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There appears to be a management problem in Barbados.
Listening to the call-in programmes on any average day, having a casual chat with a consumer trying to procure a service from some of the local businesses or even a member of the public interacting with Government departments – the complaints are universal. Failure to meet agreed timelines, poor communication and follow-up, lack of trained human resources, and even the organisation’s ability to meet deliverables due to resource constraints. These summarise the issues affecting the delivery of services and suggest a failure of basic principles and processes in the operations of the organisation. Principles that point to management effectiveness.
Whether it’s Henri Fayol’s modern management theory, Koontz and O’Donnell’s functions of management, or Peter Drucker’s work in the field of business management, there are enough theoretical frameworks that can be employed to improve our management capacity. The University of the West Indies and other tertiary institutions offer several faculties of management that train scores of students per annum for there to exist a deficiency in the operational performance of organisations, at both the public and private sector levels.
What then is contributing to the dearth of management competency in the executive suite? The issue may lie in the suitability and deployment of skills within the institution and the concomitant failure to employ the appropriate systems to support the management function.
Though management itself is a profession, the situation at hand must not be confused with technical skills in professional services. A person trained as an attorney, architect, engineer, accountant, economist or even a politician who studied political science, is not necessarily a competent manager. Unless these individuals developed specific skill sets in management, it cannot be assumed they would perform effectively as the chief functionary of the organisation.
Small business owners, too, are often guilty of not employing effective management capacity in their operations to ensure the firm can pivot to a higher level of growth and profitability. Often the self-employed person or entrepreneur, who may have a particular skill or hobby they wish to monetise, enters the marketplace without a clear plan for the development of the business idea. The business model is more geared towards the production of the good or service for which the business owner is skilled, without thought to records management, resource organisation and allocation, key performance indicators to monitor and measure growth, and a blueprint for business development and expansion. The absence of these processes and systems to ensure a viable and profitable business will result in the firm being stunted, uncompetitive, undercapitalised, resourced constrained and unsustainable. The outcome is usually the closure of the business or limited operation for a finite period.
Understandably the small business owner may not have the requisite skill set and may wish to consider the procurement of suitable competencies within the firm. Following a business plan for development, such personnel may be engaged through the hiring of staff, engagement of business advisors or through the establishment of a board of directors with members who have the relevant skills.
Similarly, public sector entities, business support organisations and the like, may wish to consider a suitable model which incorporates the appointment of management-trained and certified personnel as their chief functionaries. Persons with technical and vocational skills can be employed to lead business units based on the functional design of the workplace.
At a very minimum Koontz and O’Donnell’s functions of management – planning, organising, staffing, leading and controlling, should be understood and operationalised as an effective management framework. The five functions are:
Planning: setting objectives and determining a course of action for achieving those objectives.
Organising: developing an organisational structure and allocating human resources to ensure the accomplishment of objectives.
Staffing: acquiring, training, appraising, and compensating employees.
Leading: directing and motivating employees to work towards the objectives.
Controlling: monitoring and adjusting the performance of the organisation to ensure that it is on track to meet its goals.
Drucker once posited, ‘what gets measured gets done’. It is therefore an understanding of measurement as a key part of management, that will cause the competent manager to employ strategic planning and annual work plans with KPIs, in the management framework. Such persons will focus on establishing milestones for the organisation and systems to monitor organisational performance against the targets set. At the very basic level using the management framework of planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling, will help the executive manager to align the resources of the organisation against the set plans, establish methodologies for reporting on performance and set up systems to measure and control the performance of the organisation.
Far too often persons who are not qualified in management are thrust into management positions resulting in the poor performance of the institution and heightened dissatisfaction among internal and external customers. The small business owner must as an imperative focus on developing his/her management skills at a minimum and put systems in place to procure these competencies where there is a deficiency.
Other organisations across the state also need to examine this matter of management deficiency. There is too much dissatisfaction among consumers and too much wastage of resources in the country. Barbados is not producing at its optimum to realise economic growth and social gains. Effective management is key to the turnaround needed.
The Small Business Association of Barbados (www.sba.bb) is the non-profit representative body for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
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