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| Sunday, 22 August 2004 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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The ' Fire Fighting ' syndrome vs Productivity and growth By Lloyd F Yapa. Readers may remember the newspaper cartoon showing a man perched atop a tree looking down on his friend pedaling a makeshift raft furiously against the raging flood waters engulfing their village. The man on the tree asks, "where are you rushing to" ? The friend replies, "I am going to get my drought relief". This cartoon aptly illustrates the type of management often practised by the public sector and even the private sector establishments in this country. The Ratnapura town goes under water and areas around Tissmaharama are subject to drought practically every year. Flood and drought relief are distributed and the problem is forgotten until the disasters hit us again. Health workers and our doctors, go on strike causing much misery, especially among the poor ; officials nominally responsible for resolving such problems push a politician to the firing line (as the former are not empowered to take major decisions independently ) invariably without a thorough analysis of the problem ; the latter steps in amidst a blaze of publicity and promises some temporary relief ; 'normality' is restored, everybody is happy, though the problem simmers and flares up again. Even the most serious of problems threatening the country, the ethnic conflict has been kept smouldering in similar fashion- by patching up. Causes and symptoms We have to recognize the causes and symptoms of this endemic disease referred to by management experts as the 'fire fighting syndrome'. The problems outnumber the availability of able solvers. Therefore urgency supersedes importance. A few are 'patched up' and 'pain killers' administered without identifying and fixing the root causes. The result isthat old problems recur and create a crop of new problems, which smother improvement of productivity and business and /or economic growth. The primary reason behind all these failures is the conspicuous absence or acute scarcity of strategic planning and management skills of anticipating problems and navigating smartly to a desired end, avoiding obstacles. Finding solutions Psychologists and management experts recommend a number of approaches for overcoming the syndrome with the aim of improving productivity and growth. One of them is the 'first things first' approach and the first thing in this process is committed leadership capable of fixing a vision or a goal (on the basis of the aspirations of the people or customers), communicating it strongly and clearly among the followers including officials, managers and other stakeholders to align their work towards realizing the desired outcome. If for instance, the leadership convinces the people, to realize prosperity and alleviate poverty, production capacity has to be built, especially with local and Foreign Direct Investment, while improving competitiveness, everybody could be induced to do something positive incrementally everyday to move towards that end, and avoid acting negatively to defeat the purpose. Some of the next things, that such leadership do are to train their officials, managers and others concerned in problem solving skills and strategic management (eg by sending them to the best management schools of the world, as the high performing nations of the East have done), placing their best personnel closest to the action and empowering them to take decisions independently and above all by motivating employees, especially through creating a conducive environment for innovation, payment according to performance and/ or just extending psychological rewards ie praise and removal of disincentives/ obstacles to work on the other hand they do not flinch from showing the door to officials and managers, who habitually fail. Apart from such better management practices, experts also recommend tried and tested specific approaches to solving problems, including the following : a) Solving classes of problems. The common cause of floods, droughts, the scarcity of clean drinking water and even of power outages, the mosquito menace etc is the very weak management of our precious environment, characteristics of which are poor drainage, felling of trees in the catchment areas of the rivers and the failure to empower officials to deal with culprits according to the law. b) Appointing trained teams of officials or managers drawn from agencies or divisions concerned along with relevant experts such as sociologists and psychologists, who understand the concerns of people affected, with specific instructions/ powers to analyze the problem scientifically, diagnose the cause, find ways, means and the resources to resolve it and ultimately to implement a programme to a finish, within a specific period. c) Solving problems not by dominating (where the defeated party will wait for a chance to strike back), not by compromising (where neither side gets what it wants) but by finding a third way or integration, which results in a 'win win' situation for both parties, mainly by talking in a professionally structured way to the parties and other stakeholders to find their underlying concerns/ expectations and hammering out a consensus regarding a strategy to reach desired outcomes, without digressing into actions, which inflame negative emotions. d)Establishing 'learning' and 'pilot' projects to check on or demonstrate feasibility of solutions, without rushing rashly to implement pet schemes. Dealing with important problems in a proven professionally correct manner can therefore deliver enormous benefits in the form of improvement of productivity and business/economic growth, by 'clearing the decks' of clutter to get on with the normal business of creating wealth. |
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