Meet The Disruptors: Chaz Perera Of Roots Automation On The Five Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
“Be Inquisitive” — What better way to learn quickly than asking people to talk about themselves or the things that interest them most. It’s afforded me an unusual collection of connections and perspectives that have helped me immensely throughout my leadership journey.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Chaz Perera.
Chaz is the co-founder and CEO of Roots Automation. In his 20-year career, Chaz has launched new products, grown global businesses, and helped companies save money by leveraging data science, robotics, and AI. He’s led teams with thousands of employees, at one point leading a team of 7,000 people across 50 countries. Before founding Roots Automation, Chaz was AIG, Inc.’s Chief Transformation Officer and also its Head of Global Business Services.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I grew up in different parts of the world, but I’ve called New York City home for the better part of my life. New York City exposed me to a variety of innovative people and companies who ultimately were able to make big leaps because they had the support of an insurance company acting as their backstop as they took big risks. It made me appreciate the power of the insurance product and led me to start my career there. I spent 14 years at AIG in a variety of roles, including having global responsibility for parts of claims, operations, and strategy — each of which allowed me the space to be “entrepreneurial” and learn in a supportive environment. I also wanted to venture out and start something from scratch, and AIG afforded me the space to figure out what that was and to meet the people who I would be able to do that with.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
We combine machine intelligence and human ingenuity to create intelligent Digital Coworkers, providing organizations with AI-powered, digitized employees that can think, read and intuit like people.
Digital Coworkers dramatically improve efficiency and increase capacity within stretched insurance companies by providing business leaders a turn-key, experienced worker in digital form to support their daily operations.
It’s critically important because talent is increasingly harder to hire and retain, and companies are turning to automation/AI as a solution, but those efforts typically fall short, are expensive, and intended value can be elusive. We’ve figured out how to help insurance companies overcome this burden and see ROI and improved EX on day-one with a Digital Coworker.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
Some of the best advice I got from a senior insurance leader and mentor was to focus on experiences and skills as opposed to role and salary. Her advice was that seniority and remuneration will come from learning how to take and mitigate risk on behalf of a company and showing that you could be an innovative yet safe pair of hands at the wheel. The only way to get that exposure was to focus on core skills and experiences, some of which could be a step down on the career ladder or a lateral move. It’s definitely something I live and appreciate.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Disruption or transformation simply to do things differently makes no sense. A company’s decision to change itself has to be founded in aiming to improve three things (in my opinion): (1) What Customer Experience (CX) are they aiming to create; (2) How do they want to be perceived in the broader market; and (3) What revenue or cost improvement does accomplishing the first two things do for the company. Importantly, the market has to be ready or near-ready for the change.
From an internal perspective, many embark on expensive transformational projects without first considering the bigger picture — the ultimate vision for the change connected to my previous point — which is why we see anywhere from 50% — 70% of large-scale digital transformation programs fail.
Can you share five of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
“Be Inquisitive” — What better way to learn quickly than asking people to talk about themselves or the things that interest them most. It’s afforded me an unusual collection of connections and perspectives that have helped me immensely throughout my leadership journey.
“Demonstrate Respect” — There’s an old adage that being respected has little to do with your station in life. It’s earned by being reverent to others and patient throughout. I continue to practice being this as it’s easy to let slip.
“Extend Trust” — Assuming positive intent in people’s words, actions, and behaviors is something I try to follow everyday. It’s difficult, but you have to give people the space to learn and extending trust enables that.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
We’ve more than tripled the usage of Roxanne, our Claims Assistant Digital Coworker, and yet we’re only processing a tiny fraction of US-based claims activity. We aim to further expand Roxanne’s ability to read, understand, and process unstructured insurance documents and use insurance software without prior training or scripting. If she works at CNA today, she should be able to work at Travelers tomorrow without any extensive training/rework.
We are striving to liberate Claims Adjusting personnel to engage and focus on their end-customer when that customer needs them most. This is why people buy insurance, and it’s where the insurance product is made real to its customers.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
As a leader in an AI company, I’ll share a book that I recommend people read to get a base understanding of a technology that people need to understand and appreciate as its becomes more and more pervasive in our lives (whether they realize it or not): You Look Like a Thing and I Love You by Janelle Shane.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
It might be due to how politics and points of view manifests itself on social media but I notice we assume the worst in people or at least don’t offer the benefit of doubt. So, without being cynical about it, were I able to wave a magic wand, I’d want us all to assume positive intent in the words, behaviors, and actions of the people around us. It will allow us to listen better and to hear more. And if we can get there, then we can find shared problems, shared achievements, and shared satisfaction.
How can our readers follow you online?
Chaz Perera:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chazperera/
Email: Chaz.Perera@Rootsautomation.net
Roots Automation:
Website: www.rootsautomation.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rootsautomation/
Twitter: @RootsAutomation
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
