The reality of our (un)competitiveness . . .

. . . Filipinos would likely laugh about visiting these countries . . .

Tunisia, Jordan, Azerbaijan, Montenegro, Romania, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Namibia, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Macedonia . . . plus a handful more . . . alas, have something in common: these countries are more competitive than we are.

The writer has traveled to a few of them, especially Eastern Europe. He finds it intriguing that people who for decades lived under police states could turn on a dime and live out Maslow’s insight, shopping for $200 jeans and $300 iPhones – talk about humanness! On the more serious side, a group of young marketers the writer mentors has developed a simple one-page “marketing for dummies” model. And to the horror of MNCs, these kids are taking regional market shares from them, if not beating them hands down. The largest of the MNCs reported lower sales & profit YTD; while they had their best ever P&L/balance sheet, despite the global financial crisis, thus poised to inflict more damage on the big guys. And so a Western marketing guru had acknowledged them as “best practice” example in a recent speaking engagement.

These people knew next to nothing about capitalism, investment, global trade, etc. But they have been stuffing their portfolio of 3 different but related businesses with higher value-added products (and registering them globally) and generating the capacity to: (a) price competitively with healthy margins and (b) aggressively compete. Beyond marketing, they demonstrate skills in economics, strategy, finance as well as R&D and supply chain. They understand markets and economies and the vulnerabilities of MNCs (cost structure, agility, etc.) and treat them as preys . . . not ghosts to run away from – like we do? And they have a one-page roadmap they call a GPS: they know where they are and where they are going, and as importantly, how to get there.

It would be 18 months since the writer started to engage columnists and editors about our state-of-affairs. And over this period, it is apparent that our way of life has very little propensity for change: (a) we are truly accommodating, hospitable people; (b) the tropics is paradise; (c) our Christian upbringing tells us that every day is a blessing; (c) we are among the happiest people in this world; (d) and we are not about problem-solving or competition or development or progress – we’re about family and destiny.

We would be happy to strike the least common denominator, not the highest per capita GDP. In the meantime we would continue to support our favorite charities and doing so is a feel-good sense. Too bad for the close to 30 million Filipinos who may or may not benefit from the kindness of the rest of us.

On the other hand, we are again pinning our hopes on the next leadership. Leadership is critical . . . like FDR demonstrated. But we will always get the leadership that we deserve – because we vote for those that reflect our instincts? And until we recognize that as a people we need to change, we will perpetuate the leadership profile that we’ve had for decades: politicians pander to popular demands because they win votes – dangling candies and favors.

Popular demands are not synonymous to change. We need to see ourselves beyond a collection of exotic Pacific islands, e.g., scarce resources like human and capital ought to be optimized via ideas designed to travel beyond our shores – in order to leverage economies of scale and the interdependence of nations.

The bottom line: we must first change as a people. But we keep rationalizing our failings? Throwing supposed new widgets to our crisis? But our crisis is decades-old; we don’t need new widgets because we are the problem?