DEEPENING EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES IN ACTUALISING BUILDING OUR FUTURE TOGETHER FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF AN ADMINISTRATOR
One of the most strategic initiatives for running an organisation positively is building team members or stakeholders. The Bureau of Service Matters is highly delighted in the efforts of the leadership of the Ministry of Justice in building a positive work culture among its Officers. This approach recognises the individual talents and the potentials everyone could bring to the achievement of the overall goals and objectives of the Agency. According to Vince Lambardi, ´The achievements of an organisation are the results of the combined efforts of each individual”.
The initiative is also supported in view of the team building potentials the training would have on the Agency as a whole. It is no longer fashionable for any organisation to possess the right leadership in the right place without the right management skills.
You will appreciate from your experiences that the imperatives of your cumulative skills in such a dynamic Agency as this Ministry suggest that you have efficiency and effectiveness.
Key Words
Effective Management
This can be described as the extent to which managers accomplish their goals by means of the resources of the organisation. It involves optimum utilization of resources, timely, efficiently and effectively. (Please don’t mind the repetition of the word “effective” here again.)
Strategies
Strategies are plans of action designed to achieve long-term or overall aim. This may have to be specific and peculiar to each organisation.
Administrator (administration)
An administrator is a person responsible for carrying out the running of a part or whole of an organisation. This is called Administration. Management staff in any establishment or organisation must possess demonstrable administrative capabilities. In fact, every professional, in whatever field is a potential administrator. For instance, when a law officer, takes a decision that a suspect should be charged to court, that is administration. That is why it is called Administration of Criminal Justice. In this paper, I would rather prefer to use the word “Administration”, the concept, rather than “Administrator”, the person.
Building Our Future Together
The goal of the present Administration in Ogun State led by Prince Dapo Abiodun, MFR, is to deliver to the good people of Ogun State a five-point agenda captioned Building Our Future Together. The objective of this programme is to give Ogun State focused and qualitative governance and to create the enabling environment for a public-private partnership, which is fundamental to the creation of enduring economic development and individual prosperity for the people of the State. This is anchored on the firm understanding and principle that the government cannot do it alone, but should concentrate on its areas of strength and allow the private sector to partner with it to achieve economic development and growth. The tenets of this agenda are encapsulated in ISEYA, meaning:
I – Infrastructure
S – Social Welfare and Wellbeing
E – Education
Y – Youth Development
A – Agriculture and Food Security
Management Objectives and the Public Service
Formally defined, management covers activities that plan, organize, and control the operations of the basic elements of people, materials, machines, methods, money, by providing direction and coordination, and giving leadership to human efforts, so as to achieve set objectives of an organisation or entity.
At any level of management, several theories highlight the concepts of planning, organising, directing, coordinating, and controlling as major responsibilities. The main objective of management is to secure maximum outputs with minimum efforts and resources. Managerial roles are specific behaviours associated with the task of management. With adequate understanding of these roles, you have improved organisational alertness, better and faster decision making, quicker problem solving skills, increased rate of innovation, sharing of professional expertise and better communication. This paper is not designed to teach management techniques and application, but it is important that we take a cursory look at some management techniques that have been applied in different organisations and systems. At the end of the whole presentation, we’ll understand how administrative principles can deepen our management strategies, irrespective of the management model that we adopt.
Management by Objectives (MBO)
Management by Objectives (MBO) is the process of defining top organisational goals and using them to determine employees’ objectives. MBO processes are intended to identify an employee’s main objectives, which are later graded into group input.
Strategic Management
Strategic Management refers to the managerial process of forming a strategic vision, setting objectives, crafting a strategy, implementing and executing the strategy.
Functional Management
Functional Management focuses on short term issues, majorly. It concentrates on improving the efficiency of its functional areas.
Strategic Financial Management
Strategic Financial Management is when an organisation uses all of its resources intentionally, in ways that will achieve its goals and create profit.
Role of a Manager
Promotion of officers on Grade levels 14 – 17 in the State Public Service is vested in the Office of the Head of Service. You are quite aware that promotion interviews at this level are conducted by the Management Staff Committee domiciled in the Office of the Head of Service. This is so because such officers are considered to be in the Management level. This officers are seen as managers of people, resources (materials) and situations.
According to Mintzberg, there are ten managerial roles which can be grouped into three areas: interpersonal; informational and decisional. Interpersonal roles cover the relationships that a manager has to have with others. With informational, you must communicate the direction and strategies appropriately. Lastly, in the case of decisional, major decisions are made at the discretion of the manager.
As managers, you need to build a work culture, focus on employees’ strength, be assertive, and help develop employees’ careers; you should also be able to handle pressure effectively and communicate honestly. You also need to build good relationships with people at all levels. You are expected to be visionary, develop talents and keep learning. (I am sure that you’ll believe that all these are arduous and/or onerous responsibilities. But the truth is that a lot is expected from officers at this level. To whom much is given, much more is expected.)
Managers as leaders require integrity, ability to delegate, communicate effectively, and develop self-awareness, influence and empathy.
The Need for Effective Management Strategy in a Public Establishment
A quick look at the challenges facing present day Nigeria may suggest weak public institutions as a major factor. It is often said that in a society where there is no law, there is no offence. This is often said to highlight the importance of laws and faithful adherence to such in a quest for having an orderly society or country. Law and order, or more specifically, Administration of Justice is a vital element of public life and this is the bedrock of good governance. In view of the strategic role that the Ministry of Justice plays in the society, best practice in management ideals is expected from every member of the management team of the agency.
Public sector managers have an important role in developing their organisation to influence employees, work procedures and ultimately, the general public.
Successful law firms thrive on the talent and ingenuity of their managers and employees. The Ogun State Ministry of Justice is blessed with several brilliant, talented and ingenious officers. This agency, I am aware, rarely relies on hired hands and it is one of the most successful among its peers in the country. However, I do believe that the agency can still do much better. You only need to leverage on appropriate strategies, identify your areas of strength, manage and improve on your weaknesses, recognise change as desirable and inevitable and make room for continual improvement. This organisation should see itself as a law firm run on best practices. You have no reason not to be the best.
I know that the agency takes new officers from time to time. These officers need firm foundation on the job and must be made to learn the right rudiments from the onset.
Leveraging on Administrative Skills to improve Management Performance
We agreed earlier on that summarily speaking, Administration is the process or activity of running a business, organisation or an entity. The truth is that there are several views of what administration is. Professor Sam Aluko once defined Administration as commonsense made difficult. That appears to be a simplistic approach to explaining the concept.
I stated earlier on as well that we are all involved in administration, one way or the other. We take decisions and sometimes, we outline the processes leading to that decision.
Understanding and developing latent administrative skills will improve management performance, for the individual on the one hand, and the organisation as a whole. Let me state clearly that it is sometimes difficult to delineate between administration and management. It sometimes appears to be a thin line that separates the two, but they are different.
It is important to note at this stage too that administration is about people. People are always at the centre of administrative decisions. For instance, you need a power generation set: why do you need it? To improve the flow of work that people do! Human beings must always be the focal point of administrative decisions. Consequently, certain norms and values are capable of assisting us to hone our administrative skills. When these are applied in administration, better and higher quality decisions are made; and when these administrative skills are applied in management, they influence management outcomes more positively and necessarily improve performance. Let us look at some of them.
1. Fairness: fairness must be a watchword for any good and efficient administrator. That decision you are about to take: how fair is it to everyone? Is it based on self centredness or self-preservation? Would it outlast you? Or you are thinking of what suits your interest at the moment? We can go on and on!
2. Equity: is your decision equitable? Is your decision informed by fairness, justice and impartiality?
3. Ethics or morality: an administrator that lacks morality has no value to society or human beings. Every decision must based on high ethical values. Our society is what it is today because most people involved in administrative decisions lack ethics or morality.
4. Empathy: a key principle in developing effective administrative skills is empathy; putting yourself in the position of others. You need to develop empathy; we need to understand how people feel about our decisions.
5. Compassion: compassion is different from empathy. Compassion is having consideration for the feelings of others with a desire to help or assist them.
6. Knowledge: knowledge is a sine qua non for good administrative decisions. You must be abreast of developments in whatever area or specialization you find yourself. The modern organisation is a knowledge based one. You must know a little about everything. The depth of information you have would ultimately affect the quality of decisions you take.
7. Technology: the 21st century is the age of technology. Technology enhances good administrative decisions, at the individual level and at the corporate level. Organisations must embrace digitization. Technology reduces the level of human interference in decision making; it reduces the level of individual discretion in handling organisational issues. What often increases corruption in corporate settings is level of discretion available to individuals in taking decisions. Once you reduce the level of discretion through the introduction of technology, you reduce corruption drastically.
Good administrative capabilities enable sound management operations and overall organisational effectiveness. All these enhance management competence and achievement of organisational goals and objectives.
Next Steps
As I begin to round up this paper, I believe we should be creating in our minds what we need to do to translate this training programme into actionable and tangible dividends. In doing this, I humbly offer some piece of advice. We know that the goal of any management strategy is to improve operational effectiveness and efficiency; the same objectives why organisations invest in training and retraining of staff. That is why we are here today. We must endeavor to make it count. We must apply and continually put it into practice those ethos and principles that enhance our work and increase individual and organisational productivity. We should kindly note that it is normal in any work environment to experience different management strategies being used by different leaders; a multitude of environmental push and pull factors also come into play. However, best and transparent practices will be the only one that will stand the test of the times.
We must not underplay the importance of technology in the modern work environment. As stated earlier, technology is indispensable to a faster, more efficient approach to solving organisational problems, and this, in addition limits the influence of discretion in decision making. I stated earlier on that we should explore the world of digitization. More and more organizations in both the Public and Private Sectors of the economy are embracing digitization as a means of improving operational efficiency, cost maximization and overall management effectiveness. I do not believe that there will be anyone here who will not be able to use the computer.
A suggested means to improve efficiency is to re-work organizational structures in tune with present day realities. It will not be out of place for the Ministry to have an e-library and computer centre. I have information that the Ministry subscribed to an online library in the past. This can be modified and improved upon.
As we discuss management imperatives and performance improvement, it is necessary to briefly look at employee motivation. An organisation can have the best management practice; the most modern technology and have impeccable processes in place, but where the staff are not driven or motivated, it may all achieve nothing. Several Research efforts have established a positive correlation between staff motivation and increase in productivity. Motivation does not have to be cash reward alone; training is a kind of motivation. And there are several other kinds of motivation. Recognition is a form of motivation. Modern management practices dwell more on rewards than punishment. Let us imbibe these values that incentivize our staff and propel them to attain those lofty heights that we want them to reach.
Blending Agency’s Goals with Building Our Future Together Agenda
The Ministry of Justice has a leverage on the outcome of different programmes and policies of the State Government. If there is any agency that has a direct relationship with practically every Ministry, Department and Agency (MDA) of Government, it is the Ministry of Justice. It offers legal advice to MDAs, represents government in disputes and litigations and has tremendous influence over legislation and making of laws. The Ministry can and should put this leverage into positive effects as it charts its way forward from this Retreat or training programme. Although the agency is known to be doing this, it can still be improved upon such that the reverberations from this retreat is felt across the State Public Service. In addition, it is incumbent on all of us to key into the concepts and direction of the present Administration in the State. It will be expected that the volume of work will increase with time as Government improves the environment for a public-private partnership.
CONCLUSION
As management staff in the Civil Service, a lot is expected from you. You must keep improving yourself. You must be amenable to positive influences and change. An organisation’s ability to learn and adapt to changes rapidly is essential for high productivity.
I thank you so much for listening; God bless you.
Dahunsi Ogunleye
B.A. (Hons), MPP, MCIPM
Permanent Secretary
Bureau of Service Matters.
References
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Dubrin, Andrew J. (2009), Essentials of Management, (8th edition), Mason OH
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Being a Paper Presented at a Retreat for Management Staff of the Ministry of Justice by Mr. Dahunsi Ogunleye, Permanent Secretary, Bureau of Service Matters, Office of the Head of Service, Governors’ Office, Abeokuta, Ogun State Nigeria.