Enrique Aboitiz Mendieta
January 2022
Over the Christmas holidays, a number of us from the oversight part of ABOITIZ:GMT have been exchanging thoughts, readings, videos, and perspectives about Exponential Advance for the good and for the better as well as for the detriment. I have also concomitantly been thinking through our most precious of institutions and that is meritocracy.
GMT means Governance & Management Team. I believe that a successful institution needs both. I am sure that many of you feel that Governance meddles too much and many in governance, even though they greatly appreciate the efforts of Management, feel that Management is not moving quickly enough. As I distill notes, discussions and thoughts, it is clear to me that the tension in GMT is about speed.
Self-made was the new Prince Charming. Education was the investment for the future. It worked. The new elite is made of self-made people.
There are many consultants out there available to us for free or for very little money. Their medium of contact with us is Audible, Kindle, or paper. There is much wisdom out there of perspectives and intelligence well beyond most of us.
Meritocracy. It seems that meritocracy took off after World War 2. The end of empires, kings, nobles, aristocrats, and the privilege by birth and from that phoenix the rise of those that pull themselves up with their own bootstraps, so to speak. Self-made was the new Prince Charming. Education was the investment for the future. It worked. The new elite is made of self-made people. Women are increasingly taking more and more of the place they should occupy in society. Education, albeit late, is reaching far corners.
The world is not driven by greed, according to Warren Buffet. It is driven by envy. The new elite of successful people who have earned it are in the limelight fueled by the light of social media. Some missed the boat either because they could not make it or did not do enough to make it.
As a result, meritocracy is under attack.
The attack is taking many forms. The one that concerns me is the natural immune system that just does not like accountability.
Delaying accountability to hinder meritocracy through the weapon of silence and delay, I and some fear, will affect the speed at which we face exponential change.
Reward yes, praise yes but to be questioned why this was not done — that no or later. We live in a culture that invests energy in the orgy of thank you and congratulations for saving lives after Odette and then forgets that some reactionary efforts can be avoided through planning and prevention. Now, that means that some faces will be exposed and our ROP* immune system shuns from this. Better a couple of dead people from a typhoon than exposing the unprepared.
All too often I experience discussions with ideas that have content being expressed. These ideas move forward to the execution level and then comes the critique of form to delay or abort execution. Then there is delay in the execution of an agreement that someone down the line feels threatened by.
Delaying accountability to hinder meritocracy through the weapon of silence and delay, I and some fear, will affect the speed at which we face exponential change.
A quick review of what is coming can be seen in this video of Peter Diamandis.
- Transistor doubling
- Larger computer chips
- Databyte explosion
- The role of AI — Salesforce’s Einstein predicts 80 billion predictions per day
- By 2030, two companies = those that milk AI and those that are bankrupt
- 100 years old the new 50
- 5G and 6G
And you can explore the video as you consider the link that I am suggesting between accountability, meritocracy, and the opportunity and threats brought about by so much exponential advance.
Accountability and meritocracy rise and its link to exponential advance everywhere.
* Republic of the Philippines
