Sometime back, we wrote about one of the most horrify ing crimes Britain had ever seen.
In the English town of Ipswich, five women had been senselessly murdered. All had one thing in common, apart from being victims of a sadistic maniacal killer — they were all hard drug users — addicted to narcotic substances like cocaine and heroine. And in order to fund their expensive but unbreakable habit, they all turned to the one thing that women in desperate situations have sometimes resorted to over the ages — selling themselves for cash.
Although all of them had once been normal young ladies — with a few even coming from privileged backgrounds — their situations had invariably led them to prostitute themselves just to support their addictions. Addictions that, in the end, eventually cost them their lives.
Just this week, justice was finally served on the perpetrator of this most heinous of crimes. A forklift truck operator by the name of Steve Wright has been found guilty by a jury of his peers, and is expected to be sentenced to life, without possibility of parole.
Or possibly — not.
Because in the United Kingdom today, the subject of crime has become what many hardliners and conservatives would call “kindergarten justice” – where criminals, including even the most violent ones, often get away with literally just slaps on the wrist.
Mr. Wright’s offence, however, is something else entirely.
In a show of anger that seems quite out of character with British stoicism, calls for the restoration of the death penalty have come from many quarters, including those who have in the past been quite liberal in terms of their attitudes towards criminals and their punishment.
In this instance, people feel that the gravity of the offences ought to merit something that is beyond the normal range of sentencing norms — a price that the perpetrator should feel is the just retribution for his act — and that should equate the callousness and cold-blooded nature of his crimes with the severity of the punishment. And in a lot of people’s minds, he ought to pay with his own life, just as he had taken those of his victims’.
Reinstating the death penalty in Britain, however, is a feat that is perhaps as difficult to achieve as abolishing the monarchy, though ironically it was the latter who had used the former to such effect in ensuring that its subjects stayed in line and obeyed their majesties’ every word and command.
Modern Britain, and indeed much of Western society, now believes that the answer to preventing crime is rehabilitating, not punishing the criminal. In today’s view of the criminal mind, the main motivations seem to be more circumstances beyond the criminal’s control, such as poverty, child abuse, social neglect, drug abuse, and mental illness.
There is very little room for believing that perpetrators are genuinely aware of their crimes, and take pleasure from committing it. In many people’s minds, the criminal is as much a victim of his crime as the actual victim is.
But could this view to the origins of crime really be sustainable? And could this attitude in fact deter criminals from perpetrating their dastardly deeds on the rest of us in society?
Time will tell. For in the West today, many are increasingly of the belief that society’s lax attitudes towards criminals and criminality is partly to blame for helping to fuel the rise in violent crime that seems to have become the biggest scourge of our time.
Published in the Sun Star Daily, Saturday, February 23, 2008
Saturday, 23 February 2008
Saturday, 9 February 2008
Are You Ready For This?
NO, it’s not an excerpt from the Queen song.
I am referring to the path-breaking choice that Americans may have to make in the presidential elections in November.
Never has the world’s most powerful democratic nation been confronted with as unprecedented a choice — in fact two choices — at least concerning one half of the electoral process.
Would they elect a white woman or a black man to the presidency of the most influential nation on earth?
Never before have the gender and color barrier ever been breached in the contest for the American presidency. The Rev. Jesse Jackson tried and failed to secure his party’s nomination for the presidency, and Geraldine Ferraro, although managing to gain her party’s confidence, was only running for the post of vice president.
But a woman or a black man for the highest elected post in perhaps all of the world? Is America ready for this? Is the world even ready for this?
All the way from George Washington to George W. Bush — 43 presidents and 212 years later — there has never been a person of color of any gender or a female person of any color who has managed to occupy the highest office of the land. And even that exclusive club is limited still.
White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs), with the exception only of a few with Irish-Catholic roots, have tended to keep the office of the presidency as a virtual monopoly for themselves.
Only the Americans themselves can really say if they are ready. As a shining beacon of hope, democracy and liberty to the rest of the world, is the nation finally at a stage where it can actually practice what it has preached for so long?
Oh yes, indeed. We forget that among America’s nation-students, many have already breached the gender or color barriers long ago. Even a conservative male-dominated Moslem country has had Benazir Bhutto as prime minister, and an ethnically more homogenous Peru has elected a Japanese-Peruvian, Alberto Fujimori, as its president.
But in America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where women and persons of color have enjoyed success in almost any field of endeavor, the long line of almost exclusively WASPs has remained unbroken — that is until this year’s election rolls along.
The Democratic Party will certainly break the mould first, for the first time nominating a candidate belonging to either category as its standard bearer for the electoral contest. Because apart from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, everyone else in the party has put away his or her presidential ambitions on hold, at least for another four years.
But the bigger question remains — can America go all the way and break the mould as a nation, by choosing whoever it is that the Democrats put up for the public vote?
It all remains to be seen, of course, because America today is saddled with a host of serious problems that have neither to do with race nor gender. Its economy is badly in need of rejuvenation, and issues of security continue to haunt its collective consciousness — both problems which Democrats have not been known to be very good at solving, apart perhaps from the Clinton years being economically prosperous times for the nation.
But the implications for America will be significant if it does go ahead and break new ground. For it will give the rest of the world the unequivocal message that all of us — black or white, male or female — are truly equal as people on this earth.
Published in The Sun Star Daily, Saturday, February 09, 2008
I am referring to the path-breaking choice that Americans may have to make in the presidential elections in November.
Never has the world’s most powerful democratic nation been confronted with as unprecedented a choice — in fact two choices — at least concerning one half of the electoral process.
Would they elect a white woman or a black man to the presidency of the most influential nation on earth?
Never before have the gender and color barrier ever been breached in the contest for the American presidency. The Rev. Jesse Jackson tried and failed to secure his party’s nomination for the presidency, and Geraldine Ferraro, although managing to gain her party’s confidence, was only running for the post of vice president.
But a woman or a black man for the highest elected post in perhaps all of the world? Is America ready for this? Is the world even ready for this?
All the way from George Washington to George W. Bush — 43 presidents and 212 years later — there has never been a person of color of any gender or a female person of any color who has managed to occupy the highest office of the land. And even that exclusive club is limited still.
White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs), with the exception only of a few with Irish-Catholic roots, have tended to keep the office of the presidency as a virtual monopoly for themselves.
Only the Americans themselves can really say if they are ready. As a shining beacon of hope, democracy and liberty to the rest of the world, is the nation finally at a stage where it can actually practice what it has preached for so long?
Oh yes, indeed. We forget that among America’s nation-students, many have already breached the gender or color barriers long ago. Even a conservative male-dominated Moslem country has had Benazir Bhutto as prime minister, and an ethnically more homogenous Peru has elected a Japanese-Peruvian, Alberto Fujimori, as its president.
But in America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where women and persons of color have enjoyed success in almost any field of endeavor, the long line of almost exclusively WASPs has remained unbroken — that is until this year’s election rolls along.
The Democratic Party will certainly break the mould first, for the first time nominating a candidate belonging to either category as its standard bearer for the electoral contest. Because apart from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, everyone else in the party has put away his or her presidential ambitions on hold, at least for another four years.
But the bigger question remains — can America go all the way and break the mould as a nation, by choosing whoever it is that the Democrats put up for the public vote?
It all remains to be seen, of course, because America today is saddled with a host of serious problems that have neither to do with race nor gender. Its economy is badly in need of rejuvenation, and issues of security continue to haunt its collective consciousness — both problems which Democrats have not been known to be very good at solving, apart perhaps from the Clinton years being economically prosperous times for the nation.
But the implications for America will be significant if it does go ahead and break new ground. For it will give the rest of the world the unequivocal message that all of us — black or white, male or female — are truly equal as people on this earth.
Published in The Sun Star Daily, Saturday, February 09, 2008
Saturday, 2 February 2008
Corruption Western-Style
CORRUPTION has got to be one of the major challenges of our time.
Along with the issues of sustainable economic development, global warming, the elusive peace in the Middle East and the new pandemics affecting large swathes of our population, solving the problem could prove to be a critical turning point in our modern age.
What makes it so crucial is that it affects the solution to almost any other issue of significance that we are trying to solve. Take for example the Aids problem in the developing world.
Already as it is, there is a major funding shortage to finance new research, and the production of cheaper drug formulations that would benefit the majority of sufferers. As it happens, most of the affected areas are also in places where corruption is at its most rampant. As a result, millions of dollars that would otherwise have gone to combating the disease goes to the pockets of crooked bureaucrats, who care not if their countrymen continue to die by the thousands so long as they get their share of the largesse.
The same thing could be said with the care of refugees displaced by frequent conflicts in the world’s troubled hot spots. They too are frequent victims of corrupt practices in the places where they are, with funds supposed to be for their welfare continuing to be siphoned to the bank accounts of the very people who are supposed to be looking after them.
There has always been the belief, and perhaps this is mainly accurate, that corruption affects less developed economies more than they do countries in the West. After all, research and evidence shows that large parts of Africa, many countries in Asia, and a good number of states in Latin America – all less developed regions – lead the world in terms of corruption-related problems.
It is not too difficult to see why.
These countries are also stricken with extreme poverty, in most cases, making the temptation to profit from illicit means very strong indeed. Many of the institutions in these countries tend to be weak and unstable, making corruption cases very difficult to uncover and prosecute. And, of course, a strong and independent media is almost always non-existent, and therefore scandals are that much harder to investigate.
But the events of last week show that even in the advanced economies of the West, corruption is still very much alive and well.
Take the case of Derek Conway, a Conservative member of the British Parliament. Not unlike the practice of some Filipino politicians, Conway stands accused of improperly including his son in his staff payroll, without the latter having any clear official duties to back up his designation of researcher.
And the story only gets more interesting.
It seems another son may have also been paid in the same way, and even a Canadian friend of their sons could also have been on the receiving end of some payments.
What does this prove?
Nothing perhaps that we Filipinos, so used to seeing corruption within our midst, do not already know.
Integrity, and thus the ability to resist the temptation to engage in corruption, is not only enforced by systems of good governance, such as Britain has, but rather starts much earlier than that – during a person’s formative years when he learns the good old fashioned values of honesty, truthfulness and fair play.
Leave it any later than this, and it all remains just a matter of time, and the right opportunity to come along.
Published in The Sun Star Daily, Saturday, February 02, 2008
Along with the issues of sustainable economic development, global warming, the elusive peace in the Middle East and the new pandemics affecting large swathes of our population, solving the problem could prove to be a critical turning point in our modern age.
What makes it so crucial is that it affects the solution to almost any other issue of significance that we are trying to solve. Take for example the Aids problem in the developing world.
Already as it is, there is a major funding shortage to finance new research, and the production of cheaper drug formulations that would benefit the majority of sufferers. As it happens, most of the affected areas are also in places where corruption is at its most rampant. As a result, millions of dollars that would otherwise have gone to combating the disease goes to the pockets of crooked bureaucrats, who care not if their countrymen continue to die by the thousands so long as they get their share of the largesse.
The same thing could be said with the care of refugees displaced by frequent conflicts in the world’s troubled hot spots. They too are frequent victims of corrupt practices in the places where they are, with funds supposed to be for their welfare continuing to be siphoned to the bank accounts of the very people who are supposed to be looking after them.
There has always been the belief, and perhaps this is mainly accurate, that corruption affects less developed economies more than they do countries in the West. After all, research and evidence shows that large parts of Africa, many countries in Asia, and a good number of states in Latin America – all less developed regions – lead the world in terms of corruption-related problems.
It is not too difficult to see why.
These countries are also stricken with extreme poverty, in most cases, making the temptation to profit from illicit means very strong indeed. Many of the institutions in these countries tend to be weak and unstable, making corruption cases very difficult to uncover and prosecute. And, of course, a strong and independent media is almost always non-existent, and therefore scandals are that much harder to investigate.
But the events of last week show that even in the advanced economies of the West, corruption is still very much alive and well.
Take the case of Derek Conway, a Conservative member of the British Parliament. Not unlike the practice of some Filipino politicians, Conway stands accused of improperly including his son in his staff payroll, without the latter having any clear official duties to back up his designation of researcher.
And the story only gets more interesting.
It seems another son may have also been paid in the same way, and even a Canadian friend of their sons could also have been on the receiving end of some payments.
What does this prove?
Nothing perhaps that we Filipinos, so used to seeing corruption within our midst, do not already know.
Integrity, and thus the ability to resist the temptation to engage in corruption, is not only enforced by systems of good governance, such as Britain has, but rather starts much earlier than that – during a person’s formative years when he learns the good old fashioned values of honesty, truthfulness and fair play.
Leave it any later than this, and it all remains just a matter of time, and the right opportunity to come along.
Published in The Sun Star Daily, Saturday, February 02, 2008
Saturday, 26 January 2008
Economic Insanity
ESPECIALLY to the younger ones among us, the events of last week must have been one of the worst in their living memory – in economic terms, that is.
All around the world, going around the time zones like some dark and insidious plague, stock markets plummeted to their lowest levels in years, with each successive opening spooked by the results of the one before it.
Billions of dollars in market value were wiped out in a matter of minutes.
But then like some white knight to the rescue, the markets of the Far East sprung into action, buoyed partly by the response of the U.S. Federal Reserve, as well as confidence in their own economies to withstand the possibility of an economic slowdown in the West. And from that wellspring of optimism, a reversal of sorts took place in the major markets, recovering most of the value they lost in that single day of pandemonium. By week’s end, though still fragile, much of the damage seems to have been repaired, at least momentarily.
Difficult to explain sometimes, the financial markets. But perhaps not so strange when you think of who’s behind this amorphous thing called the “the market.”
That’s we, the people, of course.
No wonder then that markets act so strangely sometimes –- being the collective sentiment of thousands upon thousands of individual sellers, consumers, financiers and financial intermediaries interacting with one another in all sorts of ways.
It’s hard to explain the reasons behind these movements most times. If we really think about it, nothing much seems to have changed in our world from, say, a couple of years back. The planet is as populous as ever, climate change is still a major challenge of our time, and peace in the Middle East remains as elusive as it has always been. So why the sudden shift in our economic prosperity between then and now? What has happened to the world that has made us collectively poorer than we were a couple of years ago?
In tangible terms, perhaps nothing much has really changed. But our sentiments have shifted significantly. With the war in Iraq dragging on with no end in sight, worries have started to creep up concerning the future supplies of oil, thereby pushing prices up and putting pressure on costs for all manner of businesses, as well as ordinary consumers.
In response to rising costs, businesses reacted by slashing their organizations, or else exporting parts of their businesses to lower cost overseas locations, displacing thousands of their employees in the process.
Of course, the possibility of losing their jobs has unsettled a lot of consumers, causing them to hold back on their spending in order to prepare for an uncertain future. And guess what? Less consumer spending means lower corporate earnings, which lead to more rounds of layoffs, which lead to even lower consumer spending, ad infinitum.
The global economy is into a deeper and deeper spiral of despair, with no one seemingly able to pull it away from its downward course.
It is safe to say that if the economy were a person, it would have committed suicide a long time ago due to a severe mental disorder, or perhaps it would have already been interred into an asylum for the mentally deranged, for which person could afford to live with the ups and downs that the global economy undergoes every now and again?
The truth is that no person could live a life with the ups and downs of the world economy. But like it or not, we all have to live with the consequences of such seemingly insane economic behavior.
Published in the Sun Star Daily, Saturday, January 26, 2008
All around the world, going around the time zones like some dark and insidious plague, stock markets plummeted to their lowest levels in years, with each successive opening spooked by the results of the one before it.
Billions of dollars in market value were wiped out in a matter of minutes.
But then like some white knight to the rescue, the markets of the Far East sprung into action, buoyed partly by the response of the U.S. Federal Reserve, as well as confidence in their own economies to withstand the possibility of an economic slowdown in the West. And from that wellspring of optimism, a reversal of sorts took place in the major markets, recovering most of the value they lost in that single day of pandemonium. By week’s end, though still fragile, much of the damage seems to have been repaired, at least momentarily.
Difficult to explain sometimes, the financial markets. But perhaps not so strange when you think of who’s behind this amorphous thing called the “the market.”
That’s we, the people, of course.
No wonder then that markets act so strangely sometimes –- being the collective sentiment of thousands upon thousands of individual sellers, consumers, financiers and financial intermediaries interacting with one another in all sorts of ways.
It’s hard to explain the reasons behind these movements most times. If we really think about it, nothing much seems to have changed in our world from, say, a couple of years back. The planet is as populous as ever, climate change is still a major challenge of our time, and peace in the Middle East remains as elusive as it has always been. So why the sudden shift in our economic prosperity between then and now? What has happened to the world that has made us collectively poorer than we were a couple of years ago?
In tangible terms, perhaps nothing much has really changed. But our sentiments have shifted significantly. With the war in Iraq dragging on with no end in sight, worries have started to creep up concerning the future supplies of oil, thereby pushing prices up and putting pressure on costs for all manner of businesses, as well as ordinary consumers.
In response to rising costs, businesses reacted by slashing their organizations, or else exporting parts of their businesses to lower cost overseas locations, displacing thousands of their employees in the process.
Of course, the possibility of losing their jobs has unsettled a lot of consumers, causing them to hold back on their spending in order to prepare for an uncertain future. And guess what? Less consumer spending means lower corporate earnings, which lead to more rounds of layoffs, which lead to even lower consumer spending, ad infinitum.
The global economy is into a deeper and deeper spiral of despair, with no one seemingly able to pull it away from its downward course.
It is safe to say that if the economy were a person, it would have committed suicide a long time ago due to a severe mental disorder, or perhaps it would have already been interred into an asylum for the mentally deranged, for which person could afford to live with the ups and downs that the global economy undergoes every now and again?
The truth is that no person could live a life with the ups and downs of the world economy. But like it or not, we all have to live with the consequences of such seemingly insane economic behavior.
Published in the Sun Star Daily, Saturday, January 26, 2008
Saturday, 19 January 2008
The Covenant
THESE days, it is difficult to turn on the television in Britain and not hear anything to do with gang violence.
Just this morning when I was getting ready to work, I was greeted with the heartbreaking scene of a widow crying to reporters outside the courthouse where her husband’s teenage murderers had just been sentenced for their crime. In some areas, things are supposed to have gone so bad that a number of schools have had to resort to American-type screenings for schoolchildren entering the premises, looking into their schoolbags for everything from knives, guns and an assorted array of deadly weaponry.
From all indications, it seems that the tendency for youths to join gangs has been on the uptrend, alarming authorities in the country, who appear to be helpless to stop the phenomenon.
In one informative program that I saw on the issue recently, one commentator expressed a view that seemed to me to hit the nail right on the head vis-à-vis the reason for the uptrend.
He said that youths turn to gangs as a proxy for the sense of belonging and affiliation that they do not receive in their own families.This, in a sense, is very true.
In modern day Britain, in most of the Western world, and indeed even in growing economies like the Philippines, families are becoming more and more fragmented. Either because of changing family values, the pressures of work or a combination of any of the other stresses of modern-day living, the family is losing its cohesion. Even in matters of discipline, parents have now outsourced this to schools and state authorities, conveniently blaming everyone but themselves for the problem.
In a perverse sense, one can understand why youths are drawn to their gang affiliations. Albeit in a very distorted sense, gang members have a deep sense of unwavering loyalty to each other, pledging total allegiance to the group, whatever the consequences. More than anything else, it is the sense of loyalty for each other that bind them together, and make gang life so attractive for disenchanted young people.
Commercial organizations can learn from this in a very significant way — not the violence mind you, but the impact that the perception of total loyalty has in terms of galvanizing groups into action.
Many of today’s organizations have lost the loyalty of their employees, because they have been unable to provide the assurance of total loyalty to their staff. Just as respect begets respect, loyalty to employees begets loyalty from employees.
Sadly, these days this is no longer the case.
As Scott Adams’ cartoon character Dilbert says in a famous cartoon, employees’ are no longer the company’s greatest resource. They are now seventh, right behind carbon paper and paper clips.
Behind the gallows humor is a painful truth. Too often, companies do what they do without regard for the potential impact these decisions may have on their employees.
Information about important and life changing situations like mass layoffs, business closures and job redundancies are kept well away from employees until after it is too late, rendering them unable to take the necessary steps to look after themselves.
Is it any wonder then that in today’s climate, employee loyalty has become a scare commodity to come by?
Published in The Sun Star Daily, Saturday, January 19, 2008
Just this morning when I was getting ready to work, I was greeted with the heartbreaking scene of a widow crying to reporters outside the courthouse where her husband’s teenage murderers had just been sentenced for their crime. In some areas, things are supposed to have gone so bad that a number of schools have had to resort to American-type screenings for schoolchildren entering the premises, looking into their schoolbags for everything from knives, guns and an assorted array of deadly weaponry.
From all indications, it seems that the tendency for youths to join gangs has been on the uptrend, alarming authorities in the country, who appear to be helpless to stop the phenomenon.
In one informative program that I saw on the issue recently, one commentator expressed a view that seemed to me to hit the nail right on the head vis-à-vis the reason for the uptrend.
He said that youths turn to gangs as a proxy for the sense of belonging and affiliation that they do not receive in their own families.This, in a sense, is very true.
In modern day Britain, in most of the Western world, and indeed even in growing economies like the Philippines, families are becoming more and more fragmented. Either because of changing family values, the pressures of work or a combination of any of the other stresses of modern-day living, the family is losing its cohesion. Even in matters of discipline, parents have now outsourced this to schools and state authorities, conveniently blaming everyone but themselves for the problem.
In a perverse sense, one can understand why youths are drawn to their gang affiliations. Albeit in a very distorted sense, gang members have a deep sense of unwavering loyalty to each other, pledging total allegiance to the group, whatever the consequences. More than anything else, it is the sense of loyalty for each other that bind them together, and make gang life so attractive for disenchanted young people.
Commercial organizations can learn from this in a very significant way — not the violence mind you, but the impact that the perception of total loyalty has in terms of galvanizing groups into action.
Many of today’s organizations have lost the loyalty of their employees, because they have been unable to provide the assurance of total loyalty to their staff. Just as respect begets respect, loyalty to employees begets loyalty from employees.
Sadly, these days this is no longer the case.
As Scott Adams’ cartoon character Dilbert says in a famous cartoon, employees’ are no longer the company’s greatest resource. They are now seventh, right behind carbon paper and paper clips.
Behind the gallows humor is a painful truth. Too often, companies do what they do without regard for the potential impact these decisions may have on their employees.
Information about important and life changing situations like mass layoffs, business closures and job redundancies are kept well away from employees until after it is too late, rendering them unable to take the necessary steps to look after themselves.
Is it any wonder then that in today’s climate, employee loyalty has become a scare commodity to come by?
Published in The Sun Star Daily, Saturday, January 19, 2008
Saturday, 12 January 2008
Openness
FUNNY how these days, it is not easy to talk about workplace matters with your colleagues anymore. I used to remember a time when people were more open about their thoughts and opinions about work, and how stories around the “water cooler” or the “coffee machine” were seen as the real pulse of the organization.
Due to the uncertainty that tends to accompany the modern working environment, a lot of talk these days tends to be sanitized and neutral, and doesn’t tell you very much about what people are really thinking.
It was, therefore, somewhat of a surprise when a colleague of mine, who I am very cordial with, but with whom the topic of conversation tended to be limited to football most times, suddenly remarked to me on our walk from the car park that he felt “the culture of the company was changing, and changing too fast.”
This was the cue that I was waiting for, in terms of probing what he actually meant by that declaration. And taking my probe as his cue, he in turn started telling me his real thoughts on what he perceived was really happening.
It turns out that he was feeling what everybody else was feeling — a sense of alienation and neglect over the things that were clearly happening for everybody to see, but yet were not discussed honestly and openly with everybody else.
Change is certainly a feature of the modern-day workplace. This is something that cannot now be reversed. Even the Japanese have now moved away from the lifetime employment practices, and the French have started to adapt to the Anglo-American way of doing things as well.
It is therefore not the change itself, but the way that it is communicated to the people within the organization, that is critical. After all, it is people who make up an organization, and it is perhaps only proper that they know exactly what is happening to them.
There is something to be said about keeping things open and transparent. Even the nuclear family itself is adapting to this reality, and it is now not uncommon for family members to vote on issues of mutual concern — with Mom’s and Dad’s votes counting just as much as Junior’s.
Organizations, however, seem to be reticent in being as open with their affairs. But then, they live with the consequences of this choice.
In the military, where we know the overriding importance of loyalty and trust under fire, soldiers consider themselves comrades-in-arms, and are therefore sworn to look after each other’s backs and to leave no one behind.
It is this sense of assurance that allows them to be a cohesive unit, with each one knowing exactly where they stand.It is not probably quite as life-and-death in most organizations as it is in the military, but the principle remains the same. When people know exactly where they stand, they will give their all, and then some. And this, of course, is the most important – secure people are productive individuals, who will eventually contribute to the achievement of the organization’s goals.
The reverse is true as well.
If an organization sends the message to its workforce that their views do not count, and that they should just sit tight waiting to be told when the next sequence of events is going to unfold, they are clearly not going to be as committed and as dedicated to the organization that does not treat them with the total honesty and openness that they deserve.
Published in The Sun Star Daily, Saturday, January 12, 2008
Due to the uncertainty that tends to accompany the modern working environment, a lot of talk these days tends to be sanitized and neutral, and doesn’t tell you very much about what people are really thinking.
It was, therefore, somewhat of a surprise when a colleague of mine, who I am very cordial with, but with whom the topic of conversation tended to be limited to football most times, suddenly remarked to me on our walk from the car park that he felt “the culture of the company was changing, and changing too fast.”
This was the cue that I was waiting for, in terms of probing what he actually meant by that declaration. And taking my probe as his cue, he in turn started telling me his real thoughts on what he perceived was really happening.
It turns out that he was feeling what everybody else was feeling — a sense of alienation and neglect over the things that were clearly happening for everybody to see, but yet were not discussed honestly and openly with everybody else.
Change is certainly a feature of the modern-day workplace. This is something that cannot now be reversed. Even the Japanese have now moved away from the lifetime employment practices, and the French have started to adapt to the Anglo-American way of doing things as well.
It is therefore not the change itself, but the way that it is communicated to the people within the organization, that is critical. After all, it is people who make up an organization, and it is perhaps only proper that they know exactly what is happening to them.
There is something to be said about keeping things open and transparent. Even the nuclear family itself is adapting to this reality, and it is now not uncommon for family members to vote on issues of mutual concern — with Mom’s and Dad’s votes counting just as much as Junior’s.
Organizations, however, seem to be reticent in being as open with their affairs. But then, they live with the consequences of this choice.
In the military, where we know the overriding importance of loyalty and trust under fire, soldiers consider themselves comrades-in-arms, and are therefore sworn to look after each other’s backs and to leave no one behind.
It is this sense of assurance that allows them to be a cohesive unit, with each one knowing exactly where they stand.It is not probably quite as life-and-death in most organizations as it is in the military, but the principle remains the same. When people know exactly where they stand, they will give their all, and then some. And this, of course, is the most important – secure people are productive individuals, who will eventually contribute to the achievement of the organization’s goals.
The reverse is true as well.
If an organization sends the message to its workforce that their views do not count, and that they should just sit tight waiting to be told when the next sequence of events is going to unfold, they are clearly not going to be as committed and as dedicated to the organization that does not treat them with the total honesty and openness that they deserve.
Published in The Sun Star Daily, Saturday, January 12, 2008
Saturday, 5 January 2008
A Brave New 2008
THERE is a comforting sense of familiarity that accompanies each passage into the New Year.
Allowing for certain local variations, people everywhere tend to celebrate it in almost the same way, invariably to the rousing revelry and merrymaking that accompany the last moments of the year past, and the first of the year just come.
2008 was welcomed with no less enthusiasm-–what with most people having been hit by crisis after crisis in 2007 desperately trying their best to get the old year out of the way as quickly as possible.
And who could blame them? No place in the world, it seems, was spared from some of last year’s most difficult moments.
The lingering uncertainty over peace in the Middle East continued to hold sway over oil prices, which during the first few days of this new year traded at historical highs of over $100 a barrel.
The ever volatile Middle East remained fractious and divided, with even the Palestinians themselves not agreeing on how to deal with its perceived common adversary-–Israel. And the Israelis themselves were no more united in their approach to solving the peace problem than the Palestinians were.
The rest of the world remains as polarized as ever regarding the issue of global security, with countries either taking the hawkish stand of the United States, or the equally belligerent attitude of those opposed to the American solution.
This lingering geopolitical uncertainty consequently spilled over into the economic arena, with record oil prices taking their toll on business costs, as well as dampening the already fragile confidence of consumers everywhere.
To say that 2007 was a very difficult year for most of us would be understating the enormity of the problem.
But will 2008 have us faring any better than the year before?
Most signs say that things are going to get worse, before they get any better.
No one knows for sure how high oil prices will still rise in the new year. Nor is anyone certain just how deep the current credit crisis—precipitated by the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market—is still likely to drag the world’s financial markets down too.
And yet as daunting as all of these sound, the sense of optimism that always accompanies the coming of each new year cannot but let us see that it is not all dark clouds ahead.
For the first time ever in our lifetime, our world is coming ever closer to a global consensus on what is perhaps the greatest problem of our age-–climate change.
People’s attitudes everywhere are changing, in ways that we would never have thought possible before.
With the impending regime change in Washington this year, we may yet be closer to solving our common concerns over global peace and security, than at any time in almost a decade.
And while economic prosperity has continued to elude our nation while everywhere else progress seems to be the fate of most of those around us, there are hopeful signs at last that we may finally benefit from the fruits of globalization that seem to have blessed everyone else but ourselves.
And so, as we always have in new years past, let us go forth with prayer on our lips, and hope in our hearts, and make this 2008 the best year yet.
Our warmest New Year greetings to all our readers!
Published in The Sun Star Daily, Saturday, January 05, 2008
Allowing for certain local variations, people everywhere tend to celebrate it in almost the same way, invariably to the rousing revelry and merrymaking that accompany the last moments of the year past, and the first of the year just come.
2008 was welcomed with no less enthusiasm-–what with most people having been hit by crisis after crisis in 2007 desperately trying their best to get the old year out of the way as quickly as possible.
And who could blame them? No place in the world, it seems, was spared from some of last year’s most difficult moments.
The lingering uncertainty over peace in the Middle East continued to hold sway over oil prices, which during the first few days of this new year traded at historical highs of over $100 a barrel.
The ever volatile Middle East remained fractious and divided, with even the Palestinians themselves not agreeing on how to deal with its perceived common adversary-–Israel. And the Israelis themselves were no more united in their approach to solving the peace problem than the Palestinians were.
The rest of the world remains as polarized as ever regarding the issue of global security, with countries either taking the hawkish stand of the United States, or the equally belligerent attitude of those opposed to the American solution.
This lingering geopolitical uncertainty consequently spilled over into the economic arena, with record oil prices taking their toll on business costs, as well as dampening the already fragile confidence of consumers everywhere.
To say that 2007 was a very difficult year for most of us would be understating the enormity of the problem.
But will 2008 have us faring any better than the year before?
Most signs say that things are going to get worse, before they get any better.
No one knows for sure how high oil prices will still rise in the new year. Nor is anyone certain just how deep the current credit crisis—precipitated by the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market—is still likely to drag the world’s financial markets down too.
And yet as daunting as all of these sound, the sense of optimism that always accompanies the coming of each new year cannot but let us see that it is not all dark clouds ahead.
For the first time ever in our lifetime, our world is coming ever closer to a global consensus on what is perhaps the greatest problem of our age-–climate change.
People’s attitudes everywhere are changing, in ways that we would never have thought possible before.
With the impending regime change in Washington this year, we may yet be closer to solving our common concerns over global peace and security, than at any time in almost a decade.
And while economic prosperity has continued to elude our nation while everywhere else progress seems to be the fate of most of those around us, there are hopeful signs at last that we may finally benefit from the fruits of globalization that seem to have blessed everyone else but ourselves.
And so, as we always have in new years past, let us go forth with prayer on our lips, and hope in our hearts, and make this 2008 the best year yet.
Our warmest New Year greetings to all our readers!
Published in The Sun Star Daily, Saturday, January 05, 2008
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