Teamwork wins championships

The great Michael Jordan once said, “Talent wins games, but teamwork wins championships.” Now I’m a Golden State Warriors fan, but the greatest shooting guard there ever was has a point. If you aim for great accomplishment, you have to work with a team.

I say this because, in the past few weeks, I have worked alongside people who would always be first-round draft picks. Take, for example, Engr. Eddie Guillen of the National Irrigation Administration. I first met him around the time that we were setting up KALAP (Kapatid Angat Lahat sa Agri Program), where we work to integrate small farmers into the value chain of large agri corporations and give them access to the capital, knowledge and markets they need. I remember how he wowed us all as he related to us in a very detailed Powerpoint presentation how he worked with private sector to benefit the farmers of his hometown of Piddig, Ilocos Norte when he was its mayor. He proved to be very resourceful and creative in finding solutions; being an engineer also helped him come to solutions that were technically sound.

And now we are set to sign an agreement with the NIA that will potentially help our country’s food security by putting to productive use the land under its care. During my early consultations with agriculture industry experts, land-lease arrangements always came up. I was told early on that there is plenty of room for growing agricultural productivity in the country; tapping the potential of government land holds a lot of promise. This is multiplied manyfold when we mobilize private sector to help the small farmers and bring them to a level of profitability and sustainability. With him at the helm of the NIA, and now with us working together, I am sure we will achieve great things.

Cris Roque is another example. She overcame challenges and grew her small fashion business into a name-droppable and proudly Filipino brand. Now she brings this experience to the Department of Trade and Industry, and it is serving her well. She is familiar with the problems our MSMEs face, having been a small entrepreneur herself; as such, she asks all the right questions and knows where to make the biggest impact when it comes to helping our MSMEs.

Our partnerships with people like Sec. Cris and Mayor Eddie greatly aid our mission to promote entrepreneurship. They are highly skilled managers and visionary leaders; they have proven their mettle, and the Philippine government is lucky to have people like them on board.

And then there are my colleagues in the private sector.

Lloyd Balajadia, the president of Lloyd Laboratories, sent word early this month that they will be opening a pioneering industrial zone in Tarlac City, one that is dedicated to the pharmaceutical industry. It’s touted to take the country from being an exporter of manpower in the health care sector to an exporter of advanced pharmaceutical products. I congratulated him and thanked him for continuing to create opportunities for Filipinos.

Go Negosyo first worked with Lloyd Laboratories during the COVID-19 pandemic. If I recall correctly, they were among the few local companies which supplied Molnupiravir, a drug used to treat COVID-19. This was when the country had to find a way to resume economic activity after more than two years of lockdowns; their product shortened the downtime for those infected with COVID.

Since then, Go Negosyo has continued to work with Lloyd. He has since become one of our entrepreneurship mentors and generously gives of his time and resources to help our MSMEs. And now with Zen Industrial Pharma Ecozone, he will generate more than a thousand high-value jobs within three years and spur significant knowledge transfer in pharmaceutical manufacturing. Moreover, this ecozone will boost the local economy as businesses around the area benefit from the increased economic activity. In this way, Lloyd is still responding to the country’s needs. The key to creating economic prosperity for the Philippines is things like this.

Another fellow continuing to do what he can beyond his role in business is Dante “Klink” Ang. He hung up his hat at the country’s oldest newspaper and took the lead at the Commission on Filipinos Overseas to look after our kababayans abroad and strengthen their ties to the Philippines.

Even before he became Cabinet secretary, Klink has been very supportive of our programs and projects at Go Negosyo, even carving out some time to mentor at some of our events. This time, though, he will help us expand the reach of our entrepreneurship mentoring programs through BaLinkBayan, an online platform that supports overseas Filipinos in making investments, contributing donations and initiating skills transfer programs. It helps them kickstart business ventures in the Philippines and discover investment opportunities, particularly in their hometowns. Needless to say, I see a lot of synergies here, especially as we also have our own Go Negosyo BalikBayan Summit to help OFWs become entrepreneurs so they can put their hard-earned money to good use.

Leveraging private sector to support bigger initiatives isn’t new or revolutionary, and that’s a good thing. Last week I was also in talks with representatives of one of the region’s largest global investment companies. They, too, saw the benefits of harnessing private sector resources, and I am glad they appreciate the powerful multiplier effect of MSME development. Successful programs, if scaled up with the support of sufficient capacity building and policy changes, have immense potential for meaningful change, especially when we’re talking about driving change in a region as diverse as Southeast Asia.

There is success in individual achievement, but it shouldn’t be all about that. Success is seeing many lives changed for the better because we choose to work together and help the team win not games, but championships.

Source: Go Negosyo - www.philstar.com