Wake-up call: how many more?

“The ADB rating should be seen as a wake-up call,” Henry J. Schumacher, executive director of the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, said. [Philippines found wanting in innovation, Business World, 12th Sept 2014]

Granted we need to learn the 21st century world just like many other nations, if we pause for a moment and measure ourselves against the rest of the world, have we considered how we ought to be debating transparency or competitiveness, for instance? Did we not recommit to democracy and free enterprise with People Power because Marcos had upended freedom and installed crony capitalism? 

The FOI comes to mind, and the competition law. What is the backdrop or the reality of the 21st century world that we are in? That we lag in the ability to attract investment as well as in innovation and creativity? 

Is the FOI or the competition law our honest-to-goodness response and more to the point, will they fit the bill? Should we first be asking ourselves why we don't have a transparent or competitive environment – and thus the fallouts that we have to suffer? For example, should we even be surprised why the FOI has stalled; and take the power “crisis,” which has been a crisis for decades, and the general lack of infrastructure, are they a microcosm of our worldview, and our beliefs and our values?

This blog has raised it before: kids are always asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? It is meant to teach them how to look and think ahead and develop a vision or a purpose in life. But how come as a nation we never developed and established a vision for PHL? Yet we're instinctively subservient to hierarchy and against the rest of the world we rank poorly; ergo, how could we even imagine that we can be competitive? If water seeks its own level, as in the law of nature, do we believe that we can confine ourselves within our borders as evidenced by our parochial cacique system and structure? What about our penchant for the bureaucratic and inefficient – and where corruption lurks if not resides – be they legal or otherwise?

And not surprisingly, “Asian Development Bank (ADB) Managing Director General Juan Miranda said the government should remove all legal hurdles that delay the procurements and awards processes of the deals.” [ADB: PHL needs to stop being too legalistic on PPP deals, Lorenz S. Marasigan, Business Mirror, 16th Sept 2014]

“He then urged the government to review its policy on being too legalistic on the contracts, as this would make the deals more palatable to the taste of the investors. The government should do away with the legal hurdles and market the Philippines as the destination for investors—not just foreign but also local ones—to venture into national infrastructure.”

“But the government should bear in mind that the client is the public. It is what really matters. The pipeline of key infrastructure projects number to almost 60 deals, 27 of those are under the transportation agency, while the others are spread among other government offices. Manila is a champion city that needs champion infrastructure and fantastic public-sector transport. It doesn’t matter who manages it. The important thing is we have to shift people from one place to another a lot faster.”

This sentence is worth repeating: It doesn't matter who manages it.

“Let’s get proper infrastructure in place. Manila needs it. From the airport down to the points within the city, so people can go to work and don’t spend hours and hours in traffic . . . [N]o matter how quick the current government is in improving the infrastructure in the country, these projects will have to cross to another administration.”

“Anyone can start, and even if they cannot finish it, someone else can . . . [T]here is plenty of time for the current administration and for others to do it. This is a thing of national interest.”

That last sentence is worth repeating: This is a thing of national interest.

“British Ambassador Asif Ahmad is urging diversifying Filipino businessmen to turn to the United Kingdom for fresh opportunities, including new inventions and startup projects from the laboratories of British universities and research institutions.” [PH conglomerates urged to tap UK institutions, Doris C. Dumlao, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 5th Sept 2014]

“If you want to go into established businesses, you’re buying all the goodwill and brand. If you are at the early stages, you pay next to nothing, and you can be in the next big business,” he explained. Ahmad implied that it would not matter where the invention was made for as long as it would benefit not just the investor but a borderless global community in general.”

“Let’s say they buy into something that enhances crop growth at two times as fast as anything we’ve ever known, and this is the thing that Filipino business acquires over there. There’s nothing that stops it from being a startup here. Another thing is, if you look at a way in which lot of retail (business) is done here, most of them are foreign-invented, foreign brands, foreign discoveries which are brought here and sold to the Philippines. . .”

The ambassador said a mouthful and does it boil down to our worldview [again?] and how we problem-solve? For example, we’ve talked about developing R&D but we want to build R&D capability locally from the ground up? What about thinking laterally and outside the box? And because size to us matters – given our cacique system and structure – we assume that conglomerates are the ones that can pursue opportunities overseas, and the one route we know is buying established brands or businesses? 

And do we perceive the worldview of the ambassador as suspect, even unpatriotic, for wanting foreigners to acquire his nation’s (UK) ideas and businesses? What about the pope, is he un-Catholic or less Catholic than we are?

“Pope Francis married 20 couples on Sunday, some of whom had already lived together and had children, in the latest sign that the Argentine pontiff wants the Catholic church to be more open and inclusive.” [Pope Marries Couples Who Have Cohabited and Had Children, The New York Times, 14th Sept 2014]

“Bishops from all over the world are due to come to the Vatican in October for a major meeting on the family, which the Jesuit pope referred to in the homily to Sunday's Mass as the "bricks" on which society is built. The bishops are expected to discuss issues such as marriage, divorce and contraception at the synod, from Oct. 5-19. The pope has said the Church must end its obsession with teachings on abortion, contraception and homosexuality, and become more merciful, or risk collapsing ‘like a house of cards’.”

Are we awake yet?

Behind our gated communities . . .

“We can choose to be in touch with only the reality we want and may gradually fall out of touch with the reality we do not wish to engage . . . What we might call the ‘alternative reality syndrome’ gets worse the higher we climb . . . In fact, the choice of living quarters reflects Pope Francis’s more fundamental preoccupation with remaining in touch, and it’s worth looking at this preoccupation through a leadership lens . . . But it would shortchange Francis to lay out these behaviors without also elaborating the worldview that drives them, as if leadership were merely tactics . . . i.e., a distinctly Ignatian worldview: the Ignatius’s program of meditation is ‘Spiritual Exercises, to overcome oneself and to order one’s life.’ Commit to know yourself deeply, including your frailties, and come to some peaceful acceptance of yourself and your calling to lead. Then, commit to ‘get over yourself’ to serve a purpose greater than the self . . .” [Chris Lowney, Pope Francis, Why he leads the way he leads; Loyola Press, 2013, pp. 59, 60, 67]

Sadly, we Pinoys have yet to be truly self-critical and get over ourselves? The evidence: we have yet to demonstrate a community sense and that we value the common good – and instead we find comfort in our “gated communities” that put us above and beyond thus setting us apart, and out of touch?

Disclosure: My family lived in a gated community in Metro Manila before moving to the US; and as empty-nesters, my wife and I live in a gated community in suburban New York. And it was like yesterday while still in the Philippines when we had houseguests, family friends from Spokane, Washington State, and Jerry [May he rest in peace] commented after he saw how Ronnie navigated the 21 km route to/from Makati Business District and not be stuck in traffic. “So Ronnie, your car has the pass to get through military camps and gated communities? But we all enjoyed our own world.” And today friends visiting wouldn’t miss the dig: “John hates coming to your place; you need a PhD to get through those electronic gates.”

What is the Pinoy worldview especially us in the elite class? “Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow,” so asked Rizal? Why would we accept that we got it wrong thus PHL is underdeveloped and poverty stricken? When our values of political patronage and paternalism come with the bells and whistles of oligopoly and tyranny – despite robbing us of the ability to be forward-looking and set a vision for PHL?

How far do the dots connect? Economic development is beyond economics and being pro-poor is beyond alms-giving. That is why despite being the fastest growing economy in the region we remain economic laggards; and despite CCT poverty persistently stares us in the face!

Does our worldview suffer from “the alternative reality syndrome”? I’ve been asked, you seem to know our weaknesses as Pinoys when you live 10,000 miles away and keep harping on them? [See above re “Spiritual Exercises”] I was born and raised and put 20 years of professional life in PHL and thus our weaknesses are part of me. I am simply thinking out aloud and talking about myself.

“We make ourselves powerless when we choose not to know. But we give ourselves hope when we insist on looking. The very fact that willful blindness is willed, that it is a product of a rich mix of experience, knowledge, thinking, neurons, and neuroses, is what gives us the capacity to change it. Like Lear, we can learn to see better, not just because our brain changes but because we do. As all wisdom does, seeing starts with simple questions: What could I know, should I know, that I don’t know? Just what am I missing here?” [The Psychology of Our Willful Blindness and Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, 27th Aug 2014]

And asked another, you’re not an economist but you want to talk about the economy? It is like marketing or selling or even a business enterprise. People engaged in such undertakings go outside their expertise to be ahead of the curve. Because problem-solving demands openness and transparency and diversity.

And precisely why we had my Eastern European friends that are based in Sofia come for the few weeks of immersion in the US market – and which they will do periodically. While our NY operations are the youngest of the different locations the environment will pry open their minds – especially given that 11 years ago they complained: “But we’re poor Bulgarians, we can only afford packaged goods at 50 euro cents.”

“While I will give a brief orientation, the real learnings you will find in the trade, in the stores and in meetings with our different partners and individuals, and hence your agenda.” And not surprisingly, they would come back to me: “Wow, this place is so transparent, I was talking to this consultant that represents a software we were considering and he pointed me to another competing product after I presented our situation and our needs.” [And this was the guy who joined the company while still working on his engineering degree as my assistant, translator and driver; but has since earned two master’s degrees and is today our management information and analytics manager.] And another said, “This agency explained they would charge us the agency commission of 15% but the other revealed that being one of the largest outfits globally, media companies discount the charges and so they won’t bill us any commissions.”

And then we sat through hours and hours of product development sessions [see below re lateral and creative thinking] to kick the butt of US-based competition, with the full knowledge that they're the world’s largest MNCs! And as I was writing this blog, there was a call from our Singapore team, another young person – but she has under her belt Western MNC experience – that wanted to know if I was visiting Asia soon. And when I asked how they were doing, she recited their progress country by country; then the two countries where they had issues and how they were dealing with them. And before she would hang up I said: “You don’t need a visiting fireman, you’re doing better than great.”

Most of these people are younger than my daughter, and my former assistant is not even thirty, with more to learn about the competitive demands of the free market especially in a globalized world. Yet they’re not into focusing on the barriers that we Pinoys like to raise to keep foreign competition and investment out – and protect and defend our cacique system and structure. They are taking competition right to the heart of Corporate America. And many of us Pinoys are baby-boomers like me supposedly practiced and skillful in democracy and free enterprise?

But what about benchmarking? Which is measuring ourselves against the rest of the world and picking and choosing what they do best, not what they do badly! Unfortunately, our psyche is so damaged by our subservience to hierarchy – hopefully not irreparably – that we’re becoming weaklings if we’re not there yet? Translation: If we Pinoys are not committed to the proposition that all men are created equal – and the pursuit of an egalitarian society – we shall remain a nation of tyrants and slaves as Rizal saw it; and against the rest of the world we feel inferior?

News items: “PH ranks low in innovations index” . . . “PH lags ASEAN in creative productivity” . . . And we wonder why? We're still debating about export-led versus consumption-driven economies because competitiveness is alien to us? Export or consumption is “activity” consistent with linear thinking (that can easily lapse into analysis-paralysis) and why we rank low or lag in innovation and creativity – and they come from forward-thinking. And just as well, it explains why we can't set a vision as a nation. Forward-thinkers like Edison, Jobs, Gates and even Zuckerberg are not into linear thinking but lateral and creative thinking. 

We were coming down the subway station on 57th Street and 7th Avenue on our way to the US Open to watch Grigor Dimitrov [the best Bulgarian tennis player today and ranked no. 7 in the US Open but probably as admired if not more so as the boyfriend of Maria Sharapova] when one of them blurted: “You’ve talked about keeping it simple for many years now, and yesterday in Boston where we had this big meeting with the agency and the brokers and their sales agents, it finally dawned on me how profound simple is. Everyone’s eyes lit as we all saw how the dots connected. In Europe we always indulged in the caveats.”

Grigor won the match against the player from Israel and the Louis Armstrong stadium erupted in a thunderous applause including the Jewish couple sitting next to us; there must've been a big delegation that came to support the Israeli. And the announcer was beside himself, “Grigor, New York loves you and it was not that long ago when we didn’t even know you.” And his response: “Because I would always lose my very first match. But I’ve since been putting the effort. And this year I’m truly happy that it’s paying off.” But then he would later lose to another crowd favorite from France, which means he has his work cut out for him, like everyone else. It's only those of us ensconced in our “gated communities” that are above and beyond thus setting us apart, and out of touch?

It's about problem-solving and connecting the dots

Not prescribing solutions? We finally realized we need the next Mark Zuckerberg that we launched a contest to find him or her? But are we missing something? It is like the pursuit of quality or efficiency or productivity or profitability and even success, it has to be built into the DNA of the system or undertaking. In other words, in order to reap the fruit that we aspire requires more than an activity like a contest. It needs more than a tactic. It needs an ecosystem which by definition does not spring out of a vacuum. Even more, the design of an ecosystem demands an overarching element like a vision or an end goal. And we won't be able to connect those dots if we focus on prescribing solutions instead of engaging in problem-solving?

If we look back in time, one of the biggest challenges we'd faced was freeing ourselves from the Spaniards and that took more than 300 hundred years. Many revolts were led by different individuals that today we honor as our heroes. And the debate if Bonifacio or Rizal ought to be the national hero seems evergreen? For example, Bonifacio took up arms and was identified for his courage as a warrior and fighting with the “common tao”. And Rizal was the intellectual and took his pen instead and was identified with the learned. Was Rizal already focused on crafting the ecosystem for PHL? “Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?”

Similar to the Vatican culture, Rizal saw how a hierarchical system and structure would undermine efforts to free us from tyranny. And over the course of a century we proved him right – consistently, several times over?

Like any major undertaking, we need both tactical and strategic components. For example, Pope Francis wanted to care for the least of our brethren and to get there he needed to build quality, efficiency, productivity, profitability and success into the Vatican ecosystem. And that meant getting rid of the leadership of the Vatican Bank as well as reconstituting the Curia – and in both cases he wanted openness and transparency as well as diversity. He understood how an inward- and backward-looking culture would not generate forward and progressive thinking that will sustain the Vatican's ability to care for the needy.

We have a similar challenge in PHL, how do we sustain a continually growing economy that will generate First-World, not Third-World, economic output? Many of us are scandalized by the harshness of Francis in breaking the tradition of the Vatican because we measure the world against our beliefs and values, i.e., our proud culture especially the respect for tradition? That is no different from the reaction of the old guard and why the rumors of the pope retiring like Benedict and even worse, the speculation that he could be poisoned.

In the meantime we continue to look for solutions to our challenges forgetting that we are prescribing tactical initiatives yet glossing over the strategic component? But we may not in fact have the means to address that imperative simply because we don't have a track record in nation-building? Nation-building demands far more than we've demonstrated over the last century?

In the case of the Vatican, Francis realized that it was not up to the task and so he tapped experts in various fields – not just cardinals and theologians – to get the Vatican ecosystem in proper order. And not surprisingly, the private sector would see Francis as an exceptional manager and CEO. But Pope Francis didn't even prescribe a solution: he defined the problem to a group of experts against an overarching end goal.

In PHL our overarching goal is to be a developed, First-World economy. And we need more than a well-oiled “Vatican Bank,” we need a well-oiled economy. But just like the Vatican that needs a forward- and progressive-thinking Curia, PHL needs forward- and progressive-thinking institutions – the family, church, education, public and private sectors. And a well-oiled economy needs a solid platform, i.e., basic infrastructure and a strategic and competitive industrial base, for example. Of course we need the next Mark Zuckerberg too, but that comes not from a hierarchical system and structure but from one that is egalitarian in character. And that is why in the West industry wants the educational system fixed, because its graduates lack the basics of critical thinking, communication, and teamwork.

If President Aquino is no Pope Francis, is Binay it or Roxas? The bishops want to lead a transformation effort and hopefully like Francis they’re not looking at manna from heaven? What we need is to restructure our institutions – and it starts in the mind [with the innocence of a child, so says the Bible; or in secular lingo, to unfreeze our mind of our biases, if we are serious about reform] that must then come down to the heart and into the gut, and become a habit. Contrast that to a culture of impunity and a nation so corrupt – because of the values of political patronage and paternalism that come hand in glove with oligarchy and tyranny?

Even the next Mark Zuckerberg can’t fix that? What about Binay burnishing his reputation and springing the Pangilinan trial balloon as his running mate? But does the latter represent questions raised by various quarters re our incongruous if not messed up psyche, i.e., political patronage and foreign interest that we said we abhor even if it meant preserving and protecting our cacique masters? Is Binay resorting to Pinoy abilidad, but spelling no end goal or vision for PHL? Is Indonesia, for example, no longer fertile ground for political patronage, but PHL is? What about connecting the dots? And so the trial balloon fizzled as quickly?

Here's a bit of good news. Philippine competitiveness gains further, Daryll Edisonn D. Saclag, Business World, 3rd Sept 2014: “THE PHILIPPINES has continued its advance in competitiveness in the latest annual report of the World Economic Forum, riding on the impact of reforms that have enabled the country to make the biggest gains among economies tracked since 2010. The country ranked 52nd out of 144 economies this year -- up from 59th out of 148 in the previous survey -- in the Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2014-2015, which assessed markets against 12 ‘pillars of competitiveness’ that drive productivity.”

“In Southeast Asia, the Philippines ranked behind Singapore, Malaysia (20th), Thailand (31st), and Indonesia (34th). Behind the Philippines were Vietnam (68th), Laos (93rd), Cambodia (95th), and Myanmar (134th. . . The Philippines, however, still lagged behind in terms of infrastructure at 91st, albeit an improvement from last year’s 96th. This is especially true in terms of airports and seaports in which the country placed 108th and 101st, respectively. Similarly, the country placed a ‘mediocre’ 91st in terms of labor market efficiency, with the Forum noting that ‘almost no progress has been made since 2010. Lastly, security in the Philippines was still a cause for concern (89th), particularly in terms of costs that the threat of terrorism imposes on businesses (110th).’”

The mirror that the rest of the world put in front of us confirmed that we can’t celebrate yet: “[The] FDI (foreign direct investment) Regulatory Restrictiveness Index show[ed] the Philippines . . . as the most restrictive among 64 developed and developing countries. The index measures restrictiveness of FDI rules across 22 sectors, including agriculture, mining, electricity, manufacturing, as well as ‘main services’ like transport, construction, distribution, communications, real estate, financial and professional services.” [Philippines found among most restrictive, Daryll Edisonn D. Saclag, Business World, 4th Sept 2014]

Question: When will Juan de la Cruz ever open his eyes to the power of investment?

Still, it's not about prescribing solutions but engaging in problem-solving and connecting the dots – and not just among experts but a diverse group, those that have solved complex problems in other and entirely different milieus, are open and transparent, and no qualms about rank and privilege nor beholden to our parochial values and hierarchical cacique system and structure . . . And it’s beyond looking backward and inward and, that is, looking forward and outward?

Borrowing Petron's plant – an afterthought?

What does it have in common with DAP, OFWs and BPOs? Sadly, they are different hues yet fall under the umbrella of “Pinoy abilidad”? News item: DOE borrows Petron's plant to ease shortage in summer 2015. “The Department of Energy will borrow the 100-megawatt diesel plant of Petron Corp. to bridge supply requirement during the summer months next year.” [Madelaine B. Miraflor, Manila Bulletin, 3rd Sept 2014]

What would Francis do? Francis got rid of the leadership of the Vatican Bank and reconstituted the Curia. But we Pinoys like to keep shooting ourselves in the foot? Petron belongs to the few that dominate PHL economy. But of course we like to be in bed with the few as opposed to the many? Granted we have legitimate enterprises, yet we know political patronage is behind our oligarchic economy? If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it must be a duck?

If common sense is in fact rare, what about creativity, which Steve Jobs defined as “connecting the dots”? If we'd pause for a moment and lock-up Pinoy abilidad and start to problem-solve and connect the dots, we would finally begin to prioritize and commit to infrastructure development, for instance? Yet since the 1970s our investment on infrastructure has been on a decline; of course we got ourselves more billionaires, a reality in an oligarchic economy, and we wonder why we don't have inclusive growth? “The country’s spending on roads, bridges, ports, airports, as well as machines and equipment has generally been declining since the 1970s, and is now well below that of its peers . . . The Philippines spends 30-50 percent less in infrastructure, health and education compared to its fast-growing neighbors . . .” [Infra projects fail to attract institutional investors, Chino Leyco, Manila Bulletin, 28th Aug 2014.]

Still, every administration would brag about the kilometers upon kilometers of roads they'd built, and the annual GDP growth rates we registered. High school kids know that when your base number is low, any incremental will by definition look big – but it's a mirage and why our comparables are equally poor nations.

Of course, big business – both Filipinos and foreign ones like my old MNC company – will always benefit when there is growth even in poor countries. Not surprisingly, during my time as a student, we held rallies against MNCs. We saw especially the bad ones as exploiting host countries. We also rallied against bad country leadership. But have we as a people truly understood the imperative of investment, which is what an MNC is about, and like water seeks its own level? And MNCs don't have to be from the West – i.e., my Eastern European friends made their mark in this supposedly poor region of the world having made the decision to invest, and in Ukraine in particular, where the economy has contracted given bad country leadership and the conflict in the eastern region, they are growing the business in leaps and bounds. And that wasn’t lost to Forbes Magazine that my Bulgarian friend made it to the cover of Forbes’s most recent regional edition.

Two news reports about infrastructure would make one wonder if we are prepared to set Pinoy abilidad aside and instead learn to connect the dots. A Japanese sponsored effort to pursue a master infrastructure development plan for Metro Manila would reveal their ability to do just that. “The roadmap emphasizes the need to establish better north-south connectivity and appropriate hierarchy of different transportation modes such as roads, railways, and other mass transits.”[NEDA approves Mega Manila transport roadmap, Manila Bulletin, 2nd Sept 2014]

“This forms the “Dream Plan” to have a modern, affordable, and a well-coordinated and integrated transport system for Mega Manila by 2030. The roadmap also recommends planned and guided urban expansion to adjoining provinces through an integrated public transport, affordable housing for low-income groups, retrofitting of existing urban areas in integration with public transport, expanding multi-modal public transport network, and strengthening traffic management systems.”

Meanwhile we are embarking on our favorite activity – doing a roadshow – this time in Europe to present infrastructure investment opportunities in PHL. But the news report was silent on efforts to connect the dots. For example, to plan a roadshow is not the endpoint. The endpoint is to engineer a well-oiled economy. And that means erecting a solid economic platform comprised of infrastructure and a strategic and competitive industrial base. In short, we must connect the dots: investment, infrastructure, industry and synergy – if we are to ever attain continued and sustainable economic growth! That is where inclusive growth will come from!

Compare how the following reads versus the Japanese sponsored roadmap above: “President Aquino will embark next week on a five-country visit (Spain, Brussels, France, Germany and the US) tagging along with him a top-level business delegation to promote investments especially for the government’s pipeline infrastructure projects under the public-private partnership (PPP) program.” [PNoy to lead infra investment roadshows in EU, US, Manila Bulletin, 2nd Sept 2014]“[I]nfrastructure has always been a part in all of the government’s investment roadshows overseas but . . . this is the first time for the Philippines to hold an infrastructure forum in Europe . . . It is not yet clear as to where exactly the forum will be held, but . . . mostly probably it will be in Paris.”

“We are targeting big funds and big project proponents . . . there are over 30 PPP pipeline projects that are in need of investors, funders and contractors. These are basically toll ways, rail lines, seaports and airports . . . The emphasis on infrastructure investments has been timely given foreign investors and analysts concern on the slow infrastructure investments happening in the country.”

But what is reality? “In a report, titled: Southeast Asia Investment Policy Perspectives that was published last June, the 34-country group [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD] -- whose members include France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States -- cited its own FDI (foreign direct investment) Regulatory Restrictiveness Index showing the Philippines also as the most restrictive among 64 developed and developing countries. The index measures restrictiveness of FDI rules across 22 sectors, including agriculture, mining, electricity, manufacturing, as well as ‘main services’ like transport, construction, distribution, communications, real estate, financial and professional services.” [Philippines found among most restrictive, Daryll Edisonn D. Saclag, Business World, 4th Sept 2014]

Is that the final nail on the coffin? Because we will not learn to compete and simply be an OFW & BPO economy, if not implode? The rest of the world just put the mirror in front of us. We’re the nation that can't progress beyond oligarchy on the one hand and poverty on the other – given our definition of nationalism? If there’s a fine line between genius and madness [because of the gene called neuregulin 1] is there a fine line between nationalism and underdevelopment – and self-destruction as the world saw in Hitler? And more recently, Putin has played the nationalism card – i.e., Russia will not learn to compete and simply be an oil & gas economy, if not implode?

Is borrowing Petron's plant beyond the ridiculous and even the absurd? But it’s Pinoy abilidad, making do with something that is far removed from the imperatives of problem-solving – and keeping an eye on an overarching goal or the common good? Yet we have an abundance of them, in big and small ways, including granting emergency powers to the president. A few years ago a friend in the medical tourism industry in Manila related how a state-of-the art equipment they brought in sat at Customs because the tax authorities wanted to levy a ridiculous sum. And more recently, a physician-friend in New York supporting the campaign against HIV in PHL narrated how Customs were holding up donated medicines – and it meant starving patients of their required therapy.

New items: PH jumps 7 notches in WEF rankings, Paolo G. Montecillo, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 3rd Sept 2014. “Results of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Competitiveness Report for 2014 to 2015 showed the Philippines climbed seven places to 52nd out of 140 countries in the world. Since 2010, the country has climbed 33 spots, making it among the biggest gainers among the nations surveyed . . . In Southeast Asia, the Philippines ranked behind Singapore, Malaysia (20th), Thailand (31st), and Indonesia (34th).” [Philippine competitiveness gains further, Daryll Edisonn D. Saclag, Business World, 3rd Sept 2014]

Does our higher ranking mean that we’re attaining global competitiveness and that we can sustain it? That is a very important question that we must answer – given our roller-coaster history in economic development. We’re no strangers to the characteristics of highly competitive teams like La Salle or Ateneo and why they are crowd drawers – i.e., competitiveness is a culture or a state of mind, not an afterthought? And “borrowing Petron’s plant” is exactly that, an afterthought?

Willful blindness II

“At Brown University, Jonah Kagan had a clever idea of his own: Get his fellow students to name their three favorite courses, and use the results as a guide for people seeking great, unusual electives. Building the website was easy, but he could not persuade Brown to give him enrollment figures, which would have allowed him to control for differences in class size. So the survey died.” [Student-Built Apps Teach Colleges a Thing or Two, Ariel Kaminer, The New York Times, 27th Aug 2014]

“But this culture of innovation has accelerated debates about the flow of information on campus, and forced colleges to reckon with some unexpected results of the programming skills they are imparting . . . ‘Students are always more entrepreneurial and understand needs better than bureaucracies can,’ said Harry R. Lewis, the director of undergraduate studies for Harvard’s computer science department, ‘since bureaucracies tend to have messages they want to spin, and priorities they have to set, and students just want stuff that is useful. I know this well, since students were talking to me about moving the Harvard face books online seven years before Zuckerberg just went and did it without asking permission.’”

That is a most profound way to characterize where the gaps may stem from – i.e., that industry observed in graduates (critical thinking, communication and teamwork) of American universities against the demands of industry. Can we imagine how it is in PHL? Did we think that the answer to the gargantuan problems of Juan de la Cruz is President Aquino staying beyond his term? Is there a gap in that thinking or have we connected the dots, which Steve Jobs demonstrated is what creativity is?

“Nations, institutions, individuals can all be blinded by love, by the need to believe themselves good and worthy and valued. We simply could not function if we believed ourselves to be otherwise. But when we are blind to the flaws and failings of what we love, we aren’t effective either… We make ourselves powerless when we pretend we don’t know. That’s the paradox of blindness: We think it will make us safe even as it puts us in danger.” [The Psychology of Our Willful Blindness and Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, 27th Aug 2014]

“And yet willful blindness . . . isn’t a fatal diagnosis of the human condition — it may be our natural, evolutionarily cultivated tendency, but it is within our capability to diffuse it with the right combination of intention and attention . . . The most crucial learning that has emerged from [cognitive] science is the recognition that we continue to change right up to the moment we die. Every experience and encounter, each piece of new learning, each relationship or reassessment alters how our minds work. And no two experiences are the same. In his work on the human genome, the Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner reminds us that even identical twins will have different experiences in different environments and that that makes them fundamentally different beings. Identical twins develop different immune systems. Mental practice alone can change how our brains operate. The plasticity and responsiveness of our minds is what makes each of us most remarkable… We aren’t automata serving the master computer in our heads, and our capacity for change can never be underestimated.”

“We make ourselves powerless when we choose not to know. But we give ourselves hope when we insist on looking. The very fact that willful blindness is willed, that it is a product of a rich mix of experience, knowledge, thinking, neurons, and neuroses, is what gives us the capacity to change it. Like Lear, we can learn to see better, not just because our brain changes but because we do. As all wisdom does, seeing starts with simple questions: What could I know, should I know, that I don’t know? Just what am I missing here?”

“OUR USUAL WAY OF LEADING people through problem solving is to follow a pattern of brainstorming, looking for evidence, calling in content experts, and dialoguing with other people in health care. Have you ever thought of solving problems by going to the zoo? That’s exactly what Heath and Heath (2009) suggest as a way of finding new answers. Their message to us is to stop looking for experts within our fields and find someone who has already solved the problem in a totally unrelated field.” [Karlene M. Kerfoot, Solving Leadership Problems by Going to the Zoo: The Pull of Diverse Experiences, On leadership, ANNA Update—September/October 2010-Vol. 40/No. 5, Nursing Economics; Karlene M. Kerfoot, PhD, RN, CNAA, FAAN is Vice President/Chief Clinical Officer, Aurora Health System, Milwaukee, WI]

“These authors relate the story of a group at Procter & Gamble who were stuck on a problem and went to the San Diego Zoo to examine their program of biomimicry, which tries to solve problems by imitating solutions found in nature. By the end of the day, they found eight new ideas they could have never imagined by only talking to themselves. It took a totally unrelated setting to break the stereotype thinking impeding their progress. These authors tell us we should look outside our field for patterns that could match our work. For example, patient safety learned from a visit to an airline company, high-reliability processes from a visit to an automobile plant, customer service from a visit to a veterinarian, and the list goes on. These authors note it is counterintuitive for us to look outside our fields when we have invested so much time in learning the specialty of our profession. And, unfortunately, we spend most of our time within the walls of our company or industry. However, being confronted with a diversity of thinking can break up the old models in our head and open new pathways to innovation.”

Translation: We’re ambivalent about FDIs given our professed nationalism yet because we value political patronage and rank oligarchy high in PHL society, foreigners own critical industries as power, telecommunications and media. Ergo: We can't be prosecutor, judge and jury in litigating the mess we created: from the Constitution to infrastructure – i.e., energy, roads and bridges and beyond – to industrialization to their outcomes of underdevelopment and poverty. And collectively they’re reflective of our way of life and culture that is reinforced by our institutions – i.e., family, church, education, public sector – characterized by political patronage and political dynasties – and the private sector that is skewed to oligopoly yet wanting in technology, innovation and global competitiveness. Talking among ourselves in the guise of aid to legislation, for example, will not bring the diverse thinking necessary to break up the old models in our head and open new pathways to a better PHL.

How bad is the prognosis on the enterprise that is PHL – call it economy or nation, if you will? Rizal saw it over a century ago: “Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?” Before there was such a thing as cognitive science, Rizal already knew the perils of our cacique system and structure. Until our institutions get serious about what Rizal taught us, it will take a miracle before we turn this nation around. It will get worse before it gets better!

News item: Infra projects fail to attract institutional investors, Chino Leyco, Manila Bulletin, 28th Aug 2014. “‘Earlier, the World Bank Group said the Philippines needs to raise its infrastructure spending to 5 percent of its economy, or gross domestic product (GDP). Going forward, the Philippines can sustain high growth by accelerating structural reforms and increasing investments in infrastructure and in the health and education of the Filipino people,’ Karl Kendrick Chua, World Bank senior country economist for the Philippines said.”

“‘The country’s spending on roads, bridges, ports, airports, as well as machines and equipment has generally been declining since the 1970s, and is now well below that of its peers,’ the bank noted. ‘The Philippines spends 30-50 percent less in infrastructure, health and education compared to its fast-growing neighbors,’ the lender added.”

Op-Ed pieces: Agri, train officials bare-faced liars, Jarius Bondoc, GOTCHA, The Philippine Star, 29th Aug 2014.“Duplicity is a habit of high agriculture officials. Under probe . . . for P108-billion overprice in cargo handling of rice imports, their first instinct is to lie. Directly at question for the scam is National Food Authority ex-administrator Orlan Calayag . . . Calayag’s very entry to the NFA was by his and Alcala’s deceit. A one-time congressional aide of Alcala, Calayag had migrated to the US in 2006, where he acquired citizenship and worked odd jobs befitting his low skills.”

And: 30 pieces to sell out PNoy, Cito Beltran, CTALK, The Philippine Star, 29th Aug 2014. “Unless you belong to the rich upper class, have many friends in media, die or suffer an exceptionally brutal death . . . you stand a better chance of getting answered prayers from GOD than answers from PNoy and his government. This is what our peace and order as well as justice system has become.”

“You are not going to succeed . . .”

“The chicken that came home to roost from the Syrian debacle is called ISIS. It is not Al Qaeda. But, as the journalistPatrick Cockburn has noted, Al Qaeda ‘is an idea rather than an organization, and this has long been the case.’ ISIS grew through American weakness — the setting of objectives and red lines in Syria that proved vacuous. But the deepest American and Western defeat has been ideological. As Ghaffar Hussain [the managing director of the Quilliam Foundation, a British research group that seeks to tackle religious extremism] said, ‘If you don’t have a concerted strategy to undermine their narrative, their values, their worldview, you are not going to succeed. Everyone in society has to take on the challenge.’” [The Making of a Disaster, Roger Cohen, The New York Times, 25th Aug 2014]

“The list of American errors is long: Bush’s ill-conceived and bungled war in Iraq; a failure to deal with the fact that two allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, have been major sources and funders of violent Sunni extremism; an inability to seize opportunity in Egypt, home to nearly a quarter of the world’s Arabs, and so demonstrate that Arab societies can evolve out of the radicalizing confrontation of dictatorship and Islamism; a prolonged spate of dithering over the Syrian war during which Obama declared three years ago that ‘the time has come for President Assad to step aside’ without having any plan to achieve that; a lack of resolve in Syria that saw Obama set a red line on the use of chemical weapons only to back away from military force when chemical weapons were used; an inability to see that no one loves an Arab vacuum like jihadi extremists, and a bloody vacuum was precisely what Obama allowed Syria to become; and inattention, until it was too late, to festering sectarian conflict in a broken Iraqi society left to its fate by a complete American withdrawal.”

I read that piece from The New York Times on the day my wife and I were at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. And had the chance to listen to the words of Eisenhower: “If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.” My wife’s reaction: that’s a man of character. It was from “the historic speech the free world did not want to hear – and, thankfully, didn't. Hastily scribbled on piece of paper, Allied supremo General Dwight D. Eisenhower jotted down what he planned to say had D-Day . . . been a disaster. The little-known document, known as 'In Case of Failure', was quickly drafted by the commander of Operation Overlord in the event of the landings ending in bloody failure. The 66-word script reveals the U.S. general and Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill would have withdrawn the thousands of troops from the Normandy beaches rather than let them fight to the death.” [Leon Watson, Mail Online/dailymail.co.uk, 5th Jun 2014]

The big picture indeed is history repeats itself. If the cost of the First World War or the Great War turned the average American into an isolationist, the Iraq war and that in Afghanistan did too. And their consequences and impact on the American psyche gave Roger Cohen footing to write the above article. In both cases, the Americans were less prepared than they would like to be. In 1933 when FDR was elected president, the Great Depression had taken its toll. And the country was not equipped for war. In 2014 despite the turmoil in the world, America notwithstanding its mammoth military capability “was not equipped” because of its economic woes. In short, an isolationist and economically poor Uncle Sam is no better today than in 1933.

PHL may be that far from Ukraine or the Middle East but my Eastern European friends are directly affected by the Putin adventure in that part of the world. Of course, his message of nationalism earns him the support of the Russians – but the similarity to the Hitler’s nationalism message was palpable as my wife and I sat through the different presentations of the events leading to WWII at the museum.

Read recent reports from Ukraine where my friends do business: “Consumers were suffering from UAH (Ukrainian currency) devaluation, inflation and military operations in Donbas . . . Fortunately in Lugansk and Donetsk we have strong and self-driven distributors who keep operating even when others have stopped their businesses . . . Some companies . . . had paused their shipments to Ukraine – or if they have gotten back, raised their prices by 25% . . . The market looks very unstable so there is huge potential if one is smart with pricing strategy and has strong distributors . . . Despite the military confrontation in Donbas we continue sales there unlike in Crimea, which currently is shut for business.”

Will the average American be able to put his nose to the grindstone and do the supposedly impossible like they did to get into WWII when push comes shove? Japan Inc. was reckoned to cripple Corporate America yet it was Japan than went through the lost decade. Unfortunately the US may be going through its own lost decade counting from the financial crisis of 2008.

News items: Goldman Sachs, U.S. agency in mortgage settlement worth $1.2 billion, Reuters, 22nd Aug 2014; Bank of America has agreed to a $16.65 billion deal with federal and state authorities, The New York Times, 21st Aug 2014; J.P. Morgan, U.S. Settle for $13 Billion, The Wall Street Journal, 19th Nov 2013; Citigroup to pay $7 billion to settle U.S. mortgage probe, Reuters, 14th July 2014. Do they represent a mammoth guilt trip like The Economist argues – and bad for the rule of law and capitalism? And is it also human if not American nature of overcorrecting, like a driver oversteering in the other direction to avoid a collision or a similar hazard? And given the whole world suffered from the greed courtesy of bankers, something had to give, beyond Madoff, especially when white-collar crimes have proved difficult to prosecute as in establishing and pinning beyond reasonable doubt on individuals [e.g., SAC Capital’s (the big hedge fund) Steve Cohen is yet to be criminally charged though 8 of his lieutenants have been charged and 6 have pleaded guilty] in a typical large enterprise even when the veil of corporate fiction is pierced because the decision-making process could be collegial?

Poll: Amid foreign crises, more Americans support U.S. action, Susan Page, USA Today, 28th Aug 2014. “In a new USA TODAY/Pew Research Center Poll, Americans see the world as a more dangerous place and the U.S. role as diminished. Even with a war-weary public, that has helped convince a growing number that it's time for the United States to do more around the globe.”

“After years of retrenchment in the wake of two costly wars, a new USA TODAY/Pew Research Center Poll finds that Americans increasingly are open to a larger U.S. role in trying to solve problems around the world. The public remains conflicted over just how much the United States can and should do to address global challenges. But the initial shifts in public opinion could make it easier for President Obama to order more muscular options in striking Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq. If the trend continues, it could help shape the 2016 campaign to succeed him . . . ‘This runs counter to this conventional wisdom that the public is isolationist,’ says Bruce Jentleson, a former State Department adviser in the Obama administration who is now a professor at Duke and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. ‘It's not trigger-happy, but it's also not totally gun-shy.’”

What’s the point if not the principle? Call it maturity thus the self-criticism and taking personal responsibility even beyond one's borders when the free world needs fixing and for which leadership is called for and others have the lesser capacity – and why Pope Francis supports limited action against Islamic State, similar to the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s. [National Catholic Reporter, 22nd Aug 2014]

We may see the faults in others yet we can’t be less than mature ourselves if we are to move PHL forward as an economy and nation? “Everyone in [PHL] society has to take on the challenge.”