34. Keeping Pace

The work ethic that I cultivated when I struggled in my earlier jobs served me well. A determined effort to learn through readings and serious participation in training seminars allowed me to be in stride with the rest of the brand group. I feel utterly beholden to PRC for their having been unstinting in providing training.

They have provided the young managers with the wherewithal to perform at the best that they can muster. While the training on management techniques would have been refresher courses to some of my fellow brand managers who were graduates of business schools, to me they were all new and exciting ideas to be learned and to be applied with a resolute determination to make them work. The management techniques you learned and had immediately applied in your work are deeply seared in you. They become an important addition to your management armory.

Tony Tolentino, Ed Roa, Angie Lacson, Freddie Lozano, Tony Lorenzana

I have heard some say that my achievement, despite a checkered scholastic record, can be attributed to my being street smart. I cannot accept that. The phrase smacked of illegitimacy. It was as if I got my way through sleight of hand and subterfuge. People who have this to say about other people’s gains may just want to soften the sting of their own failures. Although I would grant that for some it may not have been meant to be anything but just a thoughtless use of a hackneyed phrase.