Hilary Robertson-Hickling, Contributor
THE CURRENT impasse at Bernard Lodge Sugar Estate took me right back to the years 1978 and 1980 when I worked in one of Jamaica's largest experiments to effect change in the organisation's culture there. This experiment was the Sugar Worker's Cooperative which tried to change the structure, the productivity, the culture and legacy of plantation slavery in Jamaica. The need for culture change is as important at the national level as at the organisational level as the work of Carl Stone and Ken Carter demonstrates and many trade unionists and public and private sector owners, managers, employees and customers now must agree.
Our experience in the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century has indicated that all organisations that do not change to compete in the globalised world where competition is killing old monopolies, where customers will no longer be loyal to organisations which treat them with contempt, will die. Hence, organisations have had to be changing from bureaucratically-focused to customer-focused organisations.
What does this actually mean? We need to recognise that the standards by which we are judged and our performance measured are now international whether we are at the bank, the hairdresser or the police station. An airline that develops a reputation for lateness and cancellations of flights will soon be bankrupt. A failing school can no longer hide behind its problems, it must transform itself or students will walk with their feet. Many government departments are struggling with the process of modernisation and still are frustrating the customers by wasting time through long delays.
'OUR BREAD AND BUTTER'
Many employees and managers still have not recognised that customers have choices that they will exercise. A period of time managing my own business provided me with immediate feedback on the customers' levels of satisfaction with our services. When customers were dissatisfied I had to demonstrate to employees that this was 'our bread and butter' and that when we failed to deliver on customer expectations, the customers would simply take their business elsewhere.
As Jamaicans, our record of production of high-quality goods has been less than successful although there are exceptions. We have to compete in terms of the high quality services we provide and compete with our neighbours in the region and others across the world.
Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados have been demonstrating to us that we have been overtaken in providing financial services, in manufacturing and in other sectors and we seem to be taking a long time to learn. We have to address issues like the compensation of managers and employees which is not attached to actual performance. The 'bly culture', 'friend and company' and cronyism are great legacies of the old planter and later political hierarchies. Patronage, sexual harassment, extortion and other pathological features erode confidence in public and private institutions. More 'white collar criminals' need to go to prison for their misdeeds.
Accountability, good corporate governance need to become the norm. There is pilferage and fraud at every organisational level and we have to have the courage to transform the culture as the future depends on it.
Hilary Robertson-Hickling is a lecturer in the Department of Management Studies, UWI, Mona.
