Cri­sis, chal­lenges and dif­fi­cul­ties are an in­evitable part of life. They are op­por­tu­ni­ties to learn and grow. What mat­ters is the per­spec­tive, to use the chal­lenges as learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to avoid re­peat­ing the mis­takes in the fu­ture.

All hu­man sys­tems and or­gan­i­sa­tions will face crises, chal­lenges and dif­fi­cul­ties. Their abil­i­ty to over­come them usu­al­ly rests on the shoul­ders of many, not one. Hence the rea­son why cor­po­ra­tions train their staff in team build­ing, change man­age­ment, man­age­ment and lead­er­ship. Ro­bust sys­tems and ef­fi­cient process­es en­sure con­ti­nu­ity and are of­ten not enough to ad­dress cri­sis mo­ments. Crises re­quire the emer­gence of a leader who can ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion by pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary fix­es to in­spire trust and con­fi­dence. A hu­man voice de­ter­mines how the cri­sis is ad­dressed and whether the or­gan­i­sa­tion em­braces re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and learns or de­vel­ops from the cri­sis/op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Lead­ers in gov­ern­ment or busi­ness must of­ten fight fires, as op­posed to strate­gic mat­ters. Few peo­ple un­der­stand the strate­gic is­sues but if the fires are not ex­tin­guished, they can af­fect the big­ger pic­ture. When a cri­sis oc­curs, the pub­lic ex­pects a leader to ex­plain, to ac­count or to be held ac­count­able. This is im­por­tant, as it helps not on­ly in un­der­stand­ing what, how and when things went awry but al­so where in­ter­ven­tions are need­ed to ad­dress ma­te­r­i­al de­fi­cien­cies. All of these are price­less and nec­es­sary to en­sur­ing trust and con­fi­dence in the or­gan­i­sa­tion, its sys­tems and its lead­ers.

The han­dling of the Paria Fu­el div­ing tragedy, the deaths of pre­ma­ture ba­bies at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s NICU (in­volv­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble group in the so­ci­ety), breach­es of cus­tomer da­ta at TSTT, a mys­tery ship cre­at­ing eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter in To­ba­go, and the con­tin­u­ing vi­o­lent crime, were all op­por­tu­ni­ties to demon­strate au­thor­i­ty, lead­er­ship and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. In­stead, the pub­lic was treat­ed to dis­tance, de­flec­tion and de­nial by those who elect­ed to lead and take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Plat­form rhetoric, probes, in­ves­ti­ga­tions, and com­mis­sions of en­quiry all have a pur­pose and role. La­belling crit­ics as un­pa­tri­ot­ic is as un­ac­cept­able as blam­ing the pub­lic and the me­dia for ask­ing ques­tions and seek­ing an­swers. If the health­care sys­tem is amongst the best, then its record should speak for it­self. The re­al­i­ty is that the State and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials set stan­dards in law and prac­tice for pri­vate en­ti­ties and the pub­lic that they can­not at­tain in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties.

The cur­rent co­hort of po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and those as­pir­ing to lead must un­der­stand that the pub­lic will on­ly have trust and con­fi­dence in the sys­tem when the pub­lic has con­fi­dence in those who lead, man­age and rep­re­sent the or­gan­i­sa­tions. If the pub­lic does not have con­fi­dence in their abil­i­ty to give us straight an­swers with prin­ci­ple and in­tegri­ty, how can the pub­lic have faith in the sys­tems and or or­gan­i­sa­tions they lead? Telling the pub­lic that it could have been worse is mis­lead­ing at best or play­ing smart with fool­ish­ness. It could have been bet­ter al­so!

As the elec­tion cam­paign heats up, the me­dia and the pub­lic must be more dis­cern­ing. If our lead­ers and man­agers are falling short, we must en­sure that they are held to ac­count, whether they be­long to the red or yel­low team. The pub­lic and tax­pay­ers should not be spend­ing mil­lions to di­ag­nose the same prob­lems in­stead of pre­vent­ing their re­oc­cur­rence. That is not good man­age­ment but mad­ness.