How to Build a Legacy

SUMMARY

The uncertainties caused by the pandemic and the economic recession have made us value even more whatever life and work and relationships we are blessed with. Regardless of the hits and misses or climbs and plateaus, we can still connect the dots and capture at any given moment the legacy we wish to leave behind.

We are joined in this live stream by my guest Mr. Mario Gatus, chairman of the board of Lee Hecht Harrison Philippines. With a career spanning almost 60 years, he will share his experiences and their meanings that helped him build his legacy. We learned these lessons from him:

1. There’s no dull moment in your life if you are having fun, enjoying yourself in the work that you like.
2. When people are separated from work and become less productive, society needs advocates for strong career transitioning.
3. A shift from employment to entrepreneurship needs the right mindset, discipline and persistence.
4. Follow the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.)
5. Keep on learning as the world is changing so fast.

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

 FULL TRANSCRIPT

Avic: Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for dropping by and watching especially in this live or later on in the replay. Our topic for today is how to build a legacy and after spending many years working perhaps you have stopped a while to really think what have you contributed with your identity, with your work, with your relationships. And if you have been  thinking about this, you are not alone because the current economic recession in the world and the Covid pandemic have made us realize that we are really blessed. And regardless of the hits and the misses, the climbs and the  plateaus of our career, we can still connect the dots and capture at a certain given time what is it that we could leave behind for the next generation. Sometimes the legacy is not intended. Sometimes you go on working and afterwards you realize that actually I have left this and this, like my example, my conduct, my everything. On the other hand the legacy can be  intentional that you really start wanting, that this is what I would leave behind.  

We are joined in this live stream by Mr Mario Gatus, the chairman of the board of Lee Hecht Harrison. With a career spanning 60 years he will share his experiences and their meanings that helped him right now to see what is his legacy.

Mar is like me, although he said some years apart, graduated from UE accountancy and then later on he shifted to people management. My first question mark is how did you find the shift from accounting to people management.

Mar: It was quite easy because when I was in management services. I did a lot of work related to  organizational studies, assessing organizations how well they can be improved. I did operations audits to assess how effective organizations are. I got involved in the review and improvement of job evaluation systems, performance evaluation systems and in SGV we had at that time a very effective performance evaluation and appraisal system. ao moving from management services to HR was easy for me.  It was actually easier for me to do HR work than to do management services work.

Avic: Is it easier since you could end the work at five o'clock while the accountants still  have the whole evening to work?

Mar: That's true and keeping track of accounting standards at the time was getting to be very difficult because the world was changing. There were so many frauds happening. It was more difficult to do accounting and management consulting work whereas in human resources there were no such sources of stress.

Avic: Did the shift that you did prepare you for your work in DBM or Drake Beam and Morin and later on LHH?

Mar: Oh yes, actually what I did before prepared me well for what I'm doing now in Lee Hecht Harrison. You know in Lee Hecht Harrison, we help employees adapt to change when they're about to retire and when they're about to be separated. When I learned about these services I jumped  into it because it is an area where I could apply what I've learned in the past  and what I can help employees transition as well. You see in the Philippines those who are being separated, retired or retrenched are not prepared well for life after separation. All that happens is that management pays them off. In fact what management does is guys we've served well but the business needs to retrench excess employees, therefore we are terminating you and we are giving you one month for every year  of service. Some strictly pays one half month for every year of service. In LHH we work together with employers so that they prepare their employees for change long before it happens. You see when an employee is separated today so that she will no  longer report for work tomorrow that is quite a terrible experience. Separation or retirement you need to be prepared for in advance. Because employees who are being separated or retrenched they hardly prepare for their lives after separation and transition. So much needs to be done. You know a person who is used to working and getting his pay every 30 days or every 15 days will not be prepared for life after separation. He needs to prepare for that time when he will no longer be receiving his salary every 15 days  or every 30 days. And more than that a person who has been separated wouldn't know how to handle  the amount of money that he'll be receiving from the separation. Many separated employees spend most of their money a few days or a few months after separation only to realize later that they have nothing to feed their children.

Avic: Are the LHH services something you would have found useful after leaving SGV?

Mar: No I was having fun. After I left SGV I got elected as president of my Rotary Club  that I was busy though out the whole year. Serving as president required a lot of my time and I enjoyed   doing Rotary work.

Avic: That was a good transition, you went into like community and networking service.

Mar: Yes and shortly after I served my term at Rotary I got the call from Wash Sycip he said Mar, Senator Osmena needs help. I asked what kind of help. Wash said he would like to put up a foundation that helps small and medium enterprises with the help of volunteer executives. Wow sure Wash  I said  I like that. So I called up Senator Osmena. I had breakfast with him together with Secretary Cef Follosco who was the secretary of DOST at the time. They said  can you help us.  I said yes and then Serge Osmena said can you spend  half a week with us.  I said yes half day every day because I like the work. At the  time the entrepreneurial volunteers foundation had two roles, one is helping SMEs in the Philippines,  the other one is sourcing retired executives from the US under the US executive service corps program who were made available to Philippine enterprises. SO when I took the job,  I found it exciting. And then three years after,  the invitation from Gigi zulueta and Binky Kilayko came in. I studied it and accepted it. And I  said to Serge Osmena I will have to back off, anyway we have the organization to run the EVFI. So he said okay, be prepared to be the next president.  So he did not allow it. Then a few years  later Secretary Follosco said I'm stepping down as the chairman, you'll be the chairman. There's  been no dull moment in my life after I left SGV. You know I didn't really work for these. They just happened.

Avic: It was a great transition from early retirement, having work to  do and still it's paid work, you still could support your family then. Are you still involved with that Entrepinoy?

Mar: Yes I just I just retired as a chairman last June 30. I'm now an ordinary trustee. But let me share with you what we do there. Two years ago when overseas workers  were returning home the department of labor OFW section talked to DOST to help returning OFWs pursuing entrepreneurship with the application of science and technology. And dost approached us and we came up with programs to support the overseas workers. This is ongoing. We've been running this for two years now via zoom and we are advising overseas workers from all over the Philippines on their entrepreneurship goals.

Avic:  You have mentioned LHH is really helping in career transitioning. What else does LHH do?

Mar: The main bulk of the work of LHH is to provide career transitioning and outplacement. This means helping them assess their capabilities, assess their readiness for life after employment.  We have group programs and we have individual programs. For group programs we run workshops for groups of 20 people over several days. It can be two days, three days, five days plus counseling support for individual programs. We make resources available in the office    but unfortunately during the pandemic this stopped. Most of our work during the pandemic is all done online and they are doing very well. In addition to this we provide the workshops for financial planning, personal financial planning so before separation the employees are aware that what they will receive will not last forever. So we compute, we help them determine their needs and their options. We help them determine whether to invest or to go into business.  We also provide assistance in entrepreneurship so that for those with the entrepreneurial skills and the right attitudes we help them prepare for  entrepreneurship. We invite research persons to help them depending on where their interests lie. In addition to this we also provide executive coaching, leadership development, talent development. But the main bulk of what we're doing now is outplacement career and career transitioning because so many companies have been experiencing financial difficulties and they've had to seek assistance from us. But let me point out that the companies that we're helping are just a small portion of the total population. There are many companies here both domestic and subsidiaries of foreign companies where the CEOs and the chief HR may not be open to outplacement and transitioning. Why? Well, one is because they have not done this before or two, management is trying to save on the fees. this is a major mistake because this is a problem of society when people are separated they become less productive then they become burdens to society. We are pursuing as a mission.  We take a cut in in what we charge and what's important for us is to have more advocates of active  career transitioning for employees who are being separated, retired, or retrenched.

Avic:  Have you used success stories of people who really transitioned well for the companies to get this benefit for their employees?

Mar: Yes we have plenty of success stories and we share this with our prospective clients. We share this with whoever is interested. For your information, many executives coming from the multinational companies are being recruited by the up and coming Filipino global companies. For example Jollibee has recruited quite a number of executives from multinational companies  and these executives are happy to be helping Philippine companies operate like multinationals. In addition to this, also because of digitalization, employees need a lot of help. Some people are scared  to learn the new technologies. They need to be inspired, guided and helped so that they will learn new skills and they can pursue other employment opportunities.

Avic: So when you say career transition it's really from  one employment to another like from a retirement to another employment. You’re not helping them to get into entrepreneurship.

Mar: No, we ask them. We assess what they need and that's where we counsel them. Sometimes an employee may want to do something but he doesn't have the mindset and the discipline to pursue that, then we would discourage that person. If one doesn't have the discipline and the persistence to do entrepreneurship and the financial discipline, we tell them If they decide to still proceed we make them aware of the risks, and what they need to do to succeed.

Avic: That’s’ a lot of help for people. As you said society is helped as there  will be many of these people who might be later on unemployed, unhappy, confused with their career. So when you say you don't have a legacy, that alone I would suppose is a help to society and to many families because as someone who's separated from work it can create some problems. There could be stories that the family wouldn't know what to do with someone who just retired or separated and not doing anything after earning so much and being very successful as an executive. There's the immediate shift  to just not doing anything.

Mar: That's true. Well when you ask me about my legacy I didn't really think about it. I just do what I do.

Avic: Yes, I heard that sometimes people probably out of humility or they're so busy they don't know and every day they're just doing the work that they're supposed to do and doing it well and that is unintended. But in the end you come up with a body of legacy this is something you're doing for society. Hopefully there'll be more of these companies who are really helping of course for a fee because in the end it's really arm's length transaction. I'm helping you to transition, I'm helping you to get into another career. And then going back to your own career there was like a transitioning in motion already or was that like a gap. Can you call that a career gap or hiatus like the BTS they will stop first and let's see where life will take me? How would you call those five years?

Mar: There was no gap, there was no interruption. My life was flowing naturally I was able to do   what I enjoyed doing so that's a good lesson. Maybe it was a blessing. One reason why I opted for early retirement was in 1985 I attended a retreat. I was 43 years old and after attending that retreat I asked myself what should I really be aiming for.  I was comfortable with my compensation, I could afford what my family needed, I had some savings. So I asked myself   shall I  continue working with SGV and enjoy my earnings? I kept on asking that question so that I started thinking already of retiring at age 50 and what I needed to do so that when I retired at age 50 I was ready. That retreat opened my eyes and made me ask the question of what I'm here for. It was a turning point in my life.

Avic: So it's like seven years in the making of thinking what will I do with my life? Seven years and that is already a preparation- spiritually, emotionally and financially as after 50 there is atax break in retirement I also retired, we have similar career paths but the thing is you went back to employment.  You went back after five years to being also an employee.

Mar: These were not for-profit companies until LHH.

Avic: Did you miss the time that you were like more into advocacy community service. Did you miss the five years somehow in that position?

Mar: No I continued to be active in my Rotary Club and in my other foundation work that I was doing. I just cut down on the time that I was  spending and this also gave me an opportunity to be an investor. When Gigi talked to me he said would you like to invest and I said yes. So would you like to acquire one-third, I said yes. So I had a stake in the company at that point  and if it lost then I was going to suffer.

Avic:  Can you mention influencers in your life for building that legacy?

Mar: I would like to mention my mother because my mother was a widow when I was two and a half years old. I have a sister who is 3 years younger than me. My mother raised the  two of us as a widow. I didn't have a father so I learned from her frugality, her discipline. I learned from her to be simple. I also learned to be from her to be prayerful. I carried these habits from her when I started working.

The big influencer was Allan Dy. He used to be the head of management services. Allan Dy was in 1956 the highest record holder of the CPA board exams. He got the highest grade for all the top notchers for the board exam. Sometime in the 80s somebody from La Salle a lady beat him. Allan Dy was ahead of me by one year in the management services. From audit where I was not very happy he recruited me to management services. Allan was a disciplinarian, very sharp guy, a details person as well as a big picture person. At the time he must have been the best CPA in the whole Philippines. So I worked with him, learned from him  and I learned his habits. He worked long hours. He was very meticulous. He had a high level of integrity. Allan took care of me. He nominated me to AIM to be an SGV scholar for two years and then later on he asked ,e to be assigned to thailand for a one year assignment. He was also instrumental in my promotion to partner. He was instrumental in  moving me from MS to HR so I learned from a lot from him and in effect, he guided me, my growth and development in SGV.

The third person who was a big, big influence to me is Jess Estanislao. I met Jess  in the 1990s after he retired from the government as secretary of finance. I got exposed first hand to his   various education programs when he was with DBP.  I have read a lot and learned a lot from him about his vision for Philippine society and I also learned a lot from him about spirituality- how to  sanctify work in what everyone is doing. So I've learned a lot from Jess and he’s been a guide to me for over 24 for maybe 25 years.

Avic: Wow in  that we also have a similarity because it was Dr Estanislao who brought up the idea of me going to Spain to do the doctorate. Yes we have many things in common but there I think really having the career champions would really help one's career- champions  who don’t simply just okay you work hard you get paid but the ones who are really helping us to be better as persons, as contributors. We can end probably with the tips that you have to younger people on how to build a legacy in terms of life and work.

Mar: First, be the best person that you are. Be guided by the cardinal virtues. You cannot go wrong if you follow the cardinal virtues. Keep on learning. The world is changing fast. We can only survive if we learn as fast but we also need to  reflect periodically to assess how well we are doing and how we can move on. Third  let's take care of society. Society is deteriorating,   Communities are deteriorating. The relationships of countries, states and individuals are deteriorating so we need to do something about this.   And my  favorite statement in a favorite movie is let us fill the world with love our whole life through.