Man of his words

A thousand words, my column limit, cannot capture the essence of the man that Oscar M. Lopez was. Allow me to use a thousand more.

I worked with him for about 20 years and I know that words for him were not cheap. He put words to action.

Take his core value about employee health and welfare. When he said we ought to take care of our health by doing what it takes to eat the right food and do the right exercises, he would follow up with us to see if we take him seriously. If not, he took action.

One of our executives was rather obese, to say the least. OML had been telling him to do something about it to no avail. So, OML exiled him to the Lopez Center in Antipolo in the company of a dietician and an exercise trainer. He lived in the Center for a few months until his body mass index showed some improvement.

Body mass index. That was also one of the more important metrics for OML. I recall that all of his direct reports had to undergo body mass measurement. Every quarter, a team from Medical City went to the Benpres building to collect our blood samples. The results were sent to him, and those with flagged results were encouraged to do something. Those whose results were all normal got special mention during the next management meeting.

OML was also very serious about our corporate values. He once asked me to summarize those values so we could print it in a plastic card the size of a credit card. We were supposed to carry that card with us all the time and consult it when making corporate decisions.

The Lopez Values, as OML saw, it include the following: a pioneering entrepreneurial spirit; business excellence; unity; nationalism; social justice; integrity and employee welfare, and wellness. We have to make sure decisions we make do not go against any of those values. Here is what he said in one of the launch meetings.

“For more than a year now, we have been cascading our values to our managers and staff as a means to unify our approach to our various businesses. Events all over the world today more than ever prove how important it is for conglomerates like ours to have enduring values or end up with serious reputation risks.

“Large banks and companies have found themselves in trouble because someone somewhere in their operating frontlines made a decision that was less than what was expected of a respectable corporation… There are a thousand… maybe a million ways by which any of us could stumble in the course of a normal work day unless our value system is so strong that it is almost impossible to make a decision we couldn’t defend in the public fora. That’s what we are trying to aim for by devoting time and energy into this Lopez Values cascade.

“The strategy we have chosen to carry out this program is meticulous, slow burn, and aims for both hearts and minds. What we are doing is the mental equivalent of a fraternity tattoo that marks the Lopez executive and employee for exceptional behavior under the most trying circumstances.

“This afternoon, we will try out a technique known as mind mapping… designed to make you all conscious of the processes we take when we are faced with a decision. We are complementing this with a paradigm called seven by seven, which tests our reactions to a contemplated decision against the Lopez Values and provides a quantitative measure of a decision’s compliance for each value…”

One thing I share with OML is impatience over how our government is run. Here are a few paragraphs on his view about typhoons, floods, and climate change back in 2012.

“For someone my age, this is already getting tiresome. Year in and year out, a serious calamity hits us… and we fail to learn from the experience. We are almost always taken by surprise every time a flood causes us to be in a state of emergency. We are happy to show our readiness to provide relief to the neediest victims and show to the world the best side of the Filipino. I don’t know about you, but true as the statement is, I am getting tired saying after every calamity that the resilience of the Filipino will carry us through…

“Environment Secretary Ramon Paje told the government TV network: “There is nothing we can do but to adapt to climate change, and the only way we can be prepared for the impact of climate change is to accept that these recent developments in our country, like intense weather disturbances, heavy rainfall, as well as long dry season, are now the ‘new normal’…

“I believe we all know what to do to mitigate or even stop this annual plague upon our people. Clean drainage, including the esteros. Remove the squatters from banks of esteros and rivers for their own safety. Improve flood control infrastructure. Reforest the headwaters of the Marikina River. Have good disaster control and relief programs in place.

“Unfortunately, there is very little political will to get any of these done. Worse, there is a significant amount of incompetence in the bureaucracy, as in the case of a flood pumping station of MMDA running out of fuel at the height of the flood. You and I who have spent years in management know that it is basic to make sure equipment will work when needed in an emergency. Running out of fuel is like going to war and running out of ammunition…

“I would think that after the rainy season is over, we should exert effort to make our political leaders carry out more sustainable long-term responses to our cyclical problems with Mother Nature…”

That was OML 10 years ago. Still so current.

OML did his part. He funded a climate change institute that will work with scientists to help mitigate the impact of climate change on our people. We have to pick up from where he left off. He showed the way.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco