“ . . . I would worry about what kind of basic ideas that would be driven home to get you where you wanna go because you can do that. There’s no doubt in my mind about that,” Clinton said [to us at the Manila Hotel].
That’s typical ‘looking forward’, not ‘looking back’? It’s what dynamism is about? And Clinton talks about ‘basic ideas’ – basic or simple, and they really work? And Pareto’s Principle (or the 80-20 rule) and Euclid’s ‘basic axioms – that generate an impressive body of compelling results’ – come to mind. (And he didn’t have to repeat what Hillary had to say to President Aquino about the oligarchic nature of our economy?)
Net, his message is for us to be dynamic and simple yet confident? (And we can take it or leave it?) But do we continue to sound clinical about our challenges, not action-driven? The world is moving forward, and progress is moving at warp speed – but the word ‘dynamic’ or dynamism is something we don’t talk about? It’s not top of mind – it’s not in our lexicon? What is the evidence – to continue with the Clinton thought process?
As a politician he’s one of the great communicators because he could distill his topic into a few points – what he would call ‘evidence’, a throw back to his legal training? Dynamism is not at the top of our mind – and is not even in our lexicon? How come we’ve lived through many years with such meager investment levels – how could we move forward? How come we haven’t developed winning product ideas for years – how could we compete outside our shores?
But the biggest evidence could be our ‘holistic perspective’? We seem unable or uncomfortable to pursue major undertakings unless we’ve done a dissertation in our head? Unfortunately, there are times when one stops asking and starts telling, like when a third of Filipinos are hungry? It was Clinton who presided over the longest economic boom in US modern times – driven by a simple agenda: ‘It’s the economy, stupid’!
And Fortune 500 companies likewise embrace a simple mantra – i.e., the bigger they are, the simpler they are because they value ‘the be all and end all’: clarity and execution. (They are holistic in execution driven by a simple strategy – there is nuance!) But we’d nit-pick and point to their negatives – because Americans are ‘too dialed up’ (or ‘suplado’)? They’re out to protect their interests? (And we haven’t been undermining our own interests and squandering opportunities, e.g., allowing new-market economy Vietnam to aggressively drive investments when we were first at-bat?) Or they’re just not holistic? And Clinton himself isn’t perfect? (And so was the good thief – while the bad thief was so full of himself that he fell under his own weight?)
The writer went through a similar experience with the Eastern Europeans – but they came around sooner than later. For example, margins are the key to sustainable, profitable growth! Of course it’s not just margins; but if margins are at the core of the strategy, the corollary pieces will come into place. For instance, to be dynamic in product development while ensuring new products are designed to meet margin hurdles would sustain success over the long-term. And so the writer’s Eastern European friends now live with the simple mantra: ‘Drive turnover, margins and efficiency . . . and you beat the hell out of competition’!
And . . . so the writer restates a point: ‘We want to be a developed country . . . And to get there we need enormous capital that will buy us strategic investments in strategic industries, technology, innovation, products, talent and market . . . We value capital, not cronies – and matching if not outdoing the Chinas of the world in incentives; we value strategic industries, not favors to friends; we value technology, not fielding our OFWs effectively as ‘muchachos’; we value innovative products, not low-value commodities; we value talent, not relations; we value markets – the bigger the better, not simply to corner the local market.’
But do we suffer from NIH – or ‘not invented here syndrome’? Or is it simply the absence of experience – we haven’t been a developed country yet? Young JFK’s Bay of Pigs’ trauma turned on his wisdom, overnight?
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