‘Thoroughness. It can save us from so much unnecessary
trouble and heartache.’
LESTER Pascua has been my colleague and assistant since 2009. He joined us at Coca-Cola as an assistant for our PBA basketball team, handling matters related to the benefits of the team, from the players to the staff. He left Coke a few months after I left in 2012, and joined Mega Magazine, but in 2018 he rejoined me at Nickel Asia where he is now in charge of matters related to budget, admin and special projects for my (expanding) department named Sustainability, Public Affairs and Communication.
Part of his budget responsibility is to handle matters of reimbursements and liquidations of cash advances. What happens is, whenever I need to liquidate an advance or seek reimbursement I collate the receipts, fill up an excel form, attach the receipts, sign the document and submit it to the Office of the President and CEO for approval. Once signed the form goes to Finance and shortly after any amount I am entitled to as reimbursement is paid to me. It’s as simple as that.
But Lester adds a step: he takes each and every receipt, attaches each individual receipt to one side of a used bond paper, and keeps a photocopy. I’ve been noticing this for some time but it was only yesterday that I asked him about it.
“I want to have my own file sir so just in case there is a need to clarify items I can return to my own record,” he said.
It struck me how thorough this process is.
It’s not new to me actually as it reminds me of Don Enrique Zobel, at his prime the chairman of Ayala Corporation and all its subsidiaries and vice chair of San Miguel Corporation and all its subsidiaries. EZ, as we fondly called him, was like Lester, careful to create a document trail of virtually everything he did. And not just one trail, mind you. Four of them.
Four, because he had properties in Calatagan (Batangas), Sotogrande (Spain), Honolulu (Hawaii) and San Francisco (California). Add the head office of E. Zobel Inc. at the top floor of Nezo Building along Buendia (Makati) where an archives office existed and you effectively had four copies and the original spread throughout the world.
I remember the first time I came across this thoroughness and was amazed. He had plastic folders each labeled with the name of the destination, and in each folder went a copy of whatever he wanted to preserve. It could have been his columns in BusinessWorld, or an article about him, or an article he found interesting (like something political or about agriculture for example) — the original was meticulously copied and sent off to one of the files in one of his properties. Not very ecologically friendly I guess but at that time (the late 80s and early 90s) documentation wasn’t as technologically advanced as it was today and having real hard copies was always the best option.
I remember receiving photocopies of articles with a post-it note that had comments from EZ, which could range from a simple “Ojo” to something more detailed.
Despite my exposure to EZ and to Lester, I still have a lot to learn from them about thoroughness when it comes to filing away important documents. Just the other day, while in the shower, I was asking myself where I had put the insurance policy I took out, or the file of all my St. Luke’s blood tests for the last five years which I had put in a folder but have no idea where the folder is now, and many other items that I may never find again.
Then again, it’s not too late to learn from these two and maybe that is what I will make as my birthday resolution. Or New Year’s. Hell, maybe for Easter.
Thoroughness. It can save us from so much unnecessary trouble and heartache.
