Ben Uugwanga
Meritocracy is the rightful placement of individuals into employment positions based on their competencies.
Technocracy is the rule of a system as defined by subject-matter experts.
Namibia yearns for subject matter inputs, stemming across the political divide to define her vision, strategies and tactics for her sectoral plans – more so in the public, private and non-state sectors.
Answers to our challenges will depend on well-thought-out solutions coming from the intelligentsia, who should be accorded the opportunity to define the country’s system thinking trajectory and the government’s whole system strategy after defining national priorities and integrating societal expectations through need-based assessments to arrive at a balance in terms of the feasible and viable avant-propos solutions to be implemented.
Candidates for high positions should be tested in terms of experience, wisdom, knowledge and technical expertise before being placed in leadership, managerial and technical positions.
These individuals should be well-read, good researchers, multidisciplinarians, competent critical analysts, virtuous, ethical, and not self-seeking opportunists pursuing careerist ambitions.
These individuals should have system thinking, practical and theoretical knowledge on a subject matter, and be able to develop solutions to our legislative, policy, sectoral and institutional challenges.
They may be specialists of generalism (experts in multiple areas) or generalists of specialism (technical experts in a specialist field).
Equally, their performance should be subjected to a performance management system to measure whether they were able to meet targets on where they were, where they wanted to be, how to get there, and how they knew they could get there.
If not, their work should be evaluated in terms of the bottlenecks that impede impactful performance for corrective measures to be taken.
Succession management and talent management remain crucial human capital approaches, particularly for a knowledge economy.
Succession management speaks of mentoring successors.
Talent management is the strategy of recruiting and developing a workforce that is productive and can stay with an institution for a long time.
These, combined with meritocracy and technocracy, call for a different approach to doing things as we approach the next republic.
We demand a paradigm shift in terms of our reward system, which has to reward technocrats, meritorious, ethical and competent individuals committed to national development and not personal ambition.
Jobs for comrades or cadre deployment and factionalism are disastrous.
These approaches often meant that an inner circle was built and rewarded on the basis of sectarian self-interest at the expense of technical and meritorious inputs.
Those who deserve appointments should be competent, ethical and virtuous.
John C Maxwell enthused that the wrong person in the wrong place is regression.
The wrong person in the right place is frustration.
The right person in the wrong place is confusion.
The right person in the right place is progression and multiplication.
Strategic and technical positions should not be given on the basis of sectarianism, gender, racial, tribal and regional considerations, but on the basis of the competencies and potential a candidate displays to steer Namibia towards attaining Vision 2030 and the national development plans.
Namibians should embrace competencies, and reward talent and potential.
Increasingly, values and objectives such as servanthood leadership, integrity, accountability, prudence, self-lessness, humility, professionalism, teamwork, value
for money, compassion, empowerment, succession management and talent management will be the hallmarks of setting out personal and institutional
greatness.
Finally, Namibia is required to subscribe to the demands of a learning society, whereby, as a community, we promote a culture of learning by developing effective partnerships between all sectors of the community as well as supporting and motivating individuals and organisations to learn.
If we do that, we have all the reasons to be sure that we can graduate to a high-performance knowledge-based economy after we have institutionalised meritocracy and technocracy.
The sky is the limit, and we should not be discouraged.
We have the advantage of having laid the foundation for principles, systems, institutions, processes and procedures.
Now we need human capital and resources as well as action plans to see to it that we implement our higher statements through milestone planning while capitalising on our comparative advantages, competitive advantages and economies of scale, notwithstanding promoting smart partnerships and a social welfare system as concepts to ensure we attain our national vision, goals and objectives, strategies and tactics through synergy.
* Ben Uugwanga is the founding managing director of Capstone Research Consultancy CC.