Hope beyond the crossroad: managing the transition

* JOWITT MBONGWE | Friday February 11, 2011 00:00

And then, the National Vision for a prosperous nation enjoying a favourable place in the globe - a place known for everything that is 'good' - democratic, accountable, united, proud, knowledgeable, innovative, just, safe, ethical, etc.

Enter, the big four - democracy, development, discipline, dignity - and the fifth - delivery and the route is repaved.

Deconstruction shakes the roots as yesterday's Botswana transforms into today's nation whilst reconstruction shapes the stem as the landscape is forever repainted with colours of hope - the petals of fear soon cloud the horizon and in the distance the medals of love beacon.

Simultaneously the global economic recession erodes the nation's healthy savings and dents its pride forcing a vocal digression echoing the departure from wealthy cravings of huge foreign reserves towards exposure to the lessons from the past. The smooth route that brought the country thus far has become more rugged and the gear has to change for the speed to be increased as nation navigates to become more resilient.

Faced with higher and more costly risks, moving beyond the crossroad has become the greatest challenge of all times - new thinking and innovative capacity is needed to race at the pace required to realise the prosperity we all desire. At the helm is new leadership determined to use new means coated in new language to attain national goals.

For good or for bad the nation has been shaken - by the activist political leadership to awake to the reality that all have a responsibility to reshape the future and an obligation to account to tomorrow's generations for their action and/or inactions during the time when they had the opportunity.

Here, I am reminded of a quote from one Wesley Woo who said 'To succeed you must first improve, to improve you must first practice, to practice you must first learn, and to learn you must first fail'. As articulated in previous articles our failure to acknowledge our failures have adverse implications on our readiness to learn and embrace change.

Up the time we crafted Vision 2016, the country lacked what Jim Collins called 'big, audacious, hairy goals' as well as experimentation, entrepreneurship and the readiness for self-improvement. Following successive national project manuals, the country grew its mineral-based economy whilst investing in ordinary projects to the marvel of the international community and envy of neighbours.

For decades the country shunned experimentation on extra-ordinary projects as it entrenched groupthink and popularised the supremacy of avoiding risk to the steady progress made in implementing its project manuals.

Those with thoughts of building 'Phakalanes' were frustrated to the bone by kith and kin.

The population factor was used to undermine the emergence of import substituting industries. Even as globalisation persistently knocked at our doorstep presenting unlimited opportunities for export we were content to import and we could afford it. For a long time, the country was too consumed by the comfort of its economic growth that it failed to look itself in the mirror as it comfortably aged; the engine of growth becoming ever rusty leading to natural wear and tear.

Yes, we did increase the length of tarred roads, built schools and hospitals, wrote-off agricultural loans given to prominent individuals, and splashed on other services, but failed to expand the opportunities for all to make choices on where to live, which school to send their children to or which health facility offered the best service. Only a few could afford the luxury of choice.

Although we resisted the temptation to use pubic resources to construct basilicas of Italian marble such as the one in Yamoussoukro in Ivory Coast, we remained stingy in refusing to think outside to box, keeping ourselves away from building world-class institutions that could grow functional citizens of the global village.

As new countries emerged from the ruins of apartheid, Portuguese, and British colonial strangleholds, we continued to bask in the glory of the past belief that we still remained an island of prosperity in a desert of violence and injustice.We continued to import expertise from our birth up to the present without realising that we could export talent. Our systems were so inside-oriented that we continued to train for employment in the public sector instead of training graduates to make choices on how they could use their expertise to participate productively in the economy.

We continued to import power without realising that we would utilise our huge deposits of coal to generate for the export market. When we awoke to the need to invest in the extra-ordinary project, the prices were prohibitive.

We were very amused to ferry thousands upon thousands of students across our borders as we injected our foreign reserves to bolster the tertiary institutions of neighbouring countries. This continued even after realising that national supply was embarrassingly surpassed by demand.

Even after waking up and dreaming up the creation of a world-class premier tertiary institution in Palapye, the ghost of caution continues to traumatise us into dithering, as talks of retreat have become common knowledge.

Surely a premier institution for developing human capital cannot become a white elephant in a country so starved of landmark or watershed development.

Today, we have come to the realisation of the need to explore the opportunity of a petroleum company that would diversify import routes to reduce the vulnerability or reliance on supply from refineries in one country. Let the inertia that paralysed the translocation of the national oil reserves not paralyse the thinking.

The country has been through its summer of success for too long but the winter of national introspection is upon us. Although ushering gloomy times, the season should pave the way for spring and another summer. As put by one Anne Bradstreet, 'If we had no winter, spring would not be so pleasant, if do don't sometimes taste adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome'.

It is pleasing to the hear talk of commitment to delivering people centered development. A people centered approach to doing things means deriving the mandate to govern from the people and then listening to them inform you of their hierarchy of needs and working with the people to make choices from the possible means to achieving what the people desire.

People orientation is about promoting inclusion and being purposely citizen centric by understanding what the people require to improve their wellbeing and the things to be done to produce results that would make people become increasingly happier.

Philosopher Aristotle is quoted as having once said, 'happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence'. Happiness can only come about with a more holistic understanding of the needs of all segments of our population and the use of multi-dimensional interventions that maximise benefits to target groups, especially the poor who seek to permanently escape from the jaws of deprivation to a more dignified livelihood.

Writing about 'The State of Happiness' Nicola Bacon, Marcia Brophy, Nina Mguni, Geoff Mulgan and Anna Shandro said in 2010; 'Democratic Governments have always been interested in actions that might increase the wellbeing of their citizens' adding 'And while government cannot directly make us happier or more engaged, it does shape the economy, culture and society in which we live through policies and decisions on where to spend finite resources and laws that regulate what can and cannot be done.'

To eradicate poverty as we have pledged requires that we identify and remove all factors that militate against the inclusion of people in finding joy and meaning in life. Innovative strategies based on promoting the inclusion of society are required to deal with the poverty dilemma.

It is important to integrate our conceptual understanding of people centered development with government's earlier pronouncement to embrace evidence-based approaches to delivering public services. Accordingly, it is important to start with defining what evidence we seek to demonstrate improved wellbeing before we can talk of poverty eradication.

Research has shown that the factors that influence wellbeing or happiness are largely about relationships, health, shelter, resources, spirituality, community and work. Thus, only when we can progressively improve the wellbeing of all segments of people and make them substantially happier by availing opportunities for more dignified livelihood can we say we are making a difference - evidence proven difference.

To arrive at a watershed moment in the not-so-distant future, we must avoid the misleading attribution of increased production and delivery of public services to the higher productivity of public entities. Only when we can provide irrefutable evidence that performance outputs far outweigh the production inputs we have invested can we say that productivity has increased. It is also important to deliver evidence that the outputs were a consequence of the action of the public entity and not other factors.

Beyond the crossroad, the modernisation of the public service requires investment in growing world-class leadership talent as well as building people management skills and practices that create positive and productive workplaces. Public entities with high levels of employee engagement are the only environment that could encourage public officers to go the extra mile in delivering services that make the difference in people's wellbeing.

Evidence based people centered development requires new ways of managing and different ways of working. A strategy to build the readiness of public service managers and employees is required to enable the transition towards outcome-anchored service delivery that promotes socio-economic inclusion. A significantly high level of readiness is needed to serve as the foundation platform for leaders and managers to facilitate clarity of mission and increase people management capability to boost employee engagement.

No one should make a mistake that public sector management and modernisation can succeed when employees do not have a clear voice and do not feel that their views are respected and matter.

The lack of preparedness on the part of public service managers for the implementation of the new Public Service Act of 2008 severely undermined the employment relationship in the public sector. Changes in legislation and in approaches to managing the public service impose new requirements on the leadership approach used, especially on the capability of managers in all levels to manage people.

The tensions that have been stoked by the lack of preparedness of the public service management to deal with unions in good faith, present a real risk to successfully instilling new ways of working that are associated with higher outputs and outcomes.

There is need for the public service to implement interventions to build partnerships with trade unions based on trust between employees and management. The fundamental need is not for the leadership of the public service to manage the newly emerging trade unions but rather to proactively and skillfully manage the emerging dynamic employment relationships.

There should also be a clear sense of ethics underpinned by behaviour that is aligned with the strategic foundations of the public service entities. To win the hearts and minds of employees and deliver high value services from highly engaged employees, public service leaders need a focus on building leadership and people management capability to mitigate the likelihood of conflict whilst bolstering trust.

Leaders and managers must learn to devolve the authority to manage closer to service delivery points. It is the responsibility of the public service as an employer to ensure that unions understand that it is in their interests to support efforts to improve employee engagement and sustainable public service modernisation.

Interventions geared to giving more opportunities to both managers and employees to understand, contribute to and buy into transformational change are critical if Government is serious on delivering evidence based people centered development. For change to happen on the frontline, the mental frames of those at the strategic apex need to significantly alter with greater appreciation and respect for the dynamics of change.

Former US President Widrow Wilson once said 'I would rather lose in a cause that would one day win than win in a cause that would one day lose'. Beyond the crossroad extra-ordinary prosperity needs more strategic leadership, more innovative management to handle the risk of transition and cure the hangover of historical inertia.

*Jowitt Mbongwe is a leading management and human capital consultant. He is Managing Director of Global Consult and can be reached on 3935758.