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BUNNY’S PHILOSOPHY

Mar 18, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Way back in 1986, city businessman, now deceased, Mr. Bunny Fernandes, addressed the new city council in Georgetown. The Mayor at the time was Robert Williams and Bunny’s message was straightforward: talk less and work more.
Bunny in his short presentation, told his fellow councillors that he was against committees being established to report on what was being done. He wanted to see committees established to do the work.
He also called on them to stop reporting to the press about what they planned to do but instead report on what they had actually been done. As always his motto was: stopping the talk show and get the work done.
These days there are too many statutory meetings in Town Hall. What is needed is for those appointed to get around to doing the work, to take a hands-on approach as Bunny would have suggested. Bunny was one man who talked very little. He concentrated on getting the job done. He was not into a lot of planning.
He knew that in simple organizations, the need for detailed planning was unnecessary. He believed that if something needed fixing, it should be fixed rather than spending a great deal of time discussing how it should be fixed.
Right now there is a problem with the wage bill at City Hall. It is taking up too large a percentage of the total revenues of the council. It is unsustainable. If Bunny were alive and asked what he felt should be done, he would recommend that all the fat be trimmed and all the committees that have been established to report, be disbanded and that the councillors should be out on the ground helping to fix the problems.
Bunny would advise that an organization has problems whenever there are too many deputies and assistants. Whenever you see an organization having too many managers, plus deputy managers, then assistant managers, this translates to fat and this fat must be trimmed.
The first step towards efficient management is to get rid of unnecessary bureaucracy management at the top. You need one manager to be overall in charge. You need supervisors and you need clerks. This is the structure that worked in the distant past.
However, today there is a manager and he is usually supported by a string of deputy managers who in turn have numerous assistant managers reporting to them. Each one of these managers is required to occupy offices and have telephones and secretaries.
You would believe from all these layers that it is a multinational corporation that is being run and not a simple public office.
It is the same with the City Council. Is there really a need in such a small city for Deputy Mayor? Is there a need for a Deputy Town Clerk and an Assistant Town Clerk? Is there a need for a Deputy City Engineer? If the City was London you would expect that, but not Georgetown. Indeed if you examine the organization structure of the City of London Corporation, it is quite a simple structure without the many layers that have come to suffocate public bureaucracies.
Guyana needs to simplify the organizational structures of not just the City Council but also the entire public bureaucracy, including the police and the army. A good rule would be to abolish any position that begins with the word deputy and assistant.
So we can have a Commissioner of Police but we do not need any Deputy Commissioners or Assistant Commissioners. Similarly there can be superintendents but deputy and assistant superintendents should be abolished. This would be an effective way of cutting fat.
The next step would be to have committees that did work rather than report. There are far too many committees around these days. All they do is report and report. There are more reports done than the real work that the committees are supposed to be overseeing.
As Bunny would say, the committee should get out there and ensure that the work is done, instead of reporting.
If Bunny’s advice is taken on board we would have a great deal of progress. He always believed that there is too much talking and too little work being done by those in positions of authority. He was right.

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