10 Suggestions for the Project Management Team
After nearly nine months of a caretaker government, Nepal steps into another era of a government put up by the syndicate of major political parties.
The judiciary was dragged in as no alternatives were visible, and now the onus is on the political parties to bring back multiparty democracy through a technocratic government.
Many questions have been asked on what does this mean to business and economy. Perhaps, this is not a magic potion.
The current arrangement is a bridge that Nepal goes through from one uncertainty to the other. The new technocratic government will not be able to give a boost to investment and economic growth, but it can surely do many things that will facilitate the same.
They are, in corporate management parlance, a project management team who are there to deliver a set objective. Here are the 10 suggestions to make the project management team effective:
- Draw up a code of conduct as to what should be the dividing line between a government of technocrats and a government of politicians. Do not repeat the ego trip people got into in 2005 during the royal regime when everyone thought they were there forever
- This is a project management team and different from an operating team. It will be crucial to make one dispensable rather than indispensible. You are not on a popularity gaining junket
- Stay away from bowing to political pressure on distributing money to political cadres and their circle of influence. Fiscal discipline is something only project managers can bring in and here is a great opportunity to do that.
- Stay away from ceremonial stuff, opening of workshops, ATMs, lighting lamps. Politicians do it for popularity, you do not need that.
- Make the bureaucracy and the judiciary effective, after all they are your former colleagues. Take them into confidence. Here is a lifetime opportunity to bring about change.
- Control your family members, your circle of influence. They will be capitalizing on your name more than anybody else. The temptation to take family out on officials cars to hotels fixed by your personal assistant for free is fun in the short run, but kills your credibility in the long run.
- Privatize the private sector. Tell them don’t come for favors, but clean up your workplace, professionalize, corporatize to take on the world. You don’t need to get into business now; there will be ample opportunities in the future for you to take it up.
- Project management teams always have enough time to perform many tasks. There are many pieces of legislation that need to be adopted for smooth functioning of the economy. We are not talking about big ones, but many small ones that have been pending for long.
- Stop extortion; take criminal action against those who pursue. Politicians want you out as soon as possible, so they will listen to you. Criminal proceedings against some will help. Let us learn from the campaign against drunk driving, it worked and kept skeptics wondering how it happened.
- Enforce rule of law .Punish a few people who have not been punished due to political desires. Take action against people committing financial crime. Nepal’s GDP will not rise phenomenally by doing these, but surely the message will be loud and clear to the world. This project management team means business. If you can score closer to ten on the above, the chances are people will believe that you will be able to deliver elections.