PAY THEM AND THEN FIRE THEM!

Aug 05, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The government should increase the salaries of Ministers and other top officials by 100%. There are many valid reasons why this should happen.
For one, if salaries are going to be increased at the bottom, there have to be increases at the top. Otherwise, there will be convergence of salary scales, and this will affect morale.
If policemen are to be paid a minimum of $100,000 per month, it is only fair that the Commissioner of Police should be paid one million dollars per month and the Minister two million dollars per month.
Increasing salaries at the top will also help reduce corruption. Pay people well and they will have less incentive to dip into the kitty. Pay people well and you will get better performance. Workers will be motivated to work harder and others will want their jobs, and therefore there will be competition for jobs. Those who have jobs will therefore want to work harder to ensure that they do not lose their comfortable salaries.
But even if those at the bottom are not paid huge increases, the persons at the top should always be well paid.
Forget about all that socialist gibberish about paying workers at the bottom better than managers. That has never worked anywhere in the world. If you want improved production and productivity, you have to invest in a superior managerial class.
Regardless, therefore, of whether the claim of salary increases for those at the top is true or contrived, there is merit in the proposal.
It is now a well-established principle of management that 20% of the workers do 80% of the job. The first task of any management is not to identify its objectives.
The first task of management is to identify and keep personnel, its key 20%. It is this 20%, regardless of the objectives, who have to achieve that critical 80% of the work. If this 80% is not achieved, the organization will collapse.
The task, therefore, is for every agency, whether it is government or private sector, to identity its core 20% of its staff who will be the ones that have to run the organization and achieve the core goal of 80% of the tasks to be done.
Management should take care, as a first priority, of the needs of this 20%. These are the people that will go beyond the call of duty. These are the people who will work more than any other. These are the persons on which the future of the organization rests.
Their needs must be attended to. Not just their needs for salaries. No, they must be well-treated so that there are no distractions. They must be able to devote all their time and energies towards the organizations.
They must be able to do this for five to six years straight, after which they should be replaced and others take their place. This is the secret of successful organizational management.
You can throw away all the text books on management. Look after your 20% and you will be in good shape as the owner of a business. Just look at some of prerequisites of top executives of major corporations and you will see that not only are they paid, well, but their needs are taken care of, including a healthy retirement package.
People will therefore talk about how fat an increase is being proposed for salary increases to Ministers of the government. But the bottom line is if you do not take care of these Ministers, they will find other things to do to take care of themselves, and it is the government that will suffer.
So pay them well and fire them after six years. They are expendable just like the next bunch that will replace them.

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