Failure is not an option

(The straightforward definition of competitiveness)

An old thought about failure and competitiveness came back as the writer and his wife were awaiting their flight out of Sofia (Bulgaria) airport – as similar scenes from other airports flashed back: New York airports are unlike Singapore or Amsterdam or Hong Kong or London Heathrow’s Terminal 5. And as they say, “only in New York” – do people take airport inefficiency as a given. But that is not the model to emulate if we want to elevate our competitive spirit and thus our competitiveness.

Not everything foreign is an ideal to be adopted: Japan’s inward-looking culture and Spain’s marginal entrepreneurs (i.e., their SMEs like ours ought to set their sights higher) to name just a couple have proved ineffective in economic development.

Sofia’s Terminal 2 was mired in corruption charges similar to the newest terminal in Manila. It was conceived much later than Manila’s yet despite the delays, it still opened ahead of Manila. As a people we had rationalized the delay as “business as usual”. “Failure is not an option” is not in our psyche? It is what competitiveness is all about. Of course even the best can be beaten, but that is not the mindset of winners.

It is difficult for us to dissect the implications of being the least competitive in the region because of our mindset of business as usual? Or is it because we’re instinctively fatalistic?

Have we unwittingly isolated ourselves given our comfort zone as defined by our hierarchical culture – that within our conflict-free zone we find peace and tranquility? Unfortunately, outside the confines of our culture, hierarchy is not respected – that is to say, we have to be geared to compete and leave our conflict-free zone in the first place.

It takes time and experience competing regionally or globally to develop the mindset – failure is not an option. For instance, Jollibee (not cowed by McDonald’s) has developed the confidence to compete outside the country and expects that they would generate greater business overseas than the Philippine market.

The writer still remembers the reaction of his then new Bulgarian friends whenever the imperative of global competitiveness was the topic: their jaw would drop – that was almost 7 years ago when he first came to represent USAID/IESC. Their products were not sexy or high-tech and were low-margin businesses. And so they had to learn two fundamentals: (a) product development is about expanding the mind, i.e., tapping the brain’s creative power, not worrying about do’s and don’ts because they narrow perspective – which sadly the writer reads a lot in our papers, and (b) healthy market shares and margins trump all else – when driven by marketing and market dynamics, not power or greed.

Today these ex-communist folks are so gung-ho competing with the best, the brightest and the biggest brands in the industry: they have gone from a local SME in their small country of 8 million to marketing (with ordinary day-to-day, but value-added, products) and doing business across the region of over 200 million (and counting) who had lived through socialism. And their mantra is: failure is not an option. Isn’t it amazing that old debates like socialism and debt default, for instance, are still around us? Are we in the 21st century yet – the age of global competition? Or are we still justifying our failings instead of learning from them? How can we learn to look forward if we keep looking backward?