The impossible dream

Manny Pangilinan will never acquire GMA Broadcasting Corp. Period.

The Gozon and Duavit families, who control 65 percent of GMA 7, will never sell to Manny, to PLDT, or to Smart. They would rather sell 20 to 30 percent of the country’s second largest broadcasting network to the public than to the PLDT group.

And knowing Manny, he would not settle for just acquiring the 35-percent stake of the Jimenezes in GMA 7. As in any company that he or First Pacific has acquired, he wants majority if not a controlling stake.

GMA 7 chairman and president Felipe Gozon made it very clear that Manny’s group is not welcome. Isn’t it obvious that this is more than a business deal to the Gozon and Duavit families?

Allowing the PLDT group to control GMA 7 means allowing the Jimenez family to gain back control of the network. Gozon and Menardo ‘Nards’ Jimenez Sr., who are brothers-in-law, are not exactly in good terms. Tito Nards controlled GMA 7 for decades. Atty. Gozon believed it was time for him to take over. After a coup of sorts in the GMA board, Tito Nards retired from the network and all remnants of the Jimenez regime were removed from the station. Butch Jimenez, son of Tito Nards, left GMA 7 after exchanging heated words with his uncle and accepted Manny’s offer to head PLDT’s corporate communications group. Bobby Barreiro, who is also closely identified with the Jimenezes, was booted out of the station and is now ABC 5’s main man.

Atty. Gozon probably believed that the Jimenezes were not running GMA 7 at par with the times. Or his motives may purely be selfish. Whatever his real reasons are, he will never allow the Jimenezes to be in power again. He knows that if Manny acquires majority of GMA 7, it will be Butch who will be running the show. And there is no way that he will allow this to happen.

From Sports Coach To Life Coach

What do companies like Chrysler, Xerox, IBM, Microsoft, BBC News, or even the US Postal Service have in common?

All of them use coaching to create a culture of high performance, change, and learning in the workplace. They are applying coaching techniques to encourage their employees to think and work better. Personal coaches in New York, London, and Tokyo are helping executives and middle managers unearth their personal goals and aspirations and make better business decisions.

Corporate coaching, the second fastest growing industry in the US, has been around for three years now but is still a very new concept in Philippine business organizations.

One of the country’s winningest pro-basketball coaches Chot Reyes has brought the concept to the Philippines and has organized coachcom.inc to train local executives and employees as well on business coaching. After completing his training on the 15 advanced coaching proficiencies and small business coaching intensives in London (he is the only sports coach in his group), he is now working on becoming a certified master coach.

But even before he stumbled upon business coaching, he was already giving talks to big companies and organizations on teamwork, leadership based on the knowledge and lessons he gained as basketball coach.

Based on the recently published Corporate Leadership Study 2004 conducted by DDI, out of the five major management proficiencies that need to be enhanced and are lacking for corporate teams to succeed, coaching competencies ranked first. In terms of the key factors to make learning and training sustainable, coaching similarly ranked number one.

A Fortune 500 company and Pyramid Resource Group, a coaching services company in the US, engaged MetrixGlobal LLC to determine the benefits and return on investment for an executive coaching program. The survey found that coaching produced a 529-percent ROI and significant intangible benefits to the business. Similar results were revealed in a survey by Manchester Inc. which studied 100 executives from Fortune 1000 companies. It discovered that a company’s investment in providing coaching to its executives realized an average ROI of almost six times the cost of coaching.

Due to the need for leadership development, increased management productivity and succession planning, companies are focusing more closely on building the capability of managers and executives through coaching and mentoring programs. Six out of 10 organizations (59 percent) currently offer coaching or other developmental counseling to their managers and executives, according to another US nationwide survey of more than 300 companies. Another 20 percent said they plan to offer coaching soon.

Interested groups may e-mail Chot, who by the way is also taking up his International MBA at Thames Business School and will be teaching sports marketing at the Ateneo, at [email protected] or [email protected].

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