Theo Fer­gu­son

To­day I want to ad­dress those of you who hold se­nior po­si­tions in the pub­lic ser­vice and in the many state-con­trolled or state-owned or­gan­i­sa­tions in T&T.I do so against a back­ground in which your voic­es as pro­fes­sion­als have be­come in­creas­ing­ly silent over the last two decades, as politi­cians seem to have emerged as the "ex­pert" and opin­ion­at­ed voic­es on the wide range of tech­ni­cal mat­ters that fall with­in your realm of ex­per­tise.You seem to be los­ing your place as lead­ers of the pub­lic ser­vice. You need to recog­nise that your ob­jec­tive and pro­fes­sion­al voic­es are crit­i­cal to the sus­tained de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try.Most of you are high­ly trained pro­fes­sion­als-ex­perts at what you do. You are the cream of the crop and you have risen to the top of the pub­lic ser­vice sys­tem. You are among the best that T&T has pro­duced. Hence, you are im­por­tant peo­ple hold­ing re­spon­si­ble po­si­tions.

But, do you al­ways re­mem­ber the tens of thou­sands that you are ex­pect­ed to serve eq­ui­tably, many of whom are poor and pow­er­less and who look to you to make a dif­fer­ence in their lives and in the lives of their chil­dren? Have you been mak­ing a dif­fer­ence to the lives of the peo­ple? Or have you been more con­cerned with your own self-in­ter­est and/or the self-in­ter­est of the politi­cians and po­lit­i­cal par­ties that you per­son­al­ly favour?As se­nior ex­ec­u­tives you are ex­pect­ed to man­age peo­ple in your unit in ad­di­tion to the tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial re­sources that the peo­ple of T&T and its de­vel­op­ment part­ners in the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ties have placed at your dis­pos­al.Your fair man­age­ment of these re­sources is in­tend­ed to have one out­put-the de­vel­op­ment and im­prove­ment of the so­cial and eco­nom­ic wel­fare of the peo­ple of T&T. The ex­tent to which you are able to do this is the re­al mea­sure of your suc­cess and the suc­cess of your or­gan­i­sa­tion, min­istry or de­part­ment.

Your suc­cess has very lit­tle to do with writ­ing and pro­duc­ing nice glossy re­ports, de­liv­er­ing fan­cy speech­es, trav­el­ling over­seas, or hob­knob­bing with the po­lit­i­cal elite, the busi­ness elite, the diplo­mat­ic elite and the in­tel­li­gentsia. These are just de­tails along the way to your ul­ti­mate ser­vice out­put-the de­vel­op­ment of the peo­ple of T&T.Why are you in your job? Is it be­cause of the salary, the pow­er and the priv­i­leges that you now en­joy? Is it be­cause of the glam­our and na­tion­al sta­tus that come with your po­si­tion? Is it be­cause of your po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion? Or is it be­cause you have a gen­uine in­ter­est in do­ing what you are be­ing paid to do, be­cause it co­in­cides with your own deep per­son­al in­ter­est and your own life's pur­pose?Are you bored and per­haps on­ly pre­tend­ing to be in­ter­est­ed, while slow­ly count­ing the days to your re­tire­ment, al­though you may have many more years of ser­vice? Are you an in­spi­ra­tion to oth­ers?I ask these ques­tions not to em­bar­rass you, but rather to help bring a sense of re­al­i­ty to your own per­son­al sit­u­a­tion and to help you to bet­ter see who you are in re­la­tion to what you are do­ing and what your coun­try ex­pects of you.I am pos­i­tive that as hu­man be­ings you are all good peo­ple. Al­so, I am sure that every one of you has a deep de­sire to do some­thing won­der­ful in your life. But does this in­clude mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion to the up­lift­ment of the peo­ple of T&T?

Are you meet­ing your own per­son­al ex­pec­ta­tions? Are you liv­ing in keep­ing with your own per­son­al val­ues? If not, you may be fail­ing to lead your­self and to pro­vide the lead­er­ship that is ex­pect­ed of you. As man­agers you en­joy the pow­er of hold­ing ex­ec­u­tive lev­el po­si­tions. This gives you the au­thor­i­ty to plan, di­rect, al­lo­cate and con­trol the use of re­sources un­der your con­trol.Fur­ther, as man­agers you are ex­pect­ed to run your var­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions, min­istries and de­part­ments in keep­ing with the es­tab­lished pub­lic ser­vice laws, rules, reg­u­la­tions and pro­ce­dures that have been put in place for ef­fi­cient man­age­ment and good gov­er­nance. When you break those rules you are like­ly to be rep­ri­mand­ed and dis­ci­plined ac­cord­ing­ly.In turn, you are ex­pect­ed to utilise the same rule-based ap­proach in man­ag­ing the re­sources un­der your con­trol. How­ev­er, al­though es­sen­tial, man­age­ment alone is not enough to build a great unit, a great de­part­ment or a great or­gan­i­sa­tion. It may stop your or­gan­i­sa­tion from falling apart, but it will not guar­an­tee or­gan­i­sa­tion­al suc­cess.

Be­ing a man­ag­er does not make you a leader, which is the gift that can on­ly be grant­ed to you by fol­low­ers. In fact, many man­agers are hope­less lead­ers. Take away their man­age­r­i­al po­si­tion and they sim­ply dis­ap­pear, of­ten with a cel­e­bra­to­ry cheer of "hap­py rid­dance" from those they were man­ag­ing but nev­er lead­ing.Lead­er­ship is about in­spir­ing peo­ple such that they will vol­un­tar­i­ly choose you as their leader be­cause they want to fol­low you.Great lead­ers in­spire oth­ers to will­ing­ly bring out the best in them­selves such that they be­come self-pro­pelling in their own de­vel­op­ment.Great lead­ers ig­nite the hu­man spir­it in oth­ers by ex­am­ple. They nat­u­ral­ly nur­ture and grow oth­ers as they help them to ful­fil their dreams.Great lead­ers build or­gan­isa-tions in which the en­er­gy of the peo­ple is di­rect­ed to­wards do­ing the work of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. They di­rect the en­er­gy of the or­gan­i­sa­tion in the de­vel­op­ment of peo­ple, rather than have such en­er­gy dis­si­pat­ed in try­ing to solve on­go­ing in­ter­per­son­al and most­ly self-de­feat­ing and non-pro­duc­tive con­flicts.It is through a com­bi­na­tion of both in­tel­li­gent man­age­ment and in­spir­ing lead­er­ship that great or­gan­i­sa­tions can be built. The T&T pub­lic sec­tor can on­ly be­come great when it is able to re­lease the lead­er­ship and cre­ative po­ten­tial in all its em­ploy­ees, but it must start with you. In turn, the pub­lic ser­vice can trig­ger the re­lease of the lead­er­ship and cre­ative po­ten­tial of the peo­ple of T&T as a whole.You all have the po­ten­tial to be great lead­ers, to build the T&T pub­lic sec­tor in­to a tru­ly great or­gan­i­sa­tion and to in­spire oth­ers to lead the de­vel­op­ment process in the pos­i­tive trans­for­ma­tion of the T&T so­ci­ety. Im­por­tant­ly, it be­gins with you. You are chal­lenged to re­claim your voice.