Success vs. excellence

Just the other day, a friend of mine quoting from some philosopher he couldn’t remember, said, "Money is exactly like sex, you think of nothing else if you don’t have it, and think of other things if you do." Then, just the other Sunday, I heard the priest celebrating Mass quote from the Bible St. Matthew’s words: "No man can serve two masters ... you cannot serve God and mammon." And, of course, you and I know the other famous line from the Bible: "Money is the root of all evil."

Every enterprise, every commercial establishment, every corporate business and huge conglomerate, every SME (small and medium-sized enterprise), every giant business empire, has to cope with its balance sheets every fiscal year and announce to its stockholders a lot of money earned by the company, or the bad news of losses for the fiscal year. These enterprises also have to cope with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) for the filing of the income tax returns, where the most imaginative and potent approaches to lessen the taxes to be paid come into play. A friend of mine, a big man in the business world, told me once when I attended a dinner he gave in honor of a visiting American friend who happened to be someone I had met in the big world of international telecommunications, that the difference between a tax collector and a taxidermist is that the latter "only takes away your skin." Of course, our American friend, while having a big laugh, interjected that in the US, the most feared agency of government is the IRS (International Revenue Service).

The fact is, money certainly is the objective of business. Someone is in business to make money – make no bones about that. It is the primordial reason for engaging in a business. When the very moneyed John D. Rockefeller said, "I believe that the power to make money is a gift from God," he was telling the truth – that it is indeed a divine gift, this ability to make lots and lots of money, but it is a very human dimension that when you do, you’ve got the IRS, in our case, the BIR to cope with. That’s the reason innovative tax hedges have been created ...the Rockefeller Foundation with its well-known philanthropic endeavors, and in the Philippines, we have the Ayala Foundation and the like.

But there are men in our midst where the pursuit of money is secondary, and sometimes, of no consequence at all. They provide a service to help the underprivileged Filipino and the service is gratuitous. Especially in the medical profession, the practitioners, I would like to think, are intent on healing, on assuaging the pain and being angels of mercy, far and above making money. It was G.K. Chesterton who said, "To be clever enough to make a great deal of money, one must be stupid enough to want it."

There is an admirable doctor who has established a wide practice in ophthalmology in our country. In his early fifties but looking like a young professional just out of medical school, he is considered one of the foremost glaucoma experts today and with one of the biggest hearts in any profession, Dr. Manuel B. Agulto. I think early in his life, with his sense of history, he was able to expand the scope of empathy in his being, not just accenting non-market values as love and care and public service and benevolent healing, but creating spaces in which to heal both the rich and the poor.

As one of the most valuable citizens of the country, he is a world personality who has spoken and shared his expertise at numerous international venues like the American Academy of Ophthalmology in San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Texas, Florida, and quite a number of conferences in Europe. He has authored some of the most important treatises and papers on ophthalmology in general, and the serious eye disease of glaucoma in particular.

Dr. Agulto is, at the same time, the executive director of a great benevolent facility, the Eye Referral Center, which is committed to serve the moneyed, the less moneyed, and the poor who cannot afford to pay and are therefore patients who get free eye examinations and treatments with state-of-the-art medical equipment. When one goes to the Eye Referral Center located on T.M. Kalaw St. in Manila, one sees a simple building, not like the ones you see on Ayala Avenue but a plain efficient structure with clean white walls and waiting rooms equipped with TV sets for the big number of patients waiting for their respective turns, many of them in very simple garb for what, in my books, is the best medical analysis of their eye ailments and the best treatment possible in this country.

Under the leadership of Agulto, the facility certainly has excellent credentials with a staff of practitioners that are truly experts. They have trained under him and abroad in their respective ophthalmology sub-specialization. The center has these medical accouterments and state-of-the-art equipment. Even the toilets are the cleanest, most sanitary-smelling comfort rooms, though stark and simple, with just the basic essentials.

The Eye Referral Center is run efficiently like a business but with great compassion. Dr. Agulto as the head goes about his work quietly, although his excellent credentials ooze out of every movement as he examines and as he treats the eye. He earned his medical degree from the University of the Philippines and thereafter did residency at the Philippine General Hospital. It was at the Harvard Medical School where he undertook post-graduate ophthalmology specialization. He is currently chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences of the Philippine General Hospital. He is the founder of the Central Luzon Society of Ophthalmology and is the immediate past president of the Philippine Glaucoma Society. Though extremely low-key, he has received quite a number of honors and awards, including the Distinguished Service Award from the Asia-Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology; Merit Award from the Philippine Board of Ophthalmology; Legion of Honor from the International Order of Demolay. The list of his awards I had to connive with Vivian, his very efficient assistant at the center, to obtain since he did not want to give me any material and refused to be interviewed at all. He was a fellow of the Philippine Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology and obtained his diplomate from the Philippine Board of Ophthalmology.

Agulto is one man to whom the word "excellence" is certainly applicable. Sometime in the early 1990s, the president of New York University, John Brademas, spoke before a big group of business and management practitioners on "The Difference Between Success and Excellence." I was part of the audience not because I was in business or management, but as the guest of the chairman of a broadcast corporation in the US. The affair was held in Philadelphia and I have not forgotten some of the words he said. Brademas quoted Thomas Boswell, then a sportswriter of the Washington Post, who believed that in the sports arena, there was an obsession with winning because success has been easily confused with excellence. "Success," said Boswell, "is measured externally, by comparison with others; success is often beyond our personal control, and moreover, it is perishable. Excellence, on the other hand, is an internal quality, a consequence in large measure of the capacity and of the commitment of an individual. Excellence endures." Manny Agulto falls right smack on all fours with this dimension of excellence, for excellence is his daily prayer.

Excellence is found in self-esteem, in pride, in ethical behavior, in sharing riches. He is a man that cannot be judged externally, for he has nurtured excellence in himself. His personal and professional life attest to this, and unlike in the world of business and politics, there is simply no advertisement of the good that he does.

It is a myth that the sum of your talents is equal to the sum of your paycheck. Talent and ability, like success, are what you define them to be. Excellence is doing your best at what you do best. This is indeed what Dr. Manuel B. Agulto is all about.