Date: 2025-05-02 Page is: DBtxt003.php L0913-TVM-MMW-000033
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TrueValueMetrics ... Peter Burgess Manuscript
Making Management Work for Relief and Development |
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Chapter 33
People |
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People ... Human Resource
Make people an asset The best way to make a person valuable is to organize so that they have something valuable to do, and they can do it efficiently. People who are educated and healthy and unemployed doing nothing are of little socioeconomic value ... but give people like these an opportunity to work in a good organization and get paid for it, then there is a value. The success of the Marshal Plan in helping to rebuild Europe after World War II is explained in large part by the ability of the people to do a lot of the work. Provided there was some money, some food and some materials, people could put the society back together. There was a lot of red tape, but it was not doing planning as much as it was trying to be reasonable about the allocation of scarce resources. The speed of Europe's recovery, and especially Germany, was frequently referred to as a miracle. The world is full of good people Most of the people I know seem to be “good” people. Wherever I have worked (something like 60 countries) I have found people are good. But global society as a whole and the socio-economic situation is a disaster. There has to be a reason why good people do not have a more livable global society. Good people need income to pay their bills. To support their family, good people have to work and are constrained by the opportunities available. People often need to work in economic organizations where people have to do not so good things. Ethics and social responsibility are not the priority of most corporate enterprises. Their dominant stakeholders are the stockholders and a management elite that has much more interest in profit performance than anything else. In the relief and development sector, there are a lot of good, ordinary people who work hard and would willingly put themselves on the line to get good outcomes in an emergency. These people do get into the news from time to time as they work against all odds to mitigate the impact of disaster. I have become convinced that most people are good people at heart, in spite of outward appearances to the contrary, and some aberrant behavior from time to time. If people can be as successful being good as being obnoxious then there would be more people looking good, but sadly, being obnoxious is often the best way to get ahead. The challenge, then, is to give good people more of a shot at doing well. The possibilities for a person developing their full potential are severely constrained by a global system that puts little value on activities at the bottom of the pyramid that do not directly generate wealth for corporate stockholders. When good people meet bad systems Most of the people I know seem to be “good” people. Wherever I have worked (something like 60 countries) I have found people are good. But these good people are also stuck with systems and organizational cultures that they can do little to change. Good people get beaten by bad systems, bad processes, and ineffective organizations. They work in institutions that make it very difficult for them to perform well and get the best possible results. When it comes to day to day work these institutions are huge bureaucracies with all the problems associated with a big and clumsy bureaucracy. At the end of the day, people have top follow the organization's rules or lose their jobs. Developing opportunity People need opportunity, and not to be constrained by everything around them. The “south” needs to think through what its people are doing, can be doing and should be doing. Opportunity development is multi-faceted, and includes health, education and work opportunities. More resources need to reach people so that there is better health, better education and better jobs. There has been a lot of talk about empowerment, but it is not much about productive work that generates income and tangible socio-economic progress in the local community. Rather it is to do with political and organizational leadership which does not quickly or easily translate into food for the family. It is difficult to have constructive connections with people unless there is some organization, network or community to serve as a focus. The idea of “people to people” contact is good, but difficult to organize and manage. But it becomes more practical when there is community, network or organization also involved. There is considerable experience with networks and organizations, but rather less with communities, yet it is communities that are likely to be the most effective. Jobs ... gainful employment People need places to work where they get paid and do something of value. They need jobs. They need profitable ways of using their time. People have all sorts of skills ... there needs to be some sensible matching of skills with needs. Education can help, but it is the vocational rather than the academic that is probably the most use ... the practical rather than the theoretical. Though one of the biggest successes in relief and development over the past 40 years has been the increase in the number of the “educated” in the “south”, this has not been matched by an increase in the number of jobs. Because of better education, things are possible today in the “south” that could not have been reasonably contemplated a generation ago. But the number of people who are gainfully and productively employed is not enough. There are very large numbers of people who are either unemployed or underemployed ... and there are also people who are employed but unpaid. Making better use of people is a huge opportunity. Local people need opportunities to go to work and do something useful. Getting people in the “south” to do things that are needed by the “south” and valuable is, almost certainly, the biggest opportunity for the future. What someone does is not important, merely that what someone is doing should be of value to the family and the community. Workplace ethics There are ethical standards that needed to be remembered. Some trade-offs are appropriate, but some are not. For example: low wages can be a good thing, in so far as international investment might be attracted to areas where low wage rates apply, and therefore there are new jobs and a step further towards economic progress. High wages are better than low wages as long as the jobs are created. High wages and no jobs is not a better alternative. Bad and abusive working conditions ... especially unsafe working conditions are universally wrong. Jobs where employees are being injured, or are getting killed are worse than no jobs, and should be condemned. Workplace Safety Early in my career I saw the problem of workplace safety. I was working in heavy engineering and the iron and steel industry and when things went wrong, somebody was frequently killed. It was a very unpleasant reality. Some years later I was working in large scale pulp and paper mill construction, and again, the unpleasant reality that accidents do happen and people do get killed. A constant effort to improve workplace safety has been very successful, and today safety is many times better than it was 30 or 40 years ago ... but accidents still do happen, and without constant vigilance the workplace could easily become much more dangerous again. In the “south” workplace safety is an issue. Improvement is needed, and there should be pressure for improvement, but pressure that reflects not only universal standards but also local community priorities and preferences. People organizations People organizations like trade unions have had a very important role in getting some balance between the greed of capital in the 19th century and the dignity and value of the worker. Eventually a strong middle class emerged in the “north” and the role of collective bargaining and the union diminished. There is still a huge role for organizations to advocate for better conditions for workers around the world. Respect for different skills One of the things I learned early in my working life was that it pays to have some respect for different skills and knowledge. People who do manual work deserve respect just as people who work in the executive suite. Anyone doing honest work deserves respect ... and deserves decent pay for the work. Some things never change. When I was young and knew it all, I was treated to a dose of reality that I still remember well. I had recently graduated with an engineering degree and was going through one of those management training programs that exposed you to all the activities of the company and the industry. I was working on the shop floor of an open hearth steel shop. I was given a shovel, and the simple task of shoveling a pile of manganese and a pile of chromium into the furnace. No big deal. The piles weren't very big. I soon finished the task. The old timers were clearly amused ... and in due course it was the end of the shift and everyone left for the day. That evening my left hand blew up like a balloon. It had been nicely roasted in the furnace cooking a little bit every time I threw the shovel at the furnace. The old timers knew to keep their left hand (I am right handed) away from the furnace, but I had no idea about this. My degree had its value, but it had not been enough to keep me out of trouble in the real world of making steel. The little experience taught me to look hard at what people are doing, and to respect other people's work and experience. I never take manual labor for granted. I learned that arrogance is not a valuable attribute, and can get you in a lot of trouble. This has a lot of relevance when one is trying to work in a foreign society with a different culture and way of doing things. Getting people organized - teamwork. People can do a lot when they are organized, and all pulling in the same direction. There is a lot of people energy wasted on disagreement and conflict. People will not put a lot of energy into doing something that they oppose ... but will put a huge amount of effort and energy into doing things that they want to be done. This is not a complex idea ... we see it everywhere. A refugee camp with a population of around 50,000 people was destroyed by an accidental fire. UNHCR, an organization I admire a lot, was faced with a challenge to get this population once again under shelter. The camp was already somewhat organized with section heads, and so forth. They immediately set about planning what to do about the crisis. Within 24 hours everyone was at work doing what they could towards a common effort. There was clean up after the fire. Collecting materials for the new houses (local wood, leaves for thatch, etc) and putting it all together. UNHCR was asked to provide a few things they could not provide for themselves ... mainly things like nails. In three weeks the camp was back to normal. Tiny cost to the external agency (UNHCR), a lot of local input and a huge value at the end of the effort. If this can happen in a refugee situation, I argue it can happen in any functioning community. When people have opportunity, they usually make good use of their abilities. But the most value usually comes when people are part of a team and the team acts together to do something of value. This leads to the question of how teams can be established and how people can organize to get things bigger done. How do you build teams? The better question is how do teams get built ... because a team that works is going to be one that has a natural birth. They can be encouraged, but they cannot be created from the exterior. People are the key engine for development People need ways to do what is essential for themselves and their family in an efficient way. If they have to, they will walk miles to get water, but why should they if, for example, the community can get itself organized with a well in the middle of the community. People will work long and hard to make just one dollar ... they would prefer to work long and hard for five dollars. This is a function of the efficiency of the work and the buying power of the community. People will walk long distances to get health care. They would prefer to walk a short distance, and not lose so much working time. People will have their children walk long distances to go to school, but would prefer it if the children could go to a school that is close by. People are often constrained by a lack of education and experience. Don't try to get people to do what they cannot reasonably be expected to do, but figure out what it is that they can do that is valuable, needs to be done and is worth paying for. Look for capability There are many competent people around the world who are not able to do very much of value because present organizational structures do not embrace merit very much. Competent people are doing good work, but at nothing like their full potential. I did a UN project evaluation in Benin, West Africa, in the late 1980s. I was assisted by a local consultant, and we were assigned a secretary. My French is solid working French, not very elegant, especially in a written form. My local colleague was helpful, but, frankly, not very strong. The secretary took our draft work in a mixture of English and French and turned it into a very professional piece of work. This lady was absolutely first class. She even made sense of a lot of numerical data and tables. She had a high school education, and had learned a lot by being interested in what was going on around her, but her “opportunities” were limited by the lack of “certificates” and, bluntly, her gender. If she had been in the United States she would have been at the top of a prestigious MBA class, and not doing a rather mundane secretarial job. In the Benin context she was doing well. She had a job and was being paid a reasonable wage in the international relief and development arena, but it was a fragile situation, with rather little security or mobility. People are a powerful latent force, but there has to be a framework for them to utilize their potential. Up to now there has not been much effort to think of people as the most valuable resources. Functional expertise Some of the many functions in an organization are: (1) management; (2) marketing; (3) accounting; (4) oversight; (5) internal audit; (6) audit; (7) risk management; (8) research; (9) human resources; (10) training; (11) fund raising; and, (12) program management. The departments of an organization are usually broken down along functional lines. There is a need for functional expertise in all areas so that organizations can operate well. In the “south” there is an increased amount of general education than in earlier times, but there is a lack of functional expertise and experience. In some cases, expertise may be of a technical nature and be applicable in only one sector, but in other cases expertise can be used in many sectors. Accounting ought to be present in every organization, no matter what type of organization or which sector. Many organizations in different sectors need people to drive trucks ... the trucking function is also part of the transport sector in its own right. An ambulance ... which is a functional operation in the health sector is also part of the transport sector. About Functions ... Professions I started to think in terms of functions when I was preparing data for a relational database that could be used for national planning and aid coordination in Namibia. I had already done a substantial amount of work on government accounting, data for national statistic and the like, as well as a considerable amount of project planning and project evaluation. In the corporate world, an organization's costs are usually broken down by department, and a department usually handles one of the functions of the organization ... manufacturing, sales and marketing, distribution, human relations, accounting, etc. I expected that doing the same in the relief and development sector, and in organization and projects working in the sector would be very interesting. There is very little material that has an explicitly functional focus ... it is subsumed into sectors, which works for engineering, and to some extent health, but does not work for professional activities like accounting and law. Few accountants consider themselves accountants to just one sector ... the professional of accounting applies with almost equal weight in every sector. How everyone can help ... a little bit There is a need for everyone to help. A small amount of help many times over works very well. Everybody should be doing something to help. Everyone can be a part of this. Planning becomes local and is not dominated simply by Soviet style Gosplan or the World Bank style equivalents. Planning is done in a “distributed mode” where people close to the problems identify priorities and how progress can be made. And people who are remote from the problems and can help have opportunities to build linkages that can assist in a practical manner. It is understandable that there are busy people who are fully committed to their work, their families and their social activities ... and already do more than their fair share in their own communities ... so cannot reasonably become engaged in helping the “south”. But they can help by ensuring in their day to day activities that they are not supportive of anything that is fundamentally wrong and doing socio-economic damage in the “south”. I was a member of the Africa Action Study Group (AASG) at St. James' Episcopal Church in New York for some few years. The church has been involved from time to time in substantial support to the church around the world, and especially in Africa, but compared to the wealth of New York, the help is still rather modest. At one point “action” was going to be writing to an oil company about its role in exploiting oil in Sudan, and its cooperation with the authorities in Khartoum who were also involved with a developing disaster in Darfur. Getting the letter drafted was relatively easy, but then getting someone to sign it was another matter ... there was the possibility that it might have repercussions on “business”. Professionals and business leaders, it seems to me, have to be willing to stand up so that what is wrong on Sunday at church, mosque, temple or synagogue stays wrong on the executive floors of business on Monday. People do everything, and the management information framework enables good value adding programs to flourish and those that destroy value to be identified and the responsible parties held accountable. Ordinary people can have an important impact wherever they are. When everyone is intolerant of global bad behavior, and is prepared to make just some modest action to make things right, there can be a sea change in relief and development performance. And the best brains of society and the business and financial community can also help. If the economic and financial crisis of the poor “south” was close to New York, or London or Paris, there would be a huge effort by the best and the brightest to solve the problem. These brains need to help figure out how latent opportunities in “south” communities can be exploited so that there are large sustainable socio-economic benefits. How does this get coordinated? Broadly speaking ... the less coordination the better. Sustainable development will perpetuate itself as soon as there are incentives that pull development, and decisions are made automatically ... organically, if you will ... by community groups. It is a distributed decision model. Data about performance should show progress, and alert the interested public about success and failure. To the extent that there are possibilities to improve outcomes, an oversight capability helps to get things back on course, or keep things on course. The data are made coherent by having a focus on people and community, and how all the other interactions result in making progress for people and for community. When there is good information about a community, it becomes reasonably clear what mix of activities are likely to be priority, and it is then possible to help a community based on priorities that are meaningful for the community, and then other communities and then more and more communities. |
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