As the potential firestorm continues to brew over the city of Georgetown on the parking meters, the debate rages on, tempers flare, meetings are held, discussions take place, and eventually the dust will settle and the matter will be resolved one way or another. One question will linger for a while: how did the city arrive at this juncture?
Ronald Heifetz is the founder of the Center for Public Leadership and is the King Hussein bin Talal Senior lecturer in Public Leadership at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is the co-developer of the adaptive leadership framework and a much sought after advisor to heads of governments, businesses and nonprofit organizations throughout the world.
Heifetz is the author of several books on the subject of leadership and his research has focused on creating a conceptual foundation for the study of leadership and the building of the adaptive capacity of organizations and societies. His courses on leadership at Harvard are legendary and are filled to capacity at all times.
A simplified overview of the leadership guru’s adaptive leadership framework is to split it into two parts: the technical challenge and the adaptive challenge. One classic example he often presents is the dilemma of heart patients operated on by the best cardiologists in the world. These surgeons can conquer the technical challenge successfully, whether it be bypass surgery or heart transplants, yet they still experience post-operative failures (unfairly) attributed to them.
The adaptive challenge in this instance, is really that the onus for post-operation success lies with the patient who has to (and is often unwilling to) change his/her lifestyle whether it be change of diet, quitting smoking or following a strict exercise regimen. Their failure to comply with the new demands leads to an earlier curtailing of the projected life span extension.
The City of Georgetown has been doing business in its current manner for a while, despite the fact that the city has grown several times over, and likewise, the demands and services to the citizenry have evolved with time. As Guyana strives to become a more developed society, its capital city, the gateway for potential investors, tourists and visitors must become more proficient at conducting its business.
The application of Heifetz’s adaptive leadership framework to diagnosing the work entailed in the technical challenge is relatively straightforward. The management of the city’s projects would undergo a structural change that allows for the contractual hiring of professionally qualified technocrats who are held accountable to the professional standards of their governing bodies, both local and international, to assist in matters beyond the scope of the Mayor and many of her councillors, and the Town Clerk’s office. These technocrats should be free of political interference.
The adaptive challenge is easier said than done. It will necessitate change, both on the instrumental and personal levels. The powers that be will be very reluctant to adopt such drastic changes as one might well imagine, since it would reduce the power of the mayoral chair – at least in the form in which it is currently being exercised.
The citizens of Georgetown will also need to follow suit with the adaptive challenge. The prompt paying of rates and taxes and adherence to by-laws, for instance, avoidance of littering and dumping of garbage on parapets, will have to become part of a cultural mindset change.
On the flip side of the coin, their valid suggestions for generating desperately needed revenue should be given due consideration. Letter writers proposed nominal fees for residents for garbage collection to assist with the outstanding debts to the contracted collectors, and questioned why the city hadn’t adopted a simplified parking system utilized by several metropolises in Europe, one of monthly/annual windscreen stickers that can be readily purchased at gas stations or other retail businesses, that didn’t require much in the way of overheads to implement or manage.
With regard to the larger issues of revenue, one might ask, how can the Mayor and City Council announce in a recent full-page advertisement in all four daily newspapers that thirty-four properties owe the city six billion dollars in outstanding rates and taxes? The parate execution law which used to be applied to the area of arrears collection was amended under President Hoyte, and has ceased to be the useful tool it once was in the process of rates recovery, something which has been pointed out on several occasions by the lawyer Mr Leon Rockcliffe. Yet nothing has been heard from City Hall about exploring with the lawyers and the Ministry of Communities the possibility of amendments to the law.
The longer the current way of doing business by the City of Georgetown remains in place the more likely the occurrence of contracts being negotiated by the popularly elected officials without any knowledge or experience in the field of international business. This time around, the procurement process required by law was bypassed and the City of Georgetown received painted lines, posts in the ground, and a bunch of draconian clauses that seem designed to penalise its citizens.
As the latest service supplier to the City of Georgetown exports its profits (further depleting the foreign exchange supply), one can only ponder how long would it take the leadership of the council to realise it has to change the manner in which it conducts business, and for the citizenry to accept that they have an important role to play too.
