by Dr. Rosalina O. Fuentes

This book has been inspired by gratitude and admiration. The concept of this book dates back all the way to 2000 when my training in Appreciative Inquiry challenged me to apply the concept in a paradigm shifting project. Its data-gathering, writing and printing took our project team over a year of work.

What is different about this book?

• It is not your usual story - published or splashed on television, newspapers and magazines - about Dr. Lucio C. Tan.
• The project work team was oriented at the start of the project, in the concept of 'Appreciative Inquiry' - which is the framework of the book. Widespread participation was elicited in the process of preparing this book; but at the same time keeping the undertaking a secret - not to be divulged to the subject all throughout the data-gathering period. The only time Dr. Lucio C. Tan got to know about this was when the team had the Mock Copy of the book.
• This book is an academic-driven undertaking. It observed the rigor of a research undertaking.

 What about Appreciative Inquiry and this book?

• Briefly: Appreciative Inquiry is a form of study that selectively seeks to locate, highlight and illuminate the life-giving forces of a person's or an organization's existence.

Simply put, the study looks for what is already there that enables a man or an organization make things happen; that enables one to achieve positive results; and that which keeps him focused.

• How, then, does this concept of 'Appreciative Inquiry' relate to this TAIPAN book project?
• I would say. Curiosity did it. I was curious about the 'appreciative inquiry' concept and its applications. I was curious to find out more about Dr. Lucio C. Tan who was depicted by Philippine media - especially, as someone who was a tax cheat, a union buster, an unfeeling person, a Marcos crony and so on.
• I may have been privileged to see Dr. Lucio C. Tan on many unguarded times beyond what I would read from the papers and magazines. I got to see this man up close and personal during teaching-learning moments. (I serve as Mentor-Coach for the man in topics that interest him). I got to see people from different walks of life who surround him; strangers who go to him; people of varied orientations and concerns who search him; interesting and competent people who do work for him; loyal people who grew up with him from school or his early years as a common worker; grateful people who share stories of unconditional help they received from him.
• Over the years, still I continue to read 'attacks' hurled on this person - to a large extent, by media and to some extent, by hostile individuals or politicians. Yet, I have never heard from him any unkind utterance about anybody.
• All of these transformed my Curiosity about AI and its application into Gratitude and Admiration for the Man. 

Gratitude - because I realized that I was learning from him about becoming more human without him intentionally teaching me about it. His way of life simply put it across.

Admiration - because, as I share the esteem of the book's storytellers, Dr. Lucio C. Tan consistently and very shyly says "I am nobody".

My Point of Departure

 Here is a book about someone who insist he is nobody Yet, You and I know he is some-body.

The stories in this book cannot take away, and will not claim to take away, initial perceptions of the man as a result of stories you may have read from the newspapers or magazines.

Rather, what the book hopes, as takeaway, is this: that after you would have read the book, YOU get to know a different side of Dr. Lucio C. Tan - your friend, your classmate, your colleague, your donor, your Boss: your spouse, your parent, your grandpa.

And when this happens, let it be. It is in the perspective that you will get a glimpse of the life force of this man - the TAIPAN.

Good day and God bless you.

Rosalina Ora'a Fuentes

1 December 2007