From a small abaca plantation in the 1950s, his grandfather, Don Antonio Floirendo Sr, built the Anflo Management and Investment Corporation (ANFLOCOR) into a multi-faceted Philippines business conglomerate with interests spanning logistics, trucking and port operations through to agriculture, real estate and hospitality.

These diverse interests – and arguably the organisation’s success – were built on a commitment to the region and people of Mindanao. This focus remains true until today.

By 2013, Lagdameo had spent 14 years working in investment banking, earning an MBA from Columbia University, and preparing to take his place as a leader in the family business.

Bringing fresh business perspectives, Lagdemeo knew all there was to know about the various Anflo operations but most importantly, he brought a keen self- awareness of just what he did not know.

Stepping into his new role as president of Damosa Land, a property development subsidiary of ANFLOCOR, was an exciting opportunity for Lagdameo to develop this relatively new company in his family’s portfolio of companies while learning the inner workings of the real estate industry. Beyond that, it offered the chance to deliver new development opportunities to Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines, and its residents.

Lagdameo quickly made an impact, earning industry recognition and pushing real estate development into new territory. The 88 hectare mixed-use Agriya project is considered the first agritourism city in Asia and Damosa IT Park is Southern Mindanao’s first PEZA-registered IT facility. These ambitious projects have helped establish Lagdameo’s expectations for the company’s future with employees.

Like many family businesses that have led transformative changes in their community, Lagdameo acknowledges the amount of effort required to initiate the necessary changes in response to disruption, particularly during the pandemic. He recognised from the outset that getting employees to “buy in” and collaborate with change is critical to the long-term success of the organisation.

“We like to consider ourselves as accelerators for growth,” Lagdameo says when talking about the various property projects under Damosa Land.

The Third Generation As Progress

A common reference to family businesses is the “third-generation rule” – the idea that this generation, born into wealth and unaccustomed to business, would ultimately spend the business into bankruptcy.

Contrary to the image set by highly publicised squabbles between certain family members in various business empires – think the Murdochs and the daughter of Korean Airlines chairman and the infamous “nuts” incident – family-owned businesses are usually far from fragile.

Some of the world’s most well-known and successful corporations are family owned and operated and today around a quarter of the top 750 family businesses in the world were founded in Asia. Many of these enterprises like HCL Technologies and Wipro in India, Charoen Pokphand Group in Thailand, and Wilmar International Limited in Singapore are household names in the region.

Leaders of these organisations typically drive economic growth in their respective countries, demonstrating a level of stability and consistency through the generations that reinforces investor confidence.

In the current environment, José Maria Liberti, a clinical professor of Finance at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, says that multi-generational family businesses are at an advantage because of their longevity and focus on “long-term horizons”. The World Economic Forum even believes that this advantage predisposes them to being leaders in the post-pandemic recovery.

This is no coincidence, given the central role that these businesses play in society with long-standing corporate social responsibility commitments and community relationships such as Anflo’s commitment to the island of Mindanao.

For Lagdameo – a member of the third generation – his entrée into the family business came with a mission and a hefty responsibility, more than any sense of entitlement. This extended to his style of leadership which was to demonstrate by example and get employees aligned to his vision for the future of Damonsa Land; imperative during the multi-faceted uncertainties of the pandemic.

“One thing that we had to do, and this meant me personally leading the charge, was get the buy-in because everyone was just so used to having a certain mindset. They were still getting paid, they still had a salary, so they didn’t really feel the pain so much. So it was really a lot of trying to educate them… to share best examples of what I was looking at from all over the world and saying, ‘look, this new approach can work, we can do this’.”

Shifting Real Estate

Prior to joining his family’s organisation, Lagdameo worked in investment banking with small- and medium-sized enterprises. He brought this experience to the relatively young Damosa Land, leading its rapid expansion into developing sustainable, single and mixed-use buildings as well as industrial facilities in Davao City and other metropolitan areas.

“With real estate, you have this opportunity to shift. If one type of real estate is not working, you can always develop something else that’s relevant. That’s something that interests me, and really keeps us going every day. It’s that ability to shift and to become relevant even during a pandemic,” he said.

“We just had to shift the focus of who we were creating the spaces for, but there will definitely always be a market.”

In the current environment, his team also faced a significant challenge to deliver the same quality of service which is always face-to-face in the world of real estate. The impact of the pandemic meant the team needed to migrate online and learn to explore and showcase real estate through a camera. Similar to other companies, Damosa Land was beginning to implement technology upgrades to make this possible – an important step in a traditional industry – and Covid-19 escalated the change.

“The different methods that we employed will give us an edge later. One, because everyone is using it and secondly because everyone wants things instantly nowadays. By using more technology, we have access to better data and that data is really going to help us to make decisions moving forward,” Lagdameo said.

Learning and Re-learning

Lagdameo supported the introduction of this new technology with constant education, seminars on how to deploy new applications effectively and reinforce new processes. He viewed this education as vital for his employees and also for himself.

“I had to go back to school, and learn all of these new things,” he shared, and for him that education included seeking guidance from other business leaders and executives who had lived through earlier crises and disruptions to their operations.

“I’m still relatively young so I’m not going to pretend I’ve seen everything. There are older people that have been through much worse, so I’m constantly talking to them, getting their wisdom and learning what they did during some of these disruptions,” he said.

“The moment we realise that we don’t have all the answers, then I think it makes us more vulnerable in a good way as we will know how to deal with our problems in the workplace and to deal with our team.”

Flexibility for Longevity

Perhaps because of the resilience of multi-generational family businesses, keeping an eye on the long-term plan for Damosa Land is a key part of how Lagdameo manages disruption.

He believes it is important to lean into change, but not make changes just for the sake of it. Essentially, he relies on having a plan for the long-term and through an adaptive leadership model, being ready for whatever scenario comes along.

“That’s something that we also learned with the planning during this pandemic. In prior years, you set out and agree on a plan at the start of the year, and this is it, this is what we’re going to do. Now, we have to have so many different scenarios, and the goal is to be ready for every eventuality,” he said.

“Flexibility is going to be the key, definitely.”

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In 1946, he took over an old factory – ruined by World War II bombings – and  began working. He experimented with a “rotary weaving machine” before trying his hand at mass-produced frosted glass windows and even woven bamboo roof panels. None of these took off, but the observant and innovative Honda realised there was potential in the surplus of two-stroke motors he discovered. Attaching them to bicycle frames, these powered bicycles would go on to sell fast and feed the need for transportation in postwar Japan. It would also form the foundation of Honda’s venture into motorcycles in the late 40s and 50s.

By the 60s, Honda was manufacturing his own engines, eventually launching his first automotive vehicle – a mini pickup truck – in 1963.

The rest is history.

However, his non-traditional management style and aggressive marketing to challenge US carmakers were unpopular within the Japanese business community at the time, many of whom ostracised Honda while bureaucrats tried to block Honda’s growth.

It is fair to say, this is one of the most cogent accounts of overcoming obstacles and challenging conventional wisdom in business. Honda’s most quoted line, “Success is 99% failure” is as true for entrepreneurs today as it was in his earliest years. Embracing this philosophy set him and his enterprise on the path to global success.

Like Honda, other large businesses have travelled the winding road to success. The late Apple founder Steve Jobs personified overcoming adversity when he was forced out of the company he founded only to return in the face of pending failure and turn it around to make Apple the phenomenal success story that it is today. Never left out of any party, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos can also lay claim to multiple significant failures – from video games to the Amazon Fire smartphone – which lost a whopping USD170 million.

When asked about this, Bezos actually told one interviewer this was just a tiny “blip” and he was working on potentially much bigger failures – such is the confidence and the deep pockets of success that have realised Bezos’ dream to fly into space.

The Pandemic and Early Innovation

While we have all read about the pandemic success stories – think Zoom, home delivery, Grab and others,  McKinsey‘s examination of share price movements throughout 2020 of the 5,000 largest companies in the world showed that they were thriving because they were already on the right path five years prior (owing to a ‘dramatic acceleration’ of various trends that were already in place or emerging before the pandemic).

The study also found that performance gaps were amplified, with tech-forward sectors and organisations that implemented asset-light business models gaining advantage.

It is clear here that businesses which took on calculated risks early for the long-term were better able to ride the pandemic-era wave of change. What this period has done is essentially force businesses that did not think ahead early, to adapt, rethink, and transform quickly.

Trend-spotting and Testing

Entrepreneur and founder of Singapore-based Black Marketing – whose business supports senior-level executives with their professional presence on LinkedIn – Chris ‘The Mohawk’ Reed- shared the realities that have allowed him to embrace the risk of failure as a forward move.

Years before the pandemic, Reed chose South Africa as the base for his operations, structuring it in such a way to serve clients across different time zones. Focusing on output rather than hours clocked, from the outset, Reed allowed his people to work from home.

“All the pandemic [has done] is prove to people that flexible and remote working can be done and we started this nine years ago. They’re servicing people in Europe and America. I can’t expect them to be in the office at nine, or midnight just for a call. That’s completely unreasonable. So I would say I don’t care how many hours you work as long as you deliver.”

While some abused this leeway, he found that most people did not.  “And they’re always surprised [when] they go somewhere else afterwards, and they won’t let them work from home.”

Lean company structures, like those in Reed’s enterprise, are the way forward according to Lars Wittig, Director on the Board and President of the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines.

“We will see more lean organisations moving forward; lean in terms of assets and that includes human beings.”

Bruised but Agile

People generally do not set out to make waves in their place of employment and this is especially so in Asia, where the organisational hierarchy is almost set in stone .

Yet innovation is almost a prerequisite for successful businesses (you don’t need to look any further than Kodak to learn that lesson). Whether it is top-down or bottom-up innovation it requires the entire organisation to get on board and commit to the changes.

While sound processes contribute to business efficiency, leaders with an agile mindset are likely to pivot decisively and effectively in times of crisis.

As an entrepreneur, Reed constantly looks out for new ideas:

“You’re seeing which ones work and which don’t. Then sell them, and move on to the next one.” 

It is plain to see how – in architecting a strong enterprise – Reed embraces the Honda philosophy – in his case starting and testing several businesses and discovering the two strongest brands that generated the most value.

“Knowing what and when to cut things down and when to cut a product or service down, for example, is key to enabling you to focus on the one that works,” said Reed, who credits this thinking for the continuity and sustained success of his business.

Communicating Purpose

Obviously, not all changes result in success. In fact, research has found that roughly 70% of corporate transformations fail, and this is due to – among other reasons –  CEOs who do not set “sufficiently high aspirations” and what results is an unconvinced workforce with disconnected objectives.

Deeper than that, leaders who communicate the ‘why’ behind these transformations understand that a key pre-requisite to effectively pivoting in a challenging environment is having every member of their workforce understand their role in the transformation.

Sometimes it is the major challenge and its inherent change to turn the business around. At other times, there may be smaller incremental changes linked to new technologies, geographies, supply chains and other operational procedures. This entrenched purpose, or the “what’s in it for everyone” – shared and cascaded throughout an organisation – is critical to achieving the desired goal.

Having lived in the Philippines since the early 90s, with more than three decades of experience building successful operations for brand’s across Asia’s diverse markets, Wittig understands the universal nature of drastic disruption.

“Everybody gets their fair share of the downturn. But it’s always interesting to see, those people who continually scratching their heads wondering when the good times will come back again, because good times – earlier times – never come back.

“The good old way, they come back in a new way. And it is [for] those who are agile and adapt during bad times during the downturn.” 

“Learn from your mistakes in the past. You will see how you will benefit.”

The post Creating Value from Obstacles appeared first on Bizruption Asia.

What all of these multinational organisations had in common during his tenures was, what hamstrings executive teams everywhere, disruption. Not just the general challenge of keeping up with new industry trends, but sweeping shifts in how consumers and businesses operate. The thread that connected Wittig’s success with these organisations was empathy, a leadership quality that has witnessed a resurgence in business circles. COVID-19 has only fuelled belief in the power of empathic leadership as companies find the best ways to engage with employees and customers amid unprecedented circumstances.

“Only by living the customer’s experience, can you truly understand the value of your product.”

At IWG, his instinct to connect and empathise with customers has led him to reach out and find innovative, mutually beneficial solutions. Wittig says the crucial thing is to hold on to existing customers and stop the bleeding. “Then I can start selling,” he explains. “Occupancy is steadied and goes back up eventually. You need to show value to customers, then the revenues will improve, and eventually, I’ll get back to my regular pricing.” The result of this approach, when others are floundering, has been some of his best sales months ever.

Confidence came easily for Wittig. As a 12 year old Danish farm boy, he took the train to Copenhagen to tell The East Asiatic Company – then Denmark’s largest firm – that he wanted to work for them when he grew up. This precocious childhood stunt paid off when the firm sent him to Asia. His career took off, as he worked first in Japan and then in the Philippines. It was during this time that Wittig began to hone his unconventional, innovative approach guided by empathy. While launching the Filmora cigarette brand in Borneo, which was already popular in Malaysia, he spent weeks chatting up locals living in the most remote parts of the island; often over a drink and a smoke.

“The post-pandemic new normal will be very different – it will define a new order, distinguishing the winners from the also-rans.”

He transferred this ability to identify with the needs, desires, and habits of consumers to the Philippines. This time he personally mapped every retail outlet across socio-economic areas to create focused marketing plans and sustained sales success. He explained that this is essential for achieving growth, saying that, “Only by living the customer’s experience, can you truly understand the value of your product.”

At Dole he insisted on visiting the plantation, working 16-hour shifts to learn about the planting, harvesting and canning processes. To understand the shipping process, Wittig sailed in an old container ship to Japan in a cabin with eight locks on the door and armed with a baseball bat as protection from the livestock running around the ship.

Wittig believes that this intense motivation to get a hands-on understanding of every aspect of a business, especially the customer, is a prerequisite for any successful leader. “With this attitude, it is possible to overcome any obstacle, even the disruption caused by COVID-19,” he said. “The post-pandemic new normal will be very different – it will define a new order, distinguishing the winners from the also-rans.”

Among the far-reaching effects of this pandemic, Wittig believes will be a harsher spotlight on working teams’ attributes and attitudes, in essence, the company’s ability to adapt for success. He emphasised that building high-performance teams is about people – and empathy is mission-critical. With working from home as the current norm, the opportunities for in-person interactions have all but vanished.

“Remote working has proved functionally efficient, but it is crucial to remember the human element,” says Wittig. “Call me a Boomer if you like but when you’re meeting online, turn on the camera! I want to see my colleagues! That way, I get to know them and learn about them better.”

Results suggest that somehow, this unconventional business maverick’s ideas make sense.

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