Chartered managers launch new awards scheme for excellence
One of Sri Lanka’s top civil servants, brought out of retirement to serve the President, recalled how at one point (in the past) the press (media) did not like him and also didn’t like ‘peace’.
Austin Fernando, Secretary to the President, while addressing the launching of the first ever Excellence Awards by the Chartered Management Institute, Sri Lanka Branch last week in Colombo, referred to how he was hated by the media when he was the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence in 2002 where he was blasted every week when the Situation Report was discussed and everything what he said was taken as wrong.
Here (at last week’s event) he was trying to explain as to how hard the real managerial job is where one has to take very hard decisions and when they are well construed, the results in the future would really be effective.
To drive this point, he referred to the case of Karuna Amman who was captured during the ceasefire agreement in 2002 and the Navy was trying to get his consent to kill the LTTE rebel. He said the Navy contacted him in the dead of night at around 1.30 am but he said that he refused to accede to the Navy request as had he done it the whole ceasefire agreement would have been seriously affected.
Speaking of management, he said that still the old school of management persists in some areas saying that connoisseurs know that ‘Old Scotch’ is still better but that toddy with time gets valueless.
He traced his beginnings and how he reached the top rung of the administrative service saying, “My experience in being in the public sector and private sector engagement has a long history, since I have been a public servant since 1963. Therefore, you have to listen to an old school manager who is the oldest, incumbent public servant”.
He said that his experience is that managing is a complex challenge requiring extremely complex skills that needed to be refined over time and managers are often called upon to perform different functions and to wear different hats and it applies to a secretary of a ministry too.
The political fraternity sometimes delegates their managerial power to their spouses, siblings or the private secretary or the coordinating secretary and these political bosses are sometimes hyperactive perhaps for personal gains, he pointed out and added that this has even spread to among some public servants and used a colloquial Sinhala saying; “Guraa hitagena karanakota, goolaya dhuwa dhuwa karanawaa” to emphasise the point.
The opposition is often critical about the government which however is important to prevent corruption in the public sector. “This is good governance – Yahapalanaya,” he observed. However this terminology has been heavily prostituted as every minor failure by the administration is contested. But when these opposition members become ministers they change their attitude.
Malraj Kiriella, President, CMI Sri Lanka, said that the CMI UK has been providing professional managers for more than 50 years and their mission is to increase membership and raise the standard of professional managers to be qualified managers combined with the vision of creating better managed organisations. He said that it is important to keep in mind the values of CMI which are to be professional, progressive, passionate and practical.
Neil Kavanagh, First Secretary (Political), British High Commission in Colombo, said that the UK Foreign Office has career diplomats spread over 270 locations around the world and they too were holding excellence awards to keep the quality high and to appreciate the services of these excellent managers. Even the Queen was present at such award events, he said.