EarthTone

What are your company’s main priorities or upcoming developments in Malaysia?

EarthTone Advisors’ main priority is to grow its consulting and coaching practice in Malaysia and beyond, and develop new engagements across its key service areas, including GBS and GCC operational excellence, executive coaching, leadership development, and organisational transformation.

A particular focus is helping Malaysia’s GBS and GCC organisations become PeopleReady and AIReady at the same time, prepared to address the human and organisational challenges of transformation while being ready to fully leverage the potential of artificial intelligence.

As AI takes over more transactional work, organisations that build leadership and cultural readiness alongside their technology roadmap will be better positioned to compete and move up the value chain.

Can you tell us about a flagship project your company is currently leading or has recently completed in Malaysia?

EarthTone Advisors’ current flagship initiative is Your People Make the Difference (YPMTD), launched in September 2026 in partnership with Reïna-Flor Okori, a four-time Olympian and a leading voice at the intersection of elite sport and leadership performance.

With its “When Elite Sport Meets Business Transformation” approach, YPMTD is a two-step performance development programme designed specifically for leadership teams in Global Business Services (GBS), Global Capability Centres (GCCs), and shared-services organisations.

Step 1 – Coaching: Co-delivered by Patrick and Reïna-Flor, the programme combines Patrick’s experience in enterprise transformation with Reïna-Flor’s proprietary methodologies drawn from elite sport, helping leaders improve decision-making, resilience, and team cohesion under pressure.

Step 2 – Embedding: EarthTone Advisors then helps organisations integrate these improvements into their daily operating routines and culture, so that the benefits of the programme continue beyond the initial coaching engagement.

The programme is particularly relevant to Malaysia’s GBS and GCC sector, which is facing increasing disruption from AI and needs to develop new sources of competitive advantage.

How does this project benefit Malaysia or align with national priorities (e.g., sustainability, industry, digitalisation)?

Malaysia’s services sector, particularly its GBS and GCC industry, is entering a new phase. AI is reducing some of the cost and language advantages that helped establish Malaysia as a leading regional hub over the past two decades.

Increasingly, the differentiator will be the quality and capabilities of talent, as well as organisations’ ability to provide a vision that is coherent with the times, give meaning to what their teams do, and retain their people, rather than simply the size or cost of the workforce.

The very notion of a “Best Place to Work” needs to be revisited. The search for meaning (Purpose) and the risk of Brown-Out, the loss of meaning at work, are creating new challenges for management teams. These challenges require a level of rigour and discipline comparable to that of elite performance, which is precisely what YPMTD seeks to bring to organisations.

YPMTD addresses this challenge by strengthening the leadership and organisational capabilities that GBS and GCC companies need to move up the value chain. This supports Malaysia’s ambition to remain a preferred destination for high-value enterprise-services investment rather than competing primarily on labour costs.

The programme also supports the country’s digitalisation agenda. As AI takes over more transactional activities, organisations need leaders who are ready to manage the resulting changes in roles, skills, culture, and operating models.