Change is a con­stant theme in life. Times, sea­sons, and peo­ple change in an end­less process of be­com­ing. But while we un­der­stand the con­cept of bi­o­log­i­cal change, un­der­stand­ing so­cial and busi­ness change is more com­plex. Busi­ness mod­els change, and cor­po­ra­tions must adapt to the chang­ing ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment or per­ish. While there is a pre­sump­tion that busi­ness­es al­ways have mon­ey, that is a fal­la­cy. Busi­ness­es must al­so plan and change their in­vest­ment hori­zon and di­rec­tion. That’s why they do strate­gic plan­ning. A coun­try’s lead­er­ship must al­so plan, make de­ci­sions, and act to re­alise those plans.

The fu­ture is un­known. The best we can do is en­vi­sion the fu­ture that we wish to cre­ate and work to make that vi­sion a re­al­i­ty. There are many ex­am­ples of com­pa­nies in­vent­ing a fu­ture but fail­ing to change their busi­ness mod­els to em­brace the fu­ture that they had cre­at­ed. East­man Ko­dax in­vent­ed the dig­i­tal cam­era as ear­ly as the 1970s but ig­nored its po­ten­tial and stub­born­ly held on to its lega­cy pa­per busi­ness. It ran in­to fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties and filed for bank­rupt­cy in 2012.

Sharp was a house­hold name in home ap­pli­ances and elec­tron­ic equip­ment. It in­vent­ed the liq­uid crys­tal dis­play tech­nol­o­gy (LCD) and was the first to in­tro­duce a cal­cu­la­tor with LCDs in the 70s. It ap­plied the tech­nol­o­gy in oth­er in­no­v­a­tive ways to com­put­ers and house­hold ap­pli­ances. How­ev­er, it did not re­act to the de­vel­op­ment of a new tech­nol­o­gy, light-emit­ting diode semi­con­duc­tors (LED), which are used in many di­verse ap­pli­ca­tions. Af­ter many years of loss­es, the com­pa­ny was even­tu­al­ly bought in 2016 by Fox­conn, Ap­ple’s largest man­u­fac­tur­er.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the Swiss in­vent­ed the dig­i­tal watch, but Japan­ese com­pa­nies seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty. There are al­so many suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies to­day that sur­vived and did well de­spite their fail­ures. These fail­ures led to suc­cess in oth­er ar­eas. In the tech­nol­o­gy are­na, they are called tech­nol­o­gy’s most suc­cess­ful failed prod­ucts.

Ap­ple’s New­ton and Ama­zon’s Fire phone are ex­am­ples. How­ev­er, both com­pa­nies have thrived be­cause they have mas­tered their busi­ness mod­els in oth­er ar­eas. In­deed, be­fore Steve Jobs re­joined Ap­ple and rein­vent­ed its prod­uct lines and its re­tail busi­ness mod­el, Ap­ple was on the cusp of fail­ure.

The les­son from the fore­go­ing is sim­ple. If firms do not adapt to a chang­ing ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment, the mar­ket so­lu­tion is that they go out of busi­ness through bank­rupt­cy or are ac­quired by a more pro­gres­sive com­pa­ny and re­pur­posed. Suc­cess­ful firms un­der­stand the im­por­tance of pri­ori­tis­ing ob­jec­tives. Gov­ern­ments are not busi­ness mod­els. Their ex­is­tence and tran­si­tion are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly de­ter­mined, and that mod­el has short­er time lim­its. Politi­cians are there­fore elect­ed for a pe­ri­od and may be giv­en an­oth­er term de­pend­ing on their per­for­mance and the con­sti­tu­tion­al lim­its of of­fice.

The dif­fi­cul­ty is that the term lim­its are short rel­a­tive to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives to ad­dress the eco­nom­ic and so­cial prob­lems that a coun­try faces. Po­lit­i­cal change in­vari­ably means a change of pol­i­cy or the way pol­i­cy is im­ple­ment­ed. This does not of­ten lead to con­sis­tent eco­nom­ic growth or de­vel­op­ment, as mak­ing change re­quires a longer time frame than al­lowed by the con­sti­tu­tion­al term lim­its. A po­lit­i­cal par­ty may pay a price for weak pol­i­cy by be­ing vot­ed out of of­fice, but a coun­try pays even more in the long run to rec­ti­fy the un­der­ly­ing eco­nom­ic prob­lem.

The T&T busi­ness mod­el has been based on tax­ing en­er­gy sec­tor prof­its, first oil, then nat­ur­al gas and its petro­chem­i­cal de­riv­a­tives, and re­dis­trib­ut­ing the pro­ceeds through sub­si­dies and so­cial pro­grammes. This led to a con­cen­tra­tion of ef­fort in one sec­tor. Like oil, nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion is in sec­u­lar de­cline. We are eu­phemisti­cal­ly called a “ma­ture” hy­dro­car­bon pro­duc­er. The coun­try is there­fore in a pe­ri­od of tran­si­tion, an at­tempt at a “soft land­ing”, an­oth­er eu­phemism. It is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly clear that this mod­el is not func­tion­al and re­quires a new ap­proach by all mar­ket ac­tors.

While Gov­ern­ment does not con­trol the pri­vate sec­tor, it can in­flu­ence the pri­vate sec­tor through its pol­i­cy changes, which must be clear, ro­bust, and func­tion­al. These poli­cies must be re­viewed in light of the ev­i­dence and ad­just­ed as ap­pro­pri­ate. Small de­vel­op­ing coun­tries do not have the lux­u­ry of mak­ing mis­takes, and any mis­takes must be cor­rect­ed quick­ly.

These changes are dif­fi­cult, and it is even more dif­fi­cult to com­mu­ni­cate when cit­i­zens may have to ac­cept a de­cline in liv­ing stan­dards. The most im­por­tant point is that pol­i­cy changes are made by peo­ple to pos­i­tive­ly in­flu­ence the di­rec­tion of change, and that re­quires lead­er­ship.

In his ad­dress at the Cham­ber of Com­merce meet­ing on March 14, Ron Har­ford em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of lead­er­ship and ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to be­come mas­ters of their fate by de­mand­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty from the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate. Rather than lis­ten­ing to the call to ac­tion and ac­cept­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, Min­is­ter Young heard a chal­lenge to his “au­thor­i­ty” and re­act­ed, de­mean­ing the per­son who was per­form­ing the high­est civic du­ty.

Per­haps the min­is­ter was speak­ing for him­self, though he in­clud­ed every­one in Par­lia­ment. He was not speak­ing for the coun­try. The re­dis­trib­u­tive busi­ness mod­el is no growth en­gine. A dif­fer­ent mod­el is re­quired. Reg­u­lar vis­its to Venezuela are ac­tiv­i­ties with 20 years of his­to­ry be­hind them. What mat­ters are re­sults. Plan­ning, ma­ture lead­er­ship, de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and fo­cused ac­tions are the crit­i­cal dri­vers of eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion.