Thrown into a maelstrom
FOR those who believe in fate, there is a saying that fate has its own designs. Those who also have faith, especially a belief in a Father who is God, there is the added nuance that nothing really happens without the design coming from God’s providence.
This is how Ruel Rambaoa presents his “accidental” involvement in adapting the Performance Governance System (PGS) to the Philippine Army: “Upon my return from an Australian postgraduate scholarship in 2010, I immediately reported to the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Civil-Military Operations (G7) of the Philippine Army. At the time, this was headed by Colonel Daniel Lucero (+), who assigned me to take over the operations branch.” But as fate would have it, part of Ruel’s duties in the operations branch of the office that he reported to included having to work with the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Plans. He was thus tasked to work with Lieutenant Colonel (then Major) Rommel Cordova. That assignment turned out to be extremely providential. Says Ruel: “Lieutenant Col. Cordova was at the time spearheading an initiative to craft an Army Transformation Roadmap (ATR). This was kick-started in April 2010 in a three-day working session with the Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA) in Tagaytay. Here, I was given a rare chance to participate in a trailblazing event, along with dozens of handpicked personnel representing a cross section of the organization.”
Why trail-blazing? The Philippine Army at that time decided to adapt the Performance Governance System to its long-term build-up strategy. The Army saw that the PGS was delivering results in the Philippine Navy, and it wanted to test whether the PGS can be applied to its need for formulating a strategy for building itself up in pursuit of a commonly shared “vision” for the Army. The April, 2010, working session turned out to be an eye-opener for the Army personnel, who came from various levels of the Army organization. This led into a set of whirlwind activities to adapt the PGS framework for the Army’s use.
About the whirlwind set of activities, Ruel has this to report from his personal experience: “Life at the Army Headquarters was never the same after our time with ISA in Tagaytay. The ATR technical working group had to hit the ground running, and I still remember the birthing pains. Action officers like me were suddenly thrown into a maelstrom: We were caught in a never-ending string of followthrough conferences, workshops, and ‘write-shops’. We had to go through the whole gamut that the PGS demanded: Strategic objectives had to be defined; measure profiles formulated; strategic initiatives identified and prioritized, etc. Although the substance of the PGS exercise was not new, still the terminology was different from what we had been used to; and the feel of the PGS was different from the different techniques we had previously adopted.”
Despite such a whirlwind of activities, Ruel observes: “Our office (OG7) immediately recognized the value of crafting and operationalizing our strategy map and scorecard. We spent countless hours debating about the office’s real ‘reason for being’, clarifying its specific niche along the enterprise value chain, and finding a place for it within the huge effort to transform the Philippine Army.” Indeed, this is what OG7 and the rest of Team Army finally settled upon: that the PGS should be used as an approach and discipline that eventually should deliver no less than the transformation of the Philippine Army.
Certainly, the dream was ambitious; and this time the Army was determined to make its ambition fall short of its future reality, and not the other way around. And this time, it could count on a small bunch of middle-ranking officers and a few senior officers who were committed to make that dream come true. Ruel happened to be one of those officers.