Date: 2025-05-02 Page is: DBtxt003.php L0913-TVM-MMW-000015
|
TrueValueMetrics ... Peter Burgess Manuscript
Making Management Work for Relief and Development |
| HOME | Nav ... L0913-TVM-MMW-000000a | Last ... L0913-TVM-MMW-000014 | Next ... L0913-TVM-MMW-000016 |
|
Chapter 15
Organize ... and Implement |
|
Organize
Has almost universal application The organize step is the first reality check. We know what we want to accomplish, but in a real world, how can we do it and how to organize to do it. What resources are needed to do what needs to be done, and are they available? What needs to be done to make resources available. Are people available? Are they trained and experienced and how best to organize so that they will work effectively. Are we allowed to do what needs to be done? How to organize in order to satisfy laws, rules and regulations. Implementation is where all the resources come together in a way that produces results. People, organization, infrastructure, natural resources; machinery & equipment; working capital; money; and, knowledge all come together to make progress. Getting all of these things optimized to get the best results is not a simple matter, and trying to make progress when some of the important elements are missing or in very short supply is a big challenge. And no matter how well the planning has been and the organization, when the implementation takes place there will still be glitches. Good performance comes from addressed problems rapidly as they arise and fixing them so that they do not adversely affect the results. Nothing is accomplished until there is organization and implementation. Plans and designs are interesting, but not very valuable on their own. Someone has to pour concrete and do practical things so that value is created and progress made. People who are ill need to get treated to make them better. Students need to be in school and being taught. People need to go to work, get paid and do productive work. As soon as the work is started, watch closely and see what happens. In my experience more gets learned about everything we really need to know in the early days of implementation, and often things that would never come up in planning, almost no matter how well done. Good implementation managers know a lot of what needs to be known ... it is called experience. People, knowledge and money Amazing things can happen when people and knowledge and money are put together and there are common goals. When there is a culture of problem solving and of optimizing results the impact can be spectacular. It is surprising and of great concern that such spectacular results have not been achieved in the relief and development sector. There are important assets available: ➢ Good local people are many and they have local knowledge. ➢ Good international people have other knowledge that can be useful. ➢ And the world has money, though not yet mobilized to do much of international socio-economic good. When these three come together the results can be spectacular. Small activities can easily be done with very little organization and management and be very efficient. Other things needs to be done at a larger scale and with more planning and oversight. Some things are best organized on an even bigger scale at the national level. Everything should be done in the manner that is best for the particular effort. It is not only scale that varies. The mix of resources also changes from one situation to another. In order to get the best possible results, available resources should be used in the most efficient way. Human resources and natural resources are two key resources that should be used as effectively as possible for success in development. They are more abundant in the “south” than money and machinery, and should therefore be used in preference to money and machinery wherever possible. Money and machinery should be used to the minimum and to compliment locally available resources to achieve maximum value adding. What this suggests is that we should organize to empower a lot of people and organizations to make decisions, and then encourage people and organizations that seem to be getting it right and getting good results. This presupposes, of course, that there are metrics to identify good performance. Resources Performance depends on both process and resources. It is possible to get good results or bad results from available resources, but if there are no resources, there can be no results. The critical challenge for the relief and development sector is to understand what resources there are, and to use them in the best possible way. The main resource groups are described briefly below: (1) people; (2) organizations; (3) infrastructure; (4) natural resources; (5) knowledge; and, (6) money. Constraints must also be identified, understood and steps taken to mitigate their impact. People ... who need opportunities In almost all economic activity, people are a critical resources. But people are rather infrequently identified as an important resources, and in most developing countries, many people is seen as a problem rather than being an important abundant resource. There is a challenge is to make it possible for people to be an asset rather than a liability, both in their local community and for the larger economy, because there are all sorts of shortages or constraints. Opportunity and jobs are a key to prosperity. Many people who are poor are engaged in subsistence activities. People work hard and at the end of it are just surviving. Their productivity is as low as it can be. With lower productivity they would be dead. Jobs that help people move from subsistence to paid work is progress, even if the job is menial and not very inspiring. Infrastructure In the “south” the problems of infrastructure are widespread, and the pace of infrastructure improvement has been pathetic. Business must operate with what infrastructure there is rather than what it would be nice to have. Infrastructure helps to make a society productive, and helps to improve quality of life. In the “south” the lack of infrastructure is a serious constraint whether it is national scale infrastructure or local community infrastructure. ➢ What about roads, and railways, shipping and air transport. What about the vehicles and the services? ➢ What about electrical power, telecommunications and Internet? ➢ What about water and sewage? ➢ What about the education system, the schools and the knowhow? ➢ What about health system; the local clinics, the district hospitals, the trauma centers and teaching hospitals? I was involved in the building of a fish and shrimp processing plant in Nigeria at one point in my career. In the initial planning circa 1972 our company was going to be a tenant at the Koko port where the port infrastructure was excellent, and we merely had to install some refrigeration and processing equipment in existing buildings. Koko port needed our business and it was a good plan for everyone. But all this changed in 1973 with the oil crisis and a new world order. Koko port was taken back and we had to plan around a greenfield site with absolutely no infrastructure. I will not going into detail about getting title to a suitable site ... it was interesting. After that we had to put in docking facilities ... a quay in deep enough water for our trawlers to dock at all states of the tide, and build the cold stores and processing plant, and water treatment and effluent treatment facilities, and an electric generating plant ... absolutely everything we needed. To make it a bigger challenge, everything we needed had to be imported from half way round the world, which in itself is not too difficult if there are accessible ports, and the banking system works for letters of credit, and the customs authorities function effectively. Bottom line ... in the “south”, what should be easy is very challenging. But it can be done, and it is worth it. Organization The organization of society is complex and important. It also varies a lot from community to community. What seems to be the best way to organize for a company like Wal-Mart or McDonalds may well be absolutely the worst for an organization in the middle of Africa or South Asia. Organization and organizations in a community are very definitely assets. Things get done because of organization and organizations. Most substantial work requires a group of people, and groups have to be organized in some way. The organizations and institutions are an important aspect of socio- economic performance. They help determine how well an economy can operate. Factories and their machinery and equipment are important assets, and should be included in the understanding of resources. Business machinery and equipment is an essential for business employment, and business growth is frequently constrained because there is not enough machinery and equipment. Working capital is another important asset, and one that frequently constrains business growth. In order to grow a business needs adequate inventory and it often needs the ability to finance accounts receivable. If there are banking services, a business can cooperate with the bank to finance working capital, otherwise this has to be funded by the business owners. Natural Resources Natural resources ought to be a source of local wealth, but too often it appears that natural resources merely serve to enrich others. Local people give up very valuable rights for token payments simply because they have absolutely no understanding of what is at stake. ➢ What natural resources are in the neighborhood? ➢ What are the prevailing laws, rules and regulations concerning natural resources? ➢ What are the property rights associated with natural resources. Who owns them? When the facts about natural resources are available it becomes much clearer about who is benefiting from natural resource exploitation. Too often the local people are not seeing much value creation in their communities. What is the best way of creating value from natural resources? It is important to evaluate what the local resources are that can be used as an economic driver for the area. Unfortunately, far too often the natural resources are exploited in ways that make them a local liability and only an asset to foreign stakeholders. They are usually depleted without adequate thought to the future. The key is to find resources that can help improve the local economy in a way that is sustainable over the long-term. Knowledge. Without knowledge very little can get done. There is a huge pool of knowledge that has accumulated over the years, and it new knowledge is accumulating at a record pace. Relatively little of this knowledge is about matters that affect relief and development performance. Accordingly, there needs to be a focus on getting together knowledge that is of importance for success in socio-economic development, and especially knowledge that is useful in the community setting, whatever that is. Money Money is often identified as the constraint on socio-economic progress. There is a lot of talk about “not enough money” but from all I know about relief and development, the amount of money is not the problem, it is much more a problem of getting the money to the right place and doing the right things. Lack of money is both a cause of business failure and also a reason why business was never able to start. Money is a limiting factor in business and almost all economic activity, but it is not the most important determining factor for success. Money is needed to fund things like infrastructure, or machinery and equipment, or working capital, or payrolls ... all things that make it possible to carry on economic activities and for value creation to take place. But a lot more can be done with available money if there is a complete optimization of the use of all available resources and there is the best possible organization of all the resources. Constraints Constraints are the lack of any of these resources or anything else that gets in the way of progress. Understanding constraints is very important. Simply by removing a critical constraint, sometimes relatively easy and not very expensive, it is possible to release economic possibilities that are substantial. The same economic logic that works for profit planning in the corporate world also works in the economic dynamic of a community. A small bridge over a stream that cuts down everyone's travel to a market can be very valuable to everyone in the community ... not a really big investment, but a tremendous socio-economic value. |
| HOME | Nav ... L0913-TVM-MMW-000000a | Last ... L0913-TVM-MMW-000014 | Next ... L0913-TVM-MMW-000016 |