Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner

The failure of the passage of the Integrity Bill has been a topic of hot discussion in Barbados. I am not going to get into the mechanics of parliamentary procedure and the failure, simply to say it happened. The Government needs to devise next steps and a new strategy for its implementation, as it is currently or an improved version. This provides a segue into what I want to discuss because at its core, we can pass as many bills to address integrity, corruption and governance, yet nothing may change.

There was somewhat of an ironic moment in a public lecture I delivered in 2017 on change and governance, that after examining suggestions for new governance systems, I arrived at the conclusion, using a phrase that can be attributed to Peter Drucker that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”  I recently saw an update of the phrase; “Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner”. That has been my experience when trying to bring about any form of change in organizations. You do not have to dress it up as change and put lights around it because culture can spot change miles away.

In trying to propose and achieve massive changes in our systems of governance to address integrity, reduce corruption, promote growth and efficiency, and an ease of doing business and generally an ease of getting on with life without being wrapped in red tape will require not only the technical changes but massive changes in culture.

There’s the rub. How do you go about changing an entire society, not just an organization, when change will meet the cultural realities in the workplace, civil service, private sector? How do you move a country from point A to B, when change will have to happen in the lunchroom, not only the boardroom and the household, not only the headquarters? The point is that the places where change has to navigate are often where the law cannot reach and as I said in that public lecture a few years ago, we can pass the laws to facilitate change in governance systems but until we devise a strategy for cultural change, we may not get anywhere quickly.

We can bellyache about how we got here, why it is so difficult to get anything done in Barbados, why we need an integrity bill and whistleblower legislation, but that gets us nowhere. The point is we are here, so how do we devise a strategy that is not void of realizing it is a strategy about culture with a small “c” and a big “C”.

I think one way to start the process of cultural change will be a national conversation. The development of the country cannot be paused to have this conversation, so before anyone sets up a straw man, let me knock it down for you. I think it is the sort of national conversation that has to go to the root of who we are and what sort of country we want.

It would be innovative because these discussions did not occur at Independence. It was taken for granted that after Independence Barbados would simply govern herself, whatever that was to mean, in taking largely British systems of governance and trying to apply them in a different culture without realizing that the systems would morph on meeting that culture. And that we were just in some ways, nation building through actual buildings. However, the process required something a bit deeper, more introspection but not navel gazing.

I don’t think “politics” in its proper sense is the issue. We will always have conflict and competition in any society about resource allocation. It is not about an implementation deficit disorder, which is also a popular assessment of our problems. The issue is deeper than the usual suspects of politics, implementation deficit disorder or reform. I think until there is a willingness to accept Barbados is broken in some ways, Barbados will never be fixed or made better. This is not to say that Barbados is not doing well in some areas. But as a country, we cannot implement what at the core we do not think needs implementing if we never accept that some things are not working in the first place.

The person who does not file the document or provide the information or does not work to the best in a unit or provides bad service or writes a poor report, or just meanders in a role – I do not think they believe they are wrong or doing something that needs changing. Because if so, all the previous attempts at reform would have worked.

We need a national conversation that says Barbados is not fine in some areas and these are the things that need to be addressed, accept that and then move forward to address the matters. Let us make Barbados great!

Dr Ronnie Yearwood holds degrees in Political Science, Sociology and Law. He is currently a lecturer in law at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. He is a Chevening Scholar, National Development Scholar and
Overseas Research Scholar. He is called as a lawyer in Barbados, England & Wales, and the British Virgin Islands. His areas of interest are varied and include finance and banking law, general commercial law and international trade, politics and law, education and governance. Email: yearwood.r.r.f@gmail.com.