It is night that bestows darkness upon our land, it is stubborn and visionless men who cripple our souls and rob our children of their future. In my nine years with KCOBA I have seen too much and done too little. So I no longer want to be placated, I’m not settling for the crumb of appeasement, and I will not pull any punches. Our beloved country is crying out for “HELP” and the people whom we have entrusted with leadership are on cruise control and sheepishly promising a better day. Sadly as our people slowly die, some by violence, others by neglect, and still others from Tomfoolery, we must say “enough is enough” There will be no future, as no one will be here to see it. Death, failure and despair are the bitter fruits of our independence, where are all the bold innovative leaders that that our country has produced.
So here we sit pondering the age old question, “what is it that renders our leaders so totally inept, what is it that makes management in our Island such a hapless exercise in corruption and inefficiency? Is it that those who manage are woefully inadequate, uneducated, arrogantly misguided, or culturally flawed. Maybe we are blinded by our penchant for paternalistic and fraternalistic associations, making us predisposed to the concept of elevation based on years of service. As such we erroneously conclude that age equals wisdom in all cases and ignore track record and performance. Thus we become the manifestation of the Peter Principle, which dictates that people rise to their level of incompetence.
For me when it comes to Jamaica, everything starts with KC and as such my litany of ills will begin there. This helps to underscore my point since it has become clear that KC’s problem is one of management. The people who manage KC are the Church, The board of Governors, and the Principal. The Principal, fit as he is, is engrossed in putting out daily fires at the school along with his daily administrative duties. He must teach, lead, procure, mentor, mediate and above all manage the funds to the satisfaction of everyone, so we can assume his hands are full. So where is the church and the board. One can conclude that the church is too big to be consumed with any one school, plus they never saw academic leadership as a particularly exciting purview of the church. I venture to say that from the very beginning the school was awkwardly forced upon the church by two ambitious Bishops. So over the years the church’s grand management contribution was to select a board, once that is composed, it appears the church has done its job. It stands to reason then the board is expected to do a lot of the management functions the church either refuses to do or just cannot do. The board should bear the crux of the load for managing the school.
We arrive at a paradox of sorts when we ask, what is the public expectation of the Board’s management of the school? Should they be expected to set policies, manage crisis, offer direction, improve the functioning of the school, given that the basis of their selection is mostly religious and fraternalistic in nature. Examining the composition of the board, are our expectations realistic, even more pointedly are these men equipped to do all the above? In answering this question we must start at the top and look at the leader, his qualifications and track records. I have no doubt that the esteemed Chairman of the board is academically qualified, religiously qualified, socially qualified. Questions loom when we ask is he managerially qualified, what is his track record for managing the affairs of an institution of this magnitude. In answering this question you begin to see the genesis of Kingston College managerial problems. I have witnessed first hand the Board Chairman’s finesse at articulating goals, but never achieving them. An inability to foster a consensus, get behind it and drive it to its conclusion. The grand master of his own parade that seems to march on with pomp and pageantry in a ceaseless trip to nothingness, leaving us pitiful parade watchers to wonder are we unwitting players in a
grand game of “around the mulberry bush”. Spurred on by flowery words, we constantly chase our tails until we realize its an exercise in futility. Can someone tell the chairman, that as much as we like a parade, the band is getting tired and the song and dance is becoming meaningless.
One of the basic tenets of management is to set goals and achieve them in a timely manner. This goes for everything and every process that is managed. So really, does this board set management objectives?
The rest of the nine member board with a collective age of around 800 years is a profound testament to the edict “asleep at the wheel, lights out”. Professional board members all, the notion of performance is truly foreign and is probably cynically classified as ‘North American nonsense’ in the caverns of their minds. They’ll read this and question the writer’s cheekiness for demanding that they do something other than just sit on the board.
It saddens me when schools such as JC, Woolmers, St Andrews and our neighbors St George’s can outperform and outclass us in management and aesthetics. They have assembled the right boards, elicited the right support from their church and benefactors, and have placed their institutions squarely on solid footing for the future, while we flounder in a sea of errors and missteps. It is critical that our church and our board understand that they are failing our youngsters, they are failing our country. Sitting quietly while the ship sinks is not an act of courage or even humility; it is either extreme cowardice or incomprehensible buffoonery. It is unspeakable that while our country and school lurks from one crisis to the next, they bury their heads in the sand pretending its business as usual devoid of any sense of urgency. We simply must do better.
