MAPping the Future

And while we have a sophisticated banking sector, with a world-class BSP, most of our MSMEs have no access to bank finance, let alone to medium and long-term funding. Some of our cooperatives are labelled as “millionaires” and even as “billionaires”, but their assets are deposited in banks that do not lend enough to small and medium-scale business enterprises. Those deposits are lent out instead to big corporations in metropolitan centers; and the gap between economic enterprises yawns as wide as ever. We have failed to connect the dots even in our financial sector. As a result, for medium and long-term financing, we still rely too heavily on ODAs and on resources from multi-lateral institutions.

 

Our most telling failure: our PSE is the oldest in our region, Southeast Asia. It has remained the smallest and the least dynamic. The growth and development prospects for our economy we have been throwing away, due to our failure to connect the dots in our financial resource sector: these are deeply dismaying. Here we have the potential to be richer and more financially endowed, but thus far, by our actions, we have chosen to remain poorer and to be left behind even by our neighbors in ASEAN.

 

Thus far, we have been too engrossed in playing the game of political chairs. Our focus has been riveted on elections, on personalities that can be on the winning election ticket for 2028, and on stand-alone projects from which we can shave off shamefully enormous “patongs” for our bank accounts whose secrecy we secure with all our political might.

 

We have hardly spent any time on envisioning: what we want to accomplish for our country and our people, by effectively and smartly tapping into our three major economic resource bases. We have not crafted a Dream for a Philippines that can grow and develop by tapping into our human, natural, and financial resources. And if we do not envision a future that we can build together on top of these resources—as one people— we cannot have a strategy, nor strategic priorities, nor performance targets, nor accountability systems for the delivery of actual performance, in line with our dream—our Dream PH, even by 2046 when we mark the first centennial of our independence as a Republic.

 

The Third Step: Reaching Out

 

We have always known that all dreams are realized only if we start with ourselves. Indeed, the bases upon which we can build our Dream PH are provided by PLCs, LGUs, and NGAs, “one institution at a time”. Many of these have already taken the first two critical steps: those of realism and of envisioning. What they need to do is to keep travelling on their governance pathway: they must keep going and keep transforming themselves, for both governance and transformation are for the long term.

 

Indeed, institutions—PLCs, LGUs, and NGAs—must keep strengthening and developing themselves. Even if the personalities that lead them and are working in them change, or pass on, they last. They remain. They never pass away. Instead, they must keep getting stronger; they should be institutionalized as “islands of good governance”.

 

For them to stay on the governance pathway, they must then reach out first and foremost to all the individuals who work within them. These individuals are the ultimate governance assets; They must be imbued with the core values, this time also with the four that have been mandated for every Filipino: maka-Diyos; maka-Tao; maka-Kalikasan; and maka-Bansa. These must be instilled and deeply embedded, deep in the hearts and minds of everyone, such that they are honored by their observance (never by their breach). The men and women who are the genuine governance assets must become persons of integrity: they observe in all their actions and decisions, in their life and work, the core values they profess. Indeed, through those individuals, these same core values are cascaded to their respective families as well as to all the young people who attend school in the local community. A consortium of offices of strategy management can be organized to serve as a forum for free exchange of lessons learned, best practices adopted, stories of success told, and heroic virtues extolled. In the process, the challenge of lack of civic-mindedness is addressed and effectively met.

 

Institutions also need to keep strengthening the working teams within them. They keep up with their delivery of performance targets, set by the institutional transformation roadmap. They keep improving as instruments of mutual support for transformative outcomes to be delivered. They go even further: they take care of team premises to be clean, orderly, professionally set up to deliver high quality services.  And together with other teams within the institution, all institutional offices remain clean, orderly, functional and professional. They then reach out and form a solidarity network such that with a barangay or other unit of an LGU, the barangays within the neighborhood, adjacent to the offices of the institution, are upgraded also from the standpoint of cleanliness, functionality, and comeliness. In the process, the challenge of waste, inefficiency, corruption, and lack of systemic productivity gets to be more effectively addressed.

 

Institutions also strengthen and expand the transformative reach of their multi-sector governance consortium or councils such that, in partnership with other stakeholders, they work for the gradual but sustained transformation of a much bigger area or region, and even of the wider industry or sector. External value chain issues are addressed with the spirit of solidarity such that “ESG” initiatives are more effectively coordinated to help address the challenge of poverty as well as economic, financial, social, and political inequity.

 

Indeed, the top leadership of several institutions can and should band together to address strategic issues related to the comprehensive development of the nation’s human, natural, and financial resources. They broaden and widen their horizon to take on the challenges directly associated with putting together separate and disparate “islands of good governance”, thereby building an “archipelago of good governance” instead: this is what Dream PH is about.

 

Conclusion

 

We have good reasons for our disillusionment, dark mood and despair. We have been focusing too much on short-term partisan politics, personalities, and stand-alone projects.

 

Governance and transformation have shown us an alternative pathway, with greater focus on longer-term strategy, institutional strengthening, and comprehensive visioning.

 

We now have several “islands of good governance”. The challenge before us is to connect the dots, build bridges, do outreach such that together, we build an archipelago of good governance, our Dream PH we aim to deliver by 2046.

 

(The author is the “MAP Management Person of the Year 2009”, Chair of Center for Excellence in Governance, Founder and Chair Emeritus of Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD) and Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA).  Feedback at <map@map.org.ph> and <jestanislao@icd.ph>).