Author - semi retired business entrepreneur leader who is now a senior citizen. Current posts are about his current business experience and learnings. A former lecturer at a top GSB in the PHL for more than a decade. We had great successful entrepreneur graduates
This post is thankful that there more hospitals thanks largely for the efforts of doctors to put up their hospitals and there are various aggressive groups like the ACE group. This is heartening and a welcome development. Part of this growth is generous financing from govt banks like Landbank and DBP. And this is fueled by support from UHC and Philhealth. We can see huge reimbursements from Philhealth (and horrors large arrears too due to red tape. This was not solved by resignation of former President of Philhealth)
At the Macro level, the biggest source of funds for health care are still the Household, followed by Local Govt and then govt agencies like SSS. At the Micro market level, the growth of revenues of many hospitals are from insurance and Philhealth. In strategies of hospital we evaluated, we recommended that the Philhealth dept of hospitals be beefed up and representation with Philhealth be increased.
We will not know the outcome of the PHAPI holiday with Philhealth:
1. Do not fight City Hall;
2. The external analysis always mentions PESTEL (Political and Legal)
3. It it is a Doctors Hospital, many patients will not look kindly on the doctors who swear by the Hippocrates oath
We learned though that the Hospitals did not push through with this plan to boycott Philhealth
This post is overwhelmed by the growing passion in taking sides in the current political campaign: both national and local elections. All ready there is a frenzy for campaigning for the elective positions. Onc can guess that this is so: 1. To the victor belongs the spoils, or as claimed 2. Many are being paid.
But there are also real fanatics who wish to hitch their wagon to their political candidates. I know of one FM loyalists who cried when FM was deposed. And even blamed Cory Aquino for his misfortunes (he was not looking for a job)
Change can not come from the political leaders without the support of the followers. Change can not come from the top - it can only come from our own personal changes. How far are the political candidates from the populace. And the truth is when the politician gets elected. I found this out after helping a former mayor become a governor. We helped him by: 1. campaigning for him among the subdivision buyers of the subdivision we built. 2. We claimed that the road built by us (there was a promise that we will be reimbursed) was done by the good mayor (We were never reimbursed) Well the good mayor got elected. But his post never got past his fat secretary (she has died)
Did the good governor help me as a person or as a businessman.? No. He let me struggle with his successor who objected to his previous approval.
What about you as person? Can he get you a job.\? May be if our are related to his leaders. But for only for three months. If you are at the lgu level, then maybe you can get occasional ayuda from the Barangay Chairman or the Town Mayor. But dole outs and alms can not make you successful.
You alone can make a success of yourself. Never believe the false siren song of politicians. Change the govt and change your life. FM changed the govt to parliamentary. Did we change the course of the nation.
We amended the constitution of 1935 to that of 1987. Did the destiny of the nation change? We never will know. But if we were to listen to the critics, it never improved.
But mind you our economy did improve not because of the govt but because there are many hard working Filipinos: 1. who became OFW and remitted billions of dollars, almost 1/3 of the Phil GDP
2. who joined with foreigners for the BPO 3. who became entrepreneurs and investors.
We can succeed irrespective of the President, and policies
Countries succeed inspite of corruption as in Italy (one of most corrupt) Indonesia and Japan. This post condemns corruption, but to make it as an excuse not to move forward in unacceptable.
Rather it is us to us to change our mindset of fiefdom or feudal relationship with politicians. We campaign but we expect the politician to pay sometimes with their own lives. We extract every bit of ayuda an PHP from the elected politicians furthering the graft that happnes in the govt. He has to extract and skim from all contracts so that he can feed the masses milling to his house to get all sorts of ayuda. The masses, themasses force the uppen echelon to steal to feed the hungry millions - to continue committing graft. We abhor graft, but we like the ayuda. We do not relect people who are stingy with ayuda.
Many cling to BBM because of promise of great wealth to the supporters : the FM gold bars and the Tallano wealth (not true?)
We have always thought of our companies as in the lower tier below such giants as Manila Memorial Park ark,,(5 locations; Forest Lake (23 but only 17 active) and Golden Haven (35 locations they say)
But we have only 7. We are awaiting deal. to make it 8.
But we are multi product memorial company offering various modes of interment: plots and ash vaults;
and various services: interment, funeral, and cremation.
We have 2 cremation facilities now, we have at the drawing board +3, we can have 3 more by next years. That can make our crematorium number even with the number of parks. 3 of the parks can have 10 digits inventory. We can have an average of 10,000 ash crypts in the 6 locations. We can be propelled into upper echelons of the industry when we complete this.
We also found out that the memorial park owned by the richest citizen of the Philippines does not make that much lacking perhaps critical skill and expertise in the business. The company which has incuded Bria in their company name makes more in housing and land development
In due time we can reach the level of their liquid assets, and total assetts (are they under declared
The recent pandemic has wrecked havoc on the memorial business. The traditional giants in memorial are probably hurting like the giant memorial plan company. Their sales probably shrunk, no one is using their plan, ,because people now turn to memorial plots, actual cremation and interment service. No use having the funeral service since the attendance is limited if not prohibited.
As the big company do not have cremation infrastructures, , they turn to local funeral homes who in turn turn to crematorium And as usual engage in layering of cost and squeezing the owners of the facilties. That would be unsustainable because customers will soon find out that there is over pricing. Direct cremation can be had for 1/3 the cost of the plans
We also realized that they may be holding billions of pesos in trust funds. It is not actually theirs but a liability to plan holders. We may be having more margins than them and resources owned.
Truly small holes sink a ship. Holes that you do not see but are plenty, sink a ship. Not the big ones. Because the big ones are visible, surely many will see them
and thus prevent the ship from leaving port, or is given top priority among the work. But the small ones are neglected:
Related thoughts:
1. God is in the details;
2. Those who can not be trusted in small things can not be trusted in big things;
3. PDCA - Check check check
4. Gemba kaizen - the actual battle field in business is the sales office or the manufacturing plant. This should be visited by the boss
and observed carefully. It is not enough to depend on written reports
5. Small losses add up, ,small cost reduction add up over the years and in the entire enterprise. Nothing is ever to small not to deserve your attention:
6. Be careful of your thoughts, they become your words, your words become your action
7. "For want of a nail, (horse)shoe was lost, for want of a shoe, a horse was lost, for want of a horse the soldier was lost, for want of a soldier an army
was lost, for want of an army a kingdom was lost
8. In writing the presence or absence of a comma can change the thought of a sentence
9. Some children are born defective or have serious congenital diseases because of defective gnome sequencing of a chromoome
Anecdotes
1. The Fukushima reactor had a meltdown, because a cooling pump failed to function because the battery wras grounded by the flooding; the same thing happened
in nuclear accident in Chernobyl Russia. A worker failed to turn on the valve for cooling after a test was conducted. Imagine a high tech equipment failing because
of a negligent worker, and a valve that was left open
2. The roro that sank of Batangas bay and somewhere in Belgium, sank because the ramp was not closed;
3. The JAL plane which cost Boeing nearly half a billion was caused by worker failing to install 7 rivets, just 7 rivets. He forgot about this because he had
lunch
4. In my experience, there was a formwork failure and an entire batch of concrete needed to pour on a slab was wasted; it was good nobody was hurt
because of same negligence - the formworks carpenter failed to secure the formwork by pounding a coupe of 5 inches nail.
5. In the movie Crimson Tide, a nuclear world war could have started had the order to torpedo a Russian sub was carried out, despite an incomplete communication
Denzel Washington averted this, because he had the sense to disobey Gene Hackman the captain, unless the complete message was received
ACTION POTENTIAL:
1. Employ the 5H and 1W in your repertoire when making a plan of action;
2. Ask the question why five times;
3. Read the literature on the subject before proceeding;
4. Be meticulous before any action; avoid shooting from the hips
Our concept of wealth has been radically changed by the Pandemic. We think of wealth and its ranking on a more or less stable manner. But that has been changed lately
1 In the cryptocurrency industry, lately billions in wealth (value at stockmarket) were wiped out because of Tweets by Elon Musk, crackdown by China on cryptocurrency. What is billions being wiped out? A lot. We could hardly make our ends meet;
2. Ellon Musk could be the wealthiest man yesterday, but today it may be Jeff Besos or Arnault or VMH. Because the wealth is defined by the prices of the stocks at stock market. Hence your wealth can go up or down on a day to day basis.
3. A Chinese mogul whose wealth was based on virtual education is now nearly wiped out as the pandemic wrought havoc on his business model. So with many face to face schools
Nothing is ever secure and permanent due to the pandemic.
