“Everything I learned in execution and management, I must have learned from here,” Bayani Fernando, construction magnate and former Marikina City mayor, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chair and Public Works Secretary, said yesterday at the beginning of his talk at the “Competitive Leadership Entrepreneurial Leadership Conference” at the UP Institute for Small-Scale Industries (UP ISSI), Diliman, Quezon City.
The conference, organized to mark the anniversary of the founding of the UP Institute for Small-Scale Industries, featured 15 other speakers from the private business and industry sector, government, and academe who talked on various aspects of entrepreneurial leadership. Another feature of the UP ISSI anniversary celebration was the Grand Alumni Homecoming of the Manager’s Course (MC) for Small-Scale Industries, the flagship training program of the Institute, which also graduated its 100th batch that day.
In 1971, Fernando attended the first run of the MC. According to him, he never took a formal management degree nor a post-graduate program after finishing B.S. engineering at the Mapua Institute of Technology. Thus, he said, “If I turned out to be a good manager, it is because of ISSI.”
In addressing the topic “Leadership Execution and Governance.” Fernando mainly talked about his experiences running a small business and administering the city of Marikina as three-term mayor. Peripherally, he referred to his stint as MMDA chair.
He recalls having started his construction business small, with P6 thousand he borrowed from a rural bank in Pasig City after graduating. His business, then known as BF Metal Engineering, has since flourished into the BF Group of Companies engaged in construction, steel, manufacturing, and real estate. His construction firm built many of the country’s tallest buildings, shopping malls, industrial sites and residential subdivisions.
While acknowledging that he could have amassed knowledge at the expense of bigger companies if he got himself employed, he asserted taking the entrepreneurial route allowed him to contribute more and serve more.
He described the time he spent in public service as “interesting.”
He identified two keys to good local governance and public service: political will and productivity.
It was with political will that he changed the landscape of Marikina City, he said. “We have no sidewalk vendors, no squatters. We gave each squatter a land to build his own home.” He said he was able to relocate 30 thousand squatters within the city itself.
“I didn’t change the system. I just made people more productive . We are not rich but we are well-structured. We became a decent community because the bureaucracy worked, from the tax collectors down to the janitors.”
Recalling the Philippines used to be No. 1 in Southeast Asia in terms of economic development, he blamed the decline to a slide in productivity. “The average Korean is ten times more productive than the Filipino worker,” he said.
To his mind, raising productivity also requires political will.
His credo is: “Laws are the solutions,” he said. “Our laws are the people’s collective wisdom and will lead us to peace and prosperity. “
Laws was what he enforced in Marikina as mayor as well as in Metro Manila as MMDA chief. “In Metro Manila, I was almost done with the work I set out to do.”
Now out of public service and back to business management, Fernando says he is happy as a practicing industrial designer, having designed what he calls a revolutionary schoolhouse. The design is modular, made mostly of stainless steel, and could be installed in three days. He is about to begin to construct more than 2,000 school buildings using this design, having won a bid as a private construction company.
Fernando also won the “Outstanding Achievement Award in Promoting SMEs” in the public service category during the MC alumni homecoming dinner that followed the conference.
(Watch out for other stories about other presentations/speeches delivered at the conference.)