Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence could be the Caribbean’s great equalis­er in the glob­al mar­ket.

So said Deputy Group CEO of Massy Hold­ings, James McLetchie, who shared his point of view on the tech­nol­o­gy dur­ing the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (Am­cham T&T) 32nd an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing and busi­ness fo­rum.

The rise of AI has cre­at­ed con­cerns around the world, with the fears of work­ers be­ing re­alised when, last Tues­day, Ama­zon’s CEO, Andy Jassy said he ex­pects the tech­nol­o­gy will lead to job cuts at the tech gi­ant.

At the Am­cham event held un­der the theme “Op­por­tu­ni­ties in Tran­si­tion,” McLetchie’s pre­sen­ta­tion ac­knowl­edged there were geopo­lit­i­cal chal­lenges fac­ing the re­gion, but there was al­so a se­ri­ous win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty avail­able.

“These dis­rup­tions are very re­al and it has huge po­ten­tial for mar­kets like ours be­cause I would ar­gue that when you think about the David and Go­liath sto­ry. David now has Chat­G­PT. David now could com­pete,” said McLetchie at the event.

“What we have in this re­gion is high cre­ative in­no­va­tion, but we lack scale. It doesn’t mat­ter if you sell some­thing to a mil­lion peo­ple in Trinidad, a mil­lion by $2 is just $2 mil­lion. You need scale. What AI and tech­nol­o­gy bring to us is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­al­ly dis­rupt the big boys. And that is how, at least, we think about it at Massy. That’s what I think about it per­son­al­ly, and that is the chal­lenge that I put out there. For­get tran­si­tion and dis­rup­tion as some­thing neg­a­tive. It is not. It is a huge op­por­tu­ni­ty for us, lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly, es­pe­cial­ly in the strength of who we are. We are some of the most cre­ative, in­no­v­a­tive peo­ple.”

He added, “An op­ti­mist sees op­por­tu­ni­ty in dif­fi­cul­ty. And it doesn’t mat­ter how big your com­pa­ny is, or how small your com­pa­ny is. Or where you are in the or­gan­i­sa­tion, that is a frame af­ter the doubt be­cause change is com­ing. I think it’s quite ex­cit­ing, but this is how you want to think about tran­si­tions. This is how I think about tran­si­tions, and this is how Massy is think­ing about tran­si­tions, and most of you all are prob­a­bly do­ing the same. “

McLetchie shared a per­son­al sto­ry of his at­ten­dance at a con­fer­ence for chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cers in Lon­don, where he was chas­tised for be­ing one of the few peo­ple present not us­ing Chat­G­PT as a re­source. He ex­plained fur­ther that the tech has now helped his re­search and read­ing strate­gies and could be fur­ther used to ad­dress and im­prove ef­fi­cien­cies in Massy’s busi­ness.

He said the tech­nol­o­gy quick­ly makes as­sess­ments which help Massy Stores man­agers plan for the hol­i­day long week­ends Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­pe­ri­enced last week.

“It’s a long week­end that would al­low the store man­ag­er, say in West­moor­ings to know that for a long week­end, every­body is go­ing down the is­lands. So there’s a cer­tain amount of rum you have to buy, there’s a cer­tain amount of chick­en you have to buy and a cer­tain amount of steak you have to buy. Our store man­agers will be able to go in­to it them­selves and check us­ing the Chat­G­PT and all the da­ta that we’ve have in there, and pre­dict that on a long week­end, at this time of year with this kind of weath­er, this is how much stock of steak you should have,” he ex­plained, “No­body from the cen­tre will help them do that. They will do that. They will be em­pow­ered to do that.”

He added, “Why is that im­por­tant? Not just be­cause we will have less stock and we will save mon­ey. But you could imag­ine, if you are a store man­ag­er and you could do that, you have the con­trol and the em­pow­er­ment to do that? That’s a bet­ter place to work.

McLetchie said the tech­nol­o­gy could es­pe­cial­ly help small­er busi­ness­es that were look­ing at new ways to ex­pand in­to the ex­port mar­ket and gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change.

He said, “What it means for small busi­ness­es is it al­lows you to com­pete faster, much more ag­ile with the big boys, in­clud­ing Massy and in­clud­ing ANSA McAL. But more im­por­tant­ly, if you want to com­pete out­side US dol­lars, don’t care what you’re sell­ing, if you’re sell­ing tea, if you’re sell­ing juice, it doesn’t mat­ter. This will help you write a busi­ness plan. It’ll help you write a so­cial me­dia plan. It is re­al, and it is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to re­al­ly dis­rupt as a na­tion and a coun­try and cre­ate em­ploy­ment, to chal­lenge the big boys out­side of this mar­ket.”

McLetchie con­firmed that Massy was in­vest­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly in adopt­ing a new ap­proach to its strate­gies as well as the tech­nol­o­gy go­ing for­ward.

“How do we think about all of this in a Massy con­text? There’ll be a big shift in the next I would say you’ll see us con­tin­ue to in­vest heav­i­ly in two things prob­a­bly. One is around lead­er­ship, be­hav­iours, tal­ent and in a way that we are not go­ing to run this com­pa­ny from the top down. The shift is to en­sure that de­ci­sions are made through­out the or­gan­i­sa­tion, strate­gic de­ci­sions, that peo­ple un­der­stand the strate­gies around choic­es, and they can make a de­ci­sion in the Mar­aval Massy stores the same way they can make it in Bar­ba­dos. They don’t need me to do it. They don’t need Am­bikah (Mon­groo, the ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and chair of the In­te­grat­ed Re­tail Port­fo­lio), to do it. A ma­jor shift in in­vest­ing in that side of lead­er­ship. The sec­ond thing is a ma­jor shift in tech­nol­o­gy, around digi­ti­sa­tion, around da­ta, and ob­vi­ous­ly around AI,” said the Massy deputy CEO.

He stat­ed the com­pa­ny’s new ware­house in Or­ange Grove is go­ing to be ful­ly au­to­mat­ed when it is of­fi­cial­ly opened in Au­gust.

McLetchie urged the au­di­ence not to fear the chal­lenges cre­at­ed, but in­stead look at it as op­por­tu­ni­ties to learn and adapt so that there were would be growth and re­silience to push on­ward.

“I would say that dis­rup­tion is com­ing. It is here. It will hap­pen to­mor­row. So you have to re­frame the prob­lem. Re­frame the prob­lem so as lead­ers, your teams, your em­ploy­ees, and your fam­i­ly, what they need from you is to re­frame the prob­lem as an op­por­tu­ni­ty. That’s the first thing that is re­quired of us. We owe it to them to do that. You have a du­ty of care to do that. Sec­ond­ly, learn­ing,” he said, adding that it was cru­cial to ac­cept new ideas in or­der to achieve new suc­cess.