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ONE late evening as we were about to sleep, Bonnie mentioned
casually that she was reading a book of Peter Drucker (1909-2005),
who wrote 35 books in all, including the landmark titles The
Practice of Management and The Effective Executive.
“I’d like to be one of your featured seminar
speakers someday,” my wife said.
“Uhmm,” (Read: Are you joking?) I said as I
pulled up a pillow close to my chest.
“So I’m going back to the basics of
management,” she said.
“Uhmm,” (Read: Let’s go to sleep now.) I
said again.
Bonnie said nothing. Then she removed the pillow
and pulled my ear. I mean she pulled my ear and removed the pillow
in that order. Suddenly I knew she was serious.
I thought to myself. She just read one Drucker
book and she was acting that way. Imagine if she proceeded with the
remaining 34 books!
But don’t get me wrong. I’m not totally
opposed to the idea. Look, she’s an excellent teacher who taught
my three kids how to read and write at an early age of three! Today,
she’s still at it doing volunteer work as a day care teacher in
our barangay (village) in Paranaque for at least 15 years now.
Back to my youthful days as a manager, unlike
Bonnie I learned the ropes by trial and error like what Drucker had
described to be as “malorganization” or anything like it.
Basically, it’s a multiplication of the number
of management levels to allow aspirants more opportunities to commit
a mistake. Errr, I mean for promotion. It’s very much the same as
gerrymandering in politics, you know.
But Drucker was opposed to the idea of “malorganization.”
He said in People and Performance (Harvard Business School Press,
2007) that one “basic rule of organization is to build the least
possible number of management levels and forge the shortest possible
chain of command.
“Every additional level makes more difficult
the attainment of common direction and mutual understanding. Every
additional level distorts objectives and misdirects attention.”
He was right. But I know I was right too because
of several exceptions to the Drucker Principle, which I’d rather
not discuss here until I’ve written the book People, Performance,
Promotion, and Profit, which as you could imagine is two times
better.
Of course, professional pessimists out there
have reasons to doubt my theory even without reading my upcoming
book. How could you argue with Drucker, who is widely regarded as
the founding father of business management?
I’ll tell you. Drucker is dead, I’m not. And
I don’t intend to die like my 82-year old father-in-law who was
made afloat by tobacco and San Miguel Beer, not to mention my
91-year old Tatay (father) who has no similar sin hobbies at all.
But let’s go back to Bonnie. How could she
think of being an inspirational speaker for high-salaried corporate
executives given her current missionary work as a teacher for those
in the developmental areas?
Being a speaker and consultant is difficult
because your name must necessarily have appendage-alphabets like
MBA, if not PhD. Bonnie has none, except a business degree from
Saint Paul’s College whose campus aggressively extended to
Magnolia’s Ice Cream Parlor along Aurora Boulevard in those days.
Further, it’s difficult to stand in public,
maintain eye contact with people on the front rows, and sustain
their interest too. You need to know how to speak effectively
without saying “aaahh” in every sentence.
You need to remember the message from the heart.
You need to have brains. And become an interesting speaker by using
humor all over. Standing there alone is not enough.
These days, some people say it’s easy to
become a business consultant. And Bonnie agrees to that. You don’t
need a job, much more the management experience. As soon as you have
completed kindergarten then surely you can become a consultant.
Really, you can’t blame Bonnie, who aspires to
become the female version of Bo Sanchez, Francis Kong, and Josiah Go
all rolled into one deep-fried fish tempura — a suitable feast for
Easter.
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Rey Elbo is a business consultant
specializing in human resources and total quality management as a
fused specialty. Reader’s feedback may be sent to kairoshq@info.com.ph
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