Governance sharing
BY insisting on core values as the rock-bottom reference for all decisions and actions taken by everyone every day, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has laid a strong foundation for sustaining its governance and transformation program. Furthermore, under its Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) program, it has expanded the coverage of its interest in personal development: No longer is this confined to the professional facets (knowledge and skills) of an individual’s personal life; it extends to proper provision such that personal growth in “talents, social and spiritual aspects” is facilitated as well. In much the same way as enterprise governance has to be balanced and comprehensive, personal governance also needs to be balanced and comprehensive. It is in this light that the LEAD program is to be regarded as critical to governance sustainability: After all, many studies point to a close connection between personal governance and “whole-ofenterprise” governance.
DTI’s governance sharing is properly pitched, therefore, to individuals working within DTI so they mutually reinforce each other in the observance of good governance values, principles, and practices.
In addition, DTI puts a premium on team work and collaboration. It keeps on repeating: “We do things better if we do them together.” DTI already promotes collaborative and cooperative practices. It may therefore extend its governance sharing with the traditional havens where team work and collaboration are first learned and lived: with the family. Several studies have also shown that it is in properly and wellgoverned families where the spirit of solidarity is deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of each of the family members, who then carry such spirit – and the practices associated with it – into their respective work places and the social environments where they carry out inter-action with other persons. Since DTI seeks to promote the observance of solidarity in all its bureaus and offices, it may extend its governance sharing also with the families of DTI officers and employees, and then with other families as well.
Finally, the governance mantra of DTI is service beyond expectations; thus, the very first core value it professes as part of its governance charter is “service orientation.” DTI exists in order to serve, i.e., to enable business, and to empower consumers. It works with a deep sense of social responsibility as it pursues its “prosperity plan.” It also observes the triple approach to governance: The whole of the enterprise; the whole of government; and the whole of the nation. It should follow as a natural consequence that DTI’s governance sharing should extend to other agencies of government and to other sectors of Philippine society. Such governance sharing can be done through selected networks; it may also be done through schools at the tertiary level, particularly those which can serve as anchors for community and local area development. Schools are natural havens for networking on a continuing basis with civil society organizations, media, business, and even faith-groups that can be made to work together for the prosperity of the different regions and local areas of the country. It would stand to reason for DTI to extend its governance sharing at least with some of the leading colleges and universities (at the tertiary level) in the different regions of the country: They can be the permanent local allies DTI can work with for regional and local area development.
DTI is already fully conscious of the basic proposition: The more you share, the more you get back in return. The more open and pro-active DTI is in sharing its governance and transformation program – and the lessons it has learned from pursuing it – the more secure it becomes in making such a program sustainable into the long and distant future.