Luis Aboitiz Jr. served as President of Aboitiz & Company from 1978 to 1990 and Chairman of Aboitiz Equity Ventures from 1991 to 2005. He was responsible for introducing new technologies and process improvements to our power, banking, food, and shipping businesses, to name a few, that transformed Aboitiz into a modern and professional organization.

(Note: All emphasis by Aboitiz Eyes.)

Legacy. What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.
(From ‘Hamilton: An American Musical’)

What I, Endika Aboitiz Mendieta, learned from Don Luis Aboitiz Montenegro are two seeds that stand out and that we will continue to harvest into the generations that follow us.

Firstly and most importantly, he put commitment before emotion. He did not get offended so one could tell him anything one wanted. We belong to a culture at ROP (Republic of the Philippines) that puts emotion before commitment. We put aside candor or delay radical truth and radical transparency for fear that someone somewhere may be offended, not like it, or be sentimental about it. One might argue that getting wounded by far reaching truths is on top of the list when one assesses the value of our most limited of resources, time. Don Luis appreciated that the misuse of time might be argued as pernicious.

Spinoza, one of the philosophers cum economists who dug deep for us to understand, considered emotion as the greatest enemy of reason. Hitler, having wasted resources on the Holocaust, put emotion before reason but, more importantly, emotion before his commitment to his country—Lebensraum! Only by raising our knowledge and the intelligence to do so—and get the most out of that raise—did he feel that reason could conquer fear. Don Luis understood this clearly. His commitment to his company was his primary objective.

Kahneman, having studied human nature, tells us that people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Louie Aboitiz scored low on the “caring about people” scale. It was not that they did not care about people. They did and very deeply so. However, their mission was overriding. Their commitment was more superior emotion, i.e. than their caring, because that commitment resulted in a deeper legacy of improvement for the generations to come than the feelings of a few individuals that may have unintentionally being subordinated.

Don Luis may or may not have known Spinoza’s thoughts but his high intelligence and his instincts guided him to put aside the smaller-although-important for the predominant greater good in the form of his commitments to his family and his firm. This is not to say that empathy is not a precious trait. Of course, it is but great leaders would be remiss if they allowed that empathy to get in the way of getting things done. If we are to progress, getting things done—guided by the superior ‘why’—occupying center stage in leading a family and a firm such as Aboitiz, Don Luis must have appreciated.

The second and less important concept that Don Luis taught us directly and left embedded in my mind is the cruel and unforgiving relationship of time and money. Warren Buffet calls it compounding. Compounding is built into Einstein’s God’s DNA. It is ruthless. Too many of us do not give this enough importance.

Getting things done today versus tomorrow matters compounding-ly. We belong to a society that carries Latin and Malay traits among others. The compounding power of time and money is beat by the most powerful force of all and that is the compounding force of time and learning.

As a result, our sense of urgency is much lower than it could be in the creation of better good and to pull us, as a nation, out of poverty. Poverty being among the most terrible of all acts of violence. If we grow our economy at 7% we double it every ten years. If we grow it at 10% we double it over 7 years. We need to double our economy twice to pull us out of poverty. That means we can do it over 14 years or over 20 with millions suffering more for longer.

That is not to say that there is no good side to attendance to feelings and of a slower sense of urgency—perhaps they bring about more happiness. I guess there are two sides of ever coin. Mine is to share with you what I learned from Don Luis Aboitiz Montenegro latticed with my reflections. The first he taught implicitly and the second he taught directly. Example is the most powerful of all the forces that form us after, perhaps our DNA. The ongoing pondering of which is subordinate to the other, Nature or Nurture, might be a waste of time as one will never know. We have to think that they both matter. Yuval Harari disagrees.

Tito Louie, que tengas un buen viaje a lo que viene después de un buen viaje de donde nos dejas. Les das un abrazo muy fuerte a Hank y Lulu de mi parte.

Con cariño de tu sobrino,

Endika