Culture change a necessity

THE EDITOR: Many years into the future, when the name Dr Lennox Sealy is googled, the entries will tell a story of a successful management consultant who resigned because he failed to implement a transformation process at WASA in a timely manner.

The statement will be attributed to line minister Marvin Gonzales and will likely be believed because of the positional power attributed to ministers of government.

The story will, however, be incomplete and damaging unless Dr Sealy leaves a trail of breadcrumbs to the truth.

Additionally, the back story capturing the real reason for his departure will not be obvious. One would have to read opinion pieces by veteran journalists such as Andy Johnson to “pick sense from nonsense.”

And so it continues. Prime ministers, ministers, mayors, MPs, counsellors, aldermen, assembly persons can all stick their fingers into the daily operations of state enterprises, ministries, regional authorities, borough councils, etc to influence decisions at all levels.

From industrial-relations issues to the award of multi-million-dollar contracts, they determine outcomes which are generally against the best interest of citizen and country.

The naked truth is that unless there are specific interventions, the culture will override the strategy and little progress will be made.

I believed the narrative that the cultural transformation needed for us to grow and develop would have occurred in 2015.

Six years later, what we’ve had is more of the same, with the gutting of the procurement legislation being a powerful example.

My life’s work helps me understand the magnitude of the task of culture change.

The fact that behaviour change is complex, difficult to implement, and iterative should inspire our leaders to take up the challenge. We all interface daily with our broken governmental systems so it should not be difficult to accept that they have to be reimagined and redesigned to be geared for citizen assistance rather than oppression.

Few, if any of our ministers understand that they are servants and not masters; public employees, not royalty. That understanding is the first step before identifying a cadre of persons who have the capacity to lead the culture change process.

An easy entry point is to re-imagine the role of our MPs so they understand that they should allow the subject-matter experts to do the jobs for which they were hired.

As long as our officials see themselves as divinely appointed to do whatever they wish, we shall continue to fail at culture change and just keep me and others vex that Peter Drucker, 20 years ago, was right when he said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast!”

DENNISE DEMMING

Diego Martin