By his boards we know a minister

Franklin Johnston

Friday, February 10, 2012

BOARD membership is not a vanity job. Every road dug up, building raised, exam sat, water not delivered, failed school, rickety minibus, clinic opened, hotel approved and the X6 that zips past was approved by a board. This is high public service, hard work and a privilege to be entrusted to skilled and worthy people. The airline we no longer own and the JOS (remember this?) that died before you were born still has a board to manage its legacy.

Statutory boards, commissions and government firms are gateways to progress or pork. They spend some 80 per cent of our uncommitted budget, approve 90 per cent of contracts and make or advise Cabinet on 70 per cent of decisions affecting us. Watch them! They ought to be nimble purveyors of progress, but some are badly run and unaccountable. Port Authority is the most successful board ever - Jubilee award? It is now boards' season and members say a lot about a minister. Check for ones not published, as those icebergs can sink ships. Please bawl out, "Ah ooo oono put pon dis ya board?" (Excuse my bad patois.) Boards are engines. They create more jobs, buy more champagne, laptops, Olympic tickets, fuel more growth or corruption than a ministry. They need good chairs, good members, and one or two well-qualified youth to gain experience.

The public service suffers when governments change. They retain ugly activists with angry voices to defend them -- distrust. Ministers should speak truth -- good and bad -- build trust; empower nurses, teachers, police, all workers, one goal: prosperity! The civil service is not politicised, it is bastardised. Politics is not the problem, as party activists would work hard to make their party look good; slackness is! Cabinet must rehabilitate, retool, redeploy and enable workers to find their better selves. No witch hunt! Our vital signs are stable and we are febrile yet optimistic. Ministers must take the hard decisions: assign tasks, demand results, invoke "zero tolerance", and reward or sanction promptly. A few ministers speak of JLP misdeeds. The majority are silent as the discovery phase is not over. Big conglomerates as finance need time to get data and some, like education, were fixed by PJ Patterson's transformation from 2004 with $5b committed. Mr Holness kept to the path with few changes. Last time we saw deep cleansing of the service. It violated the very Services Commission. Ministers must not do this. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar! Every minister says he is ethical but acts as if his predecessor was not, and workers suffer no matter who was wrong or right. A chair, board members, secretaries, aides, interns from outside are transients, but career workers must be assumed professional and productive until proved otherwise; then fire them.

Some entrepreneurs and managers of integrity and skill openly support JLP or PNP, and on boards their professionalism is impeccable. To serve with Lightbourne (JLP) and Lawrence (PNP) was pure joy. Good boards make good ministers. Vice versa? The PNP takes office with a higher debt than when it left and a fragile stability paid for with IMF cash. Every time the bank boosts my overdraft I pay creditors - who think I am flush - so they give more credit but I know it's not income, it's debt - this is Jamaica. We defer the evil day, so let's use the money well. Boards are frontline in service delivery.

Years ago the public sector was underdog. Then they got 80 per cent of private sector pay and kept all the freebies: UK home leave, free pension, sick pay; top dogs, accountability and performance didn't increase. It has since drifted, but we need not fire them, as with process and output metrics good managers can elicit production. How do we find good boards? It is folly to be hasty. We should advertise criteria for groups of boards, say, in health; entice performers, build public confidence -- the minister rightly has the final word. Boards should be, say, 50 per cent private sector. Why? Business people know running a ministry is hard work and ministry's business is taxpayers' business as those in the private sector pay most taxes, have known performers and cannot sit idly by.

Good managers must serve. Whatever the core content --health, buses, education, food, roads -- it's production or service to benefit 2.6m people. The best agronomist, driver, educator or clinician is no substitute for a top manager. It adds no value to pack a health board with health experts; this simply foments conflict. Boards are too large and meet for too long. Ministers must call for CVs, attendance records, CEO's appraisal, and verify fitness of intellect, energy and skill to new initiatives. Boards implement, so a health board has internal, external supply chain, people, materiel, logistics and process -- this is what managers do.

The soon-to-be launched "P Log" professional logistician degree by "Caribbean Institute of Logistics and Transport" (sponsored by the Chartered Institute, UK) will assist us. Board processes are best moderated by a manager as chair, not a content expert, however brilliant. Managers work in real time and work hard on boards as their reputation is at stake; experts keep their jobs in the service or university, even if they fail. The PS and CTO (chief expert) should be on boards; other experts called as needed. A top private sector chair has no axe to grind except to excel and burnish his expertise. He protects taxpayers and settles disputes among contending experts: a safe pair of hands. When doctors disagree, patients die; when educators or architects disagree, what? The manager as chair gets consensus. Meetings are important but their management is crucial.

Most boards are large, unwieldy; some meet from breakfast, through coffee to a well-catered lunch. The economic cost of meetings is massive! Managers are worth big money per hour, an expert is worth a lot, and quality time is lost in meetings. After two hours a meeting is counter-productive; by four hours a chair can get any decision, as low blood sugar and ennui sap focus and breed an irrational propensity to agree -- all decisions are now suspect. A board needs standing and ad-hoc committees to do the research, analysis, crunch data and report to the board (some boards get mired in detail for hours); this makes for smaller boards and shorter, effective meetings. We must insist on good meeting protocols for efficiency. Try it, nuh? Stay conscious, my friend!

Rip tides

Two youngsters from Kingston recently drowned in Portland. Sad! That beach has all the features (strong inbound currents, obstructions with narrow channels) to create a rip current. They did not know how to parallel-swim and survive. I did. Tragically, not my best friend. Rescuers expected undertow, but rip is a surface current pushing out to sea. We live by the sea but don't know the sea. There are a few such sites and NEPA must erect good signage.

Dr Franklin Johnston is a strategy adviser and project manager. franklinjohnstontoo@gmail.com

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GCT to go down, white rum prices going up

By his boards we know a minister