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by Merrick Peiris - Director, Merlin Unitel (Pvt.) Ltd.

In our quest to succeed in the emerging global market, should we simply imitate western management styles and force a cultural change in our people's mindset, or should we adapt a set of management principles based on our own cultural values?

Most senior managers in industry today have had their management training based on western oriented management styles. We tend to judge our corporate and national leaders in comparison with those of economically developed countries.

Managing within a mix of colonial and traditional Sri Lankan mindsets has been a never-ending struggle. Private sector organisations with a colonial history, as well as the civil service that were efficiently managed under colonial rule in the past have turned into bureaucracies. The problem lies due to a conflict between management styles, expectations and cultural values.

Therefore the solution would be adapt a balanced set of rules that include efficient western management principles and the strengths of our own cultural values. These include psychological and sociological factors such as the collective psyche, value systems, and cultural, religious and ethical norms.

'Know your enemy, know yourself, and your victory will not be threatened. Know your terrain, know the weather, and your victory will be complete "Sun Tzu, Chinese General 400-320 BC.

Managing an organisation within a global market context is certainly a battle. Mere survival may not be sustainable in the long run. Without the spoils of victory we may remain engaged in hard labour for decades to come. Industry leaders could learn from Sun Tzu's Art of War, the many strategies and tactics advocated in a battlefield.

Choosing the battleground 'L's - Level, Leverage, Law

Although a level playing field is the ideal, in real life the battleground could be hostile, or it may simply favour one side. Choosing the battleground and being able to easily identify our friend and foe are important issues for effective management.

The leverage we have is in our people and expertise. An army needs to be trained for prevailing conditions and be familiar with battleground conditions. Are they armed with knowledge, expertise and tools to outsmart competition? What expertise do they have and need? Are there likely to be new competitors entering the market with new skills?

Law of the land or business ethics should be considered and valued. Are we fair to our customers? Do we offer good value? Is our advertising truthful? Are we fair to our industry and competitors? Do we treat our employees fairly?

Look at some ground realities when competing in the global market place.

The western developed nations have the technical and production expertise in high technology and financial services strength. So globalisation means opening markets for free flow of information, goods and currency.

On the other hand developing countries such as Sri Lanka has the strength in numbers in our labour force. Could we expect the same globalization process opening up labour markets to allow for a free flow of labour? If it did, would it work to our advantage or disadvantage?

Once we have analysed the ground situation prepare for battle and ensure that we have room to make tactical changes and have the strength to sustain the long haul. The idea is to succeed, and not merely to join the battle and survive. There is always a price to pay when going in for battle.

Developing a value matrix

To use cultural values to our own advantage, we need to generate appropriate management tools to enable managers to put them into practice. "Hence it is said that enlightened rulers deliberate plans while capable generals execute them" Sun Tzu.

Getting ready for battle

Consider at what "Price" you'd go into battle. You may need to implement IS (information systems) to introduce greater efficiency. However, in order to get the benefit of IS you need to be prepared to change existing bureaucratic management structures and ideas. Managers who's power relied on the how information was used to manage people will find their positions threatened. The new manager has to change from being a bureaucrat to "decision maker" and allow subordinates to make decisions.

The missing 'P's

The old four "P's, product, price, place and promotion will adequately serve the marketing aspects for trading in mass produced items. But when it comes the strategically placing your tailor made goods and service, the two most important 'P's are missing. These are People and Partners. The expectations of people, or the employees and customers as well as business partners make a significant difference to the value equation.

Managing the three "R"s - risks, resources and reward

An organisation's most valuable assets are its people and information. The expertise, the labour force and customers represent these. Consider the risks of losing your most valued asset to your competitor.

Although people are not capital assets, there is loyalty, flexibility, adaptability, creativity and innovation in them. In contrast to mass scale, high speed and consistency in machines, we have uniqueness, market adaptability, expertise and craftsmanship in people. The risk is that we do not invest on training to develop these attributes within our most valuable resources.

Managing people is both an art and a science. We need to train our managers to manage the corporate resources to bring in the best rewards from our assets. This also means arming them with the most effective tools such as with IT.

Our reward systems in many organisations contradict the corporate values often preached. We promote teamwork but reward individualism. We talk about the customer being king but treat them with indifference.

We preach transparency but reward bureaucracy. Train to "work smart", but we reward long hours and ignore good results. Judge on disabilities and ignore special abilities.

We expect loyalty from our workers but rely on flexibility to hire and fire. If the leaders punish combatants severely for the slightest misconduct while ignoring large scale plundering of resources by senior commanders, that army will not survive.

Our own cultural value system augurs well for framework and leadership. But we tend to blindly adopt western management, styles and reward systems, which may not be appropriate to our culture. Organisations would be taking high risks by ignoring these factors.

"Too frequent rewards indicate the running out of ideas; To frequent punishment indicate dire distress" Sun Tzu.

The leadership 'I's - Leadership is about Inspiration, Influencing and Instilling

This involves trust, empowerment responsibility and accountability within a management relationship. "Trust and verify" would be the more prudent mechanism as opposed to security and mistrust.

If the leadership lacks vision and ability to communicate effectively, getting others to follow is rather difficult. We need to change our management styles from one of "master slave control" to managing, protecting and leading.

After all, leadership is about having a Vision, a Passion, and the determination to achieve goals.

IT plays a major part in how you manage people and information today. Here again, access to information could become a double-edged sword. While enabling faster communication and decision making, IT also enables information flow to cut across management structures. Therefore implementing IT should go hand in hand with corporate cultural changes.

One of our major weaknesses in industry is our leaders' inability to instill a sense of discipline.

What I mean by the term discipline is "respect for people, time and property". Meetings seldom start to time. Schedules are set to compensate for latecomers, penalising those who arrive on time. We see vandalism of public property by pasting posters in flagrant violation of the law by the very people who advocate good governance and are elected to set the laws of the land. These are indication of lack of discipline due to ignorance, apathy or total disrespect.

Re-evaluating the "Cs" Customer, Competitor, Country and Currency Information Technology has changed the whole battleground and the balance of power.

Our customer has access to a global market, yet expects a localised service. Even if we concentrate on our local customer, with IT, our competitor has equal access to our customer. The global operator has economies of scale but they do not have the same people to people contact at ground level.

The country of origin is not as important as the brand image. Our customer buys trust, recognition and value. The time that politicians controlled currency values are long gone. Today our currency value only represents the level of confidence. With free flow of currencies governments can no longer manipulate this. Valuing and measuring the "E's, Efficiency, Effectiveness and Excellence

First we need to identify what we value and base our KPI (key performance indicators) on those values. We need to ensure that we measure qualities that we value. If we value our employees family life and their support, then we need to identify such contributions to corporate performance. If we value the environment as an organization, then we need to find a mechanism and identify its contribution as indicators and how to measure performance.

If we value our customers, again we need to measure our performance on enhancing such values and reward our customer accordingly.

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