think it was the first time I took an ethics class and a philosophy class. Um, thank you, Ateneo, um, for that. Um and um that's when I started exploring. And then I got more responsibilities in the office. Um, I was, I think my first time I got into management was my in my mid-20s. Um, they assigned me a small team, uh, did project project management. Um that I think was a great lesson or series of lessons for me and like managing people. Um eventually, though, um I just found myself myself gravitating towards um learning around how the brain functions, how humans think, how we get encouraged, inspired, and how we move. Um so from books to podcasts, um, even when podcasts weren't a thing yet, uh, before audiobooks eventually. And then there's this particular series of training courses that my wife and I took um to be more self-aware, but at the same time, like really with speed spot what people are going through and coaching and all of that, which I brought back to my my professional.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

So valued, so valuable and undervalued in general. Wasn't really called neuroscience back then so much, was it?

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Well, we didn't call it neuroscience, but it it was part of it was was that um and a lot of practice. Um that that that was the great thing about it. Like the program had it was structured in such a way that we had a lot of practice. Um and and to be honest, a lot of the success that I have right now is because I've gotten that practice um so that when I um needed to use those skills in a professional environment, it just came naturally to me. Because I'm an introvert, so these skills didn't come naturally at all. So I'm I'm afraid of people.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Uh can you give me an example of practice? So you you learned you were learning more about how humans work and like what kind of practice.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Well, um, for example, like one of the basic they call it tools was um around people are meaning-making machines, right? So the basic principle is that something happens, which is totally different from how we interpret or the story that happens and how we're wired cognitively is that it's a vicious cycle. Like we something happens, we make an interpretation about it, and then that interpretation informs us to see the world in in that way that shapes your next experience. It's sort of like a vicious cycle, so a self-fulfilling prophecy, so to speak. So now the earlier and the stronger you are at differentiating the two, then you're clearer about what really just happened and what's your take. Yes. Or what's your you know how how you how you took it on. And sometimes it's hard to see that for yourself, even probably harder to coach another person to see it for um him or herself.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Yeah, it's um the hypothesis or the posit is that it's it's never the thing that happened, it's always the meaning we made or the story we told ourselves about it, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:19

That produces the emotional charge that yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

And then we just only see data that matches the belief we exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Studying how people work and neuroscience and going deep into those things has also been really so useful for me. And I got so obsessed with it for a couple of years. Um quite a few books that really changed the way I see myself and other people. Can you think of a book that you could share with people that was uh kind of stuck out or a horse or anything?

SPEAKER_01 12:51

I'm not a big book reader, um, to be very honest about it. Um but one of the earlier books that I still remember until now would be Carnegie's book around how to win how to win friends and influence people, right? So um in fact, there's a particular story in that book about like uh influencing policemen, um, which I still hold true today. Like I since I've read that book, my driver's license hasn't been confiscated uh from me. Like so the type of conversations I have with You're making us think that there are many reasons why it shouldn't go. I won't comment on that, but before that, there was a big contrast before that, or like before there were a few times after um I knew how to communicate such that not to worsen my position, but at the same time, like just you know, really get to not getting my license remote like that.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Congratulations. Thank you. Um along the journey of leadership and you know, yeah, just working with people as your core focus. Is there anything you could think of where you unlearned something or you changed a belief where you know you previously believed this and you kind of shifted across time to realize significant change?

SPEAKER_01 14:17

There there were a lot. Like uh I think in in this industry, in the profession we are in, we we have to constantly learn in and learn, right? Um I guess one of the one of the earlier and I'm trying to get to like the Genesis moments, right? Um earlier when I was like the first time I became a manager, right? So be after that before that I was a project manager, so I had some experience in managing people, but not to the extent of being their people leader, right? Um so now um so the they got me to lead a small group of architects. Now, when we say architects in IBM, they typically were old or older. Um, so I was quite young at the time. So I think it were a group of it was a group of around 10 people. Nine of them were much older than I was, and then there was a single, one single person who was two years younger than I was at that time. Since it was my first people leader role, I was like, okay, I'm gonna apply everything that I've learned and research and all of that. And I had one-on-ones with them. Um, very, very structured. I would prepare, like, you know, I'm a planner, like I would prepare. How do I get to know them better? These are the questions that I will ask. This is what I'm willing to share about myself and what structures we need to establish between the relationship to make it work. And at the time, Starbucks was a big thing. Uh, they had only one branch in Makati. If you remember in 6750, that was their first branch. So I would buy them coffee from Starbucks, from the very first branch, for our one-on-ones. And then it went along quite okay for a few months. And then, but there was this one guy who I felt like I wasn't like building a connection with. And that was the younger guy. Right. Uh, at some point, I think after a third or fourth one-on-one, he just blurted it out and said, Peter, you don't need to try too hard. Uh I was like, What do you mean? This coffee, you know, I can buy myself the coffee. I appreciate it, you know, but maybe just tell me something about yourself. I'll tell you something about uh I'm thinking about, and then let's go on from there. So from there I threw out the script and learned how to just be in the moment and be with a person, uh, be with the people around me in a professional setting. Since then, the relationship flourished, you know, when he got married, I was there, you know, in his promotions, um, I was there. And I sort of took that learning with me all throughout this year. But yeah, and there's countless other areas like where we are right now with with AI, right? Like, I'm questioning myself really like how do I need to change as a leader with with everything that's happening around us? Um, I think it's the latest um change that I'm going through. Um I, you know, being in the industry or working for more than three decades now, I sort of had like a backstory in my mind that Peter, you deserve to not learn as much and just rely on, you know, what you've learned throughout the three and a half decades. Um but now it's like, no, you can't. Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

So um yes, let's let's you know transition into into that topic. Um you're leading a you're leading in a company where you know core products are literally AI that that change that that takes over human workflows and accelerating the the change of what work is. So how do you how are you currently navigating, you know, advocating for people? Um I know you've talked about remaining human in this in this age of AI. Yeah. Where are you currently at with that journey?

SPEAKER_01 18:24

I think I started with just acknowledging uh and really seeing the tech and what it could do and how it compares to the previous like big waves like cloud and the internet and all of that, and see how different this is and how big this is and how fast it is evolving. Um, and with that acknowledgement and understanding, um my initial reaction was like, nah, I'm gonna take the like different lenses, right? One is uh, I would say a pessimistic view um around, oh, this is doom and gloom, they're gonna take people's jobs away, it'll take my job away, um, and it's gonna be people will have a lot, a lot of people won't have jobs, right? And then quickly shift into a lens where no, the data's lying. Um, or it will take 10 years before people really adopt this, or or maybe the head of the ostrich under the sand um lens, right? Eventually um I guided my way to because I was dealing it with myself first, um, because I didn't want to involve my core leadership team when I was in the first two lenses, right? Eventually I had to take a deliberate choice to take on a third lens, which is there's some opportunity here. You just need to open up to it and be cautiously optimistic about what we can build with this technology. And that's when start things started opening up with me. Um, I then I had the space to do um, like really seeing what is the potential opportunity and impact on the various teams that we have, or people in this like typical roles in this industry, um, how much automation can provide or absorbed, or how much of what we do can be absorbed. And then from there, what do we need to do to prepare people? And how do we develop people such that they can arrive?

SPEAKER_00 20:37

I want to hear a lot more about where you've gotten to after you found that third lens. But just really curious how long did it take you to get through the first two lenses and into the third one?

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Very fast. Um took me a week with Claude to start, you know, just prompting my way through research and uh scenarios and all of that. Um so really like AI as a thinking partner. Um and then that I also that gave me the realization that, you know, um, because typically these cycles would be months, right? Um but here we are a week. Um, and suddenly an opportunity, right? Like we can actually change people's mindsets much shorter now with the power of the same tool that's inflicting this transfer.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

At least scaring everyone. No, that's that's fascinating. Okay. All right. And so you know, once you put on the third lens, then where did that take you?

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Now different possibilities started to show up. Um again, going back to because I I I mentioned that I had to deliberately take on that third lens, right? Um, because I also knew about Myself and me being a human being and how to change typical patterns in my thinking. Right. So the training that I mentioned to you about in that experience, I applied it to myself to get to that speed. And so by the time when I was in the third lens, new opportunities started coming up. New avenues and roadways into how to deal with this started to arise. And it provided a space for some conversation with other people about it. Being vulnerable, that I really just went through all of that and just checking in on them, where are they? Right. So now we've expanded that conversation. And now we have quite a few great ideas on how we move forward, what work potentially will look like. And how the various roles that we have can potentially look like after in the next, you know, not even after this is done, I mean in the next 18 to 24 months. And that's very empowering at the moment because initially it was just like staring at you and saying, you know, something big will happen to now I have a path moving forward. That's not everything is known, but there's a viable path forward.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

That's a good feeling. And you mentioned that you I think you're alluding to some real deep research that you have done. Yeah, whatever you can share, like what has that led to? I'm glad it's led to optimism and feeling like you have a clear path forward. Maybe any other leaders out there in a similar position, if you could give them recommendations on how you did that shift or you know, what kind of research project you went into or anything like that?

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Well, number one, use the same tools that you're afraid of to figure out what to do with it. So in our company, we were fortunate enough to get early access to these, like really big toes as soon as they were announced. Um not just one, but two or three. And we started comparing what they would um um how they could work for us, right? So that was one an opportunity. Started asking like small questions, looking at what data is available that's clean enough that I can feed it to make to understand what we're going through. I had to tell it a lot about myself and my role and the type of work that we do in the company and other like data points around protecting PII and all of that, right? And then just asking, being curious and being critical about what it gets, you know, causes you back. Um, because it's so the the output that they give is so polished that it's so easy to believe that it's the truth. But um we really need to exercise human critical thinking around whether is this really real or is this something not applicable to me, or are they making assumptions? And yeah, you can ask them what assumptions they made in in coming up with that. So actually, I fell in love. I fell in love with the tech. Um so much so incredible. It's incredible like comparing what we had like in December to what we had in Feb and then March, and then now like the evolution of how smart it is and you know what what they could potentially provide is just to me right now, it's inspiring being part of the IT industry for the three and a half decades at the moment. So so now it's really around allowing myself to like reimagining initially the work and then the workflows and then reimagining how people can lead this. Because we're talking about human in the loop, right? But we're also speaking about human in the lead, right? We shouldn't be just in the loop, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:59

We should be I have I have had a similar thought about that phrase where I'm a little bit it sounds a little passive or you know, latent. It's a little late. It's like yeah, we we need to be. I I also want to kind of double click on the the filter issue because I I see this daily where the outputs are are so polished and they sound so good. And I think you know, we can very easily get a little lazy because we want to, you know, go too fast, I guess. But I mean, obviously this is gonna be a big challenge for people at all levels, but just just thinking as a very senior leader who is responsible for directing the future of an organization. Um when you say critical thinking, yeah, I I love what you you just you just opened up a thread that I think sounds very interesting is um test the assumptions. So what could you give us some examples of of what you look what you have noticed in outputs that made you realize you needed to ask what the assumptions were or or you know, give us some ideas, how do we get better at that?

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Yeah, I think, well, with my early learnings, I realized conceptually they tell you AI is only as good as the data that you feed it, right? Um unfortunately, the state of our data is not necessarily super clean, right? So, and the effort to clean it before feeding it to the models is in and of itself a lot of work sometimes. So um then you feed it with your best available to get, but my realization is that you need to be cognizant about that, that it's your best available data set. And from your knowledge about that data set, what false assumptions would the model have gotten to because of that? And also like feeding them multiple data sets, you're expecting them to look at and see the patterns and interconnections, but sometimes it doesn't. And you need to ask, what interconnections did you actually see or not? How about this? And most models will not disagree with you. They'll say, you know, oh, you that's a good point, stroking your ego. And it's like good cat. So I I changed my I'm building my agent OS at the moment. So um, so I I changed that. You know, you need to be more direct with me, you don't need to stroke my ego and all of that. And that sort of changed the conversation that I'm having with it right now. But incredible to go through that journey in just like a couple of months by actually taking it on. I'm now learning more about the model. So I spoke to you a little bit earlier around, you know, after this long time, I would have expected my that my experience would lead me through the last 10 years of my working life, right? Um but now I'm seeing in, you know, with this experience, just actually acting on it and doing it and experimenting. Um I'm learning a lot through the very tools that are at subject. So it's it's very interesting where we are at the moment. And to get to where I am now compared to like two months ago when I seriously started looking into this. It's just it's just so incredible how things can change. Uh gives me also like how that might impact other people.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Yeah, that's kind of what I wanted. I think if I understand what you mean by that, I think one of the biggest disparities that I am seeing is that it doesn't take very long to open up your mind around what's possible and to start realizing like you can totally change your worldview about, you know, about like your paradigm about what's possible. But then you it's easy to also forget how many people don't understand yet and if they don't see that and they haven't experienced that yet. So what do you think we can do as leaders to sort of model or make to help people see what's possible so that they would start to desire to innovate or want to experiment?

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Well, you said it, model, right? One of the first things we did last year was to start with our most senior leaders around creating this conversation and learning together. Because we knew that at that time the tools that we have now weren't as sophisticated just yet. But being um IT practitioners and professionals, we knew where this was headed, right? It was just too fast. Um, so we started the conversation very early. We learned as a group. Initially, we asked external help um just to start it off and then see what's possible for us. Like even just going through understanding how models work, what are large language models, how does hallucination come up? What's a good, what's a prompt? What's a good prompt, what's a bad prompt? And even like what what are the what are the different models good at um and how to use them, which are not still can't keep up with that. Yeah, exactly. Because the the good, what good looks like before is not anywhere near where it is right now. Um so the realization of we this is like really a continuous accelerated learning um is something that we realized um very early. We also had to prepare a very safe space for all of us to learn together. Because we were stupid in this area, but we have leaders, you know, had two, three decades of experience with some ego there, right? So we needed to create a space where we could all be stupid and just ask stupid questions and experiment.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Um that's gonna be the major quote from this whole conversation. You have to create a space where you can just all be stupid together.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

Yeah, that's that's good.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

And we realize that some are like paysetters, some are like average, some are still lagging behind as a as a leadership team, right? So we could just project that out to to everyone. So yeah, so that's what we're now um building. We're in the middle of that, like creating safe spaces for people, changing the narrative around AI, um, and how it can because before, given that there was no like active narrative, uh, people were getting doom and gloom, afraid, like context around it. So we want to reshape that. Because if we don't reshape that, then people won't pull it in towards themselves. Right. So so we're in the middle of that journey. How do we do that? But it really just started with modeling um and sharing what we were learning and also what where we felt stupid.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

And you personally took a significant amount of time to go deep. Yes. Which means you have to go, you went first, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:39

Yes, yes. I'm lucky and fortunate that I had access to people who were way ahead of me. Right. So, and and they provided safe spaces for me um to do that. Um, one of the first things that I did was to seek out a talent that could reverse mentor me uh in this area. I hired the talent into the org because I knew that we all needed mentor, a mentor to start this off so that we could be mentors ourselves and create these safe spaces across. Um it's amazing that we just started it off like barely a year ago. And to to see where we are right now in terms of the lenses that we took, the kind of conversations we're having now, the kind of learning that we are experiencing individually and collectively is to me inspiring. Now that my our next problem, our challenge is how to get everyone else along the journey. Um Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

So that's the part I want to kind of shift toward is you know, widespread adoption and like clarity around what is the ideal vision of that look like, and then how do you actually support people well, which I know is a lot of what you're thinking about right now. Maybe before we go into that, just kind of zooming out a little bit. I think I saw that you said you've spoken publicly about how in the Philippines there's very few organizations that are AI, you know, very mature at all. Um, where do you see the biggest gaps in? Is it you know, skills, is it mindset, is it leadership? Like, where do you think the gaps are that we need to do?

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Or agree about when when I say it, um, I I don't think there's like a single way to measure like maturity, and nor would companies actually publish their own self-assessment um on maturity in this area. But with my interactions in the industry with fellow leaders in other companies, um this is all we talk about recently, and you know, from the notes being exchanged. A lot of it, I feel one of the gaps is fear, and that fear comes as a default when we don't shape the narrative deliberately with our people. So that's a gap. So I think communication is a gap. Um, and also skills and competencies. Why do I say that? This industry where we are at is not new, it's a little bit old, right? Like it's at least like three or four decades into that. And with industries like this, as you mature, a lot of people sort of develop winning formula and standards, right? And what good looks like and how work should be done in this industry. And that in and of itself um has formed like norms that are deep-rooted with our practitioners in the industry. Like that, I'll give you an example. Um we I this is my job, and I'm doing this. Now you cross-train me into something new. Now my work is a little bit more complex, and I need to toggle between two domains. I deserve a bump up in pay. Um, because what they've been used to in the industry is that it's very, like, very specific. This is what you do, this is very process-driven, right? Uh very task-driven, KPI-driven. That's how we built this, right? One of the problems we are at is that that is preventing us from getting people to learn as much as they can with the speed that they need to do this, right? Um so um, so I I point that out as a gap, maybe recency effect, because that's something that we're looking at even um in our current teams, but I feel it's a big gap. This this structure that we had created and made this industry successful is something that we need to deal with because we we have to unlearn it and learn something new. Yeah, no, that's true. And and people need to be able to see that as early as they can so that they have the proper mindset to learn. And that's why I was telling earlier, one of the key um um skills and competencies that we feel is really needed moving to this new era is learning agility and meta-learning, ability to learn. And we can take the sense that you know people inherently have a very strong ability to learn, but their mindset can be in the way.

SPEAKER_00 37:26

I could talk on this topic for days, because I grew up actually homeschooled and I'm very much a self-teacher, and my kids also. And I think you know, we we have access to all knowledge. Yeah. So if we have that ability to quickly learn new things and be curious and seek them out ourselves, like now it's a superpower. Cause you you know, and yes, conversely, if we grew up in a world where school taught us to just kind of follow the protocol and don't ask questions, we're fairly disadvantaged, and that's a huge shift.

SPEAKER_01 37:58

Um Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Conscious of the time, and I really, really appreciate this conversation. I am starting to think we might need to come back and do another one in six months or a year to see, you know, how because you're because you're you're really pushing the envelope. I can see that. And um, you know, one of my favorite things you just said is we can't allow there to be a vacuum of information, which means you have to go deep, you have to model, you have to have some clarity. Of course, you don't know where's where things are going, but you've got to be able to show people that you have a little bit more vision of what the future looks like than they do. And if you say nothing, then the fear will just build, right? I think that's so important. If you can answer quickly, because I know we're running out of time, you know, just one belief or behavior that you wish you could see every leader in the Philippines adopt. Just a belief or a behavior.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

Just one.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

Yep, that's the hard part. You gotta choose.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

I think being vulnerable, especially where we are at with the tech around us, and and just acknowledge we don't know everything. And it's okay to not know everything.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

It's okay to not know. That phrase alone in this culture, it's it's typically not okay to not know somehow, right? Yeah. Vulnerability requires so much courage the more you practice it. It gets but it it's so powerful.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Okay. Peter, really, really appreciate the conversation. Uh thank you. Appreciate what you're doing as well. And I'm learning from you. So thank you. Curious to see where where you are in the year and and what you learned.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

I'm very curious to know. All right. All right. Thank you very much. Uh and uh best wishes. Um hopefully you'll have uh a lot more interesting conversations in in the near future.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

Definitely. All right, thank you. All right, thank you. All right, that's the conversation for today. And you know what? If something in there hit, good. Stick with it. The most expensive leadership insight is the one you agree with and never asked. If this felt worth your time, pass it on to one leader in your life who needs to hear it. That's how this conversation grows. Thank you again for being here. I'd love to hear your comments on the conversation. Again, I'm Eli Harold, and this is what leadership looks like when students come first. See you next time.