By Reynaldo C. Lugtu Jr. “At the core, Hit Refresh is about us humans and the unique quality we call empathy, which will become ever more valuable in a world where the torrent of technology will disrupt the status quo like never before.”– Satya Nadella from Hit Refresh Microsoft was an ailing company before its current CEO, Satya Nadella, took over – internal politicking instead of teamwork and innovation atrophy because of its arrogance. Now, it’s at the top spot of the “Top 100 Global Technology Leaders” published recently by Thomson Reuters, besting Apple, Google, and Amazon. It’s stock price has also reached its unprecedented high, prompting analysts to forecast its market cap to reach $1 trillion by 2020. At the heart of Microsoft’s transformation is rebuilding its culture – one that is hinged on empathy. This word appears 53 times in Satya’s book. It’s about understanding and feeling what customers experience; and has three components: 1.Listening: This is about taking the time to truly listen to each other. Business executives and employees will be more effective in their roles if they listen carefully to their customer and colleagues. Technological innovation will be much easier if we understand the true needs of our clients and customers, both external and internal. 2.Trusting: This is showing a belief in a person's honesty or sincerity, through open communication and feedback. Teamwork will be more effective if team members have a deep understanding of one another. This results in not having to worry about who gets credit or not, but rather the focus is on achieving a common purpose. Hence, the team shares a common accountability. 3.Understanding: This is about opening the mind and perceiving the feelings and intentions of others’ actions. This can make the difference between a productive interaction or an unproductive one. It helps one to admit mistakes and move on instead of blaming oneself or others. Amid the digital transformation and disruptions that organization face, empathy is the foundation in which culture likewise transforms. In my conversations with senior executives, clients, and a larger audience in conferences, they always ask – how can we transform our culture to become more responsive to customers, more innovative, and more resilient to disruptive technologies? I prescribe these steps to build an empathic culture:

• Create the Vision of what an empathic culture is – What are the problems of our customers that we can solve? What are the internal problems we need to address? What are the obstacles to our vision? How do we overcome them?
• Build a movement for cultural transformation – What is the baseline of empathy in our organization? What training and enablement can we have to develop empathy? Yes, empathy is a skill that can be learned and developed by organization members.
• Deliberately dialog about it – Create discussion groups about it. Talk about it in townhall meetings, in company messages and taglines
• Make it part of the organization’s DNA – Integrate it in measurable KPI’s of employees and customer satisfaction surveys.
• Modelling the way – Leaders should create standards of excellence and then set an example for others to follow, as Stephen Covey put it.
• Practice, practice, practice – members of the organization should breath and live it by practicing day in and day out.

What’s working well for Filipinos is that we are naturally hospitable – a recognized trait and quality by foreigners the world over. It is our disposition of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, generous way. It is deeply rooted in our culture of helping others, which sets us apart from many countries, making our country the call center capital of the world, and the main source of household help, seafarers, hotel and restaurant workers globally. We easily develop Filipino workers to become empathic through guidance, training, and practice. As artificial intelligence and robots emerge to replace even sophisticated tasks, empathy will be even more critical skill needed in the 4th Industrial Revolution. This is something that cannot be replaced and can be a sustainable source of competitive advantage of companies.

* The opinions expressed here are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of FINEX.The author may be emailed at [email protected]. The author is President of Hungry Workhorse, a digital and culture transformation consultancy company, and Co-Founder of Caucus, Inc, a data privacy consulting firm. He is the Chairman of the Information and Communications Technology Committee of FINEX. He teaches strategic management in the MBA Program of De La Salle University. He is also an Adjunct Faculty of the Asian Institute of Management.