Busi­ness is not al­ways smooth sail­ing. Peo­ple change, as do their taste pat­terns and mar­ket con­di­tions. A busi­ness must adapt and re­shape its strat­e­gy to these chang­ing con­di­tions if it is to sur­vive.

As the say­ing goes, we can­not di­rect the wind, but we can ad­just our sails. There­fore, com­pa­nies down­size, re­struc­ture, or re­or­gan­ise as nec­es­sary, and this re­quires lead­er­ship and man­age­ment to ad­just the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

To­day, Ap­ple is the sec­ond-largest com­pa­ny in the world by mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion, with Mi­crosoft at num­ber one. Yet in 1996–1997, Ap­ple was close to fail­ure. Its fi­nances were so dire that Michael Dell, founder of Dell Cor­po­ra­tion, said that if he were the CEO, he would have shut it down and re­turned the mon­ey to share­hold­ers.

Ad­ver­si­ty makes strange bed­fel­lows.

Steve Jobs, who is cred­it­ed with the turn­around of Ap­ple, sought help and re­ceived $150 mil­lion in a cap­i­tal in­jec­tion from long-term ri­val Mi­crosoft.

The Ap­ple turn­around was based on re­launch­ing new prod­ucts (iMac, iPod, and iTunes) and a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to mar­ket­ing and sell­ing through its net­work of Ap­ple stores. By 2005, there were the iPod, the iPod Mi­ni, the iPad Nano, and the iPod Shuf­fle, in de­scend­ing size or­der.

That same year al­so saw the in­tro­duc­tion of the first iPod with video, along­side the abil­i­ty to buy movies and videos on iTunes.

The turn­around was com­plete, and a new fu­ture for the com­pa­ny had been in­vent­ed. Then came the iPhone. The rest is his­to­ry.

Not all cor­po­rate turn­arounds are as suc­cess­ful. Most fail af­ter a long strug­gle (Ko­dax, Sharp). Cost-cut­ting alone can­not res­cue a com­pa­ny.

The key task in a turn­around ex­er­cise is to grow the busi­ness or­gan­i­cal­ly, re­build­ing sales and mar­ket share while cut­ting costs. The busi­ness failed by do­ing what it was do­ing.

I can­not suc­ceed by do­ing the same thing. It must do things dif­fer­ent­ly. This re­quires chang­ing the busi­ness strat­e­gy. This, of course, is eas­i­er said than done. And a lot of peo­ple need to be con­vinced along the way.

Or­gan­i­sa­tions are run by peo­ple. Peo­ple make de­ci­sions and must im­ple­ment those de­ci­sions. To change the di­rec­tion of the com­pa­ny, it re­quires a change in cor­po­rate gov­er­nance at every lev­el. A key task of lead­er­ship is to co­or­di­nate the vi­sion and in­flu­ence peo­ple to make that vi­sion a re­al­i­ty.

Tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence is one part of the task. More im­por­tant is the abil­i­ty to con­vince peo­ple to en­able that vi­sion and to work to make that vi­sion a suc­cess. This in­volves com­mu­ni­ca­tion and change man­age­ment.

T&T is at a cross­roads, in need of some­thing like a cor­po­rate turn­around. The so­cial fab­ric is dis­tressed. The key en­er­gy and petro­chem­i­cal sec­tors are strug­gling.

The eco­nom­ic mod­el since 1974 has been to dis­trib­ute the rents de­rived from these two sec­tors to sup­port oth­er sec­tors with sub­si­dies in var­i­ous forms.

The pre­cip­i­tous de­cline in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion has un­der­mined this mod­el and re­quires a new ap­proach. Symp­to­matic of this de­cline is the in­abil­i­ty of the State to main­tain the same lev­el of sub­si­dies that the pop­u­la­tion has en­joyed in the past.

The ev­i­dence is clear. Nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion has been in de­cline since 2013. In­creased drilling ac­tiv­i­ty up to 2017 has not re­versed that down­ward trend.

The fail­ure of BPTT’s in­fill drilling pro­gramme in 2019 ex­ac­er­bat­ed that trend. The new con­tract prices ne­go­ti­at­ed be­tween NGC and nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­ers (BP, Shell EoG) have al­tered the eco­nom­ics of the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor and low­ered for­eign ex­change earn­ings and tax rev­enues.

The chron­ic for­eign cur­ren­cy short­age is a symp­tom of the dif­fi­cul­ties. Ru­mours that BP is in dis­cus­sion with Peren­co re­gard­ing the di­vest­ment of its Amher­s­tia, Cashima, and Im­mortelle as­sets are im­por­tant de­vel­op­ments in the sec­tor, over which T&T has no con­trol.

The GORTT’s rev­enue mod­el has stalled. It can­not af­ford the petrol, elec­tric­i­ty, wa­ter, and pub­lic hous­ing sub­si­dies while main­tain­ing oth­er trans­fers at the cur­rent lev­el.

This has been ob­vi­ous since 2014 when the Gov­ern­ment used NGC div­i­dends to fund re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­tures. Pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture ef­fi­cien­cies, if pos­si­ble, are not enough to meet the ex­pen­di­ture de­mands.

What is re­quired is the equiv­a­lent of a cor­po­rate turn­around. How to grow the oth­er eco­nom­ic sec­tors and their ex­ports? This is not a short-term ex­er­cise and has been a con­tin­u­ing task since in­de­pen­dence, with vary­ing lev­els of suc­cess.

This was the ar­gu­ment be­hind Carif­ta, then Cari­com, and now CSME. It was the idea be­hind Vi­sion 2020 and then Vi­sion 2030. These are all grand ideas, but they need con­sid­er­able ef­fort to take ac­tion and im­ple­ment them. What is mea­sured gets man­aged.

Who is re­port­ing on the progress in im­ple­ment­ing the ob­jec­tives con­tained in these plans?

Busi­ness lead­ers keep share­hold­ers in­formed of their plans and ob­jec­tives and in­spire con­fi­dence by demon­strat­ing per­for­mance.

Man­ag­ing an econ­o­my re­quires the same con­fi­dence-build­ing mea­sures.

To win the sup­port of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, the GORTT should do every­thing to en­sure that the State is re­gard­ed as a re­li­able busi­ness part­ner.

De­lay­ing VAT and tax re­funds for years and pay­ing sup­pli­ers late do not pro­vide a base for the turn­around of the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic for­tunes.