Beloved Colleagues and Friends!
Our usual Sunday Digest of this week is coming to you on an early Monday morning for reasons of other commitments and inability to meet up with the constraints of the moment. I guess you are good with the situation.
Our discussion is on Consultations, Personal Initiatives and Liberty of Actions. But before I go into the matter, the Board Meeting took place on Wednesday the 5th of June 2019. The Members sent you their lovely greetings. The high point of the meeting was the presentation of the work you are doing. These presentations were elegantly done by Dr. John Oko, Ms Cecilia Agrinya Owan and Mr. Greg Atogbon. They were at their best and the Board was grateful to the Staff for the elaborate good works being done across the country. We remember that before the Board meeting the Finance Committee sat on the 4th of June 2019. Dr Godwin Ukel, took the committee through with all our financial internal audit processes and concerns with great commendations. We are happy, the committee is poised to help find solutions to some of our transactional concerns.
Yes, but why are the issues of Consultations, Personal Initiatives and Liberty of Actions of necessity here? What is Consultations all about? Does one need to consult always? Whom is to be consulted? Is there no room for personal initiatives and reasoning? Where lies the boundary of personal initiative and liberty of actions in the context of one’s duties? Does the Management and especially, the Executive Secretary wish to know and do everything himself? Does he intend to micro-manage? Can he not trust the competence of his collaborators? But does he have the wherewithal to do the work alone? What exactly is required about consultations and the individual liberty of action and good initiatives of staff who are on the ground? Are the Staff not sufficiently knowledgeable to carry out their duties? Does one need these elaborate bottlenecks of endless consultations? Of what purpose is the often emphasized “omitting one and committing the other” in our context?
It is precisely on the basis of your expertise and experience that consultations are of primary importance to me. Here consultation deals with dialoguing with either your Supervisors, State Team Leads, or Commanders as the new vocabulary foisted on us demands, or with the Executive Secretary or the entire Management Team at all levels of our operations. Consultations in this regard deals also with mutual sharing with the other. It is your experience and ideas of how best to do a things that you share with the other in consultations. It is therefore important to know that one good way of avoiding clashes and conflicts in work places, is to do a good consultation with stakeholders in the matter. When you do this, everyone involved feels good with your work. Otherwise, you may harvest conflicts and poor collaboration with critical Stakeholders.
In my own case, the matter is even worse. I do not have the knowledge and experience you guys have over the years. Remember you have been on this job for close to 8years for some of you and 3years for the least of you. But I am not up to three years with you. And I do not know all of you. Neither have I encountered all of you. And it is doubtful, how anyone can trust, one whom one has not known and encountered. Don’t you think that since you possess more and better experience about the job than myself, that I should learn from your in dialogue and consultations? Otherwise, what options do I have to learn, if not through dialogue with you? That explains partly why I feel that consultations with me especially is important to help me know and find my feet in the job. It is to learn from you. It is also to show you my interest in the work you do and how best to make you happy doing your work. Consultation with me and with your other line managers, for instance, are never designed to deprive you of your personal initiatives or your liberty for good actions. It is the opposite. Your initiatives and liberty to act in your area of competence demand a mutual sharing with others who are in working relationship with you.
In my own case therefore, Consultations with me on matters that require my attention and approval does not get my consent if only one copies me in a mail addressed to some other person. In other words, mails and matters requiring my approval, do not come to me by copying me in a mail. It requires writing me a mail after we have discussed the matter, barring emergencies and other unforeseen considerations. I think the same applies, in your relationship with your other line authorities. Copying in a mail is sharing of information. And this serves its purpose if there is no approval required, otherwise, one would feel that the matter does not need to come to its head. That means, the matter is only for your information and no action from you is ever required.
Consultation in another parlance, seeks approvals from one who does not only have the power, but the authority. These are two different things. Power is not authority. You may have power but you have no authority. But if you have authority, there power is taken for granted. In some of our operations, your good will, personal initiatives, and liberty of actions are not enough. They needed the legitimization of authority. Let us get it right, no one has absolute authority in our organization. Every level of power and authority have their checks and balances. We shall only be doing the system some harm, when we operate arbitrarily, or with some tinge of authoritarian arrogance.
Personal Initiatives and Liberty of Actions are essential. One must not consult in all matters. And I think this is important to know. And we know it as Adults. There are and there will always be matters requiring individual use of personal initiatives. Otherwise, we shall ever remain infants. But one is also bound to communicate with colleagues when the need arises, about how one has used one’s initiatives in matters that have consequences for others. Meanwhile, no one is an island. We are working in groups. And each member of the group is as important as any other member. Don’t you think, therefore, that mutual communication is an important instrument against conflicts and wars in homes as well as in the places of work? When we communicate effectively, we bar all rooms for rumours, suspicions, conflicts and the like. Kindly do not feel that your initiatives and good wills are attenuated, while you are required to share your ideas and plans with others in work collaboration with you.
Before we forget the kern of the matter in the maze of the foregoing, let me reiterate what Consultations with me holds for you. It is my sharing in your ideas and plans. It is my learning from your experiences and expertise. And I need it urgently to grow in more knowledge and experience. You would be doing me some harm, if you obstruct this channel of growth and development. Kindly help me to understand the system before I could contribute reasonably to its renewal and development. A child must first learn to walk, before that child could reasonably run.
In the light of the foregoing, let all channels of communication and dialogue be renewed; the Supervisors and Supervisees, Mentors and Mentees across all boards. In such way as this, we shall be able to carry everyone along, and build that strong bulwark together for the growth and maturity of our organization, for today and for the next generation .
