A foreign company wanted to manage their Filipino team better.
So they brought in the best. A recognised expert, author, practitioner. Someone who has trained thousands of Filipino managers and written the actual books on it. If there is a manual, this is the person who wrote it.
Six months later the company walked away. Didn't work, they said. Who knows.
Here is the thing they missed. They thought if they cracked the culture, the team would follow. Learn the rules, apply them, manage the people. Even Filipinos will tell you, with a laugh, that Filipinos are challenging to manage and lead. So the foreigners assumed the fix was knowledge. Get the right expert and the room falls into line.
But there is no line to fall into.
Three hundred years of Spanish occupation didn't sit on the surface. It went to the bone, the faith, the family, the names people carry. Fifty years of American rule went just as deep, the English, the schooling, the ambition. Add the Chinese trader, the Malay, the sea. None of it stayed foreign. All of it got absorbed and made Filipino.
Four empires came here to change the place. Every one of them got absorbed instead. That is not a thing you manage.
You earn your place in it. Or you leave in six months and call it failure.
PS. Twenty years in, and still learning: www.linkedin.com/in/davidthomas-asia
