Green Spring
The more complex the world we are living in is the higher the demands on management systems with whose help people are trying to regulate it. And the level of executives’ competence in all the spheres of public life influences the quality and results of management. And the very quality of the “human resource” currently aspiring to become deputies, directors, or political experts raises more and more questions year in year out.
First, there is a considerable narrowing of aspirants’ general outlook. In terms of politics, it can be very easily illustrated by the change of attitude to such figures as our ex-presidents Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma and civil servants of a lower rank belonging to the same generation. Those who were not considered as wise as Solomon 10 or 15 years ago, are often thought to be almost the gold standard of statecraft wisdom and common sense. There is no Party Leadership Academy any more and the quality of Ukrainian education has been reduced out of proportion. The situation cannot be saved by Western universities graduates coming into sight. Foreign universities like national ones for various reasons do not aim at training all-round scholars who can think out of the box basing on the experience of the world civilization due to their nonlinear logic and interdisciplinary education. The mentioned educational establishments are not settled on producing efficient managers capable of taking the right decisions in the turbulent medium quickly.
Second, personal, psychologic and social maturity has ceased being a necessary characteristic feature of people who consider themselves fit to run for political offices or to offer themselves for top managerial posts in the commercial world.
There are several major reasons for this.
One of the basic myths of our times is a quick win which anybody can allegedly get without putting in much time and effort. Imposed by pop culture, it urges many people who do not have even an ounce of personal characteristics necessary for the managerial activity to try and make a sweeping “fashionable” career of a politician, a boss of a company (even consisting of two people and having no office), a consultant, a teacher, a “spin doctor”, an “expert”.
It is beneficial for backroom puppeteers to have obedient immature marionettes who can easily be “motivated” with little, in the puppeteers’ opinion, money and pseudo-high social status. In late 1990s and early 2000s, it surprised me to see how ready the owners of even very big businesses were to appoint quite young employees, those in their mid-twenties, to senior management positions. The situation was clarified by a clever and cynic “puppeteer” who said a very simple thing, “These guys are ready to sweat their guts out 24 hours a day just to feel how cool they are and… to sign troublesome documents without a moment’s hesitation.” The time is passing by, generations are changing but the logic isn’t. In this country, there is always a fresh supply of ambitious Pinocchios who are taken by Cats and Foxes to the economic “Field of Miracles”.
Children and other relatives of those in power fill in managerial vacancies regular as clockwork. And if in trade and commerce this approach might be explained by a wish to build up a family business, there is no excuse for nepotism in the sphere of state administration. Even if it is explained, let’s say, by politicians’ taking care of the offspring of their late friend who used to be a party grandee. Because the voting public is to delegate powers not patrons. And there must be no exception to this rule in a democracy.
Thus, we get a sad tendency at the end of the day – extremely important managerial decisions are taken by people who have neither knowledge, nor experience, nor the necessary maturity. Day-old students and post-graduate students quoting other people’s studies or their own drug-induced dreams have imagined themselves to be experts and offer advice of “the cosmic scale and the cosmic stupidity”. “Green directors” are confidently ditching companies in between tours abroad and night club life. “Green deputies” and “green ministers” simulate frenzied activities in the public sphere not even trying to go into the heart of governance processes. This is the price the society has to pay for a light-minded and shallow employment policy.
Assessing the quality of human resources, taking care of the succession pool and planning career development are challenging tasks which are not tackled even by all big Ukrainian corporations. The government sector lives under self-determined incentives and nobody is interested in creating new ones which can be proved by a strange story of sacking the reforms-oriented head of the National Agency on Civil Service. But sooner or later they will have to make up their minds. And the sooner the better.
Of course, the state described in the dialogues of Plato who considered only specially trained grown-up philosophers to be worthy of the ruler’s rank is a utopian idea. But if we are building “new Ukraine” why not dream about at least a socially mature political elite? As well as responsible, knowing, wise, efficient, ready to give to the society more than it takes from it. Because, like the Dalai Lama says, “The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane.” And Ukraine in its current state needs it more than any other country in the world.
http://forbes.net.ua/woman/1374030-zelenaya-porosl
Tags: Politics State