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Just like his valuable miniature cars on his office desks, he himself is of the same value–genuine, real, priceless. For Gary Manansala winning in your own league is being around the things you aspire and the passion you need to get going.
“I like to make the work environment as light as possible. If you look around, you see my own personal collection there. The message being is we need to be dedicated and serious with our work, but keep in mind the lighter side of things,” says Manansala. “Happiness [is] just having a very stable family life, having a very balanced environment, wherein you work hard, you play hard, and devote time for family and enjoy building and strengthening that bond with the people who are dear to you.”
As the General Manager of WinSource Solutions, a wholly, Filipino-owned BPO company, Manansala tries to juggle his time to manage a 300-seat facility primarily doing outbound calls while maintaining their edge as a leader in the global market. Through his leadership, WinSource has been expanding its reach to establish the right market and developing the right strategies to be able to compete with its foreign counterparts.
“We really cannot directly compete with our foreign counterparts in terms of capitalization bandwidth. We do however intend to keep in step with them in other avenues. To keep step with them, we are increasing our presence in our core market.” emphasizes Manansala. “We plan to expand our US-presence and get [the market] comfortable with the outsource environment. Once you have the model proven to them, start to put part of the business here, we should be in step with the players through a working model. What’s working for us in Winsource is the full support we are getting from our shareholders to get us to where we want to be.”
Coming from a different industry and a quite distant field, Manansala has tried to apply each difference to make his current company work. He has proven that rising to the top cannot always be instant, sometimes one needs to “roll up his sleeves and do the dirty work.” After graduating for De La Salle University with a double degree on AB Economics and BS Commerce Major in Management of Financial Institutions, Manansala started out his career as a clerical staff of Standard Chartered Bank for the Custody and Clearing Services department. His original career plan was to take on a prominent role in the realm of securities trading. But in 1998, at the height of the Asian currency crisis, he realized that his career path in stock brokerage is going nowhere, and thus decided to take advantage of the opportunity offered by his boss to switch to a role in Service Quality. His career with the bank spanned seven years where he basically moved from the ranks from junior clerical staff to Service Quality Manager, eventually handling the 5 major Service Delivery departments of the bank’s Wholesale Bank division – Custody and Clearing Services, Trade Services, Cash Management Services, Credit Operations and Electronic Banking Services.
After acquiring the necessary knowledge in Service Quality Management, he then decided to move to a start-up organization, Globalstride, as a Quality Assurance Manager. Eventually, his position rose as he went on, from one management team to another. He went through three different CEOs –each one had a different job of function for him: first, as a Quality Assurance Manager then as Quality Assurance and Client Services Director and eventually as Operations Director. Come 2005, he was then invited by his former boss to help start WinSource Solutions. But knowing that there might be a greater opportunity outside the country, Manansala tried his luck to pursue a career in Dubai, a very short stint that made him realize the greater value of his contribution in his home country.
“Interestingly enough, I left WinSource for about 3 months to take on another role in Standard Chartered in Dubai. But three days into my stint there, the Managing Director of Winsource called me and asked if I would be interested to come back---this time, to take on the role of Senior Director for Business Development. Looking at the bigger picture, I decided doing Business Development in the Philippine outsource industry will have a greater impact compared to the role I was playing for Standard Chartered Bank-Dubai. With that in mind, I decided to come home,” narrates Manansala. His decision to come back home eventually paid-off as he was subsequently appointed as General Manager for WinSource nine months after his return.
Coming from the securities industry, people always have this misconception of him having an iron hand operating a tight ship. Yet as the General Manager, Manansala tries to reach out to his team members and deal with them in a “mild-mannered” fashion.
“I try to encourage members of our team: ‘Let’s have a very harmonious work environment, let’s not get to the point where we have to have somebody push our own buttons. We all need to be accountable for our respective areas,” explains Manansala. “It is only when your people feel they are empowered can your organization thrive in any given situation.”
After office hours, Manansala juggles his time with his family and his hobby. He tries to spend quality time with his wife Alya and his son Gab and at the same time serve his hobby of collecting miniature cars. He believes that after an average of 13 hours at work, what keeps him grounded to reality are the things around him and the people who are always there to inspire him.
“I try to spend time with my family. I’d rather be at home having lunch, or simply lounging around, having a video marathon with my son with whatever cartoon character that catches his fancy at that particular point -- just spending that quality time,” says Manansala. “That is something that I also try to respect with members of our team. I make it a point not to get in touch with anyone in the weekend to discuss work unless it’s really urgent. I also want to respect the personal space of the people working for the organization.”
For him, opportunities come about. It also depends on the person how to make these opportunities work for him/her. “It depends on the individual on how he or she would identify those opportunities, and how he or she will make himself or herself available to take advantage of all those opportunities.” Manansala is never afraid to go one level lower and do the “dirty work” if it means success and growth for the company.
“From an early age, I’ve always been trained to keep up after myself. My father exposed me to his work environment as early as when I was seven years old. Due to the crisis of the middle 80s, my parents involved us in the family’s trading business. So basically, my eyes were opened on the rudiments of business when I was 13 years old. I think if you can get yourself that grounded, you’ll be successful. At the end of the day, don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeve and say, ‘I’ll be doing the dirty work, I have to do it.’ Never anticipate for anyone to clean-up after you. Take accountability and do what needs to be done,” ends Manansala.
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