New Media Philippines » Leadership Principles

Sleep your way to the top

Carlo Ople — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 15:50:53 +0000

Huffington Post founder and now AOL executive Arianna Huffington gives a short 4-minute TED Talk that emphasizes the power of sleep. It’s a brilliant, simple, and insightful talk that will definitely jam some sense into our sleep-deprived minds. Watch it below.

Ayala Young Leaders Conference 2011 Photos

Carlo Ople — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:04:49 +0000

The Ayala Young Leaders Conference (AYLC) is an annual event which gathers the top student leaders from all over the Philippines. It’s like a leadership/success bootcamp which features professionals from various fields sharing their experiences and lessons to the group. I was invited to be a panelist and I immediately said yes since this was a great opportunity to inspire and help the next generation. For this batch there were a total of 81 student leaders. It was truly an amazing experience to be there and see how passionate these guys were! Basketball celebrity Chris Tiu, veteran journalist Marites Vitug, and myself formed the panel for the Arts and Sciences forum. Allow me to share some photos which were all taken by my lovely wife.

Thanks to JQ Quesada of the Ayala Foundation for inviting me over.

I’ll write more about what was discussed as well as my other insights about the event in separate entries. If you want more pictures, head on over to the photo album which I made on Facebook.

Seth Godin talks about Curiosity

Carlo Ople — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 12:13:30 +0000

This video was shared by Randell Tiongson on Facebook. It’s a brilliant interview of one of my favorite authors and marketers, Seth Godin. In this video he talks about “curiosity” and how eventually the safest thing you can do are the risky things and the riskiest thing you can do is be safe. When Seth talks about things like this he comes across as very credible because he walks his talk.

Anyway, here’s the video. I hope you guys learn something from it and get inspired to be more curious.

Secret of Manny Pangilinan’s Success (MVP)

Carlo Ople — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 07:48:24 +0000

I was reading an interview of PLDT and TV5 (among other companies) chairman Manny Pangilinan (MVP) about how he was able to rise up to be one of the most successful businessmen today. It’s interesting because what he said in that interview matches most of the stories and “urban legends” that you’d hear about him if you worked for a PLDT company. In his interview MVP said that one of his single biggest advantages is that “he tries harder”. If you talk to PLDT group managers and executives they all say that MVP has impeccable work ethic. In fact some say that he’s the very first person to arrive in the office and one of the last to leave.

MVP during the TV5 Center Groundbreaking Ceremony

This made me reflect on two points that I’d like to share with everyone in this article.

Point 1: Do we REALLY try harder?
The term “work harder” hasn’t been given justice by a lot of people. Working hard actually comes hand-in-hand with working smart. If you’re just pouring in more hours without being effective then you’re not doing things properly because you’re also causing unneeded damage to yourself which can affect you the next time you come to work. How many times have we seen officemates do insane overtimes lasting through the night and suddenly disappear the next day due to fatigue? There will be instances like this but this shouldn’t be the case all the time.

Working smart also means that we realize that there are different ways to attack a problem. Sometimes we get too much into the solution we have in mind that we don’t see other potential answers or opportunities.

Working harder and smarter also comes in when you fail. This is something that’s very evident in MVP’s story. If you guys read the interview you’ll see that MVP crashed in several business deals. But he didn’t let that get him down for good. We need to learn how to be resilient and flexible so that we can learn from our mistakes and move forward with the new lessons learned.

Point 2: At what cost?
Sacrificing means giving up something in exchange for what you want to achieve. The next big question that we have to answer is what are we willing to sacrifice in order to achieve what we want? This stresses the importance of working “smart” because sometimes we think that working hard entails us boxing ourselves in the “work world” and forgetting everything else outside of it like family, charity, and God. There really has to be a balance because money alone won’t be able to bring us true happiness and fulfillment. How many times have we seen celebrities and stars throw away their lives despite them having millions if not billions?

Just something to think about this Sunday.

Some of my best Teachers (2/3)

Carlo Ople — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 06:08:40 +0000

This is the second part of the 3-post series of “Some of my best teachers”. This series was inspired by the video “Teachers should care” which you’ll be able to watch below.

If you have a lot of things in common with a person the more likely it is for you to trust and learn from them. This was the case with my English teacher in 2nd year (or 3rd year) High School, Mr. Frederick “Erick” Tomas. We loved two things passionately: Judo and… StarCraft.

Teachers should care video

Tale of the Wrong North
There was a time in my life when things weren’t going well. There were a lot of “domestic” issues and they happened mostly during High School. Going to school everyday then was such a hard thing to do because I had so many things on my mind and I wasn’t just in the mood to “learn”. I was your typical rebellious young man who wasn’t going along with his peers and despised his teachers even more, haha.

Enter Mr. Tomas. This guy was a geek. But he wasn’t just a “geek” because he was also the Ateneo High School Judo team coach! Anyway, I eventually decided to join the Judo club and would practice once or twice a week. This guy taught me most of the basics of Judo including how to do a Judo roll. Judo became my outlet for the stress and problems at home. It gave me something to look forward to each week and I really poured my heart and soul into it.

“Judo rolling” over my wife during our prenup pics shoot

The most memorable thing about him though was a StarCraft game! We organized a Teacher vs Student match in Netopia (an internet cafe across Ateneo). It was a very exciting fight but we obviously won (:P). The best moment in the game was when we were attacking from the north and Mr. Tomas was shouting to his teammates “NORTH NORTH NORTH!” For some weird reason his teammates went SOUTH. He then started shouting “WRONG NORTH! YOUR OTHER NORTH!” LOL.

We all need teachers that we could relate to and trust. They help build our confidence in ourselves and in our abilities. Judo was an integral part of my younger years because it taught me the values of discipline andhard work. I wouldn’t have pushed forward with it if it weren’t for Mr. Tomas and eventually my college coach Ali Sulit. Good teachers point you towards where you’re supposed to go… your true north. Not the wrong one.

Thank you Mr. Tomas and I hope you and your family are doing well! How about a StarCraft 2 rematch? >:)