Whether he is aware of it or not, President Benigno Aquino III seems to be adopting the exciting new management paradigm called Management by Mission. An improvement over the old models of Management by Results and Management by Objectives, this more holistic approach to leading an organization imbues all members of the management team with the mission of the organization and ensures that all their actions are oriented towards the mission of the organization. As the experiences of notorious business organizations like Enron, Lehman Brothers, and AIG have demonstrated, focusing on results and objectives exclusively can be counterproductive. What should always be uppermost in the minds of all the members of the management team must be the corporate mission which has to be clearly spelled out and communicated to all.

That is why, President Aquino should not listen to those who accuse him of just constantly repeating the mission of his Government of fighting corruption, generating employment and eradicating poverty. No matter how they may sound like motherhood statements, they have to be repeated ad infinitum so that they will sink into the sub-conscious of the members of his Cabinet and all those working for the Executive branch of the Government. No one criticizes an outstanding leader in the private sector for taking advantage of all occasions to refer to the mission of his organization. That is the only way his followers will internalize the abstract concepts contained in a mission and then translate them into concrete policies and programs through their creativity, initiative and persevering hard work.

It is now incumbent upon the members of the Cabinet to make sure that everything that they do in their respective departments has a direct contribution to one or more of the key elements of the mission enunciated by their President. In other words, every Secretary must ask himself how his department is contributing to fighting corruption, generating jobs or eradicating poverty. All the other quantifiable goals should be considered as instrumental to attaining these key objectives. For example, attaining a GDP growth of 7% or more annually for the next six years should not be an end in itself. It should be aimed at only to the extent that it will lead to the eradication of poverty and generate quality employment. The same thing can be said about the promotion of exports, which should be geared towards generating employment or earning foreign exchange so as to provide employment in those industries which have to import raw materials, equipment, or technology from abroad. Another example is the reduction of the fiscal deficit, which is not an objective in itself. It should only be considered as a mean towards either preventing higher inflation, which could make life more difficult for the poor or making investors--both local and foreign--more confident in putting up employment-generating enterprises.

A paramount example of a Secretary who is clearly following the lead of President Aquino by contributing to his proclaimed mission is DTI Secretary Greg Domingo. In all his pronouncements, he is constantly invoking employment generation as the primary objective of his Department. He has even dared to quantify this objective by citing 3 million jobs as his target over the next six years. As an example of his single-minded focus on job creation, he has made it clear to the automotive companies that the new Motor Vehicle Development Program should be crafted so that it promotes the long-term employment growth. The two contending parties--the automotive assemblers and the pure CBU importers--still have to demonstrate who of them will in the long run generate more employment. They will have to utilize input-output analysis to show how industry inter-linkages of each sector will have the greater multiplier effects on employment generation. It cannot be assumed that the assemblers can create more jobs because of their backward linkages to auto parts and components manufacturing. Given a set of assumptions, those importing pure CBU could generate more employment in the retailing, repairs and other services. It must be pointed out that a job is a job, whether in manufacturing or services.

Another example in the determination of Secretary Domingo to focus on long-term employment generation is his announcement that a screening system will be put in place by the DTI to optimize the employment impact of its support programs for small enterprises. In the past, there was the more populist policy of helping any micro-enterprise or small business even if it had no long-term prospect of growing and generating more jobs. A lot of the money could have actually been given as mere cash transfers to alleviate poverty because the businesses were unsustainable. With the screening to be done, only those that can grow and employ more people would be appropriate for DTI to help. The unsustainable ones could very well be more under the purview of the Department of Social Welfare or other agencies geared towards immediate poverty alleviation which, of course, is another very important element of PNOY's mission.

Other examples of management by mission would be the Department of Education giving the highest priority to improving the quality of elementary education, because various studies have shown that giving access to the children of the poor to quality elementary education is a most effective means of combatting poverty. At the level of secondary education, vocational training has greater impact on employment generation and poverty alleviation. In the Department of Public Works and Highways, a focus on farm-to-market roads and other infrastructures that make small farmers more productive and cost efficient is the way to support poverty alleviation. This should be in coordination with the Department of Agrarian Reform, whose immediate concern should be to provide the existing four million or so beneficiaries of past agrarian reform measures with the necessary rural infrastructures instead of trying to parcel out more lands. Because of the continuing need to improve the rural infrastructures that have been long neglected, the Department of Finance should exempt capital expenditures on rural infrastructures from the cost cutting needed to reduce the fiscal deficit.

As I discussed in a previous article on tourism, employment generation and the eradication of poverty can be inputted into a tourism strategy by linking the improvement of rural infrastructures (as accomplished to a great extent by the Philippine Nautical Highway project of the previous Administration) to the fostering of more labor-intensive bed-and-breakfast facilities all over the tourism destinations, instead of just focusing on the encouragement of large and expensive hotels, which have limited employment impact. Bed-and-breakfast facilities attain multiple objectives that are part of the PNOY mission: they generate more employment per peso invested; they give rise to numerous small-scale enterprises that are sustainable; and they are more affordable to low-income domestic tourists. I am glad that DOT Secretary Alberto Lim has already stated that there will be an emphasis on these types of facilities.

One exception to a single-minded focus on employment generation should be in the mining industry. There are some misguided Church officials and NGOs who think small miners are preferable to big mining firms because the former are supposed to generate more employment per peso invested. If we consider environmental damage, small mines can do much more harm to the environment because of their inherent chaotic nature and lack of technology. As long as the big mines are required to follow the best practices in such countries as Canada, Australia and Chile in respecting the environment as well as the indigenous people, the big mines can contribute more to the common good than the small miners. They can be more efficient in protecting the environment while generating the necessary foreign exchange needed by Philippine enterprises who have to import indispensable raw materials, equipment and technology. I hope my readers will send me more suggestions about how other Departments in the Executive branch of the Government can directly contribute to generating employment, eradicating poverty and fighting corruption.
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For comments, my email address is bvillegas@uap.edu.ph.