In this episode, Paige Buan sits with Jebe Gayanelo as he shares insights on leadership, problem-solving, and empowering teams. He emphasizes the importance of identifying the root cause of problems and the value of getting perspectives from junior team members. He also stresses the importance of understanding that employees care about their jobs but also their personal and family lives. He talks about the importance of a balanced approach to management, where employees are happy and also able to deliver results. He also highlights the negative impact of silos within organizations. Jebe also shares his own journey on becoming a leader and how he realized that leadership is not just about getting results but also providing for his family and the importance of genuinely caring for the welfare of people around him.
Throughout the episode, Jebe shares personal anecdotes and experiences to illustrate his points. Jebe shares that he realized the importance of being a leader and empowering people, and that to achieve that level of success, he needed to realize and unlock his leadership potential.
A few things we talked about:
About the Guest
Jebe Gayanelo, a seasoned executive with over 4 decades of experience in various industries, including logistics, agriculture, food & beverage, and healthcare. He has held leadership roles in various companies such as La Filipina UyGongco Corp; Asia Brewery Inc., Nativo Nutritionals, Unilab, PT Medifarma Indonesia, and NutriAsia.
Jebe's expertise is in developing, producing and marketing high value products, managing teams, and developing business strategies. He is currently a Managing Consultant at UpSkills Inc.
In this episode, Paige Buan sits with Jebe Gayanelo as he shares insights on leadership, problem-solving, and empowering teams. He emphasizes the importance of identifying the root cause of problems and the value of getting perspectives from junior team members. He also stresses the importance of understanding that employees care about their jobs but also their personal and family lives. He talks about the importance of a balanced approach to management, where employees are happy and also able to deliver results. He also highlights the negative impact of silos within organizations. Jebe also shares his own journey on becoming a leader and how he realized that leadership is not just about getting results but also providing for his family and the importance of genuinely caring for the welfare of people around him.
Throughout the episode, Jebe shares personal anecdotes and experiences to illustrate his points. Jebe shares that he realized the importance of being a leader and empowering people, and that to achieve that level of success, he needed to realize and unlock his leadership potential.
A few things we talked about:
About the Guest
Jebe Gayanelo, a seasoned executive with over 4 decades of experience in various industries, including logistics, agriculture, food & beverage, and healthcare. He has held leadership roles in various companies such as La Filipina UyGongco Corp; Asia Brewery Inc., Nativo Nutritionals, Unilab, PT Medifarma Indonesia, and NutriAsia.
Jebe's expertise is in developing, producing and marketing high value products, managing teams, and developing business strategies. He is currently a Managing Consultant at UpSkills Inc.
Welcome to Leader: Unlocked, where we dive deep into the leadership strategies and insights of successful business leaders. This is your host, Paige Buan.
In this episode, we're joined by Jebe Gayanelo, a seasoned executive with over 4 decades of experience in various industries, including logistics, agriculture, food & beverage, and healthcare. He has held leadership roles in various companies such as La Filipina UyGongco Corp; Asia Brewery Inc., Nativo Nutritionals, Unilab, PT Medifarma Indonesia, and NutriAsia.
Jebe's expertise is in developing, producing and marketing high value products, managing teams, and developing business strategies. He is currently a Managing Consultant at UpSkills Inc.
Super excited to have him on our podcast as we explore the world of leadership with Jebe Gayanelo.
Paige Buan
Hi, Tito Jebe. Thank you so much for being on the Leader: Unlocked podcast.
Jebe Gayanelo
Hello, thank you for having me as your guest today. It's a pleasure.
Paige Buan
I love it. I'm super excited for this episode. To give everybody a little bit of a background, I've always had the pleasure of listening to Tito Jebe's stories and adventures in the corporate world. And I always learned so much from all of these sit downs. And so naturally, when I decided to start this podcast, I immediately knew that we had to start or have our own episode.
I'm just excited to ask a lot of these questions here. But for our listeners, can you tell us a little bit about your background and your experience in leadership roles.
Jebe Gayanelo
The first time I knew I was going to be a leader was when my grandmother told me that I had no future. She said, "This grandson of mine, he's not going to be as lucky as his cousins. This cousin will be very rich. This cousin will be very successful." Then she said, "The only redeeming factor you have is that you're going to be a leader." I said, "Really?" I didn't know what it was. I was too young then.
Anyway, joking aside. Leadership does not come as a second nature to me. I didn't understand what being a leader was, primarily because I was raised as an only son. So as an only son, I was a lone wolf. As a lone wolf, I did things on my own. I tried to fit into packs of other wolves that were together. So when I joined people, I joined groups. It was with the primary intention of being accepted. So I had a natural knack for getting accepted into groups. I was friends with all sorts of people around where I grew up. I was friends with almost everybody.
And maybe it helped that I was raised alone. And since I was raised alone, I thought I had to adapt wherever I tried to fit in. I didn't try to impose what I was used to as what I was used to as being alone. So being with a group meant that I had to blend with a group.
Paige Buan
Yes, and adjust.
Jebe Gayanelo
And adjust with the group. And it never occurred to me to lead the group. All I wanted to be was be part of the group as a young kid. And as a part of the group, I want to enjoy the max. I wanted to get them to accomplish what they wanted to accomplish. Or if we were playing marbles, if we wanted to win against the other team, if we were playing shatong, if we were playing hide and seek, all I wanted to do was to cooperate and make sure that we did things to the best of our ability so we would get what we wanted. If we were building a sandcastle, I just wanted to make sure that I was doing my part of carrying the water or carrying the sand.
In short, it never became an objective to be a leader. What happened though, was I could recall in particular, one incident in school that I really appreciated. It was an exercise run by the teacher. I think it was early in college, we were asked to look at the person in front of us, the person to the left, to the right, to the back and then stand up and look at all your classmates. And then we were supposed to choose. If we were to be trapped in a cave, and we were to be alone, and you'll have to survive together. Who would you pick? And I was surprised because a lot of people picked me.
And I didn't know that I was wondering, why would they pick me? I mean, there were five or six of them who picked me. I didn't expect a single one. After all, I was a provinciano studying in Manila. And in that particular class, when those people picked me, I started to wonder why. And then they were asked, of course, you were supposed to tell the teacher why you picked this particular person, and they had very similar answers. And the bottom line was that they believed that if I was with them, I'd find a way to get us out of that situation. And that really boosted my ego, my self-belief, my understanding of who I was and how I impressed other people. And I tried to tie that back to the whole thing since I was a young kid. That to me was the spark of what said, you can be a leader.
And I realized that being a leader did not entail, at least in my case, me trying to impose my will on everybody, or trying to make sure that everybody voted for me, and I'd be the gang leader that tells you where to go. I never really tried doing that as I was growing up, as I was moving up through life.
And I realized that you become a natural leader, when people believe that you will be there for their good aside from your own. When I see a person who I believe will not only represent himself, will do something to promote himself, but will do everything to get the whole group or the whole team to succeed, then we naturally gravitate towards that person to become our leader. And that's when I realized, "Oh, I have a potential to be a leader." And to be a leader, I must have been doing something right. And the primary thing that I thought was most important was that you will always do your best to get things done. And it didn't matter to me then who got the credit, who was the star, who was the captain ball, who was the team leader...
Paige Buan
The title didn't matter.
Jebe Gayanelo
It didn't matter. Whatever role was given to you, you appreciate it and make the best out of it.
It's so funny because something else came up to my mind now, how I enjoyed just being a part of it. There was a play called Jesus Christ Superstar. We had a stage play that we did in a theater in Davao. I was attending it as part of the group, just to be part of the whole gang that produced the show. And eventually, I got a role. And my role was kind of funny. I had many roles. But among the roles was that I was the apostle who cut off the ear of the soldier in one show. And after a while, I became the soldier whose ear was cut off. So really very insignificant. You don't even know the names of those people, but I really enjoyed being there. I really enjoyed being part of it, and it was something that I experienced.
And so if you asked me again now, if I go back to the question, "How did you start being a leader?" I can't put a timeframe or a peg on it. I think leadership was when people started believing that they should follow me.
Paige Buan
Yes. It wasn't like you wake up one day and decide, "I am going to be a leader." In your case, you lead where you are without an official title, and people decided that they would follow you.
Jebe Gayanelo
Correct. That was how it was. And I think it's also a natural progression of your career. Like I said, I was studying and I took up a very nice course in Ateneo. At the time, people said that it was an elite course. It was so difficult that only the brightest got to finish. And people are expecting, "These people will be corporate leaders. They should have this and that position." But to be honest, when I was going to school then, the most significant thing that struck my mind was that whenever I went from Loyola Heights to Makati, I rode the love bus, the Love Bus. I don't know if you remember that. For those of you who were born way after, during that time, a huge part of beautification was to make it convenient for people to commute. And this project was to have an air conditioned bus system. So these are blue buses that traveled from Cubao to Makati and several other centers. But to me, what was important was the Cubao to Makati route, because I used to go to the quad to watch a movie or do things like that. So whenever I'd ride the bus, the thing that ran to my mind was that, "Wow, what a job. This driver sits in an air conditioned bus, drives from Cubao to Makati, just like an airline pilot.
Paige Buan
Yeah.
Jebe Gayanelo
And I said, "Not a bad job. Maybe I should just be a Love Bus driver." So when I recall and I tried to think about it, it never occurred to me that I should be the head of a company or a president or a manager. I just wanted a job. And that's what I had. I found a job as a salesman. And as a salesman, I tried my best to do what I was supposed to do. You're a salesman, you're supposed to sell, see to your targets, meet your quotas, do your reports, hit your number of calls, et cetera, et cetera. And so I did. That was the role assigned to you. And whenever the boss needed information about what to do best, I told him what I thought was best. So you cooperate. When my teammate needed help, I'd give them help. So it seemed like just doing your best to do what you have to do as part of a team was all I wanted to do. But every time I did that, people started thinking that this guy should be promoted. And of course, you get promoted.
And as you get promoted, the definition of your jobs, they change. Your role changes, and your function changes, and the way you relate to other people changes, not because you want it to change, but because the job by definition says that you have to do this and do that. So the first leadership role you'll have as a salesman is that if you had a truck driver under you, you're the salesman and you have an assistant, a kargador, then he's the first person that you lead. You tell him what to do, you tell him where to go, et cetera, et cetera. You tell him what time you're supposed to start, where to put the stocks. Basically, if you were to fulfill your role, you need to know the technical side of your role, the details, then you need to be able to communicate this to the person that you're working with, otherwise hindi kayo magkita-kita. Diba? So things become haywire.
So you start by doing your job. It's normally defined. And you just follow instructions, and you try to anticipate how do I do this best, to the best of my ability? And how do I influence the people who are supposed to work with me, and whoever that person is, whether he's below you, your colleague, or your superior. By cooperating and doing what you need to do, you become a good follower, and a good follower who cares about the team. And eventually, I didn't realize this until later that people appreciated it.
And you get offered bigger and bigger roles, more and more responsibility. And as you get more and more responsibility as you go up the ranks, you start to have more and more people that you need to include in your team. It becomes your team now. You need to guide them. You need to lead them. You need to make sure that they know what they're doing. So it's very important that you understand how to help others achieve their full potential. And as you do your job through the years, you start to accumulate a wealth of knowledge. So I don't think I was ever born to be a leader, I just learned how to be because it was the job that was assigned to me.
And as you grow in your leadership roles, you start to understand that leadership is not just leading people, not just teaching people, not just guiding people, leadership starts to evolve into a bigger responsibility of creating more leaders. So the real test of a leader is not when you're able to guide your team to accomplish a mission. It's when you're able to produce leaders, meaning to say that the team that you had, that you had to guide to be able to accomplish a particular mission, now by themselves know how to guide their own teams. So nanganganak. So the most important part of leadership, I think, for you to be able to say you're "successful" in your leadership role, is that it's not that you're able to accomplish things with your team. But most importantly, when you're able to help your teammates become leaders themselves.
Paige Buan
Right, right.
Jebe Gayanelo
So the biggest joy is when you see, "Oh, yung dati kong trainee, marketing manager or sales manager na or president na." They're now presidents of their own companies. They're now leaders in their own rights, and they're producing leaders who are even better than them, because that's the main goal. When somebody tells me, "Oh, buti pa yung tao mo, your subordinate before, he's much, much better than you. He now leads a bigger organization. He's more successful. He's richer." That person doesn't know, but that gives me a lot of pride. It doesn't make me a lesser person. It makes me a better person to know that the people that I guided before, the little pups that I used to train, are now industry leaders and now better, much better than me. Because that's your goal. The goal for leadership in your career is not all different from the goal of leadership in your family.
Paige Buan
Right.
Jebe Gayanelo
When I look at my children, I am not only proud that they're able to live on their own. I'll be very, very proud when they start producing their own children, and their own children live better lives than they do. Because your children should live better lives than you, and their children should live better lives than them. So things should get better and better for the next generations to follow.
Paige Buan
I love how you related that. It's so meaningful to hear that.
There was a story you told me a few weeks ago about how you thought of empowering others. Can you talk about that again? You don't lose the points.
Jebe Gayanelo
Yes. When you empower other people, when you get people to charge up and work on their own and become very successful. When you praise them, and you push them, and you give them motivational work. Whatever you do that makes other people better, does not detract from you. Because nobody can take away whatever you have. Whatever you have is limitless. It's like having good vibes. If I'm happy, and I make you happy, it does not make me less happy. It actually makes me happier. If I help you make yourself successful, and I see that you're successful because of the little things that I did to help you, it does not reduce my success. It makes me even more successful.
Paige Buan
Right, right.
Jebe Gayanelo
Yeah. So empowering people also. When they make people more- give them more confidence, when I give them more authority, when I give them more responsibility, it does not detract from my responsibility also.
Let me give you an example. If I was president of the company, and I had 5 vice presidents, okay? Let's say I have a vice president for finance, a vice president for manufacturing, marketing, research and development, quality control or whatever. If I had 5 vice presidents, and all of these vice presidents were doing their jobs only according to my instructions, if I had to dictate everything that they did, would they be good vice presidents? Maybe. Why would you say that they're good? Because they are able to follow instructions. Okay. If I tell them, this is the thing that you should do in manufacturing, and they do everything the way I said in manufacturing, is he a good vice president? Yes. Because he does everything according to what I say.
Now, when he does things according to my instructions, it's very good. But that word "according to my instructions," is a very limiting condition. Why? Because if it's not already to my instructions, he's not supposed to do it. What if it does things that are not according to my instructions, but better than my instructions? How do I see that? Should I say that, "I told you to do A, B, C, D. Why did you do A, X, Y, Z, X? And I feel offended because why did you do that?" I question him because he's not doing things according to my instructions. That would mean to say that I am just hiring somebody who is an extension of myself. I still have to work because I still have to give him instructions. And if I were a person who needed the authority, the power to be able to say that you're supposed to do this and that, and not this and that, that's probably fine. But that's not the way I work.
If I find a vice president to do manufacturing, I would talk to him and tell him what are my goals for manufacturing, what are my goals for his particular role, whether it's manufacturing, finances, or whatever. And I explained to him why my goals are such, why I thought of these goals. And I would actually ask him, "What do you think of my goals? Maybe you would have something better than my goals." And in all likelihood, if I were to listen carefully to people that I hire, they would have better ideas than mine. Why? Because I only hire people who I think are better than me. Because whenever I hire a person supposed to do a job for me or for the company that I work for, the primary consideration I have is that this person should be able to do a better job in that particular role than myself.
Paige Buan
Right.
Jebe Gayanelo
Why should I hire somebody who cannot do the job better than me? I might as well just do it. Right? So I'm hiring him, so that he can contribute whatever he has for the fulfillment of the goals and functions of that position. So it's very important that I know that he's better than me. That I know what it is that he would want to do if he were in my role, what is it that he would like to implement and how he would like to implement it. And for as long as I understand and I believe that, that position of his, his objectives, strategies, tactics, and leading his organization, is compatible with my overall strategy, and it helps and it synergizes with the rest of the organization, then my goal is to get him to do it the way he thinks is best.
So I empower him to do it. Because I understand that he's going to do it anyway, according to what his role should be, in the best way he possibly can. So in short, when he takes over the position, empowerment is an essential component.
Paige Buan
Yes.
Jebe Gayanelo
And empowering him to do it does not make me a lesser president. If I'm the general manager or the president or the CEO, and I have a Vice President who's really good at manufacturing, and I empower him, and he keeps me up to date, he tells me the development because nothing is static in this world. The point that you're talking about, maybe 5 years ago, this was a situation, this was what you agreed upon. But as time goes, things change, and he should be able to adjust to that change. And every time that change happens, and he wants to do something to make his job better, and he consults with you, and he talks to you and coordinates with you and tells you what he's going to do, and you agree, then let him do it.
So again, going back to the basics, me empowering him does not make me a lesser leader. Empowering him actually makes me a better leader because now I have more time.
Paige Buan
That's true.
Jebe Gayanelo
Because now I don't have to think about manufacturing. This guy is so good. He's better than me in manufacturing. He's coordinating everything with everybody else. I don't even have to spend too much time thinking about it. And if I have all my vice presidents like that, wow.
Paige Buan
Yeah, I remember you saying you don't lose power by giving power.
Jebe Gayanelo
No, you don't.
Paige Buan
Yeah, I love that one. Have you heard of the acronym HIPPO?
Jebe Gayanelo
No.
Paige Buan
It's the highest paid person's opinion or the highest paid person in the office. So relating to your story earlier that you want to hear other people's ideas, you hire people who are better than you, and you hear their ideas, because they're going to be better than yours. What's- a common problem are the HIPPOS in other organizations. Because when they say their opinion, even if other people have better ideas, they're like, "I'm not gonna say it anymore. Let's just do the HIPPO's ideas or suggestions or opinions." And there are a lot of those in an organization, especially if the person is like the CEO, or the CFO. They would put forth a problem statement to hear everybody's ideas, but in the end...
Jebe Gayanelo
They already have a solution that they want.
Paige Buan
Yeah, they already have a solution that they want. Do you have any experiences on that? And how did you navigate through that?
Jebe Gayanelo
That's actually very common. That's one of the common mistakes of leaders, and I'd like to say particularly owners because I've had the pleasure and the chance to work with owners of enterprises. But let me digress, and split it into two.
When I talk to owners. Of course, when you're the owner, you know, you feel like you're the god of this company. That everything that you say and everything you pronounce becomes the law of the land. And that is not only the fault of the owner, it's also the fault of the employees because employees tend to pander to the owner. Employees, executives and everybody else, they try to pander to and try to please the owner. And that breeds a situation where you have a lot of yes-men. Okay. And then, like you said, the HIPPO, the highest paid person in the office, nobody's paid higher than the owner because he's the one paying everybody else, right?
And the first advice that I give to the owners that I worked for is that, if I am the CEO, I advise them to keep their opinions to themselves and give their instructions to me. If you have anything you want to accomplish as an owner, it is safer for you if you gave your instructions to a CEO or a COO that you can trust, that you believe will be able to translate your ideals and your ideas into reality. Why? Because as you said, if the owner starts talking and saying that this is his opinion, many times, many employees will follow, will just keep quiet and just say, "Yes, boss, that's what you said," Now, as the leader, as the CEO, my role is actually to understand exactly what the owner wants to accomplish, how he wants it accomplished and when he wants it accomplished, at what cost, all the details, I should understand all of that. And I would try to convince him that this is how I would like to translate that into action.
So this is how I would like to execute as the Chief Executive Officer. It's your vision, your mission, your goal, your ideals, what you really want, your money, and this is how I'd like to do it. This is my plan. Okay? And if you agree, then I will execute it myself. Why am I doing that? Is it because I want the power to myself? No. It's because I want to protect the owner. Because if the plan that he wants, the goal that he wants, the way that he wants it is not perfect, and it's never perfect, if it falls apart or something goes wrong, that I can absorb all of the fault. So I tell the owners, let me do it. So that when I implement it, and it's not perfect, and something goes wrong, you're protected. I can absorb all of the blame for the things that we have done, right, among the people. And the people don't get confused. Because if I say something, and he says something different- or he's actually saying the same thing, but people misunderstand it, because no two people talk the same way.
Paige Buan
That's right.
Jebe Gayanelo
So if they misunderstand it, then it makes it more difficult to get the instructions or the operation moving smoothly. So I tell my bosses, "Please let me do it. And if I'm wrong, if something goes wrong, then let it be my fault. It won't be your fault. I can absorb it."
The same is true with my people. When I give them instructions, I tell them what we're supposed to do based on the business plan or whatever we agreed upon, and they agree with me and they implement it. I also tell them, "Do it with all of my authority that I've empowered you with. I have delegated the job to you. But let me be the one to tell the owners what you have accomplished, so I can highlight what is good and take it upon myself to admit if you have any failures." I don't like blaming my people about things that they didn't accomplish. If they have any failure, it's my failure. So as far as I'm concerned, in an Asian setting, like here in the Philippines, the owners are the primary people that I need to protect from that. And I will need to protect the people from them also.
Paige Buan
Right.
Jebe Gayanelo
Because people are so scared of owners, because they know that "these people have the power of life and death over their careers." And that doesn't create a safe haven for them. Okay, now eliminating the owners, because tayo na 'yun in our leadership roles. It's very common for people who think that their opinions are entitled to more attention from everybody else. They think they're always right. They think that because they're the most senior, the highest paid, that it's their opinion that matters. And many times because they are the most senior in the group of managers that are around, the junior people would tend to, "o sige na nga", let his opinion be heard and let it be what we follow, and they get intimidated to raise their own opinions. That's a very unhealthy situation.
Paige Buan
That's true.
Jebe Gayanelo
Because that breeds a lot of, again, yes-men. And even if these are not owners, because they're most senior and they're most influential, they think that they should be kowtowed to, they should follow. So what do you do? How do you eliminate that?
So the first thing that we do, instead of us saying what we want to solve a problem- Let's say we're facing a problem, and I want to know the solution. Instead of telling them, "We have a problem. We need to do this and that. And then I think we should do this and that. When I say that, of course everybody will start telling me how to do it the way I wanted to do it. So the first thing that I usually do is I listen to people first, the most junior ones. I ask them, "There's a situation. What do you think? Can you please define the problem for me first?" Because sometimes even the definition of the problem is the root cause of the problem.
Paige Buan
They don't know what the problem really is.
Jebe Gayanelo
You don't really know what the problem is. And sometimes when the boss says that this is the problem, but they know that it's not the real problem, the real problem is an underlying situation, then nobody will say anything, right?
Paige Buan
That's right.
Jebe Gayanelo
So the first thing to do is to get people to define the problem. What do you think is the problem? And you will be surprised that many people, different people will have different perceptions of what the problem really is. And then- you know the exercise called the root cause analysis, right?
Paige Buan
Yeah.
Jebe Gayanelo
So you have a problem, but what caused this? And then what caused the next cause, and then finally, you see the root cause.
Surprisingly, if you talk to the most junior of your team, they would have a better perception of what the root cause of the problem is. Why? Because they're the most affected. When a problem occurs, before it reaches top management, it would have affected already people below you, and they would have faced it already. They may already have tried to solve what they perceived to be the problem was. And they would have failed to do it, that's why nakaabot sa 'yo.
For example: you have a driver. Your car's a problem. The tire is running flat. So what would the driver do? He would go to the gas station, pump more air, and then think that is okay, so he comes back to you. Two days after, the tire is deflated again. Then he would tell you that, "Sir, flat po 'yun gulong. Mukhang may pako.” So they say, "parang may pako." Okay. By the time you know it, he already actually knows what the problem really is. And I tell him, "Okay, why don't you have it vulcanized?"
Okay. Now, if you had a driver like my driver, Kuya Max, he would actually have done two more steps. After he put air in it, he would have used it for 2 days. And the second day, he would bring it to the vulcanizing shop, have it repaired, and then come back and tell me, "Sir, flat po 'yun gulong natin. Pina-vulcanize ko na. PHP 200 po binayad ko. I paid PHP 200 to have the tire vulcanized." And so there's no more problem. He had it vulcanized for PHP 200, and all I had to find out was that he had it done already.
Paige Buan
There was a problem, and he solved it.
Jebe Gayanelo
He solved it. Okay. So when the problem reaches you, it's because your subordinates were not empowered to solve those problems.
Paige Buan
Right.
Jebe Gayanelo
Okay. So basically, when you look at your corporate situation, and you find problems, and bigger problems more than the flat tire, if you trace it back, it would usually be because the person who was directly involved with diagnosis of the problem was not empowered to solve it himself. Okay? And he probably asked his boss for permission to get it done. And the boss said, "No, let's ask...
Paige Buan
They're also not empowered.
Jebe Gayanelo
Until it reached you. And then suddenly, you all realize that the problem was so simple, it should have been solved at that level. Okay, so why? Because if you allow the Finance Vice President to talk about flat tires, what would be a solution? We should have systems in place. Our engineering system should have a...
Paige Buan
Right. So complicated.
Jebe Gayanelo
Complicated because it's at the top level.
Paige Buan
Yeah.
Jebe Gayanelo
We should not have problems like flat tires. Until one day, the engineering group will say, "We should buy run flat tires or tires that never go flat, or solid tires." That's complicated, when in fact, all it took was for a driver to have the tire vulcanized, and it was done. So things are not always as complicated as they seem to be. And if you start talking to your big guns for solutions, they will have big solutions. But if you start talking to your subordinates, the lower rank, then the solutions don't become too complicated. They're very simple, actually.
And most of the time, in most cases, people would criticize me for this, but I think 90% of the time, malasakit lang. If people start to care about their jobs, many of the problems will get solved. It's not very difficult. So again, when you say the highest paid officer or individual in the room is usually the guy with the most complicated solution because he thinks that, "I'm paid so high, I should find the most exotic solution to this problem." You talk to the guys lowest paid. He's probably going to give you the simplest solution, but the most realistic and most easily implemented.
Paige Buan
Right. And it's actually not a big problem.
Jebe Gayanelo
Not a big problem. There are very few huge problems, and usually, it's the small things that kill you. It's the small things that pass unnoticed that suddenly become a major problem. So things like that. What are major problems? Product failures. And what else? Cost overruns? When making the product becomes more expensive than the budget was supposed to be. So things like that. They start from small mistakes, very small mistakes. Like if somebody underestimates the cost of something and then presumes that it will be solved along the way. That's when problems start.
So it's when you ask people and you empower people to start saying their piece, not being scared of authority, and not being disrespectful. When I say "not being scared," doesn't mean to be disrespectful.
Paige Buan
That's true.
Jebe Gayanelo
But you encourage also- that's one of the leadership points that we teach in the seminars in UpSkills. We try to say that they should be open to suggestions. That you should be able to listen to things that your subordinates say, and you should be open to change. You should be open to surprises.
Paige Buan
That story that you gave, that if you wanted to test if you have an empowered team, you ask people what the questions are. And if the problems are so simple, it means that your other team members are just really not empowered to fix the problems. You mentioned, they have to care about their jobs. How do you get people to care about their jobs?
Jebe Gayanelo
Well, first of all, when people start to work in a particular job or a particular work function, you have to assume that they care about their job, because they wouldn't have applied for a job or joined the company if they didn't care about their jobs. But you have to understand also that caring about the job is secondary to caring about their own personal situation. I think it's absolutely pointless to assume that somebody would put this job above his family. So that's not realistic.
Some people say, "Here, we work so hard. We don't go home. We sacrificed our family time to be able to get the job done. We're so passionate about our job." Well, yes, there are some people who are like that, and usually those are the owners of the company. Because to them, their job, their ownership of the business is synonymous with their ownership of their family. Their family life is closely tied to it.
But for 99.99% of the population who are not the owners of the company, a job is simply a tool for them to be able to achieve the things they want to achieve in life. So a job, to some, would mean getting their son or their daughter to a good school, a job would mean that I'd be able to feed my babies the right food, be able to celebrate the birthdays of my children, being able to bring my parents to the hospital if they need to be hospitalized. A job is really a means towards an end for me, as a person.
And if I start to understand that the job is actually secondary to the person's primary obligation, which is to his family- of course, family, God, country, okay, that's very important. But the primary one is the family. So everybody works because he wants to provide for his family. So the first thing you have to understand- I have to understand is that if he is working because he wants to provide for his family, he needs to bring back not only money back to his family, right? He needs to bring back time for his family. He needs to bring back a good mood. What's the point of having a job where you work, you get a lot of money, and then you still have a lot of time, but you come home and you're grumpy or angry or you're stressed out? Then you're taking that away from the family.
So what you want is somebody who's working, he gets what he needs to provide for his family, he gets enough time, he puts it in the right amount of time, but he still has enough time for his family. And the third is that he's able to do his job happily. So that's a very important component, able to do and deliver on his job and do it happily. Because some people are able to do and deliver, but they come home and they're not happy.
So there used to be an exercise in corporate management, where you have two situations you try to develop in your workplace. One is what they call the country club style of management, where everybody's given everything to make them happy. And the other one is the results-oriented style of management where you need to get things done at all costs. And always the conclusion of that, you want a blend of the two. You want a blend where people are happy, and they're able to deliver what's needed. That seems to be very simple, right? Keep them happy, and get them to do things correctly at the right time, right cost. But that's tricky because if you assume that people will be happy just doing their jobs and focusing on their jobs alone, you're mistaken because people are not like that. And if you think that by letting people enjoy themselves so much that things will get done, you're also mistaken because they'll just do a lot of Facebooking and Instagram and everything right?
So it's a blend. So you need to make the person understand that you understand his situation. That I understand that you're here. That this is a job for you. That is a career for you. But the ultimate goal is for you to have a good, happy, well-provided-for-family. That's what you want, right?
Now, it's a fair exchange. It's also a business for you. Why? Because the company is buying your time, buying your knowledge, buying your skills and buying your attitude towards work. In return, the company pays you, gives you the stability, provides insurance, provides an environment where you can grow and prosper and probably become somebody better, have something better in the future. It should be a fair exchange.
Because I've worked for companies that think that it should be work, work work. If they're happy, there must be something wrong. If they're having fun, we're doing something wrong. And that, to me, was a very sorry company. And they could do very well because they're experts on something, but it's hard to imagine them growing way beyond. And I've seen companies also that really didn't care about work, just had fun, fun, fun, and now they're all bankrupt. So given the choice between the two, if I had no choice except two: one, that's all fun and no direction; and one that's all strict, all work and no play, actually, I'd choose the all work and no play because at least the all-work-and-no-play has a better chance of survival. But is that the ideal situation? No.
What you would like to do is to give people as much leverage for enjoying their job. Because the more they enjoy their job, the longer they stay, and the better the output becomes. So I don't believe that when they're happy, they're not working. Actually, when you're happy, you're working even harder. Look at yourselves. Your own business. You work so hard. Why? Because you're happy doing your job. It's your business.
Now, even if it was not your business, even if it's just an employment, the owner or the general manager or the people leading the organization should understand that they cannot just slave-drive because they will lose their people eventually. And they will have a hard time because they'll keep on having to hire new people. And do you know who stays behind in a work-only-slave-driver situation?
Paige Buan
The ones who don't care.
Jebe Gayanelo
Correct. The ones who don't care, the ones who are not really that good. And the ones who will take all the sh*t just to get my pay, and not get fired. In the end, what will happen is that you'll have a company full of losers. People who are just yes-men. "Okay, to make you happy. Okay, to get things done." They'll do routine work. They're like robots. Unfortunately, these are the same people that you can replace with AI.
Paige Buan
That's true.
Jebe Gayanelo
These are the same people that when you get automation, you don't need them. The people who you need beyond automation, who you need beyond AI: the people who think, the people who are creative, the people who want to contribute more to grow your organization. These people cannot be slave-driven.
Paige Buan
Right.
Jebe Gayanelo
They can be made passionate about their work. So there are things like that. It's not new. From 20, 50 years ago, people were given stock options. So that if the company becomes big, they become rich. Think Apple, all of these old companies, Microsoft. Think about all these old tech companies where all of those options were the first triggers for them to get the best people to work for them, the dotcoms, et cetera.
You have to have the kind of motivational program appropriate for each and every level. So for people who are technology providers, who have great ideas, you probably have to give them stock options. For people who are, let's say, the simplest na lang. Let's say you have a janitor who cleans your office. Making sure that you acknowledge him as a human, as a human being. When you see him, you greet him, you treat him well.
In fact, that's always my instruction to my children. The lower status they have in life, the more you have to treat them with respect. The more you have to treat them well. And when they have mistakes, you don't bully them because they have so much less in life than you. So that's how you do it. That's how I would do it. In a company, the frontliners especially, you have to treat them with respect, and you cannot just treat them as if you don't care about them. That's why they would know that I like talking to the salespeople. I like going around. I like going to the supermarket, meeting the merchandisers. I like going to the factory, meeting the people loading the goods into the truck. I like talking to them. I like seeing them, because sometimes you don't know the impact on them. It's hard to appreciate it.
But sometimes when the highest person in the organization is not just saying his opinion, but seen there in the streets, in the factory, in the shop floor in the canteen with the customers going with them, then it shows them that this company cares. But actually, it's just the leader. The leader shows that he cares about his employees. So how do you motivate them? How do you get them to stay? How do you get them to care about the jobs? Very simple. You should care about them.
Paige Buan
Yeah.
Jebe Gayanelo
If you don't care about your people, they won't care about you, and they won't care about their jobs. But if you care about them, genuinely- "Genuinely," hindi yung kunyari lang. Plastic. By the way, the people at the ranks, they're the most sensitive. They know if you're being plastic. If you're just pretending. You're being a hypocrite. They know that. And it's even worse if you pretend. So the best thing to do is really enjoy. But to me, that's not a problem because I was a salesman. I used to be at the bottom of the ranks, diba? So I actually enjoy being there. I enjoy eating in the carinderia. I enjoy eating with them, getting durian on the side streets. I enjoy talking to the mechanics. I enjoy looking at the machines, tinkering with the nuts and bolts. I enjoy talking to the janitor because the janitor tells you exactly who's the dirtiest person in the office, who's the most disorganized and who's the neatest. So the first thing to do is to really enjoy being with them.
And it's impossible for you to be able to relate to each and every one of the employees, especially in a huge organization. It's impossible. But if they see that you're relating and you're enjoying it with somebody of their level, vicariously, they feel that they're also part of it. "Yung boss namin, okay yan. Kasama yan. Umiinom yan sa carinderia. Kumakain yan, kasama namin." Namin. Wala naman siya doon, pero alam niya. May picture eh o di kaya nakita. And if you are being a hypocrite about it, they will say, "Ah, plastic yan. Kunyari lang yan. Namumulitika lang yan."
So it's a win-win situation. Enjoy yourself, and they will work for you very well.
Paige Buan
I love that. I can go on and on, to be honest, but we have to wrap up. And hopefully, you'll be back for another episode. There's so much to cover.
I just have one last question, something that you said earlier about, it just happened where people just followed with you. You must have had that turning point where you decided that you would take ownership of what people were looking at. When did you decide now, "Okay, I'm going to be a leader, I'm going to advise the owners of the company, and I'm going to empower the people." When did you decide that that was your role?
Jebe Gayanelo
Well, I think they decided for me, because when the owners of the companies or the most senior executives of the company started to believe in me, they trusted me, and then I realized that the reason that I'm here is because they trusted me and they trusted my judgment. That was one. But to be more mundane about it, to go down to when I started to realize that I should nurture my leadership role, take care of being a leader to lead people to do good things and to be able to achieve a lot of things, that's very simple.
One time, I was reading through some financial figures, and I realized that the top 2%, 3% of the executives will earn more than half of all the pay being paid by the company. I don't know if you realize that. But the top executives, the C level executives, if you put their salaries combined are usually paid almost half of the entire payroll budget of the company. So it's very simple. I realized that if you were a leader, and you were at the top, you get paid the most. I said, "If I want to provide for my family, I want to be one of the highest paid individuals in the room, if not the highest paid individual in the company." And I realized that for me to be able to earn that much, I needed to give that much also in return. So the decision was, if I were to be paid as a CEO, as a COO, as a GM, or whatever role, as the marketing manager, if I were to be paid the next highest level, I had to exhibit the traits of the ideal person for the next highest level.
So when I was a product manager, or product officer, actually, and I realized that my promotion from product associate or detail man to Product Officer, the salary jump was so huge. And suddenly I was receiving brown envelope bonuses, five months of my salary. Wow. I realized that I get paid more the more I get promoted. Very, very simple. But to get promoted, it was not enough to know how to do your job well. To get promoted, you had to be a good leader, you had to be able to empower other people to do their jobs well and better. And then I realized that if I were to become a very highly paid individual, I needed to have people believe in me so that I could lead other people to produce other leaders.
And therefore, I realized that for me to get where I wanted to be, to be able to provide for my family, I knew that more and more people to believe that I was going to be good for their organization. And how do you do that? You do that by being genuinely concerned about the welfare of the people around you, the welfare people above you, and the welfare of the people below you.
And most importantly, that people should understand, when you're working for a company, you're not just working for the organization. You're helping that organization deliver goods and services to other people. And therefore, what you want to do is to lead an organization to provide the best possible goods and services to reach customers at the right cost, at the right time, at the right quality. And to do that, you need to be able to build the team, the whole team, not just accounting, not just finance. That's just what I saw.
Let me digress a little bit to the negative parts of it. Many of the failures are when people start to build enclaves, kanya-kanya.
Paige Buan
Silos.
Jebe Gayanelo
"Accounting kami e." Silos. I want to have my accounting group. I want to have my sales group, and my production group. Kami dito. Kami. Kami. That's the most counterproductive attitude. Because if you do that, okay, you can become the highest paid person in that particular organization, but you'll never go higher.
Paige Buan
Right.
Jebe Gayanelo
So the idea is that- when I realized that the best thing to do to be able to achieve what I wanted for my family was to get to the highest possible position where I could qualify for and I could deliver the best for the company, that's when my attitude suddenly- not really changed, but solidified, and said, "Okay. I need to study, I need to understand, I need to evolve." Because you're not perfect. I'm not perfect. I need to understand what are my mistakes. What are my errors? How do I correct it? How do I change it? How do I evolve so that in the changing times like now, how do you evolve so that you become a better person and a better catalyst for change and catalyst for improvement for other organizations? Even after your retirement, it's the same thing. After you retire, you no longer have the organization that you work for, but you still have your other businesses. You still have your other people that you help.
It's a continuing process until you- probably until I die, I'll still need to improve. I still need to find and remember the things that I did wrong, so that I don't repeat them again, or I don't repeat them as often as I used to.
So when you ask me, it's so simple, very, very simple situation where I realized that the best way for me to provide for my family was to maximize my leadership potential. Because I was not a lawyer. I'm not a doctor. I'm a management engineer, but I'm not really a civil or chemical or any other engineering type, where it's a specific technology that you can practice.
So my practice is leadership. My practice is getting people, helping people to get things done at the right time, at the right place, at the right cost, at the right quantity, at the right everything. So if I can get people to get things done the way they should be done, then that's my value in this world. And that's very simple. That's just leadership. That's just being able to get people to do things the way they should be done.
Paige Buan
And with that, I can really say your lola got it right. Thank you, Tito, so much for doing this episode with us on Leader: Unlocked. I hope to see you on another one in the future. But before we end, is there anything that you'd like to share with our audiences? Where can they find you right now?
Jebe Gayanelo
Well, yes. So thank you again for this episode, and thank you for your efforts. And I'd like to invite everybody. I now have a team that works on training local government officials and the local government employees. Our advocacy there is to help the government. We're there to help them with soft skills, leadership, customer service, relating to each other, report writing, communicating. The basic things that make things easier in running an office. So you can see us at upskillsinc.com or you can go to Facebook, UpSkills, and we would be there. I'd like to also thank you for this opportunity and congratulate you for this project.
Paige Buan
Thank you.
Jebe Gayanelo
And giving a lot of people a lot of opportunity to start off their own podcasts.
Paige Buan
Yes.
Jebe Gayanelo
I hope that we could have our own podcast with your assistance also.
Paige Buan
Absolutely. Thank you so much. All right. That's it.