It is both an instructive and exciting development – Newsday’s Business Day of May 27, 2010 reported advertisement of a government ministry in Trinidad and Tobago proposing to hire consultants to conduct a “thorough process of re-engineering of the organisation’s key processes.” The announced objective is to effect organisational transformation. This is a welcome approach – one that is being increasingly explored in some member countries of the European Union for example.
The concept recognises the need for more dynamic responsiveness to the increasing and varied demands of a challenging customer sensitive environment. It involves the timely delivery of quality service by creative management teams committed to liberating the potential, and enhancing the capacity, of the right mix of human resources. It involves a paradigm shift to more collegial decision-making, and structured delegation of authority to match assigned responsibilities.
Re-engineering involves a substantive change in an organisation’s culture, with emphasis on employee empowerment and on performance appropriately compensated for following transparent and consistent evaluation.
Is it too farfetched a target for any organisation, and moreso a public service agency, to aim for?
The fact is that such an experience is far from being exotic. The records will show the number and range of donor-funded projects initially intended to proactivate the management and enhance the working processes of several local public sector organisations.
Consistently, projects have been formulated to achieve levels of performance which, in the extant global environment, must be comparable to at least regional standards, as well as satisfy international requirements and expectations. These efforts have been undertaken against the steadfast backdrop of vertical decision-making, involving less than optimal participation. Not unrelated was the fact that the new applications tended to be limited to technical processes, accounting and financial procedures, and of computer information systems. The opportunities to provide an environment amenable to creative leadership and highly motivated workers have not been seized.
A quick review of institutions which must not only be sensitive to regional/international perspectives, but must also develop and maintain appropriate relationships, would invite attention to the following, amongst others: Deeds Registry; Guyana Gold Board; Guyana Geology and Mines Commis-sion; and Forestry Commission. Then there are those agriculture sub-sectors involved in export; as well as a pivotal service organisation like GO-Invest.
The above are but a few of the areas that should be ‘marked for excellence’ and which should serve as models of high performance and quality results.
Having said that, however, it would have been much more appropriate for the private sector, as the proverbial ‘engine of growth,’ to set the more visible pace for re-engineering amongst its membership organizations – to address, for example, the fundamental issue of ‘competitiveness’ and its ramifications.
In this regard it would be good to be assured that the memberships of any or all the known private sector organisations have respectively developed and shared strategies, based on their individual and several experiences, on how to tackle skills retention, for instance.
The presumption must be that individual strategies do exist which, while of benefit to the particular organisation, do not serve to help or guide the relevant product or service sector as a whole. It is the latter which must mount the coordinated response to external competitors.
There have been actual instances indicating that the ‘privacy’ approach to information-sharing is taken to counter-productive lengths, subliminally reflective of the level of confidence these ‘growth engines’ have in their own management capacity, and consequentially their reservations about the degree of trust to be invested in what should be perceived as a strategically important collaborative effort.
In the current scenario where the inter-relationships are so immediate and linkages so close, it behoves the private sector to actively set the standard and pace not only for its own ‘re-engineering,’ but also to give the needed impetus to the process in ‘counterpart’ public sector agencies, since the former can only benefit from the positive results of the latter’s organisational transformation.
Yours faithfully,
E B John
