By Dr Joseph Bonsu-Akoto
As Peter Smith once said, the “External forces are dramatically changing the public’s aspirations and expectations vis-à-vis political and governmental institutions. And, the system’s perceived inability to respond effectively is seriously eroding public confidence.”
After careful reviews and analysis of what is happening in the nation, sky rocketing deficits (CI $75million as per the last count),the financial crisis all over the globe,H1N1 Epidemic, the creation of jobs for our youth, our national healthcare cost-including the cost of improving on our health systems so that Caymanians and fellow residents need not to travel to the United States to seek healthcare, and many other pressing issues, we believe the answer to the question for sustaining our economic strategy rest on the topic: Transform¬ing an Organization: Strategies for Sustaining Excellence in the 21st Century. This is to help institutions, particularly the governmental units, to set forth an aggressive reengineering agenda to move the nation to a positive economic growth.
Reengineering requires different leadership process from what we are accustomed to experience. The new leadership must be primarily proactive as opposed to the more familiar reactionary style. The process of transformation is the initiation of a whole new order. It will change all the governmental units to be both efficient and effective in their service delivery to all stakeholders. The environmental factors are such that major change must come in public institutions. Hard decisions must be made and some of them will be painful. Reengineering or transformation requires hard decisions and decisive actions but offers the hope of a new order.
Transformation would not only bring confidence in our national economy, it would help to transform the administrative processes. The question many people are asking: Can our nation survive considering the current outcome? The job for the strategist would be to identify and project a clear vision. Where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18). In addition, the job for strategists is to help the leadership to see the organization not as it is … but as it can become (J. W. Teets, Chairman of Greyhound, and Inc.). For strategists, there’s a trade-off between the breadth and the detail of information needed. It’s a bit like an eagle hunting for a rabbit. The eagle has to fly high enough to scan a wide area in order to enlarge its chances of seeing prey, but it has to be low enough to see the detail - the movement and features that will allow it to recognize its target (Frederick Gluck). Continually making this trade - off is the job for a strategist.
In considering a transformation commitment, you must understand the consequences of maintaining the status quo while the world around us changes. Unless the governmental institutions, including those that govern, significantly shift the modes of administration, the confidence of our constituents and the general public will in all probability continue to erode, financial pressures will continue to build, and would be difficult sustaining our economy, and the future of our nation will be questionable. Reengineering requires “thinking big,” extraordinary commitment and absolute dedication to the accomplishment of organizational mission, it is not a consideration for the timid, but it could well be a path for maintaining Cayman Islands as the most successful nation in the Caribbean through out the 21st century. And we could be called “the little country that grew”. With that in mind: We must answer the question of “Can we survive?” with a resounding, “We must survive if our nation is to thrive!”
Objectives: Strategic planning and management structure the framework which allows reengineering or transformational principles and related tenets to be interwoven, more fully developed, and implemented. The aim of strategic planning is to exploit the new and different opportunities of tomorrow while minimizing the negative aspects of the unexpected challenges that will surely occur. The aim of strategic management is to create an organization capable of doing that. Coupling strategic planning and strategic management is required for reengineering to be successful.
To reengineer administrative processes requires our institutions to start from scratch in making fundamental assumptions, to reject much of the conventional wisdom abundant in all organizations, and to “think out of the box” by looking for ways to initiate changes of magnitude through innovation that fit the needs and aspirations of all Caymanians. We need to start from scratch in making assumptions because very significant environmental and technological changes have occurred since most processes now in use were conceived. To begin the redefinition process we might ask the fundamental questions, “When were the processes currently being used designed?” and, “Can our institutions design a better process given the technology (including the educated workforce) we now have and/or will have shortly?”
Another aspect of the reengineering process is that we must also take into consideration the need to reject conventional wisdom that, “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” Just because it is not broken, does not mean that the process is doing the job right or even doing the right job. An organization that continues to employ previously successful strategy eventually and inevitably would fall victim to a competitor (William Cohen).
And, “even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there” (Will Rogers). In respect from what is happening in the nation lately one can say that “great spirits encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds” (Albert Einstein); believing that the status quo is always the best opposition to maintain. Having said that, “the real question the leaders of any organization should ask is not how well you are doing today against your own history, but how you are doing against your competitor (Donald Kress).
Rewriting the rules to provide advantage over competition, taking into account technological potential and the resulting impact upon human actions, must be paramount. “Nothing focuses the mind better than the constant sight of a competitor who wants to wipe you off the map” (Wayne Calloway).
“If we are not faster than our competitor, we are in a tenuous position, and if we are only half as fast we are then terminal” (George Salk). We also need to “think out of the box” if our nation is to meet the constant increase in competitive and financial pressures for growth, and establish new standards of performance. Inspiration and innovation by people will more and more become critical components in meeting new challenges and expectations involved in the evaluation process. A variety of formal and informal methods that solicit feedback from the entire institution may be utilized.
The elements involved in this are for us to understand the environment in which the organizations should function, define organizational mission and goals, identify options, make and implement decisions, and evaluate actual performance or our organizational outcomes. It is essential that planning for information technology and the overall management goals and objectives be completely integrated into the institutional strategic planning and leadership process.
Strategic planning calls for an analysis of the entire organization, that is, the entire organizational structure and also an assessment of environmental factors and their impact on the national economy. Such planning should be based on inputs from a variety of cost centers and functional areas, and should provide direction for, and constraints on, the whole organization regarding both strategic and tactical directions. It should help the leadership to set forth a vision for the future and define goals and operational objectives for accomplishing the vision.
Clearly defining a vision can help our national institutions to generate support from both internal and external groups, develop coherent future-oriented decision-making, assist in the resource allocation which is so important in reengineering, improve the organization’s image, and encourage organizational teamwork while creating smoother relations between the institution and its constituents.
The objective is to ensure that a strategic planning process should fit the environment of the nation and the whole political organizations. “Objectives are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future: they are the means to mobilize resources and energies of an organization for the making of the future” (Peter Drucker). This would require political astuteness and a solid understanding of the culture of the place and time.
Successful information and the overall technology planning requires strong support from the top of the organization’s hierarchy, a focus on organization-wide priorities, broadly based participation, structure and organization, staff support, and the institutional guidelines. It must culminate in evolutionary policy, procedures, and decision-making which are designed to support the transformation process.
The adaptation of a planning model is in our opinion perhaps the best way for our institutions to introduce strategic planning and management into our organizations. “Like a product or services, the planning itself must be managed and shaped, if it is to serve the leadership as a vehicle for strategic decision-making” (Robert Lenz). Before implementing a selected model, the institution should ensure that the entire leaderships are in agreement on a plan and should set it forth in a formal charge.
The model should incorporate an internal and external assessment of environment, in addition to values analysis, which will lead to the development of an extended mission statement, goals and objectives, broadly based operational strategies, institution-wide tactical plans, and unit-based action plans and individual behaviors. It is important to note that the bridge between defining the mission and accomplished mission is, how? The “how” is what reengineering should help the organizational
leadership to answer.
Technological Entrepreneurship: In the 21st century, an organization must create technological entrepreneurship-activities that develop new resource combinations to make innovation possible, bringing together the technical and commercial worlds in a profitable way. Administrative capabilities must be deployed both effectively and efficiently. To achieve success, our organizations should be called upon to change the way of attaining the objective(s).
“Change is disruptive…. But it does not make any difference. You get to do it anyway. We are in an era where, literally to learn to love to change is the only survival course. Change does not necessary cause good things or bad things to happen to people. How people react to change however, can have good or bad consequences. It is equally true that, “it is not the strongest of the species that survive, or the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change” (Charles Darwin). Changing our plan is a big risk, but not changing it could be a bigger one” (Nancy Perry). Sometimes the road to change mechanism becomes “foggy”. But change is necessary to improve performance. And for any organization to improve, it must be transformed.
Dr.Joseph B. Akoto, is Operations Management and Strategic Planning Consultant. Formerly, Management Support Advisor at MHHS, Cayman Islands and a Co-Author of State and Local Fiscal Structures and Fiscal Stress; Standard Health Insurance Fee for the Cayman Islands; Changes in Cayman Islands Labor Market –Trends, Implications and Solutions. E-mail: akoto.joseph2009@yahoo.com |
