Forget, for the moment, about economic statistics. True, a 5% (or so) GNP growth rate signifies a reversal of fortune for the Philippines. But in a region used to higher, sustained growth rates, it's hardly worth writing about.

    Disregard, too, the conventional wisdom that the Philippines is doomed to be the sick man of Asia. Such a notion is rooted in old memories of political instability, power crises, and unfavorable investment climates—which have been banished from many businesspeople's minds.

    Instead, focus on a more useful set of indicators: the perspectives of the country's leading chief executives. They are the ones who feel the pulse of the consumer, the mood of the investor, the threat of the foreign competitor. And it is under their leadership that business growth may—or may not—be sustained.

    Enter the offices, and minds, of four of the Philippines' leading CEOs: Gloria Tan Climaco is chairman and managing partner of the Manila office of SyCip, Gorres, Velayo & Co. (SGV), Asia's biggest accounting and management consultancy firm. Arsenio Bartolome III is president and CEO of the Philippine National Bank, the country's largest. Jose Concepcion III is chairman and chief executive of RFM Corp., the fast-growing food conglomerate. Francisco Eizmendi, Jr. is president of San Miguel Corporation, one of the most highly regarded companies in the region.

    Gloria Tan Climaco knows all about being competitive. She is a magna cum laude accounting major who fast-tracked her way to the top of SGV, a traditionally male-dominated firm with a high-stress culture that has broken many more ambitions than it has fulfilled.

    In the aftermath of the attempted coup against the Aquino government in 198_9, many businesses suffered. Climaco's audit division thrived. She had completely revamped their methodology and pushed for—and gained—higher productivity.

    So it is with characteristic tenacity that she is positioning SGV to become even bigger and more influential than it already is. "Strategic issues preoccupy me," she says. "Entering new markets. Building new practices. Embarking on new businesses." By most accounts, she has brought innovativeness and aggressive marketing to the job. "Glo has a clear grasp of the needs of the marketplace. When there's a practice or service area which SGV can go into, she'll penetrate that with singlemindedness," says an SGV partner.

    The borderless economy is not new to SGV. Washington SyCip, one of the firm's founders, turned it into the first Asian multinational three decades ago. SyCip, ever the visionary, traveled around the region forming strategic alliances—long before that term came into use.

    Observers see in Climaco some of SyCip's traits—the tireless passion for work, the compulsion to learn new things, the attention to detail. And they both have a commanding presence; Climaco's 5-foot, 10-inch frame, resonant voice, and purposeful manner intimidate many at first sight.

    The challenge for Climaco is to match SyCip's foresight, which she credits for keeping the organization always ahead of the change curve. She says, "We believe that we should change at a point when we are strongest. We know we have to be nimble and flexible—to act as if we're a small company."

    SGV, with 1,500 professionals on its payroll, is anything but small. And given the nature of their work, those professionals demand heavy training. Which they get: staff are sent to specialized skills programs overseas, partners attend management programs. "Our single largest expense, aside from the payroll, is training. But it's worth it. All it takes is commitment," says Climaco.

    Her own t宣传海报入口raining comes in the form of constant conversations with other CEOs, meetings with government officials from various countries, learning first-hand from policy makers. She spends 30% of her time servicing some of the firm's 5,500 clients, who represent a good cross-section of Philippine industry. "I have to feel the pulse of the economy, which I get by working closely with clients," she says.

    The pulse she feels is strong: "Never, for instance, have I seen so much being spent on infrastructure, and the burden of spending on it has shifted to the private sector." Another indicator: the managers who left the company in the 1980s are re-joining. "When you see a brain drain in reverse, you know that the economy is moving forward," says Climaco.

    Assuming the characteristic role of consultant, she offers a set of prescriptions. For businesses in a growing economy: develop a deep bench of talent and make technology a critical component of human resources. And for Filipinos in general: stop being contrarian and have more faith in themselves. "If there's going to be any limiting factor at all, it won't be infrastructure. It will be the faith of the people in themselves and in the country."

    Francisco Eizmendi, Jr. has a keen sense of history. He can still feel the entrepreneurial spirit of San Miguel Corp.'s (SMC) founder, Col. Andres Soriano, Sr., in the halls of the company's modern headquarters. He witnessed how the founder's successor, Andres Soriano, Jr., turned SMC into a diversified, decentralized conglomerate. Today he works with the current chairman, Andres Soriano III, in continuing that vision.

    Eizmendi would be the first to observe that throughout the history of San Miguel, there has been one constant: the need for change.

    Andres Soriano, Sr., was said to be an autocrat. A Fortune article from the 1950s described him as a "controversial capitalist...[whose] management techniques would not be well thought of by the Harvard Business School." But even then, the Colonel could feel the need for change. "He foresaw what San Miguel would be like 20 years after his time, and he planted the seeds for a change in the company's management style—toward a decentralized one," says Eizmendi.

    Eizmendi was with the group of executives who met with Andres Soriano, Jr. in Hawaii in 1973 for San Miguel's first strategy review. He says, "The review asked three questions: Where are we today? Where do we want to be? And how are we going to get there?" The answers led to SMC's further decentralization.

    Andres III asked those questions again this year, and made it clear where San Miguel wants to be—in Asia, with a "formidable" presence in each booming market. SMC is expanding its breweries in China and Indonesia, and setting up a joint venture in Vietnam. The company knows that growing beer consumption accompanies growing prosperity in developing countries, and that it has to geographically diversify so as not to be totally dependent on the Philippine economy—perhaps the company's greatest weakness.

    Not that the local markets aren't hot. Profits rose 40% in the first half of 1994, thanks to recovery in consumer demand and improved power supply. To keep SMC performing this strongly, especially with the arrival of more foreign competitors, Eizmendi has a list of issues to address.

    "Product quality is of primary concern," he says. "We are advocating the Total Quality Management concept in the company. This means not just inspecting the product, but trying to do everything in the best possible way. If we are to compete with world brands, we must lift our capabilities to world-class levels."

    Maintaining good dealer relationships is high on the agenda for the Philippines' best-known brand name. "With the proliferation of brands, the competitive advantage no longer lies in the brand itself. We must foster partnerships with our dealers, sharing with them our plans and targets for each area," says Eizmendi. Technology helps here. SMC's beer salesmen now tote hand-held computers. The information generated helps the company anticipate customer needs.

    And to gain that global mindset, training is of utmost importance. In China, where SMC has two breweries, Filipino managers are enrolled in a university in Xiamen. "The course coverage? How to manage and do business in China," says Eizmendi.

    The SMC president is calm and introspective as he describes the challenges his company faces. It isn't difficult to imagine him in a laboratory, quietly studying chemicals, which was his first job at SMC 37 years ago. He displays an instinctive understanding of human nature, especially as it applies to the still-unfolding history of San Miguel.

    As he views the latest chapter—which could be called "internationalization"—he knows that history has a way of punishing those who come late. San Miguel is hurrying.

    It is early evening, and the floor of Arsenio Bartolome III's room is strewn with files and documents.Archit is normally a stickler for orderliness, but today is an exception. It is the eve of Philippine President Fidel Ramos's departure for an extended trip to Europe and Bartolome, who will be part of Ramos's entourage, is making sure everything is in a high state of readiness. For the career banker, it's just another day in a dream job.

    As president of the country's largest bank, he finds himself in the familiar position of being in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills. Plus the qualities that have carried him throughout his career: discipline and motivation. Bartolome stumbled into banking "by accident," by playing basketball on the Bank of America team. But once in, he quickly moved up. It was a heady time, the early seventies. At Bancom, the investment banking pioneer, Bartolome felt what it was like to be a leader in the region, helping set up the first investment bank in Thailand, consulting for the Indonesian government.

    By the start of the eighties he was ready to do what he felt he should really be doing—running his own bank. So he made the big career jump from senior bank manager to entrepreneur, and started a small development bank, Urban Bank. "At that stage of my career, I thought I could afford to commit big mistakes," he says.

    He wouldn't commit many. Barely eight months later, when the first of a series of crises hit the financial industry, Bartolome was in a position to turn crisis into opportunity. He had positioned Urban as the first private bank in the country, and his nichemanship paid off; clients of big banks which were rocked by crises flocked to Urban. The small "community" bank with 12 people grew to become a universal bank with 30 branches and 600 people. And its founder, who normally kept a low profile, was thrust into the limelight.

    Two years ago he received a call from President Ramos asking him to chair the Bases Development Authority. Seven months later the president informed Bartolome that he was appointing him PNB president. "I had no second thoughts in accepting. To be president of the country's largest bank—it was a dream come true," he says.

    The new PNB president quickly buckled down to work—to the reality of making PNB respond to global threats and opportunities. Twenty-eight foreign banks have applied to enter the Philippine market. And while it is the largest in the country, PNB doesn't even belong to the top 20 in the region.

    Beneath his easygoing appearance Bartolome is a determined, no-nonsense professional. "We have no choice but to go outside the country and compete," he says. "If foreign banks can come in and grab a share in our market, there is no reason why we can't go outside and grab a share in foreign markets."

    He has a similar view of what the country's managers have to do: "One of our weaknesses is that once we have accomplished something, we tend to step on the brakes. But the economic growth is for real, and everyone has to expand his business horizons."

    Bartolome has also applied himself to the difficult task of transforming PNB, a government corporation, into a bank with a "private-sector-type" entrepreneurial mindset. "I call it a paradigm shift, a complete change in attitude," he says. "I told the bank's people that we should attain world-class efficiency."

    For telltales, he looks at small things. He says, "I'm particular on deadlines, tardiness, cleanliness. I get annoyed if the toilets are not clean. To me these are indicators of something bigger." He views his own role as leader with Druckerian common sense: "If I say something, I make sure I do it."

    It is early evening. Most government corporations have closed for the day, but PNB is humming with activity. People are huddled in meetings, rushing to meet deadlines, preparing the next day's workload. The toilets are spotless.

    Joey Concepcion is addressing the professional basketball team of RFM Corp. A noted coach once told a gathering of personnel managers that managing pro ballplayers—superstars who have been pampered by everyone around them since childhood—could be the toughest management job. But Concepcion is not intimidated. He talks to his players with the same sense of urgency he has with any of RFM's staff, and about the same concerns—performance, money, and time.

    In other words, All Business.

    It is this intensity that has characterized Concepcion's drive to make RFM the largest food and beverage company in the Philippines. His acquisitions of Cosmos and Selecta, well-known brands in the local market, had people comparing him to Donald Trump. His bold diversification strategy has increased RFM's assets sixfold since he took over from his father six years ago.

    It is also this intensity, combined with his formal manner, that make him a target for critics, who came out in full force when Concepcion became RFM head—at the age of 29. Faced with pressure, he found himself worrying about failure. "I kept asking myself: 'Am I ready for the job? Will I be able to do it? Will the organization respect me as a leader?' It was a good experience. It shaped my character."

    Today he is absorbed with shaping RFM into a highly competitive marketing machine. Liberalization opens the door for battle-ready foreign companies. To Concepcion, and to the Philippines' other marketers, "globalization" does not translate to "look outward," but to "look out!" He says, "We have to start defending our territory first."

    It is a territory that he has surveyed first-hand. Part of his training at RFM was as route salesman, a job which took him around the archipelago. What he learned surprised him. "We were only a two-billion-peso company then, because we were not catering to the masses," he says. "Our products were up-scale, we didn't have 'downline' products which could give us the big volumes." He quickly changed RFM's marketing approach and created the downline pr官网命名公司oducts which now make up the bulk of the company's seven-billion-peso sales.

    It also started him on his search for established brands to add to RFM's line. This led him to acquiring Cosmos, a soft-drink brand, and then Selecta ice cream. "There are many good local brands that are neglected," he says, "and we were the first to see that opportunity."

    His formula for turning these brands into market forces: improve the image, heighten awareness, distribute them well. But above all, make sure the product is good. If it is, consumers will pull it out of the shelves. "A good product will always find its way to the consumers, because consumers will always look for it," he says. Consumers have been looking for RFM's products; Selecta's sales have gone from 20 million pesos to one billion in the last four years.

    Investors have not ignored RFM either. The company was able to raise 900 million pesos in a private placement for Swift, its processed meat brand—and actually got offers for 1.6 billion pesos but turned those down. "There's a lot of capital coming in," says Concepcion.

    In this environment, where both investors and competitors are marching in, the key could be forming the right alliances. "You have to get the right alliances to help you with technology," says Concepcion. "It's unfortunate that we are coming out of what I call a depression. Now we must face global competition, and these foreign companies are prepared to fight."

    But he reckons that the new generation of Filipino managers are battle-ready. If Concepcion is a good example, then they are more aggressive and more persistent than their predecessors. And their time is now. The future can wait. Asked if he sees his seven-year-old son eventually taking over (which would make him the fourth generation of Concepcions at the top of RFM), Joey shrugs, dismissing it as a romantic idea too far ahead to do anything practical about today. "It will happen—if that is his destiny," he says. He bids us good-bye, turns around, and goes back inside his office to fulfill his.

    And what about the Philippines' managers—what's ahead for them? Despite the new-found optimism, there are still many things to be realistic about. The country's foreign debt remains heavy. Inflation is a chronic concern. The savings rate is among the lowest in the region.

    The work force's English skills, long touted as a strength, are slowly being eroded. The application of information technology is hardly as sophisticated as in neighboring countries. Strategy expert Michael Porter says that sustained competitiveness is determined by national productivity. But "productivity" is not a word heard often inside Philippine offices, certainly not to the same extent as, say, in Singapore, where nine out of ten workers know what "productivity" means and how to measure it.

    Can the Philippines' managers accelerate the growth of the country's economy? To that question there is, of course, only one acceptable answer. The alternative means fulfilling everyone's worst expectations.

    Jet Magsaysay is the Editor-in-Chief of Chief Executive Asia.