16:51

Before I joined Ignite, I used to work in Abu Dhabi as an OFW for 9 years, which is why when I came back home, my heart bled for OFWs. I wanted to help them by giving them a holistic integration process back to their lives here in the Philippines so that when they came back home, they'd be ready for anything. In the last 4-5 years, I've been working on modules to offer them help in achieving that. However, in the last 100 days, everything turned upside down and I trashed 6 months worth of modules because I realized that what I created for them was not what they really needed. I decided to learn and connect with my stakeholders in genuine and more authentic ways, because I learned that I needed to know their pains, wants, and needs so that I can better serve them. In my experience, it was an overwhelming response that they wanted to learn about entrepreneurship. So, I realized that everything else I created back then was no good. Because I started connecting with and asking my stakeholders what they really want and need, I threw away 2 years worth of work and another 6 months of work on a product that I cared deeply about. I fell in love with the problem, which allowed me to be indifferent to the solution. I fell in love with the solution instead of immersing myself within the problem.

36:22

I’m the innovation guy for Ignite. I formally trained in Stanford, specializing in human-centered design. Human-centered design drives customer centricity wherein this framework helps businesses impact the lives of others. In the past 100 days, I’ve been concerned with one thing - more impactful innovation. I've always believed that in order to innovate, more people have to ask better questions. One of the things that frustrated me, as we talk to clients and organizations, is their tendency to fall in love with the solution without realizing and without really knowing who their customers or stakeholders are. What shaped my next level breakthrough, in terms of what I've been trying to do, is figuring out how to get organizations to refocus and have a deeper understanding of their stakeholders. This means having a deeper and personal understanding of the needs, motivations, and pains of customers. Ignite’s Empathy Project is something we’ll be rolling out pretty soon and we’re excited about it because it allows us to have a deeper understanding of our stakeholders and customers.

26:40

I am the COO of Ignite, but my work also entails Chief of Staff responsibilities. I intend to be a supporting character with visionary leaders. My personal breakthrough is to develop and nurture people and dub them as co-founders, co-founders that serve as partners of visionary leaders. This breakthrough aligned with my key strength, which is discovering and tapping into people and nurturing them to be the best versions of themselves. In the past 100 days I have sought to understand individuals, discover their own strengths, discover problems that they want to solve, to hone their competencies and skills but not through classes or lectures, and to partner with other leaders.

I’ve been stuck on another breakthrough, which is getting other communities to join Ignite’s community of practice. Time has been a major obstacle, because their own daily work occupies these communities’ minds and agendas. These communities also have their own initiatives - they cannot make enough time for our initiatives. But I realized that instead of working towards bringing them to Ignite, why not just bring Ignite to them? Why not establish our presence in their initiatives and bring the tools of Ignite in order to help them accomplish their breakthroughs? Since the organization has its own initiative, Ignite must pivot to help and provide tools for these communities. what habits should we be able to form and how do we form and nurture them? Ultimately, how do we build a community with a bias towards action, a bias towards making things happen, to getting things done?

50:04

As a VP in UnionBank, one of the most innovative financial institutions in the Philippines, we started working with Ignite and have since come up with a breakthrough. One of the key things we wanted to bring out to the market, in line with the purpose of co-creating innovations, is to be more relevant to our corporate clients and customers. This was the one key thing that was missing, and exponentially present during the pandemic. It goes beyond simple engagement with customers. We've launched so many webinars, modules, and programs, but at the end of the day, we still want to do more to help SMEs to get to their next level. This breakthrough is our GlobalLinker community and it is really important to UnionBank. As we help SMEs grow, our community serves as a cycle of providing them more services and financing that will enable them to get to their next breakthroughs and grow all the more. The GlobalLinker network is 3 years old and now it has 370k members who are primarily SMEs. Our dilemma: the membership number sounds good, but what about the engagement of all these 370k members? It is hard to collaborate with bigger organizations because of all the bureaucracy and delays. We adopted agile methodologies and learned to use rapid prototyping. Building to learn and prototyping worked for us, not building by analyzing and planning. We’ve now drawn more engagement and interaction in our community.

1:06:21

I learned a lot in the past 100 days with the Ignite community. I’ve realized that I’m not very keen on falling in love with the problem. I’ve been struggling with all the practices and mindsets we do here such as the Launchpad Hurdles because I am guilty of jumping at the solutions directly. But it’s a great pleasure to be part of this new group and to possibly start something new with the rest of the GlobalLinkers community which I am a part of. I have been working on a side project of providing sanitizing papers for public school modules. I applied the practices I’ve learned from Ignite, trying to find out how to tap into the problem. We came up with a prototype which we call a book sanitizer, which was designed for libraries to adopt and be used as sanitizers. Hopefully we can build another prototype soon, and as soon as it’s done we will showcase it to Ignite.

1:19:30

I represent an HR community that has two purposes - empowerment and financial sustainability. Our community started collaborating with Ignite and came up with 2 specific breakthroughs.

HeRo Code - This is a program where long term HR practitioners advocate for the rights of HR practitioners by providing mentorship and coaching. The goal is to provide professional empowerment. We’ll be launching in 3-4 weeks through the collaboration of our community and Ignite’s. We’ll be seeking to establish who is in HR - in the Philippines, there are so many misconceptions with regard to HR practitioners. With the help of Aileen Gutierrez, we would like to reframe HR in the Philippines grounded on Ignite’s Genius, Purpose, and Service.

Entrepreneurship Program - Because of the pandemic, a lot of employees, including HR personnel, were off-boarded and lost their jobs. This program intends to help HR practitioners learn how to have an entrepreneurial mindset by developing their own side-hustle ideas, so that their income will not not just come from their company. During the workshops that were led by Miguel Aranaz I discovered and learned a lot. I started a business that can thrive in 3-5 years and I am taking baby steps by applying what I’ve learned in these workshops. I am actively working to bring that into fruition. Thanks to the efforts of Miguel and Aileen in teaching business concepts and principles, several of us in the program have been able to start or revise their businesses.

1:31:55

We have been in Abu Dhabi for the past 13 years and we recently launched BizKids, an initiative where we teach kids how to start up a business. Our business guested in Ignite a few weeks ago and since then, our 5 power users finished their modules and told us that they wanted more. Bringing in the kids as co-creators was huge, as suggested during our session with Ignite. As co-creators, the kids gave us good suggestions like adding more modules because it was too short for them. So now we’re creating more modules for them, teaching them how to take the next steps forward. This pandemic makes it difficult to go out physically and sell the kids’ products, so we’re also looking to help them launch their products via Zoom. The kids will invite their friends and family and we’ll put each kid in several break rooms so that they can sell their products to multiple groups.