Strategy is patience
Recently, I was asked what businesses need most in times like these. My answer was simple: calm leadership is the first requirement.
When the environment becomes uncertain—when events far from our shores begin to drive up oil prices, fuel inflation and disrupt supply chains—the instinct is to react quickly, to cut costs, reduce spending and protect the bottom line.
Boards ask the right questions. Should we reduce advertising? Should we slow down investments? Should we rationalize headcount? Should we tighten credit or reduce support for distributors? These are not unreasonable questions.
But strategy is tested not only by the decisions we make, but by the balance we keep. While discipline is necessary, overreaction can weaken the very foundations of the business. This is where patience becomes important.
In essential businesses, this discipline becomes even clearer. Consider Mercury Drug. For decades, it has built its business on a simple promise: Nakasisiguro, gamot ay laging bago (You’re sure that there’s fresh stock of medicine).
More than a slogan, it became a discipline—ensuring availability, maintaining trust and serving customers who depend on it daily.
In uncertain times, that role becomes even more critical. Customers do not simply look for lower prices; they look for assurance—that what they need will be available and that they can rely on the people serving them.
Companies like Mercury Drug do not respond to uncertainty by pulling back from these commitments. They continue to serve, to stock and to reassure, because in businesses like this, absence is not an option. That kind of steadiness may not always show immediate results, but it builds long-term strength.
I have seen how easily organizations can lose this balance. When costs rise, the natural response is to tighten. Advertising is reduced, spending is deferred, people are stretched and distributors are asked to carry more burden. Each decision may seem reasonable on its own, but taken together, they can weaken the system.
When advertising is treated purely as a cost, it is often the first to be cut. But in consumer businesses, advertising is how a brand stays present in the consumer’s mind. It reinforces trust, signals relevance and sustains demand—especially when consumers themselves are becoming more cautious.
Reducing it indiscriminately may improve short-term margins, but it often erodes long-term strength.
There will be periods when the bottom line declines. Margins tighten and earnings come under pressure. These are difficult moments. But this is precisely when patience is most needed, because the instinct is to protect earnings by cutting deeper.
Yet these are also the moments when the business must protect what sustains it—relationships with customers, trust with distributors and the strength of the brand. These may not immediately show in the income statement, but they determine whether the business recovers or weakens further.
The challenge, therefore, is not whether to exercise discipline, but how to do so without losing momentum.
There is always waste that can be addressed—complex product lines that add little value, promotions that drive volume but not loyalty, layers that slow down decisions, internal fraud and dishonesty that must be ferreted out through stronger controls over procurement and other systems and spending that is poorly targeted.
These can be reduced without harming the business. But the core must be protected.
The realities of the market do not change as quickly as the headlines—how families eat, how communities gather, how consumers make daily choices. These remain steady, even in uncertain times.
In the end, strategy is not about reacting. It is about staying clear on what matters. Cut waste. Protect the core. Stay the course.
That is what patience looks like in business.
And in times of uncertainty, strategy is patience.
Pet Bautista held top leadership roles as president of San Miguel Brewing, San Miguel Foods, Kraft Foods and PT Warner Lambert Indonesia, as well as managing director of Universal Robina Corp. He is a recent recipient of the Mansmith CEO Lifetime Achievement Award.
