Management Man of the Year

Awards are starting to be a dime a dozen these days. Some award giving organizations have discovered a good way of raising funds. They charge an entry fee to be considered and if you win, they overcharge you for dinner on awards night with a ceremony that drags on for hours. More awards mean more entries and more entry fees the next year.

But there are awards that are truly respected and the Management Man of the Year award of the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) is one such award. It has established a reputation through the years of being a true recognition of excellence by one’s peers in the world of business.

This year’s award is no exception. I believe that Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario is truly deserving of the recognition. He is one hands-on manager who doesn’t think twice about flying off to some world hot spot to make sure Filipino workers are safe and their evacuation facilitated.

For that alone, Secretary Del Rosario should get some form of recognition for his selfless dedication to duty. The job of the foreign secretary has changed much since that tragic Flor Contemplacion case. Today, the Foreign Service must prioritize the welfare of OFWs, who are after all, today’s new heroes for their contribution to our economy.

I am not sure this shift in priorities is totally a good development for our foreign service. Our government should rethink this responsibility lodged on our diplomats. We should harness instead the right number of officials from the Department of Labor for the full time job of looking after our OFWs. Of course, the oversight of the Foreign Service will always be there.

We should not forget that the principal mission of our diplomats is diplomacy. True, we are a small country and our diplomats do not have the awesome responsibility of their counterparts working for the world’s powerful countries. But the ability of our diplomats to conduct diplomacy must not suffer because they have their hands full dealing with the day-to-day problems of our OFWs.

I remember one ambassador making the observation that he feels like a barangay captain who has to conduct a barangay meeting almost every day at the embassy. There are just so many Filipinos abroad these days and a good number of them regularly get into some trouble.

I believe every Filipino in trouble abroad deserves the help and attention of the embassy there. But our Foreign Service officers must still be able to do their other responsibilities as diplomats. Our diplomats are the eyes and ears of our government and they must provide insights to help us keep relations with other governments in the best possible state.

Covering foreign affairs was one of the first beats I was given as a young reporter in the early ’70s when the foreign secretary was Carlos P. Romulo. Our foreign service officers then, and I want to believe now as well, constitute the best educated and among the most intelligent of our civil service. Only a handful of aspirants manage to pass the very tough examinations to become Foreign Service officers.

That is why observing the merit system for promotions and assignments is very important for morale. This is one other reason why Sec. Del Rosario deserves this management award. Politicians have made serious inroads in our diplomatic service to the detriment of our career diplomats. Sec. Del Rosario has stood up for the career service and that’s how it should be.

On the other hand, I am less impressed with Sec. Del Rosario’s handling of our country’s diplomacy. That has become a real problem because P-Noy isn’t that conversant with the management of foreign policy too. I am told that when he became president, his passport was 10 years expired. He had no interest in world affairs prior to being president and it showed.

For example, the handling of our China problems could have been better. As an ordinary Filipino watching from the sidelines, I am among those who cheered as Sec. Del Rosario gave it to China when the emerging superpower acted like a bully in the common sea we shared.

But on second thought, it is not right to conduct our foreign policy via press releases in a very public fight. Diplomacy is best done through back channels. Sen. Trillanes managed to get P-Noy to authorize him to do back channel talks because DFA dropped the ball somehow.

 Sec. Del Rosario’s lack of experience in diplomacy (he was in the insurance brokerage business before he became ambassador to the US) showed even in his handling of Asean. The other disadvantage is our very shallow bench of diplomats who are China experts.

It didn’t help that Sec. Del Rosario used his America card and made P-Noy sign EDCA. Now even the Solicitor General admitted to the Supreme Court EDCA does not obligate America to help us if we get into trouble with China. And with President Obama trying to mend fences with China because that is more to US interests than risking a war on our behalf, what did our very public display of subservience to America get us? We should have at the very least, been given a fleet of discarded warships and F-16s.

Looking forward, we must learn to deal with China on our own. Sec. Del Rosario must develop more diplomats with a deep knowledge and understanding of China because we must more effectively deal with this fiery dragon in our neighborhood. We need more diplomats who speak Mandarin and stationed long enough in China to understand what makes it tick.

But we are learning fast. Based on what both P-Noy and Sec. Del Rosario are saying now, they have realized our relations with China cannot be determined by a single issue. While there can be no compromise on the territorial issue, life goes on while this is being resolved one way or another.

The faculty of the Foreign Service Institute must be strengthened so that our diplomats are able to benefit from the work of experts in political science and economics. We do not have too many think tanks that analyze foreign policy issues to guide government policies. This is where a more active FSI faculty comes in.

While I applaud MAP’s giving this year’s award to Sec. del Rosario, I have a few observations on its handling of the award through the years. I hope they take my view here as a constructive suggestion to make the Management Man of the Year award more inclusive for all sectors in the business community.

I scanned the list of awardees over the years and there is no doubt that almost all deserve their awards. But you also get the impression that it is almost exclusive to the Makati Business Club elite. Some of the awardees seem less deserving than some names left out.

Where is John Gokongwei? Or his son, Lance? What they have accomplished with Cebu Pacific and URC requires outstanding management skills. While Manny Pangilinan had been given Management Man of the Year honors, one other executive in his group, Orlando Vea who founded Smart and runs it today with Sun is still doing amazing things in the tech industry deserving of recognition.

I am sure the low key Carlos Chan who has established a successful business empire that spans China and Southeast Asia, a Filipino multinational flying the Philippine flag in its factories, is more deserving than a few of the names already recognized.

I know Ramon Ang is controversial in the business community and considered an outsider by the Makati crowd, but what he has done so far seems more than what had been accomplished by some past awardees.

Then there is Dr. Jaime Aristotle B. Alip, who founded a microfinance institution called CARD (or Center for Agriculture and Rural Development Inc.) with 55 branches across the country serving more than 900,000 clients. I haven’t had the honor of meeting Dr. Alip, but Wash SyCip told me all about him. Mr. SyCip was so impressed with Dr. Alip and the operations of CARD that he gave a personal grant of a few million pesos for lending in their microfinance operations.

Speaking of finance, BSP Gov. Say Tetangco, one of the world’s top Central Bank Governors, is due for recognition too in his home country. Managing the BSP bureaucracy, the local financial sector and our monetary system demands the best management skills.

My point simply is the need for MAP to cast a wider net beyond the same old faces they have lunch with in Makati everyday. There is a country out there beyond Ayala Avenue where excellent Filipino managers are thriving, setting good examples for future generations of managers.

The last thing MAP should want to happen is to make the award so parochial as to be meaningless outside of Ayala Avenue.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco