Harvard Business School Publishing and
John Clements: Unleashing the Knowledge Market
By Paul Catiang

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
- John Adams, former US President, Harvard Alumnus

The Challenge
The Philippines’ need for visionary and enterprising leaders has become a litany that has been chanted over and over again since the booming of the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry.

According to the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P), in 2006, the Philippines generated revenues of US$ 3.5 billion from outsourcing, employing 240,000 people and accounting for over 3 percent of GDP. That's up 42 percent over the US$ 2.4 billion in revenues in 2004, and a huge increase from 2000 when the industry employed just 2,400 people in Manila and had revenues of only US$ 24 million. At its current rate of growth, the Philippine BPO sector is expected to rake in US$ 12 billion in revenue and employ almost a million people by 2010.

It is these rates of growth in both revenue and employment that throw the need for leaders with a pioneering spirit into stark relief. Their guidance and foresight is required to maintain the boom that was initiated by the Philippines’ affinity for Western culture and the empathic spirit of its people. It is for this reason that John Clements and Harvard Business School Publishing have established a partnership that addresses this growing need for management talent with globally competitive functional and leadership skills.

“The Philippines increasingly participates in a global economy and in order to compete effectively, we need world-class managers. With the best-in-class training materials Harvard offers, we can ensure that Filipino managers have the talents and skills to compete on a global basis,” said Carol Dominguez, President and CEO of John Clements. This is especially true for the BPO (business process outsourcing) sector, which has grown considerably in the last half decade. "With escalating performance requirements, management development programs are more critical than ever to help local BPOs meet the challenge of competitiveness," continued Carol.

According to Peter McAteer, Vice President and Managing Director of Corporate Learning at HBSP, “the biggest challenge for the Philippines is to keep up with the pace of growth. As firms get bigger and have more diverse services, the leadership challenges also grow. One way to create sustainable growth is to continuously upgrade the skills of the talent pool through management and leadership training.”

HBSP and John Clements are currently offering eLearning services in three categories: performance support, facilitator design, and training.

The Tools
Specific eLearning products include Harvard ManageMentor®, HBSP¹s popular online performance support tool for management and leadership. Harvard ManageMentor® is a just-in-time, desktop reference tool covering business topics ranging from communications to working with individuals to strategy
implementation.

HBSP is also offering its vast collection of case studies and training courses aimed at helping learning facilitators expand manager skill sets, while honing leadership skills. Organizations can choose from the myriad resources offered in the HBSP collection to create their own programs and syllabi with guidance from HBSP partner John Clements.

For fast-moving companies that are continually working to develop new management talent, HBSP¹s Stepping Up to Management program helps first-time managers deliver results quickly. Stepping Up to Management enables new managers to learn critical management skills while performing their day-to-day jobs. This translates to a faster and more successful transition into the new management role with minimal training time. Through interactive scenarios, as well as assessments and tools to use on the job, managers better understand what they need to do and how best to handle common management challenges. This program is designed to engage the supervisors of the new managers, leading to a learning process with much greater impact.

”We believe that by offering these one-of-a-kind learning products to the Philippine market, we are in fact taking a major step toward enhancing business and economic competitiveness,” said Carol, who in the last three years has expanded John Clements to become the premiere provider of corporate training in the Philippines. “We believe that we will help make the Philippines an even more attractive investment destination not just because we excel in speaking English, but because we are effective managers and leaders as well.”

The Response
While Harvard Business School Publishing eLearning tools are versatile enough to be applied in any industry or company, the need for qualified leaders is greatest in the BPO industry in the Philippines. This call for visionary leadership has been echoed by John Clements over the past few years, since the start of the BPO industry’s growth. For the industry to maintain its current momentum or even surpass it, what’s needed is a response to this call for leaders. With the tools for more effective management now available to anyone willing to take on the challenge and move the BPO industry—and the Philippines—forward.

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For more questions on the products offered by HBSP through John Clements, please email Carol Dominguez at cvdominguez@johnclements.com.