It’s heartening that in a leadership course (in the MBA program at a prestigious Catholic university) they’re reaching for relevance, and making a connection to the challenges confronting the Philippines. And the writer is delighted to be a part of the exercise – the niece, working for her MBA, would record an interview with him about leadership.
When the writer started this blog two years ago, it was in response to friends and relatives who had asked what he thought about the economy – and what could be done? Others were prodding him to get involved in education to share his worldview and experience. The writer recently met with our premier business school and they started a discussion on the need to “translate the technical to (the ‘language’ of) practice” – e.g., how organizations drive their businesses to be competitive.
Our business education has currency in its definition of private sector needs. Research efforts and the cases we utilize as key learning tools are contemporaneous – including global ‘best practices’. With Asia today being the engine of the world economy, it is important that we are part of the continuing development of the Asian manager. (Even in Eastern Europe managers are learning leadership and competitiveness – e.g., a doctoral candidate recently, and very proudly, forwarded her now officially published article, earlier critiqued by the writer.)
Back to the writer’s niece: he wanted to highlight the demand on leadership: (a) it must be disciplined and focused on the object or the ‘endpoint’ of the endeavor, (b) be dynamic and pursue execution with confidence and (c) get the team on board and committed to the cause. The simpler the definition of the endpoint the greater is the ability of the leadership to execute with confidence. Clarity facilitates communication and motivation, and engenders the team’s commitment and ownership of the efforts. Leadership, by definition, must inspire but the leadership process is disciplined – precisely what Lee Kuan Yew is telling us.
In the case of the Philippines, our ‘endpoint’ as a country is to be a developed economy, with a specific GDP or per capita income as a goal, for instance. But to relate leadership to the group of MBA students, the writer would explain that in the private sector, the ‘endpoint’ is to attain ‘sustainable profitable growth’– and collectively, sustained profitable growth in industry translates to sustained GDP growth. Conversely, sustainability is at risk when businesses don’t drive competitiveness – i.e., under invest in technology, innovation, people, products, markets; and unsustainable economies, starved of investments won’t yield the necessary economic and social benefits people aspire for.
A growing Philippine consumer-products company with healthy margins, penetrating the overseas market must be designed, as its intermediate goal, to deliver >$100 million in revenues – to match the median subsidiary of global players. A local company (and the writer enjoys following news reports about them) appears moving in this direction. And, unsurprisingly, they have the confidence to embark on a major investment to raise their capacity to compete. To be focused and committed to their core business elevates expertise – knowledge, attitude, skills, habit and insights – to higher levels that can be leveraged regionally if not globally; a reality Philippine industry may not appreciate given that our major enterprises are local conglomerates. That is, they are yet to be competitive beyond our borders. We have a handful geared or gearing up to be competitive outside our shores, but we can use more in order to substantially raise the nation’s revenues or GDP. (GE is the best practice model for conglomerates – each of the businesses is a major global player.)
Indeed we’re doing loads to raise our revenues as a nation particularly in SMEs – starting from the Barangay or even at the GK-village level. But despite a market of >90 million Filipinos especially powered by OFW remittances, we’re not generating the revenues to lift the economy above underdeveloped levels. We have to move from livelihood-mode to competitive-mode, not just peddle imported goods and/or make local ones – but learn to create higher value-added products and services; think big – and take advantage of the global economy; and feed and capitalize our creativity. We have to start somewhere, reach for the human spirit and our God-given potentials?
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