Christmas thoughts

I wrote the following for BusinessWorld in December 2001. Five years later, I still feel the same.

Social capital and the spirit of Christmas (December 20, 2001)

There are many things I like about our country. The weather is temperate. The cuisine is tasty. And the people are friendly and know how to have fun. Christmas in particular brings all the best things out of Filipinos. This is when we have the most fun. And this is when we are nicest to each other in general and, in particular, especially nice to people we care about. Christmas is, therefore, a great time to build and strengthen ties with people.

Now, why am I making a big thing about being nice to each other, having fun and building ties? Because I think that these are practices that we Filipinos are so good at and yet have not made full use of, whether in corporations or as a nation. Organizational researchers have a special term for high-trust networks of relationships which allow people to work together towards a common goal – social capital.

I’ve often wondered why, despite the vaunted talent of the Filipino, we are conspicuously trailing many of our neighbors in achieving development goals. At the micro level, this kind of underachievement is true even in many otherwise excellent organizations. My theory is that we have run very low in social capital. We have slowly squandered our reservoirs of trust, goodwill and sense of collective fun until we have become in many organizations, and as a nation, socially bankrupt.

Watching the evening news is a daily habit for me and it’s a habit I may have to stop if only to keep from getting depressed. Not a day goes by without a politician leveling the most horrible accusation at another on national television. More recently, a lady from a cause-oriented group deplored how excluded her group felt about the recently held economic summit. A government leader, one of the organizers, explained that they did take the group’s concerns into account during the summit.

And as I watched the exchange on television, I had that strange combination of feelings I often get nowadays: lucky, on the one hand, to have such committed and talented individuals taking the cudgels for our country and sad, on the other hand, that these individuals will never get their act together. Then it hit me. We can’t get our act together because we don’t trust each other. We don’t even like each other. It’s no wonder this country isn’t going anywhere!

How did we get this way? How did a country known for its patient and hospitable people ever get to a point that we have made putting each other down a national pastime and a gladiator sport? How did a country that has produced – and continues to produce – some of the most talented individuals become the collective cellar dweller in the drive towards genuine national development?

It’s the little things, I think. It’s the insistence on being right and the other being wrong. It’s the refusal to really listen and let the other person finish a sentence before we say our piece. It’s the little judgments we make about another person not being one of “us” and, therefore, not being trustworthy. It’s the focus on “me” instead of the “us.” In other words, it’s the fatal mistake of forgetting that in the journey of life, we are all in it together.

But this is history, and Christmas signals the coming of a new year and a new beginning. If we have run out of social capital, we can certainly build it up again. First, we need a collective goal and we certainly have one – the uplift of the dignity and standard of living of the majority of our countrymen. We need to accept that our fates are intertwined; that we cannot truly succeed while others plod along in life. Second, we have to put our talents for niceness and caring to very good use – on each other – and not just during Christmas but all year round.

This will begin the building of collective trust. But it will take time because it will need the establishment of an ethical climate where we, whether as citizens or as members of organizations, act beyond self-interest. And this is only possible if relationships are allowed to build over time. There are some specific steps that we should consider seriously. In companies, this means selecting people more carefully and trying to keep them longer. If as a manager you are considering moves that will result in too many losses of jobs, rethink it. If it looks good on the balance sheet and gives a twinkle in your investment banker’s eye, rethink it even more. You may be profiting by displacing people who have toiled hard on the very strategies you asked them to pursue, only to toss them out when these strategies fail. Is there a more humane way of recovering from the mistake? A fairer way? Can you share in the consequences and the pain? Avoiding the short-cut solution will earn you tremendous trust points (not to mention pogi points) with your people and build company social capital. The next time mergers are considered, managers should look at how much social capital will be lost as people are let go and as relationships are destroyed.

As countrymen, we can start by giving each other more benefit of the doubt, especially on contentious issues. The horrific attacks on the World Trade Center had one good effect – they triggered a global interest in understanding why many Muslims feel so left out. While the President’s declaration of the last day of Ramadan as a national holiday wreaked havoc on my personal schedule, I applaud her intention and hope for more efforts to reach out to our brethren in the South.

Three of my siblings, who long ago migrated to the US, often ask me why I stay. I always say that I love being here. I like the weather, I like the food, and I still like the people. This Christmas, let’s all reflect on how we can begin a new year of rediscovering what makes us special as a people. Who knows – I may even convince my siblings to come back. I’m an optimist.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Praying for the Common Good

So it's the day before the CBCP-organized prayer rally at the Luneta. The bishops have called the rally to "watch and pray" for the good of the country, especially after the House majority passed the controversial Constituent Assembly resolution in the wee hours of the morning.

Below are postings I made in Manolo Quezon's blog clarifying the need to seek a common ground for dialogue on the current issues and the need to promote the common good:

On the need for Dialogue based on a Common Ground

"I think [with respect to the CBCP Luneta prayer] it’s also possible that people of faith are realizing that a collective appeal to a higher being is a more constructive response to the deterioration they see in the behavior of legislators than an escalation of angry rhetoric or personal attacks. Although I’m a Catholic, I haven’t made up my mind about going on Sunday because I’m not sure how much prayer there can actually be in such a large crowd.

I agree that the religious groups have vested interests in the current situation, although that should legitimately be the promotion of peace and the common good.

I’m hoping the rally can build some bridges between the sectors at conflict and open some real, thoughtful and mutually respectful dialogue."

When a poster expressed doubt about the possibility of building "bridges", I explained:

"By bridge, I meant common ground among people in seeming conflict. For example, is it possible that people on different sides of the Cha-Cha issue may actually love this country? Or that they want a bright future for their children? Or desire the upliftment of more Filipinos? Or believe in a God of love? I think so. If so, these can be starting points for dialogue and creative problem. Who knows where things can go after that? Still, I find that more appealing than a spiral downwards to chaos, factional hatred or, dare I say, civil war.

I’m not a historian so Manolo might give his inputs here, but it seems to me that the countries we now acknowledge as stable and well-developed went through their own political crises and WORKED THEM THROUGH. It wasn’t always neat, and oftentimes it was preceded by bloodshed, but real progress occurred only when people and their leaders took responsibility for the common good, not just their sectoral interests while simply branding others. I think we can reach this level of thinking and we can really BE a nation, instead of just being co-located accidentally in 7000 islands. IMHO, common ground and dialogue are not only possible for progress, they are necessary. Especially since I presume we prefer a non-authoritarian route. Prayer and discernment can open our minds to these possibilities."

On the Common Good

When a poster questioned whether anyone could or should actually speak about the common good since good can vary among different individuals, I explained that:

"While Oxford dictionary may be right about there being no “strict” definition of the common good, may I offer for your consideration two definitions from two Johns which may be useful for our discussion here. I think that talking about the common good is important because the CBCP often speaks of the common good and a consensus on the common good is basic to nation-building — which is why the phrase appears in the Preamble of the Philippine Constitution as in “We, the sovereign Filipino people, imploring the aid of Almighty God, in order to build a just and humane society and establish a Government that shall embody our ideals and aspirations, promote the common good, …”

The definitions:

1. From Harvard philosopher John Rawls, author of A Theory of Justice: “certain general conditions that are . . . equally to everyone’s advantage”

2. Originally from Pope John XXIII in the papal encyclical Mater et Magistra (Mother and Teacher)and reemphasized in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church: “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily”

The similarity between the two Johns’ definitions is striking considering that Rawls is secular while Pope John is Catholic. This indicates that there tends to be consensus on the common good.

Common examples of conditions which are part of the common good range from the physical (such as clean air and good roads) to social services (such as free basic education and social security) to institutions (such as free markets and the rule of law ), etc. A quick check of the examples against the definitions of the two Johns will clarify why they are part of the common good.

The government has the DUTY to promote the common good because it promotes the dignity and development of every citizen.

The danger in the current situation is that private good or special interest (some say “vested”) is being mixed up with or is harming the common good. This needs to be guarded against and is why the Church is against the recent acts of the House majority — these were seen as brazen acts which harm the common good, i.e., the rule of law, in this case. It is important for ALL citizens, faithful or otherwise, to understand, promote and defend the common good. It is a foundational principle of our republican democracy.

By the way, republic comes from “Res Publica” which is Latin for “the public thing” and refers to what individuals in a community hold in common or place above their self interest."

I think that the concept of the common good is critically important during these times in our country.

Main thesis of humanistic management

I tried summarizing the main ideas of humanistic management for my friend Mela Lazatin and it went like this:

The person is the most important entity in the world and therefore in any organization because Christ is in him/her. The most important purpose of any organization is to preserve the dignity and facilitate the integral human development of every person. Therefore, a manager should be a strategist for human development.

People are social by nature and attain their full potential in association with each other. A manager should be a community builder.

Therefore, work that is humane and which creates socially useful services/products is essential to human growth. A manager should be a designer of humane work in the service of society.

Unfortunately, in the absence of humane managers, organizations begin to be centers of power struggles and personal interest. Indignities are tolerated and even multiplied, wittingly or otherwise. Work becomes unduly burdensome and makes people lose balance in their lives -- even leading to health damage for many. Work atmospheres become characterized by low trust, poor communication and alienation. Products and services produced are often not socially useful, if not actually damaging to people's character or bodies.

We need more humanistic managers.