In his book, Re-en­gi­neer­ing Man­age­ment, James Champy states: The re­sults are in: Re-en­gi­neer­ing works–up to a point. The ob­sta­cle is man­age­ment. The on­ly way we're go­ing to de­liv­er on the full promise of re-en­gi­neer­ing is to start re-en­gi­neer­ing man­age­ment. The prob­lem is, cur­rent Caribbean lead­ers will not ac­knowl­edge that lead­er­ship mod­els across the Caribbean are bad­ly bro­ken, let alone that they are the one who need reengi­neered mind­sets. Wit­ness again, the num­ber of times over the past two decades or more, that Caribbean lead­ers have been beat­ing their chests: "We need more co­op­er­a­tion; we need an­oth­er study; we need al­liances...we need...we need..."

As re­cent­ly as May 10, the share­hold­ers of Li­at met in An­tigua to "seek to fos­ter greater link­ages with the T&T-owned and -op­er­at­ed Caribbean Air­lines." That fa­mil­iar tune has been sung so many times that it's get­ting old and mean­ing­less...just more chest-beat­ing.On April 27, 2005, for­mer min­is­ter in the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, Ken Gor­don, wrote about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: "Our prob­lem (of crime) is not with a short­age of ideas or rec­om­men­da­tions. It is with the lack of po­lit­i­cal will, ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion, and stay­ing the course which have been our great­est fail­ures."Gor­don blamed the Gov­ern­ment, "which must ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this sit­u­a­tion" and "stop the vac­il­lat­ing and take de­ci­sive ac­tion while the sit­u­a­tion is still con­trol­lable."

We have a se­ri­ous lead­er­ship prob­lem across the Caribbean, not just with the Gov­ern­ment. Re­place the crime con­text with "Caribbean air trans­porta­tion", and "Gov­ern­ment" with "Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers", and we have a re­al­is­tic as­sess­ment of the pre­vail­ing sit­u­a­tion with air trav­el."Our prob­lem with Caribbean air trans­port is not with a short­age of ideas or rec­om­men­da­tions. It is with the lack of po­lit­i­cal will, ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion, and stay­ing the course which have been our great­est fail­ures. It is Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers who must ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this sit­u­a­tion and stop the vac­il­lat­ing and take de­ci­sive ac­tion while the sit­u­a­tion is still con­trol­lable."There has been a lot of talk, but no re­al sense of ur­gency about deal­ing with this is­sue.

San Juan Ac­cord

Does any­one know if there were any de­fin­i­tive ac­tions im­ple­ment­ed af­ter the San Juan Ac­cord, held on Oc­to­ber 19, 2007? There were ten pro­pos­als from that meet­ing:

1. Ac­cel­er­ate the re­vi­sion of the Cari­com Mul­ti­lat­er­al Air Ser­vices Agree­ment (MASA);

2. Con­vene a fo­rum of CTO tourism min­is­ters and Min­is­ters re­spon­si­ble for air trans­port, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er re­lat­ed mat­ters to ex­am­ine ways and means of har­mon­is­ing air trans­port pol­i­cy in the con­text of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of Caribbean tourism;

3. Es­tab­lish a CTO-wide um­brel­la pol­i­cy for air trans­port with­in the frame­work of the ex­ist­ing As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean States Mul­ti­lat­er­al Air Trans­port Agree­ment;

4. In­ten­si­fy ef­forts to­wards the cre­ation of a sin­gle re­gion­al air space with­in sub-re­gion­al group­ings, such as Cari­com by Sep­tem­ber 30, 2008;

5. Urge the Re­gion­al Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Over­sight Sys­tem (RA­SOS) or suc­ces­sor agency to con­sid­er the fea­si­bil­i­ty and pro­ce­dur­al re­quire­ments of cre­at­ing a sin­gle re­gion­al air space;

6. Fur­ther lib­er­al­i­sa­tion of, where re­quired, air ser­vice agree­ments (ASAs) with key in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, such as the Eu­ro­pean Union and the Unit­ed States;

7. Re­in­force mea­sures to fa­cil­i­tate the move­ment of in­ter­na­tion­al and in­tra-re­gion­al pas­sen­gers in the Caribbean;

8. Pro­mote in as­so­ci­a­tion with ex­ist­ing re­gion­al air­lines, en­hanced func­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion geared to­wards im­prov­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy of those air­lines and ip­so fac­to their prof­itabil­i­ty and re­duced de­pen­dence on gov­ern­ments' fi­nan­cial and oth­er sup­port;

9. En­cour­age the sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of the air trans­port op­er­a­tions by em­brac­ing new tech­nolo­gies, as pro­posed by IA­TA, which would con­tribute to­wards greater ef­fi­cien­cy, im­proved cus­tomer ser­vice and cost sav­ings;

10. Un­der­take a study on the com­pet­i­tive­ness of the Caribbean's air trans­port sec­tor for the con­sid­er­a­tion of the Fo­rum of CTO Tourism Min­is­ters and Min­is­ters re­spon­si­ble for Air Trans­port, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er re­lat­ed mat­ters.

Fail­ing to act

To an­swer the ques­tion about what has been done fol­low­ing the San Juan Ac­cord: ab­solute­ly noth­ing. In fact, in Jan­u­ary of 2011, Alec San­guinet­ti, di­rec­tor gen­er­al of the Caribbean Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion, was harsh­ly crit­i­cal of Caribbean lead­ers for their fail­ure to act on the San Juan Ac­cord.Let me re­peat what Dr Ralph Gon­salves, Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and out­go­ing chair­man of the con­fer­ence of heads of gov­ern­ment, said at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 28th meet­ing of the con­fer­ence of heads of gov­ern­ment of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) on Ju­ly 2, 2007:"It is in my view an act of ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, for any gov­ern­ment to stand askance from re­gion­al so­lu­tions to the prac­ti­cal is­sues of in­tra-re­gion­al air trav­el. More­over, it is en­tire­ly con­trary to the let­ter and spir­it of the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment."Are the failed air­line ghosts of the past to rule us from their graves? Do we not have the con­fi­dence in our abil­i­ty as the chil­dren of an au­then­tic Caribbean civil­i­sa­tion, to fash­ion a re­gion­al air­line so­lu­tion in our peo­ple's in­ter­ests?"

I'm not about to lay out a strate­gic plan here, but here are some ideas for im­me­di­ate ac­tion if, that is, is­land lead­ers are se­ri­ous about demon­strat­ing po­lit­i­cal will to break the cy­cle of in­er­tia and act now. A fore­warn­ing to crit­ics. If you must crit­i­cise, then let's use a process of cre­ative de­struc­tion. You can rip these ideas apart; on­ly if you sug­gest ways to im­prove them.

Time to act

Step 1: Is­land lead­ers pub­licly and clear­ly af­firm a com­mit­ment to act. Time­frame: im­me­di­ate.

Step 2: Is­land lead­ers ap­point an in­te­gra­tion spon­sor­ship team. Time­frame: three to six months.

This high-pow­ered team will com­prise sev­en high-lev­el de­ci­sion-mak­ers; three rep­re­sent­ing re­gion­al gov­ern­ments, two rep­re­sent­ing the re­gion­al air­line in­dus­try, and two rep­re­sent­ing the re­gion­al tourism in­dus­try.

The team will be em­pow­ered by agree­ment from all is­land po­lit­i­cal lead­ers to:

�2 Act on be­half of all is­land gov­ern­ments on is­sues of a "one Caribbean car­ri­er"

�2 Be the ul­ti­mate de­ci­sion-mak­ers for all in­te­gra­tion ef­forts

�2 Cre­ate an in­te­gra­tion mas­ter plan (phased/pri­ori­tised ap­proach to the San Juan Ac­cord) for ap­proval by is­land gov­ern­ments

�2 Guide and mon­i­tor im­ple­men­ta­tion of the mas­ter plan

�2 Re­port reg­u­lar­ly to is­land gov­ern­ments on progress to­ward in­te­gra­tion

�2 Com­mu­ni­cate on a reg­u­lar ba­sis with con­stituents in all is­lands on progress to­ward in­te­gra­tion.

Com­plex is­sues

The ele­phant (San Juan Ac­cord) is a com­plex se­ries of is­sues. The pre­ced­ing two steps are manda­to­ry pre­req­ui­sites to im­ple­ment­ing some­thing so com­plex (eat the ele­phant one small bite at a time); if this is the ele­phant Caribbean lead­ers want to chew on.It is ur­gent that Caribbean po­lit­i­cal lead­ers stop mak­ing "a re­gion­al air­line" a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball. It's time for Caribbean politi­cians to ei­ther put up by cre­at­ing the right en­vi­ron­ment for trans­for­ma­tion once and for all, or shut up. But let me be very de­fin­i­tive. We can­not re-en­gi­neer air­line busi­ness process­es with­out first re-en­gi­neer­ing lead­er­ship. To a large ex­tent, this means find­ing and in­stalling com­pe­tent lead­ers who are not en­cum­bered by crony­ism or past be­hav­iours and prac­tices.So, what say you, is­land lead­ers? The ball's in your court.

Pe­ter Berke­ley is a na­tion­al of T&T, an in­ter­na­tion­al man­age­ment con­sul­tant, and af­fil­i­ate fac­ul­ty at In­di­ana Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty's School of Busi­ness and Lead­er­ship. You can reach him at: pe­ter@tiad.us

Sep­tem­ber 30, 1999 (Trinidad) Call for an al­liance be­tween air­lines

March 6, 2000: (An­tigua) BWIA to run Li­at: Strug­gling air­line could be­come 'feed­er car­ri­er'

June 5, 2001: (An­tigua, Li­at) Cullen re­peats call for air­line co-op­er­a­tion

De­cem­ber 20, 2001: (Trinidad) BWIA, LI­AT join forces

No­vem­ber 2, 2002: (Trinidad) Man­ning calls for re­gion­al air­line

No­vem­ber 5, 2002: (Bar­ba­dos) Lynch: Caribbean must aim for a re­gion­al car­ri­er

No­vem­ber 6, 2002: (Ja­maica) 'Butch' says no to re­gion­al air­line

No­vem­ber 13, 2002: (Trinidad) Re­gion­al gov­ern­ments warn they will on­ly sup­port one re­gion­al car­ri­er

No­vem­ber 22, 2002: (Ja­maica) Drums beat for in­te­gra­tion–Caribbean air­lines urged to unite

No­vem­ber 27, 2002: (Caribbean) Ja­maica/US 'open skies' agree­ment

Jan­u­ary 9, 2003: (Trinidad) BWIA wants co-op­er­a­tion, not sin­gle re­gion­al car­ri­er

De­cem­ber 23, 2004 (Trinidad): Man­ning: BWIA and Li­at could be closed with­in a month to make way for a re­gion­al air­line

Jan­u­ary 14, 2005 (Trinidad) Val­ley: Merg­er plans be­tween BWIA and Li­at put on hold