Synthetic Consumers, Real Culture: AI adoption at Colgate-Palmolive | Michaela Schoberova

Michaela Schoberova, SVP HR for Global Commercial Transformation at Colgate-Palmolive, on what 20+ years inside one company taught her about running AI experiments without breaking the culture.

Stela Lupushor (Donna is off this week) gets into:

• Colgate's proprietary digital consumer twins and how they compress early-stage product innovation
• Whether you can, or should, build synthetic employees the same way
• The AI Hub, mandated short training, and broad access behind a firewall
• "Super You" peer cohorts: why voluntary, role-specific learning beats top-down training
• Where AI grows the business vs. where it just cuts cost
• Coaching at scale, knowledge management, learning velocity
• The positive psychology lens on AI: character strengths, human relationships, and what we risk losing
• Leadership for a BANI world (brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible): empathy, clarity, agency
• What HR will regret in three years if we don't act now

References from the episode:

• "The GenAI Focus Shifts to Innovation at Colgate-Palmolive" (MIT Sloan Management Review, Davenport & Bean)
• "Navigating the Age of Chaos" by Jamais Cascio, Bob Johansen, and Angela F. Williams (2025)
• Anna Gallotti, MCC, Chair, ICF Task Force on AI in Coaching

More at workestration.ai.