Just another job opening?
IS AN elective position just another job opening?
Can campaigning with its posturing, speeches, troll attacks, and press releases be considered just a different type of job interview? The presidency? Maybe, Philippines, Inc. is just head-hunting for an appropriate executive to run a country. Who’s making the decision here? Is it the board or the union? Advisers always want the candidate to think of the rank and file. (We will have toilet paper in each stall.)
Public servants recruited from the private sector were, in the distant days of the autocracy (or kleptocracy?), called “technocrats.” The term did not have any devious connotation at that time. It was just a way for highly paid corporate types to take a salary cut and “serve the country.”
Corporate types still join government. They just try to avoid running for elections. Businessmen are used to political advocacies like education, poverty alleviation, or pandemic relief and rehabilitation.
It is tempting to view business success in dealing with large nationwide organizations as a transferable talent that can be applied to government inefficiency and lack of strategic vision. How many CEOs have been asked if they wanted to run the country? (No, thanks. Better to outsource that service.)
Singapore, with the highly regarded efficiency of its civil service, applies management principles to running government, even providing better-than-corporate paychecks to attract top-notch talent, without the need for corruption to make ends meet.
Management principles do apply to government corporations that have valid business models which follow corporate processes of setting goals with quantifiable metrics. Key Result Areas (KRAs) and objectives expressed in numbers adhere to a simple principle — “What cannot be measured cannot be managed.” Can this
A job applicant wanting to run the country like a business may need to hone up on other skills like bargaining, compromise, building up photo ops with quarantine sites, arm-twisting, exhorting the faithful, communicating with sound bites, and dealing with unfair accusations and failures. These are not even subjects in business school. And does one really need trolls in business?
approach also apply to government agencies, including the one in charge of running the country?
Here are some challenges in applying management principles to political realities.
Media scrutiny goes beyond investor relations where the topics are demarcated by business issues. No financial reporter will ask about relatives involved in security contracts or why inspections are being made on imported vaccines. The political media (or circus) ascribe the basest motives to leaders. Good news in political
reporting is a monopoly of government-owned media.
The corporate CEO is really an autocrat, even when espousing consensus building. These are just inputs for a decision to be made. On the other hand, a political leader sometimes has little power beyond giving speeches that the distribution of pork has been cut back due to cholesterol issues. He needs many sign-offs and approvals in aligning the political blocks towards a certain goal like streamlining the bureaucracy to promote business efficiency.
The metrics of success are vague in politics. There may be the statistical litany of schoolhouses built and kilometers of road constructed. But there are always unbuilt roads and un-constructed shelters after typhoons that have their loud advocates. What about the vaccine rollout? (Do you only count those with two jabs?)
Corporations take care of a few numbers like the bottom line, stock price, market cap, and dividend payout. Politics have more numbers to chase, including the misery index (total of unemployment and inflation rates).
Companies have executives with their own self-activating tasks and job descriptions. So, even in a crisis, the CEO need not be the one hosing down fires. He has subordinates to do that. In politics, an absent chief is considered derelict in his duty — why does he pop out only once a week?
Just as a politician would make a bad CEO, trying to balance interests, create dynasties (as long as they perform), and making bad trade-offs to appease warring segments, a true-blooded corporate type is likely to bulldoze his “political will” towards a certain goal to be on time and on budget, never mind the writhing bodies that get caught under the wheels. The board approves all the management decisions, afterwards.
A job applicant wanting to run the country like a business may need to hone up on other skills like bargaining, compromise, building up photo ops with quarantine sites, arm-twisting, exhorting the faithful, communicating with sound bites, and dealing with unfair accusations and failures. These are not even subjects in business school. And does one really need trolls in business?
Politics is not for people with soft voices and well-argued positions — can I show my charts? This is definitely not just a day in the office.
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