Crab mentality . . . Hierarchy . . . Pork

The first 20 years of my career were spent in the Philippines (although the last 25 years I've been based overseas.) And I realized on the 18th year that we Pinoys weren't keen to prioritize – as in our failure to provide electricity that is so fundamental to life, the absence of a modern airport in the 21st century, or basic infrastructure like roads and bridges and ferry services and facilities being an archipelago, etc., etc. (And like the Washington culture, what we are keen on is the next election, and the next.) But then when we are compared to a neighbor we are defensive and pinpoint at their deficiencies – we think we are the paragon of democracy? And it explains our failure and inability to benchmark? Yet we have experts in total quality management; and fundamental in TQM is benchmarking! That was how Toyota was able to dislodge Detroit's Big 3; and it is also how Hyundai was able to become a major player in this global industry.

 

And so I’ve been asked, why do you talk about Bulgaria? Because the place was exactly like what we thought Soviet satellite states were like, in one word, dreadful! And so my wife's first reaction when we arrived in Sofia ten years ago as their first snowfall that year came was: "What are we doing in this godforsaken place?" It is not a Singapore that we like to visit but are defensive when it’s compared to PHL. Bulgaria suffered under communist rule for decades and was left holding the bag, that of a backward economy, but over the last ten years has shown what we Pinoys could only dream of: a modern airport, a subway system, world-class highways to their seaside, a major tourist destination for locals and foreigners alike, etc., etc. They're not perfect and so for a couple of months now, without fail at 6:30 pm, they've been holding a daily protest rally, beyond pork, against corruption and cronyism, and against a corrupted media. And my wife and I had joined them, but being foreigners our Bulgarian friends didn't think it was wise for us to become permanent fixtures in the protest. Still, these people care about their country and long before had learned self-immolation, as when they wanted to tell their former communist rulers that they couldn’t be subservient. (And we have socialist-wannabes?)

 

And so on that 18th year I started pondering how people could learn to prioritize. And I’d already been with my old MNC company for 5 years, done business and budget reviews countless of times; and that helped opened my eyes to the reality of ideas and plans that would inspire academic work – or why there was Plato and there was Aristotle? And so this once lazy student kept in touch with academe while picking and choosing what would work in the real world. As I've said in this blog before, I became the father of goal alignment in the MNC company, a very simple model that could hold the attention of our president and the CEO. [Disclosure: I did not adopt the Balanced Scorecard popular in business schools after test-piloting it in a subsidiary.] And whether my approach would work only with a Fortune 500 company was put to a test when I accepted a development-work assignment in Eastern Europe from an arm of USAID – to assist small enterprises compete in the EU market. The one that I thought was sincere, beyond being made up of smart young people, would prove their mettle – and would earn their place among the best in the EU.

 

In the meantime, we're protesting against pork? But pork doesn't happen in isolation – i.e., is it an outcome of crab mentality, for example? What about parochialism and hierarchy and oligarchy that beautifully come together, gift-wrapped and all? What about subservience? What about seeing no evil, hearing no evil, and speaking no evil? That's why there is pork?  We need a new airport, but where is the grease money? In the vernacular it's called "bulaan" – i.e., we can't simply be black or white, it is always gray? Thus transparency is foreign to us? And a classic example is our "Dutch disease." We don't talk about it yet we celebrate what we proudly call our consumption economy – principally from OFW remittances and call centers – delivered to the waiting arms of oligopoly? We don't have to be forensics to know how the dots connect – because the same pattern would explain why we've had the Mindanao power crisis and even worse why foreign investments by-pass PHL? And add to that our primitive infrastructure?

 

In the meantime we've taken a holier-than-thou posture because of our faith – while compartmentalizing our culture of endemic corruption, a classic case of faith without works? When we're subservient to hierarchy while indulging in crab-mentality and celebrating oligarchy aren't we helping and abetting influence peddling – and that is how the dots connect to our perfect storm of persistent underdevelopment and pervasive poverty? And so pork is only the attention-grabber but the cancer is much more extensive having metastasized and attacked every critical organ of PHL?

The ability to predict

Finding meaning in work remains the challenge for organizations and their managers – and which my Eastern Europeans friends have learned in spades, and yet they’ve recognized that they’re far from perfect. And in my presentation to the European culture-management community explaining the struggles in their journey, I wrote: “All throughout the planning and budget process, the company now drills down to the critical demands of execution. This is in sharp contrast to that of the past when the company would be satisfied with simply setting target numbers [sounds like PHL export targets?] and with no rigid timelines – a practice that through experience suffered from great uncertainty and unpredictability. Clearly, unlike now, the enterprise in those days did not meet global competitive standards in, say, efficiency or cost-effectiveness, thus often delivering inconsistent financial outcomes.”

 

“Having learned from experience, they now make a concerted effort to minimize uncertainty or mistakes by making business plans truly cognizant of the imperatives of a successful selling and marketing effort – which is to come up with the right product, pricing, placement, and promotion. And to heighten the probability of execution, they now duly factor-in all the major resource requirements – people, machinery and equipment, materials, operating budget, and systems and methods – as well as the mechanics of execution itself – the who will do the what, when, where, and how. Thus, the company now delineates authority and responsibility not as an extraneous, slap-on effort but builds them into the planning and budgeting process itself" [which throughout must satisfy Pareto's 80-20 rule; but which we Pinoys seem unable to internalize owing to crab mentality, but which euphemistically we label holistic or inclusive or comprehensive, as in our failed comprehensive agrarian reform program? Or take East Germany where "social programs devoured billions [of euros], including a [job] creation program, which was later dropped".]

 

“Simply put, the company now gets everyone in the organization engaged in how the business is conducted – from how a product idea is developed all the way to how a product is produced, marketed and sold, and its sales proceeds accounted for. Likewise, information technology and management is no longer confined to producing periodic financial statements; now it also monitors on a daily basis the company’s sales in its various markets or countries, matching them with several performance yardsticks like forecasts by brands and by business units. As this gives everyone a sense and feeling of ownership, each of them develops a strong commitment to the business plans. What’s more, the process is very transparent, so the “What’s in it for me” question is now quickly and judiciously answered through the bonus system.”

 

And given that this blog is about economics, specifically the Philippine economy, an article from The New York Times on 24th Aug 2013 would attract my attention: “What Is Economics Good For?” [By Alex Rosenberg and Tyler Curtain] “When we put a satellite in orbit around Mars, we have the scientific knowledge that guarantees accuracy and precision in the prediction of its orbit. Achieving a comparable level of certainty about the outcomes of an economy is far dicier . . . The fact that the discipline of economics hasn’t helped us improve our predictive abilities suggests it is still far from being a science, and may never be. Still, the misperceptions persist. A student who graduates with a degree in economics leaves college with a bachelor of science, but possesses nothing so firm as the student of the real world processes of chemistry or even agriculture.”

 

“It’s easy to understand why economics might be mistaken for science. It uses quantitative expression in mathematics and the succinct statement of its theories in axioms and derived “theorems,” so economics looks a lot like the models of science we are familiar with from physics. Its approach to economic outcomes . . . recalls the way atomic theory explains chemical reactions. Economics employs partial differential equations . . . that look remarkably like ones familiar from physics. The trouble with economics is that it lacks the most important of science’s characteristics — a record of improvement in predictive range and accuracy . . . Moreover, many economists don’t seem troubled when they make predictions that go wrong. Readers of Paul Krugman and other like-minded commentators are familiar with their repeated complaints about the refusal of economists to revise their theories in the face of recalcitrant facts. Philosophers of science are puzzled by the same question. What is economics up to if it isn’t interested enough in predictive success to adjust its theories the way a science does when its predictions go wrong? SO if predictive power is not in the cards for economics, what is it good for?” And especially in PHL where we’ve suffered from “Dutch disease” (i.e., championing OFWs/call centers instead of fixing our real economic fundamentals?) when the disease has long before been discovered? The fallout: persistent underdevelopment and endemic poverty?

“. . . Morality Lesson”

That’s from The New York Times’ Roger Cohen, The Euro’s Morality Lesson, 5th Aug 2013: “Economics in Germany, it has been noted, is a branch of moral philosophy. Growth is the reward for good behavior. Such virtue includes frugality and avoidance of debt. It goes without saying that, in this view, promoting growth by increasing fiscal deficits is the height of immorality. Economics in Greece is rather different. It is a branch of personal ingenuity. Morally loaded words from the Anglo-Saxon canon like “corruption” and “cronyism” have attached themselves to the Greek approach, but for Greeks following rules was a form of stupidity. If politicians were corrupt, what could be the purpose of personal integrity? Far better, Greeks thought, to trust in “fakelaki” (the little envelope) and “rousfeti” (a political favor for votes) than confuse morality with material advancement.”

 

“It was a German, Martin Luther, who ignited the Reformation with his objections to the papacy’s corruption, the sale of indulgences and the papal authority to absolve sin. A big case of northern probity against southern laxity, frosty rigor against sun-soaked elasticity: the clash of an attempt to hold humanity to a high moral standard with a system taking human fallibility as a starting point. A few centuries later along comes a shared currency that tries to unite the Protestant north with the Catholic or Orthodox south, a Europe that went through the Reformation with one that did not. Trouble was inevitable . . . Europe must bridge its moral chasm. Greeks can learn something of economics as moral philosophy. Germans can learn that austerity as economic tool has its limits and that the use of a fiscal deficit to finance growth is not a sin. The euro is also a morality lesson.”

"THE Philippines 'must do its homework' to bring down power costs and increase the income of the Filipinos so it could attract more foreign direct investments (FDI), ING Bank Chief Economist Joey Cuyegkeng said. [Business Mirror, 4th Aug 2013] He said investors, who would want to invest in other Asian countries, especially China and Indonesia, look at the local domestic consumers as their target markets . . . So increasing the purchasing power [i.e., GDP per person] of the citizens in the country will make foreign manufacturers go to the Philippines.”

 

In other words, we can’t be patting ourselves on the back that because of our large population (roughly 100 million) we have an inherent economic driver, i.e., it has a very critical qualification, purchasing power. Of course, those making the argument may also be invoking morality, especially the pitfalls of reproductive health? Theologians could argue either side, as with Papal encyclicals; meanwhile the continuing challenge of economic development remains. And it comes down to: PHL must very quickly become a developed economy – which, unfortunately, will take us at least a generation. But even more unfortunate is our inability to examine, challenge and expand our comfort zone or worldview? And that is our overarching morality challenge, because underdevelopment and widespread poverty have confounded us?

 

“Noah Smith has an interesting note on the “death of theory” in economics. Obviously that’s an exaggeration, but there has been a measurable decline in the number of papers that offer theoretical innovations as opposed to empirical analysis, and also a harder to measure but unmistakable shift in the profession’s value structure, with empiricists reaping greater rewards and theorists valued less . . . So in my experience, anyway, theory lost its luster in trade because it could prove anything; it lost its luster in macro because it proved things that weren’t so.” [Paul Krugman, What killed theory, The New York Times, 5th Aug 2013]

 

“The hard truth seems to be this: We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock. The significance of our lives and our fragile realm derives from our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We would prefer it to be otherwise, of course, but there is no compelling evidence for a cosmic Parent who will care for us and save us from ourselves [e.g., threats of nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, economic collapse and mass starvation.] It is up to us.” [Carl Sagan on the meaning of life, Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, 14th Jul 2013; Wikipedia: Sagan spent most of his career as a professor of astronomy at Cornell University where he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. He advocated scientific skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).]

East Germany: a primer in nation-building

“An estimated 1.3 trillion euros ($1.7 trillion) have flowed from the former West Germany to the former East Germany over the last 20 years. And the tab is still running. To this day, the East is gobbling up subsidies estimated between 70 and 80 billion euros a year. That lifeline will continue for at least another nine years . . . Even then, structurally poor states . . . can expect to receive further cash infusions . . .” [Eastern Germany is western Germany's trillion euro bet, DW.de, 24th Sep 2010] 

 

Wikipedia: “Its population declined from more than 18 million in 1950 to 16 million in 1990 . . . Although the GDR (informally known in English as East Germany) had to pay substantial war reparations to the USSR, it became the richest economy in the Eastern Bloc. Nonetheless it did not match the economic growth of West Germany . . . In 1989, a peaceful revolution in the GDR led to the destruction of the Berlin Wall and emergence of a government committed to liberalization. The following year, free elections were held, and international negotiations led to the signing of . . . the status and borders of Germany. The GDR was dissolved and Germany was reunited on 3 October 1990.” [N.B. Germany today has a population of 81,147,265.]

 

In the meantime, “The Philippine energy sector will need at least P3 trillion [roughly equivalent to $68 billion] in fresh investments between now and 2030, to ensure adequate power to support the growth of the local economy.” [Philippine Daily Inquirer, 20th Dec 2012] What can we learn from East Germany about development and nation-building? Clearly we need tons of money; and international institutions have said that it would take at least a generation for PHL to approximate a developed economy. In the meantime, instead of doggedly pursuing development, we have been siphoning off whatever little treasure we have to benefit a few? We may have a budget of over a trillion pesos but that doesn’t make us financially equipped to carry out the demands of nation-building. It looks relatively big especially against a few beneficiaries –  i.e., the 50 richest Filipinos own over a quarter of GDP, and add them to the network of legislators and NGOs and their friends, that is where our treasure has been finding its way, our version of the 1% or Occupy Wall Street? What else can Germany teach us?

 

“[D]id reunification come too fast and cost too much? There were so many uncompetitive industries. But the costs of shutting them down, of unemployment and the many recovery programs all added up quickly. Reunification hasn't come cheap . . . There were, however, plenty of mistakes made along the reunification path. For example, numerous eastern German cities, often in isolated regions, used funds to build huge water recreational venues that now struggle to find paying guests. One of them uses as its main structure the once massive hanger built by a . . . subsidized venture that had hoped to build huge industrial cargo airplanes but went bankrupt.”

 

“Then there are the billions that went to renovating dwellings in inner-cities, with the backfiring effect that people fled their apartments in pre-fabricated high-rise buildings on the outskirts for nicer places in the city centers. Now many of these buildings are being torn down . . . Yes, some money went to the wrong projects . . . But you can't wait 20 years to know what is right; then nothing happens . . . If infrastructure projects consumed billions of euros, social programs devoured billions more. Taxpayers' money is best invested where it can achieve the most productivity and this certainly hasn't been the case . . . Maybe too much money went into social programs, like the work creation program . . . which was later dropped . . . Despite all the hiccups that the reunification process has suffered along the way, a general mood of optimism about the future prevails . . . Like every investment, it's a burden in the beginning when you have to finance it . . . But hopefully it pays off later on . . . We're already seeing that.”

 

Bottom line: East Germany benefited from the experience and wealth of West Germany – and they still made lots of mistakes. We Pinoys don’t have that benefit of wealth and experience in economic development and nation-building. The timing of at least one generation for us to approximate developed economy status is looking too optimistic everyday as we read about how we keep messing things up? Experience- and wealth-wise we're way off, what about our head and our heart and our gut? One columnist hates that we're a lapdog of the US; what about standing on our own two feet? And it’s not about donating $250K to Hurricane Sandy? 

“Capitalism is culture . . .”

“To sustain it, laws and institutions are important, but the more fundamental role is played by the basic human spirit of independence and initiative.” [Robert J. Shiller, Why Innovation Is Still Capitalism’s Star, The New York Times, 17th Aug 2013] “The decisive role of the “spirit of capitalism” is an old concept, going back at least to Max Weber, but it needs refreshing today with new evidence and new thinking. Edmund S. Phelps, a professor of economics at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate, [wrote] “Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge and Change” (Princeton University Press), and it contains a complex new analysis of the importance of an entrepreneurial culture. Professor Phelps discerns a troubling trend in many countries . . . He is worried about corporatism, a political philosophy in which economic activity is controlled by large interest groups or the government.” Professor Robert Shiller, of Yale University, is probably best known for his book, Irrational Exuberance.

 

“Semiconductor industry needs government boost.” [The Manila Times, 16th Aug 2013] “. . . [T]he four constraints the semiconductor and electronics industry faces today [are]: high cost and low quality power; poor infrastructure; high cost of labor . . . The roadmap for the industry . . . aims to transform the Philippines into a regional center of excellence in selected electronics industry products and processes . . . [T]he semiconductor and electronics industry will have three growth drivers: consumer products like smart phones and tablet computers; medical equipment; and electronic parts for automotive applications.”

 

PHL has been busy working on industry road maps starting with 32 of them – and as many as 50, if not more, were likewise into the exercise? Clearly given our deficiencies in infrastructure there is a major role for government if we are to establish a strategic and a competitive industry base. But are we socialists at heart (given our compassion and faith) and want more government (given our "success model" of oligopoly as in franchises and concessions)? “Capitalism is culture,” so says Shiller! And if we look at our failed good-governance initiatives like land reform, party-list, or even EPIRA, Shiller is no space cadet?

 

Is there too much “cobwebs in our heads”? Does it explain why in the 21st century we still don’t have the basics like power, basic infrastructure, a modern airport, etc., – because we can’t simply prioritize? And the classic example to note is the lobby industry in Washington and why the US tax system is so convoluted. The bottom line: Our industries must very quickly move away from simply being third-party providers and invest in understanding markets, and learning and embracing innovation. I’ve been a development worker in Eastern Europe for ten years and the major advantage (beyond their currency at two-to-one over the euro; which we also have in PHL and in a bigger way, at over 40-to-one over the dollar; and something to note is their low tax rate of 10%, individual and corporate – to attract foreign investments, a learning from the Hong Kong/Singapore models) my friends had was their accession into the EU; meaning, there was a huge market that opened up to them. But it wasn’t meant to be a cakewalk. They had to learn to compete and embrace innovation. (And APEC will not be a cakewalk for us either – because we didn’t do our homework?)

 

The reports about PHL’s various road maps don’t dwell much on innovation especially product innovation. As every marketer knows, the first element in marketing is the product – i.e., there must be a product or service (the aggregate of which spells a nation’s GDP) that must find a sustainable market in the first place. The operative word is sustainable, which is this case is the simplest definition of innovation. I’ve kept talking about what I have preached in Eastern Europe, and they are: margins (for a sustainable economic activity) and product innovation (for a sustainable market) and they come from investment, technology, education and training, product development and market development.

 

And where are we in PHL? We’re still at the levels of: “high cost and low quality power; poor infrastructure; high cost of labor; and government taking away subsidies.” The issue about power is true, and so is infrastructure; but high cost of labor and absence of government subsidies are magnified as barriers because we don’t have the innovative products to market – and so we can't compete in the region or globally. Margins are not only a function of costs but also economies of scale. The bottom line again: we must very quickly move away from simply being third-party providers and invest in understanding markets, and learning and embracing innovation.

It had lost the game long ago . . .

". . . [T]he Hail Mary hardly stood a chance. BlackBerry had lost the game long ago." [How BlackBerry fell, The New Yorker, 12th Aug 2013] "In retrospect, the company was facing an inflection point and was completely unaware . . . Shares of BlackBerry peaked in August of 2007 . . . Seven months earlier Apple had introduced the iPhone . . . Executives at BlackBerry decided to let Apple focus on the general-use smartphone market, while it would continue selling BlackBerry products to business and government customers . . . One of the companies that pioneered the smartphone market may soon end up selling itself as scrap . . . But the story of its past six years has been one of missed opportunities . . . The company failed to recognize that the iPhone could hurt it . . . Overlooked the threat of low-cost competitors in Asia . . . A new line of high-end smartphones failed to resonate with consumers, having arrived far too late with very little to offer . . . BlackBerry's Hail Mary pass (in January 2013) when the company launched . . . its most serious attempts at high-end smartphones that would actually be attractive to everyday consumers, failed to sell as well as the company had hoped – roughly a fifth of what Apple sold during the same period."

 

There are several dimensions to this story that would describe what the 21st century world is and precisely because it is moving at warp speed, even those in the thick of it could fail to recognize those inflection points. It is a story not only for businesses but also for economies, and yes, including the Philippines! For example, we had so much faith in ourselves that we've had missed opportunities running over decades. And I am as guilty as every Pinoy, perhaps more so, because those inflection points coming from our neighbors were occurring before my eyes during the decade I was a regional manager for an MNC. Take Singapore. It was a tiny market and in our case it was managed remotely by our Malaysian subsidiary. In more ways than one Singapore has bested New York as a choice location in ease of doing business, like lower taxes, and why the co-founder of a major tech company relocated to Singapore, even surrendering his US citizenship. And he's not alone. 

 

And I would say it again; the real damage to PHL inflicted by our parochialism and our celebration of oligopoly is it turned us into economic laggards – i.e., starved of investment, technology, innovation, etc. – which come hand in glove with pervasive poverty! And not surprisingly, we are treated like scrap as in human trafficking? OFWs may be several notches above but their sob stories would capture the concern of then Archbishop Tagle, yet PHL economy is riding on their backs?

 

And there are more dimensions to the BlackBerry story. One of them is the imperative of academe and industry partnership. And not surprisingly, UP is unable to pursue the level of partnership like those in developed economies, i.e., our largest enterprises that make us proud are conglomerates whose core businesses are franchises and concessions! Translation: we’re not accumulating knowledge and experience in global competition because our success stories are not founded on the imperatives of the 21st century: investment, technology, innovation, education and training, product development and market development. [N.B. Exchange rates and/or tariffs are concerns for developed countries that have market dominance given their very little room for growth – i.e., it dictates their posture in global trade; while developing countries given their lower cost structures and low market penetration have room to grow if their products have perceptible value-added – i.e., it explains my Eastern European friends’ newfound global reach, because they focus on developing high-margin products not on exchange rates or tariffs like we do in PHL. “Bring ‘em on!”]

 

I try to find the time in Eastern Europe to reach out to academe precisely because as one marketing professor told me, "It takes forever to get our syllabus updated and we are still heavily into classical marketing." I had discussed Maslow's hierarchy of human needs being at the heart of product architecture modeling and innovation and its implication on market segmentation or targeting markets by income levels – which Apple has upended as the fall of BlackBerry would bear out

PHL, sadly, had lost the game long ago . . . too? Would we be far too late with very little to offer . . . too?

Beating the world's biggest . . .

“Change is a common thread that runs through all businesses . . . Our world is changing fast and, as such, organizations must change quickly too. Organizations that handle change well thrive . . . The concept of "change management" is a familiar one in most businesses today. But, how businesses manage change . . . varies enormously depending on the nature of the business, the change and the people involved. And a key part of this depends on how far people within it understand the change process. One of the cornerstone models for understanding . . . change was developed by Kurt Lewin . . . in the 1950s. His model (known as Unfreeze – Change – Refreeze) refers to the three-stage process of change he describes. Lewin, a physicist as well as social scientist, explained . . . change using the analogy of changing the shape of a block of ice: If you have a large cube of ice, but realize that what you want is a cone of ice, what do you do? First you must melt the ice to make it amenable to change (unfreeze). Then you must mold the iced water into the shape you want (change). Finally, you must solidify the new shape (refreeze).” [http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_94.htm]

 

While my first meeting ten years ago with my Eastern European friends was a hasty 15 minutes owing to an earlier commitment that I couldn't adjust, beyond their smarts and sincerity that I thought came through was their "dream" to beat the world's biggest consumer-products company in their local market. I told them that they were once my old MNC company's competition too. And job-one was to transform their "dream" into a "sensible plan," i.e., to elevate its probability of success. And that I knew a little about competing with and beating them. But of course we also had the resources of a Fortune 500 and which my then new friends didn’t have. Yet they were a bunch of hardy, young stout-hearted men and women – which we Pinoys would probably call naïve! 

 

Fast forward: In the war room that we created, the battle cry was straightforward. For perspective, the market value of the company that we put in our crosshair would approximate the GDP of PHL (where the 50 wealthiest Pinoys, representing oligarchy, owned the equivalent of over 25% of our GDP – i.e., but that would still be only a fraction of our target.) And we focused on their biggest business in the local market – i.e., to win in this arena would give us the wherewithal to become a regional and then a global player.

 

If a Philippine president couldn't take on oligarchy, my Eastern European friends had taken on a bigger target and won! How? They had to unlearn what they thought were their smarts! (They had to learn Lewin’s “change model.”) And they were honest enough to admit that their smarts would be overwhelmed by the competition.  And that is a problem for Juan de la Cruz and why he has succumbed to “learned helplessness” – i.e., his smarts are too big to unlearn? We are well-schooled – and know it all? Our culture is to be proud of – and it can't be unlearned? We are hierarchy-fearing – and thus subservient? We seek harmony – and thus see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil?

 

How do we think Myanmar or Cambodia is viewing the world – or even Vietnam? And before them, what about our neighbors that became the Asian tigers? Of course, Juan de la Cruz is smarter than all of them put together? And that explains why we're the laggards? If we are to behave like winners we better learn how change comes about? Two things violated my Pinoy sensibilities when I joined my old MNC company: (a) that English was my second language and (b) that I had to attend a 'managing change' program . . . And about change, I've realized that change is indeed the only thing constant. And which explains why after ten years I’m still in Eastern Europe – i.e., I have to keep updating the syllabus in my head. And especially given that my friends learned innovation from me – i.e., I can’t teach innovation if I’m in the past, of the past and for the past? But which we Pinoys are proud about because we represent old-world values? Is that for real or are we simply being holier-than-thou? And precisely why we can’t be receptive to change? Too bad . . . so sad?

 

[Disclosure: Beyond a once lazy student, I never saw myself as creative. But I hurdled those exams – from high school entrance to GMAT – apparently because of, but then foreign to me, my spatial ability; and why my first employer offered for me to join the then new IT department (IBM folks saw my spatial test scores) after I turned in my resignation, ten months after my hiring. But I never saw myself as a programmer either. Adios.]