Today’s world is complex and complicated — the complex being challenging to understand, and the complicated being of many moving parts. It is also changing rapidly from all sectors and corners. Both the complexity and complicatedness of the world need intelligence for it to be broken down into simpler forms to be better understood — the former needing knowledge and the latter requiring experience.
Notes by EMA
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Notes by EMA: Teamwork
Teamwork is a word that is often used and, perhaps, not understood at depth. At its most superficial levels, it is about getting along. That understanding is of the concept is what those who end up last in a competition manifest in their everyday behavior – pat people on the back and tell them how great they all are, no matter what they have done.
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Notes by EMA: A Few Simple Qualifications in Leadership
The Aboitiz Eyes team tells me that our readers have a great interest in leadership. That is good news because, at the end of the day, we have seen that people work for people, and not for companies. We would like them to be loyal to institutions and, of course, that is an educational and cultural goal, but they work for individuals — individuals they look up to, respect, learn from, are engaged by, motivated by, and have fun. “Fun” here being so much more binding of the above than too many realize.
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Notes by EMA: Smart people get it + get it done
‘Snowball’ is a biography of Warren Buffet by Alice Schroeder. It is 800 pages and well worth reading. Let me zero into one of the valuable lessons I picked up from the Berkshire Hathaway AGM and the study. –EMA
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Notes by EMA: How To Make Committees Work Better
Aboitiz Eyes recently published committee structure of our Group. It struck me that, as much as we do need committees to manage a business like ours, our priority is still the customer and how to make him happy. Can we wow customers?
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AP ManCon 2019 Closing Remarks by Endika Aboitiz
“Over the years, I have come to my premise that our most significant risk-cum-threat-cum-challenge is the law of unintended consequences and that our two most substantial assets are an engaged team that is in full attention 24 x 60 x 60 by seven.”
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Notes by EMA: ‘LikeWar’ – A Summary of the Conclusion
LikeWar is a book written by P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking. It is about the “weaponization of social media”. I have taken pieces from the book for your convenience.
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Notes by EMA: Our Cognitive Biases (INFOGRAPHIC)
“Firstly, may I wish all of you a Happy New Year. 2019 just might be one of those marker years — like 1929 for Finance, 1939 for War, 1982 for wine and 1920 when Aboitiz & Company was formed.”
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Notes by EMA: FAANG’s Privacy and Control
Let us talk about privacy. The media tells us that we care about our privacy, but we really do not. People love to gossip. People regularly and unabashedly tell other people the most personal details of their lives. People put on Facebook all about their experiences.
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Notes by EMA: The Western Levant
“Arafat died with 750 million US dollars in his personal estate. Had it not been for the creation of the State of Israel, he would have been known to his mother at most. The Jews had been forgotten before World War II. Where is the Coptic Church, anybody? Who would give a care about the Mossad?”
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Notes by EMA: The New TINA Towards 2040
“What will TINA (there is no alternative) look going forward? What will there be no alternatives to? What will we have to adjust to or fail, or just win, or be the winner? Our goal has to be the winner.” – EMA
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Notes by EMA: Doing business in the Philippines
Capital is interested in only one institution – that of Rule of Law. Hong Kong was not democratic nor was it liberal but it had rule of law. Singapore seemed democratic but was not; nor was it liberal but it had rule of law and that protected capital.
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Issues that may most likely worry China’s President
“Companies think in terms of years mostly, some in decades, and others in generations. Empires must think in Centennial proportions – we realize that their leaders do not.” – EMA
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Notes by EMA: That Better Owner
Appreciating that the general opinion of the market is the goal of an enterprise is to provide long-term value. That is the main purpose that everyone working for an enterprise realizes in different degrees.
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Notes by EMA: Conventional Wisdom & China
Yukon Huang – watch him on YouTube to get a full picture. This is a summary of what he thinks. I have learned from him. I have never liked conventional wisdom and have sought those that help me challenge the same; not for the sake of challenge but because in a world that is rapidly changing and adapting, conventional wisdom cannot generally be the best path forward.
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Notes by EMA: The WhatsApp – Spotify Generation — Living Instantly and Unenriched
“Does one prefer ten low-quality photos on WhatsApp or one spectacular one that feels like you are there? I am curious, how does a selfie beat the mirror?” –EMA
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Notes by EMA: Stephen Hawking
“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.” – Stephen Hawking
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Notes by EMA: More on Leadership…
I have received requests to share with you my thoughts and experience on leadership with more articles for Aboitiz Eyes. I am happy to do so yet must clarify again that these are my thoughts and those that I have learned from others. None of us get all of this right and that is what makes life so wonderful – the joy of improvement and of achieving better ways.
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Notes by EMA: Winning vs. Losing and Its Ingredients
It has never been about right and wrong. Man invented this concept. The animal in us functioned with rules that are ingredients for winning or losing based on our basic instinct of survival.
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Notes by EMA: Richard Branson’s Finding My Virginity
“Richard Branson is the Virgin Brand and the Virgin Brand is Richard Branson. Of all the successful people in life, he has to stand out among the very top of our time.” – EMA
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Notes by EMA: Seven Principles of Richard Branson
“Interrogating the principles one stands by has to be up there in things to learn. Every 20 years I guess it is necessary to interrogate your choices and the principles that drive them.” – EMA
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Notes by EMA: 8 paradoxical habits of wildly successful people
“The reason that there are so many different opinions on what traits are necessary for success—and the reason that so many of them contradict each other—is that successful people are complex.” – Travis Bradberry
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Notes by EMA: 2018 New Year’s Message
“We at ROP have always been insulated and kind of isolated. The world does not really affect us. When we are short of money, we send people to work abroad and they send money back in. I suspect that is changing at a pace that we may not notice.” – EMA
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Notes by EMA: The Psychology of Influence & Persuasion
“To persuade people to act, stimulate their stored up impressions, fears, hopes, desires and dreams. Tap into the powers of suggestion instead of making ‘in your face’ requests.” – EMA
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Notes by EMA: The Real Deal on Geopolitical Risk
“I think that the geopolitical risks of war are over and they are over for one reason – there is no longer any profit in war. There is no longer anything to gain. On the contrary, there is a lot to lose due to the economic interconnection of the world.” – EMA
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Notes by EMA: Latinization of an Economy
“Thought, ideas and action – GETTING THINGS DONE! The rest is noise.” – Endika Aboitiz
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EMA Message: A Tribute to Washington Sycip
“Most men choose principal over principle. I think Wash was one of the few that chose principle over principal.” – Endika Aboitiz
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Summary of the Book: Outsiders
“Don’t be a blind contrarian, be an intelligent iconoclast – informed by careful analysis and often expressed in unusual financial metrics that were distinctly different from industry or Wall Street.”
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Jack Ma – Alibaba
Alibaba is a company that is 18 years old, and it dreams of 2 billion customers all over the world and a trillion dollars of revenue by its 20th anniversary. Of that number of customers, 1.2 billion will be from outside China.
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Why Manila Needs The Green Jeepney
“Let’s not wait for the air to be too hard to breathe for us to start something. We need to be proactive rather than reactive. In a world where the only thing constant is change… then we need to know when to embrace what change is good.”
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Speech by Endika Aboitiz at the QEV E-Jeepney Launch
“Earlier this year, we flew a jeepney to QEV Tech Barcelona’s R&D center to assess how to improve their electrification and we are working on that. We could not wait so we brought in to Manila a half a dozen QEV engineers to work with a local jeepney manufacturing expert, the original makers of the jeepney themselves, the Saraos, to finally convert our quaint and unique jeepneys to electric.”
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10 Years After the Most Serious Depression Since 1929
A decade ago we thought the whole economic world, and with it our socio-economic world, would fall upon us. It seems that man has again prevailed. I repeat – It seems. Self-healing seems to have functioned and now proceeding to strengthen.
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Notes by EMA: Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference 2017 – Part 2
Artificial intelligence is to be the most disruptive and important technology of our time. It will enhance our IQ and will replace the repetitive work that humans do. It cannot, however, replace the innovative and creative occupations – it cannot replace things that are done for the first time.
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Notes by EMA: Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference 2017 – Part 1
What is being done to those that are left behind in this world of Globalization is key! There are certain transaction costs of Globalization. It is not that China is taking away jobs, the U.S. losing them. Regulation is a serious problem everywhere – small, medium, and large.