Key facets of personal governance scorecard
THERE is always a bit of divide between concepts (and the framework into which they need to be fitted) and the actions that need to be taken as a result of resolutions made, when we do our health check. The former, i.e., the conceptual framework, has to be comprehensive and all-inclusive: the latter, arising from our personal resolve to take action, has to be focused, specific, and concrete.
Thus, on a day-to-day basis, we focus on action, carrying out our resolutions, and scoring more wins than losses. This is the practical side of a personal governance scorecard: each day, just a step or two forward, for as long as those steps meet the
standards of pragmatism -- they have to be realistic, they have to be focused, and they have to be concrete. Nonetheless, they should always be tied in, and connected with, our personal core values.
But the conceptual framework for a personal governance program has to be much more comprehensive; indeed, it has to cover all key facets of our personal life, which in the end we hope and pray would be transformed for the better, so we can carry out all of our duties associated with “the office of citizen” that we all hold. It is impossible to consider all these facets in our day-to-day process of scoring more wins and losses; normally, we can focus on only one facet during any given day. However, over a few months, and most certainly in the course of a full year, we should try and cover all key facets of life. As indicated by the transformative changes that we wish to see in the Filipino as ordinary citizen, a few of those facets relate to our duties to ourselves, and our duties to others.
The duties we have to ourselves relate to the imperative of our taking much better care of ourselves as individuals, i.e., our physical fitness, the acquisition of skills and the knowledge associated with them, and the attitudes that get shaped by the values we give due importance to. In other words, we never look at ourselves only as a number. The quantity of people helps an economy and enlarges the polity. But to the extent possible people – i.e., we as individuals – should be healthy and physically fit; they should be knowledgeable and skilled: and they should have the proper attitudes towards work and life as well as towards their inter-action with others at home, at work, and in society. In all of these, if we are going to become the ultimate governance assets of the enterprises we work for and of the community of which we form part, we should be making progress, and over time scoring more wins than losses through the use of our personal scorecard.
Beyond the duties we have to ourselves, we also have, fundamental duties towards others, starting with those in the family, then extending to friends at work and in our preferred social networks, and finally to the local community where we live and of the country of which we are citizens. These duties on occasion may conflict against each other: and we would have to resolve those conflicts by making a reference to the core values we profess and to the general guidelines that solidarity and patriotism impose. Sometimes, it may not be so easy to harmonize these different duties that can make competing claims on our time, attention, and other personal resources. This is where personal mentoring comes into play: we seek advice, we go for guidance, but in the end we come up with our own personal decisions that should enable us to move forward towards those transformative changes indicated above.
All of the above, related to the duties we have to ourselves and to others, make the journeying towards the transformative changes that Dream PH asks from each one of us, very challenging and interesting. They challenge all of our personal capacities and resources: they throw at us many problems and conflicts, which should be in our personal interest to resolve properly. Rising to that challenge, and resolving those problems and conflicts properly make the road towards personal transformation awesome and riveting. It also happens that so much of the progress we make towards realizing Dream PH would depend on how well the challenge is met and the problems are resolved, on an individual, personal basis.