theceomagazine.com | 117such as The Medical City group, for which
GGDC built a US$42-million hospital within
the vicinity. Much like St Luke’s Hospital in
Bonifacio Global City, Makati Med in Makati
or the Asian Hospital and Medical Center in
Alabang, Michael noticed the most successful
business parks in the Philippines had
technologically advanced medical facilities.
“We were very strategic in terms of how we
went through the selection process. Access to
high-quality health care is one of the top-five
things that locators will look for,” he remarks.
Not ignoring the country’s business
process outsourcing (BPO) phenomenon,
GGDC also wanted to make sure it was
offering quality office space that could be
taken up by BPO firms at a discount
compared with the other major business
parks in the country. “Overall, we’re
approaching it from an enterprise-wide
risk-management perspective, and also
looking to build a very successful business
model that says operations will drive financial
results, and vice versa,” explains Michael.
“What’s served me well is that I’m not just afinance guy, or just an ops guy.
I’m really a marriage of the two.”
Beginning his career at Ernst & Young in
the 90s, Michael says the experience working
alongside the best and brightest coming out
of the various universities in the US set the
bar for him in terms of creating a culture
of excellence and professionalism. He adds
that even after leaving public accounting,
he has never really “taken the auditor’s hat
off ”, approaching everything from a process
standpoint and with a healthy measure
of professional scepticism.
Michael then worked at Archbold
Medical Center in the southern region
of Georgia in 2002 as a director of Patient
Financial Services, responsible for managing
revenue of around US$500 million. It was
there that he came to the realisation that,
regardless of the organisation he was at,
he had found a niche in operational
restructuring and turnaround.
“It was always process improvements
and building on and integrating systems, and
then implementing processes that would help
all the organisations to adopt best-practice
benchmarks,” Michael explains.
From a project management standpoint,
Michael adheres to a saying from former
board chairman of IBM, Louis V Gerstner Jr.
“It’s along the lines of, ‘You don’t get what
you expect. You get what you inspect’,”
he says. “That’s management by walking
around. You can’t assume that just because
you give a directive or because you engage
a company to execute a contract package,
it’s automatically going to happen.”
The Filipino economy has been more
than hitting its straps for almost two decades,
averaging above five per cent annual growth
and predicted to be between six and seven
per cent in the foreseeable future. The
Philippines is expected to be the sixteenth
largest economy in the world by 2050.
So crucial is Global Gateway Clark for
the country’s future prosperity that it has
enjoyed the favour of three different
Philippines administrations including the
current one under President Rodrigo
Duterte, whose ‘Build, Build, Build’ initiative
has put infrastructure as one of the »“ What’s served me well is that
I’m not just a finance guy, or
just an ops guy. I’m really a
marriage of the two.”
Interview | INNOVATE