Given the history between our hosting the IMF meeting decades ago and the Asean meeting this year, should we take stock of where we are? We must not continue to mess things up, be in a race to the bottom?
Forty-one years is over a generation. And because we are today the regional laggard, the least we can do is commit not to replay this forgettable period? We know the words. Reform. Change. Paradigm shift.
Yet to refashion Juan de la Cruz seems too remote. Even Rizal expressed doubts. “Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow? And that they will be such is not to be doubted, for he who submits to tyranny loves it.”
We like to talk about TRAIN. The 3rd telecom. The war on drugs. Du30 even boasted that he will resign if he can’t win the war on drugs. To change paradigm, we must toss the idea of a silver bullet. Remember OFW remittances? Land reform? Or is Bongbong the next silver bullet?
The idea behind the blog came in 2008 in response to friends who asked the writer to share his worldview and how he saw PH against the rest of the world. Looking from the outside in by a Pinoy could offer an altogether different perspective. Says Enzo Ferrari, “You cannot describe passion, you can only live it.”
Some have asked how the writer could know Juan de la Cruz when he has lived overseas for 30 years. Beyond his annual visits following his retirement, he is Juan de la Cruz personified. He talks about himself when he beats up on Juan de la Cruz.
He is parochial and insular. He defers to hierarchy and expects paternalism in return. He values and relies on political patronage and dynasties and oligarchy. He even worked for a subsidiary owned by an oligarchy for 8 years.
He was even Juan Tamad. He was voted least likely to succeed by his high school classmates. He was a lazy student.
Still, people develop. Companies develop. And countries develop too. And why the post quotes Ferrari. The writer lived through all three. His old MNC company had to change paradigm when it became a takeover target. It had to sell over 100 businesses, cut revenues by 50% and then rebuilt them up twice as much … and again twice as much during his stint.
At the top 10 subsidiaries, they hired “change agents.” And the Philippines being one of them, the writer was brought in to challenge the status quo. And when he moved to headquarters he changed the budgeting process of a 200-year old company – from finance-driven to goal alignment.
Yet it wasn’t a slam dunk. He first introduced it to the Asia region and as it gained momentum, it would not escape the notice of the President who then asked the CEO to have the writer present the model to the senior-most team of the company.
And as the group signaled its buy-in, turning it into a key company process was a matter of course. And it meant getting it into the company’s core education and training curriculum mandated for all managers to undergo.
He was also part of the taskforce that created the education and training curriculum to support the company’s people development and succession planning initiatives. It’s current CEO and those under consideration to become the next one came out of the exercise.
But then again, every time change occurred, it was from collaborative efforts that came together behind a desired, shared outcome than the singular work of one individual.
And the same applies in the case of his Eastern European friends and how they grew from a small, losing proposition to today, a giant killer and one of the best enterprises in the EU. And the writer covered the Asia region when the Asian Tigers were demonstrating to the world the journey from poverty to prosperity.
In other words, we Pinoys must live out development, not just talk about it. To those of us that have only access to the power of the pen, let’s bird-dog key players in both the public and private sectors. Let’s not be part of the problem. Challenge the status quo, not protect, preserve and defend the very ways that have caused us infamy. Recall my loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to the country begins.
As they say in the West, everything must be on the table. Problem-solving cannot be ideologically driven. Even socialism has failed. There is no perfect system – so let’s not debate ideology. Ideology can never be the posture. Even the draw of holier-than-thou must not entice and rule us. Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God which are God’s.
Not even expertise. Recall how Nobel prize winners brought shame to their discipline. At the end of the day, it is about community and the common good. And the financial crisis cum Great Recession of 2008 – that the world is yet to fully overcome as evidenced by the political absolutism it is witnessing from the Brexit to Trump to Germany’s struggle to form a coalition government – comes to mind.
To quote from an earlier posting, “It is about the ecosystem. As the new UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) have articulated, it is imperative that: (a) we are unequivocal in accelerating infrastructure development; (b) be laser-like in our focus on industrialization, not be at the mercy of political patronage and oligarchy; and (c) dogged in the pursuit of innovation and competitiveness.”
Instead of the war on drugs, we must pursue the war on accelerating infrastructure development. If Du30 does his homework, no war on drugs was ever a success. The only one that can approximate success is the Portugal experience that decriminalized drugs and championed rehabilitation.
Instead of messing up with the form of government, we must have some committed group that will work with government to accelerate infrastructure development. But even that group must pledge to a change in paradigm. “Pinoy abilidad” cannot be the model.
For example, it must do its homework to develop a “growth mindset” and overcome a “fixed mindset.” It must develop several hypotheses and test each one. The first hypothesis must be derived from an outside model like the Asian Tigers so that we don’t keep reinventing the wheel. Which explains why we’re the regional laggard.
And instead of responding to populism, the group must demonstrate foresight and learn to employ Pareto’s principle. We cannot be everything to everybody. Which is what “crab mentality” is about.
A similar exercise must be done in the pursuit of industrialization. And its north star must simply be: not to be at the mercy of political patronage and oligarchy. Whatever happened to the JFC’s initiative, or the seven big industry winners?
And then do another one to drive innovation and competitiveness. First, we must toss leader-dependency. And innovation and competitiveness goes beyond attacking the yardsticks of competitiveness. We can start with the top exports and their support industries. Where there is momentum and mass and weight there is energy and power. And the effort must be to develop products and/or services that will find a wide international market.
We’ve heard it before: keep moving up the value chain not for pricing per se but to respond to the hierarchy of human needs, raise man’s well-being and attain a sustainable enterprise. For example, in today’s fast-paced world, convenience is central because people want to have a life. Again, looking outward will give us a better worldview instead of reinventing the wheel.
The common thread of the above exercises is to define where we want to be. It is not about the universal 7%-GDP growth. That is too narrow. It is about development. We must talk building blocks not a silver bullet. The latter has been misunderstood as equating to the imperative of focus. Yet when it comes to the industry road maps, we want to bite more than we can chew? Model thinking can clarify the power of purpose and distinguish it from building blocks and sets and subsets, or the vital few from the trivial many.
After 41 years, we must figure out how we don’t instinctively replicate the last 41 years.
“Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow? And that they will be such is not to be doubted, for he who submits to tyranny loves it.” [We are ruled by Rizal’s ‘tyrants of tomorrow,’ Editorial, The Manila Times, 29th Dec 2015]
“Now I know why Paul dared to speak of ‘the curse of the law’ (Galatians 3:13). Law reigns and discernment is unnecessary, which means there is little growth or change in such people. When you do not grow, you remain an infant.” [Faith and Science, Open to Change, Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, 23rd Oct 2017]
“As a major component for the education and reorientation of our people, mainstream media – their reporters, writers, photographers, columnists and editors – have an obligation to this country . . .” [Era of documented irrelevance: Mainstream media, critics and protesters, Homobono A. Adaza, The Manila Times, 25th Nov 2015]
“National prosperity is created, not inherited. It does not grow out of a country’s natural endowments, its labor pool, its interest rates, or its currency’s value, as classical economics insists . . . A nation’s competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade.” [The Competitive Advantage of Nations, Michael E. Porter, Harvard Business Review, March–April 1990]
“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” [William Pollard, 1911-1989, physicist-priest, Manhattan Project]
“Development [is informed by a people’s] worldview, cognitive capacity, values, moral development, self-identity, spirituality, and leadership . . .” [Frederic Laloux, Reinventing organizations, Nelson Parker, 2014]
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