That was my publisher Rollie Estabillo’s gracious greeting to me when I approached him last week about resuming my columns for the Manila Standard.
I used to write a weekly column for this paper, then titled “Bypass”, in honor of my memorable surgery in 2008. However, I stopped sometime in 2013 when it became clear to me that the regular venting of my spleen against the PNoy administration, while good for my cardiac condition, was probably no longer fair to my readers.
But we are now thankfully rid of that unlamented dispensation. These days we’re governed by a new leadership that’s trying to get rid of the mountain of trash that was left behind, take us in bold new directions using methods that are even bolder (perhaps reprehensibly so in some instances), and build a legacy that is qualitatively different, maybe even revolutionary.
It’s a great time to plunge back into the issues of the day and start writing again. I’ll be coming out twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. I’m looking forward to this, and I promise not to disappoint my readers, old and new, too often.
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Before jumping into what’s new out there, I should like to bid a proper farewell to the company I’m leaving behind—specifically, to my former colleagues at BDO, the country’s largest bank, where for the past six years I was (to quote the colorful description of my fellow columnist Vic Agustin) “burrowed deeply” during the PNoy years.
As a long-term consultant, I was in a great position to closely observe—and hopefully contribute in a meaningful way to—the workings of the bank without being hedged in by the corporate rat race.
BDO is notable not only for its size, but also for outperforming its peers in almost all key metrics of bank performance (one exception is I think number of branches, where Metrobank is ahead by a few more).
A key reason for exceptional performance was the nurturing of a corporate culture over two decades of growth by acquisitions. It’s a culture that has managed to absorb and preserve what was best in those acquired banks, but integrating them under the no-nonsense, customer-focused (“We find ways!”) philosophy of the retail-based Sy family.
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I was surprised to learn that through more than a dozen bank acquisitions, there had never been wholesale lay-offs, a standard solution to the inevitable issues of job redundancy and duplication. BDO’s management simply relied on continuing growth of the economy to pick up the slack over time, while ceaselessly exhorting their people to keep working harder and working better.
To my American-trained mind, this was not only unorthodox, but also outright risky. And I’m still probably right—but only in the context of Western practice and prospects.
In a highly competitive economy where a lot of inefficiency has already been squeezed out, margins are thin, and therefore so too is the room for error. At the same time, employees are valued exclusively for what they contribute, and therefore are just as disposable as other, inanimate value inputs, such as land or capital. This environment encourages business acquisitions to be more, rather than less, brutal.
But in our part of the world, old habits inherited from more pastoral and spiritual traditions die harder. This makes our economies probably less efficient, but our communities a heck of a lot more livable. At the same time, the receding horizon of future growth continually creates additional space for us to make our mistakes, but also to build businesses that can afford the luxury of perpetual optimism.
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In my next few columns, I’ll be talking about the six key performance areas of the Duterte administration and what we can do to contribute to their success, not for his sake, but for ours and our children’s. This will be by way of explaining why I chose to title my resurrected column “Formation.”
For now, let me close with an inspirational news tidbit, courtesy of my old friend and HMO guru Ernest Rufino: the appointment of the very first Filipino to lead a Catholic diocese in the United States.
According to CNA/EWTN News, Bishop Oscar Solis, currently an auxiliary bishop in the archdiocese of Los Angeles, has just been named to head the diocese of Salt Lake City. His history-making appointment follows on his earlier record in 2003 as the first Filipino to be appointed a bishop in the US.
Born in San Jose, Nueva Ecija, the future bishop’s duties after ordination were exclusively on the educational and administrative side. But he was introduced to, and “fell in love with,” parish life during visits to the United States, where he was subsequently incardinated in 1992 into a diocese in Louisiana.
He is fluent in Spanish as well as English and Filipino, which will stand him in good stead among the large and growing Hispanic population of Salt Lake City. But evangelization will be more difficult among the Mormon majority, a uniquely American denomination with even more aggressive proselytization, as witness the ubiquitous young American men in white shirts and ties tirelessly walking in pairs around the humblest parts of our country.
Just as we wish those Mormon missionaries well among us, we also wish His Excellency Bishop Solis the best among his new flock.
Readers can write me at [email protected].