Imagine you own a company with a sizeable number of employees that work for you. To make things simple and convenient you decide you will not deal directly with your employees, so you select three managers to manage them. The three selected managers directly report to you and there is constant contact among you’ll, so as to achieve the company goals. Although each and every employee is not directly under you, a system is put in place whereby you are able to monitor every employee’s performance indirectly through these designated managers. Due to your preoccupation in other businesses you start delegating additional powers to these managers so you can free up more of your time.
So that everything goes according to your plan, you have taken the trouble to write a vision and mission statement, that will drive your company and most procedures are written down as part of a standard procedure manual, to make sure every employee knows his role and duties in the company. Although the three designated managers are the immediate boss for the rest of the employees, you make sure you still remain the big boss. Everything seems to go smoothly and as per plan, or so you think. But one day while reviewing the financials, you are caught completely off guard with a surprising underperformance of the company. The profitability has seen negative growth and there is high employee attrition.
You dig deep to find out the reasons of the underperformance, apparently one of your designated manager was stealing from the company in the form of inflated purchase bills, hence the company took a direct hit on the bottom line. The second manager instead of taking the first manager to task for his theft was busy abusing his powers by drafting silly rules so as to indirectly control every employee’s personal food habits, by making sure they cook and eat according to his whims and fancies and reward only those who fall in line. That spoiled the work atmosphere in the company, hence the high employee attrition rate. The third manager just kept shouting and instigating employees against the other two managers and made sure fighting is always on in the company, even on petty matters, such as, who owns the broom that was supposed to keep the company clean, hence more turmoil in the company which reflected on the results.
As long as all three managers were having a ball, none of them really bothered about the company or tried to make you aware of the worsening situation. But financials had to catch up someday, as there was no hiding there. You confront all the three managers, point out to them that none of the actions committed by them were stated in the company vision or mission statements or in the work procedure manual. You sack all the three permanently with minimum fuss to and get the next best three candidates which you had already lined up as part of the company succession plan. You also realize your mistake of overlooking and trusting these three managers for too long, but take corrective measures, make sure they never come near your company and save the company from going bust.
All this was possible because although you gave your manager’s powers to perform, you made sure you remain the Big Boss. You were able to detect underperformance and take corrective measures just by reviewing the financials, because numbers always tell you more than thousands of pages of prose. This could be achieved at a swift pace only because you believed in keeping the power with you; the power to choose, the power to check performance, the power to keep things simple, the power to discard and the power to make sure everybody works within the parameters set. To top it all, you designed sufficient checks and balances to detect slightest shortfall in performance. The managers were exposed because their baloney directly affected the company performance.
If a scenario like the above is possible in managing a company then why can’t that same logic apply to politicians that manage Goa? Why don’t we treat them like employees working for you, and select people that will only tow your line. Unfortunately for that to happen, Goans will have to change their mindset big time, from a slave mentality to a boss mentality. A boss that will demand work instead of getting carried away by false aura built around politicians. This is not to suggest that all Goans possess the slave mentality, but a sizeable number have made it their business. A boss mentality is very vital in a democracy because it invariably keeps politicians on their toes, they become attentive that the boss is always watching his performance, while in a slave mentality mindset, politicians usually get away making lousy statements so as to change the subject, performance be dammed. It’s a shame that in recent so called modern times, politicians are allowed with deafening silence to make statements that are polarizing Goa. It can only mean two things; either the slave mentality has prevailed so there is no contradictory argument or politicians are deliberately allowed to alter the vision and mission statements after taking up the job.
Politicians have survived and thrived because slave mentality has prevailed in India in general and Goa in particular. The Generation Past Goans are just unable to come to terms that most government work can be done without any politician’s intervention, hence the rush at politician’s homes for trivial tasks. But there is light at the end of the tunnel, the mindset is changing at least at the Generation Next level. Here’s why; there is a local channel that broadcasts a program whereby the host goes about in college campuses asking general knowledge questions. Most questions are like, who is the power minister of Goa. Really, should the Generation Next be adding this kind of information as part of their general knowledge? What is pleasing is that most college students are completely unaware of the answer. The host finds it amusing when he catches people unaware of the answer little knowing that it is this type of content that borders down to outright brain-washing and preparing slave mentality among the Generation Next. If politicians have their way, they will even include names of their pet cats and dogs as part of general knowledge. Let’s focus on preparing the Generation Next Goans to think as the Big Boss, and not program them to get swayed by so called tall leaders.
(Plastino D’Costa is a business consultant)
