Barbados is a country that needs to behave like a company so that the average Bajan can prosper.

This requires an improved collaborative approach involving Government, the private sector, and trade unions to establish what corporate governance adviser Dr Basil Springer is calling Barbados Inc.

Springer, who was a management consulting pioneer in the late 1970s, and has more than 40 years of project management experience here and abroad, believes the island needs look no further than the successful South East “Asian tigers” of Malaysia, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea, and especially Singapore, for inspiration.

This included transforming Barbados into a global trade hub, and focusing on enterprise development for expanded exports to boost foreign exchange.

Follow up vision with action

He advocated for a management system that focused on productivity, efficiency, and innovation and suggested that the private-sector needed to take a lead role in any such effort.

“First of all, you have to have a vision and you have got to follow it up with action. Vision without action is mere fantasy, as you are just dreaming about something and you do nothing about it,” he said in an interview with Barbados Business Authority.

“Action without vision is folly, if you start doing things and you don’t have a strategic perspective, then you could end up anywhere. Neither action nor vision reeks of irresponsibility, if you are supposed to be in a leadership position and you neither have a vision or action, you’re wasting time.

“Vision and action, when you get them to work well, they induce synergy, and that is the best that we want. We want Barbados to win and when Barbados wins, we all win. I am interested in getting the country to work well.”

These are not mere slogans or buzz words for Springer, who is concerned that “we’ve been spinning tot in mud since I’ve been working, which is since the late 60s”.

“We get some things right, I think the present Government has done very well since 2018 in the context of digging us out of a hole, dealing with COVID, restructuring the debt, trying to get the economy to flow, but what we now have to do is build Barbados Inc.,” he advised.

His recommendation was for Government “to set policy, to provide regulatory service in support of that policy and general service, like what the civil service would do, while the private sector “should do business and earn foreign exchange”.

“And then the trade unions should be like productivity consultants, they should work with the labour force to say, ‘listen, you guys, your job is to be highly productive, give the best you can, and we will seek fair compensation for you’,” he suggested.

“That is the governance system that we want for a Barbados Inc. to move forward. Then, once you have a Barbados Inc., like in any other company, you have got to manage it well.”

Springer highlighted the opportunity Barbados still had to become a leading trade hub and he also stressed the importance of enterprise development, both of which Singapore excelled in.

Learning from Singapore

“I’ve been in Singapore four times between 1982 and 2007, so I have seen this stuff, I’ve talked to people, I’ve had presentations made to me by the Economic Development Board in Singapore,” he said.

“People usually say, ‘Oh, you cannot compare Singapore with Barbados’, I am not comparing at all, but I’m saying, Singapore is successful, that is a fact. The question is, what can we learn from Singapore?”

Springer also said that Barbados, while successful in tourism, financial services and other sectors over the years, had “failed miserably” in enterprise development.

He proposed the 3M/Shepherding Model of metamorphosis, “get that little idea going into a big one”; management, “assign the shepherd to the individual”; and money, “an equity fund where you invite investors to put money into the fund, and then the fund buys shares in the entrepreneur’s business”.

Assign shepherd to entrepreneur

Springer said he developed this Shepherding Model over the last 25 to 30 years and it “has the potential to allow the enterprise development sector to grow”.

“You need shepherding. You need to assign a shepherd to the entrepreneur, and to get that shepherd to focus on skill set, mindset, cross cultural communication in order to develop the entrepreneur,” he underscored.

Springer believes it is not too late to build Barbados Inc.

“Even though we’ve missed a lot of opportunities, we can start now. I am at the last quarter of my life, I can hardly get up out the chair without a few pains, the mouth is still going, the brain is still working, but it’s the younger people now who have to take these ideas and implement them,” he said.

“To say that you had 17 successive quarters of growth is not good enough to filter down to the lower levels.

“So that’s why it’s necessary first to come up with enterprise development, or something else, to really grow the economy, as has been done in Southeast Asia. They have found ways of significant growth, not just a little bit of growth that doesn’t filter down.” (SC)