President Antonio D. Kalaw Jr. asked the Academy’s leaders and operating groups to unite in order to ensure that the institution duplicates its success over the past year in 2016.
In his new year’s message during the year’s first flag ceremony last January 4, Kalaw said he looks forward to “more collaborative endeavors between and among” the Academy’s various centers, saying that such collaboration is the only way the DAP can effectively address the challenges of 2016. He cited the highly successful 1st International Conference on Productivity and Innovation that the Academy hosted last November and which saw the Philippines being designated as the Center of Excellence on Public Sector Productivity of the Asian Productivity Organization as proof of what uniting for a single purpose can do.
‘Fundamental requirement’
“Unity is the fundamental requirement for any organization’s success. Last year, we saw during the international conference on productivity that we held how unity and teamwork render all tasks easier to accomplish,” PADK said. “The only way we can effectively address the challenges of 2016 is if we work together in harmony and create a workplace where everyone treats each other with empathy and respect (respect for our country, respect for our institutions, respect for authority, respect for our processes, and respect for each other’s ideas and opinions).”
Kalaw cited three key concerns that he said must be addressed in 2016. The first, he said, is enhancing initiatives to develop and promote programs and services that meet customer requirements or even create new demand, saying that the Council of Fellows and all operating centers must work together to identify and satisfy customer preferences.
Assuring relevance
“Our relevance is only assured as long as we continue to develop products that are not offered by other training, educational, research, and consultancy institutions,” he said.
He also cited the need to ensure that “our programs and projects will be relevant, recognized, useful, and appreciated by the national leadership,” saying that the DAP, as a government institution, would have to address the priority thrusts of the new national leaders.
“For the past 43 years, the DAP has always managed to find champions in every administration supportive of its development advocacies and programs,” the President said.
A third concern, Kalaw said, is the need to develop the Academy’s younger employees who will ensure continuous growth and enhancement of the DAP brand.
Urgency of developing the young
“We will never grow without talent. As one of the elder DAPpers, I now see the urgency of developing the younger generation, and ensuring that the legacies of our founding fathers are not lost,” PADK stressed. “We must improve our own individual knowledge and skills by efficiently utilizing the horizontal connections between centers and the vertical passing of information and competencies from the older to the younger generations.”
The president also stressed that while the Academy’s longer-term strategic goal must be “attuned to the larger national strategy” of the next administration, its people have to “continually reinvent” themselves and “refuse to stick to paradigms to which (they) have long been accustomed.”
Kalaw nevertheless said that the DAP must not abandon its commitment to good, honest, and responsive governance and to propagating productivity primarily in the public sector.