Washington Sycip was our guest speaker during Jollibee's last Leadership Learning Zone. At 87 he still spoke in a very clear voice and obviously there were no signs of any memory lapses from the way he narrated stories and anecdotes to illustrate his points.
He didn't ramble on aimlessly or digress, but kept to his topic of why human resources have to be given importance by any organization that wants to be competitive. And he did it without any prepared speech!
He told us that when he and his partners put up SGV he hired Filipinos primarily. Then, the accounting industry was dominated by the British and in these firms people moved up the organization, not because of merit but because of the color of their skin. So when he ran SGV he made meritocracy the guiding principle.
He said that they only hired the best and the brightest and trained and educated them. He stressed that education was key to keeping an organization competitive. They must have done a very good job because after some time SGV became better than the foreign firms and they even bought them out.
He expressed concern that the Philippines has been ignoring the devlopment of its human resources. We are spending 1/6th of Thailand's investment in education and 1/11th of Malaysia's. Consequently, we are ending up with "poor"human capital. These are the kind who sell their votes and therefore put the wrong people in government.
He said that the two handicaps to Philippine progress have been what we used to boast about: 1) Democracy and 2) Christianity. He went on to cite that countries that had strong man rule have fared better (e.g. China, Korea,Taiwan, Singapore). When income levels increased,democracy followed.
"Democracy comes when people are no longer hungry and don't need to sell their votes."
He said something about developing teachers as one of the keys to improving the quality of education. He pointed out that they have stopped giving scholarships but focused on rewarding teachers.
"If the teacher is inspired,the teacher will want to go to school. But if the teacher is dull,the student will not want to go to school."
