Business View - October 1999

RICHARD JOSEPH
GENERAL MANAGER,
CARIBBEAN BUSINESS SERVICES LIMITED

It would be very difficult to write any article on the eve of the millennium without slipping into a reflective mode followed by an assessment of what must done for us to be in a better position this time next year.

Considering our position earlier this year, who would have thought that our economic fortunes would have turned so quickly from nail biting desperation to a situation of relative comfort for many. As usual as soon as things improve we lose the focus and discipline that we start to develop in the harsh times, and continue to live life in our normal happy-go-lucky manner, confident that because God is Trinidadian, we will always muddle through. The events that are shaping the new economic order are inexorable however, despite the recent setback in Seattle, and we have to come to terms with them in a way which would allow us to feed our families and meet our needs in the not too distant future.

Simply put, in any occupation, whatever it may be, if we do not add value or make a meaningful contribution, sooner or later we will become 'unoccupied'. In the current circumstances, the measurement of the value we add, or the contribution we make, is no longer being made in comparison with our local environment, but with the wider international community as communication, transport and trade barriers come down.

In order to add value competitively there are three basic requirements: · An understanding of what has to be done · The capacity to do it · The Will to get it done

We put a lot of effort into analyzing problems and proposing solutions. Every event that is considered a problem, or generates strong conflicting views, is subject to intense investigation whether in the Press or by Government appointed Commissions of Inquiry. That many of them continue to repeat themselves, or manifest themselves in other ways, suggests that we have not as yet met Lloyd Best's challenge of "discerning our predicament" at a national level. If we do not understand our problems, we are very far away from developing lasting solutions, even though luck may, from time to time, make us believe that we are on the right path. Understanding what has to be done requires the application of focus and rigor, disciplines that we seldom use outside of Carnival.

Reviews of the changes that have taken place in our physical infrastructure over the last decade suggest that we have the capacity to achieve much. When we consider the challenges now being faced by the former components of the Eastern bloc, we can appreciate that however ineffective our institutions sometimes are, they are the basis for building a civil society.

Many of our key institutions though, have been seriously compromised during our extended period of lean economic times. Our Civil Service, Legal System and Police Service are showing the strain caused by lack of reinvestment in human resources, and if we are not careful, we will lose all that was built in previous decades.

Brian Lara's recent admission that the West Indies team had 'no guts' suggests that we do not always have the Will to get things done. We have two common attitudes that prevent us from achieving. One is that we feel that it is satisfactory if we do our best. Doing our best does not count if we do not get anything done. Another is a widespread feeling that we are entitled to receive benefits from the Government, Society at large, or God. This is just another way of avoiding taking responsibility for influencing the events that shape our lives.

It seems that while we have a lot of the requirements for success in place, we seem to be always falling short of achieving it on a sustainable basis. Where do we go from here? Should we continue to be lost in analysis paralysis while we consider what has to be done? Maybe we should just identify several problems to be fixed and fix them while the dialogue continues. With the limited resources we have at our disposal, it is probably ineffective to invest in large attention-grabbing events that have little follow up.

For the Business Community, two of the facilities that will go far toward strengthening our capacity to add value and compete are: · A well-designed, effectively administered legal framework to support commercial, including property transactions. · A well developed institutional infrastructure (Central Bank, Central Statistical Office, etc) which is capable of re-inventing itself to meet changing needs. Perhaps if we were to set modest goals that are achievable, we may learn how to get things done and meet our full potential.