Fear of the un­known and the un­fa­mil­iar is a ba­sic sur­vival in­stinct. Stick­ing to the known and cer­tain al­lows us to re­main safe, man­age out­comes, and avoid un­ex­pect­ed re­sults. This ex­plains why most peo­ple are re­sis­tant to change. The co­nun­drum is that coun­tries, so­ci­eties and peo­ple can on­ly ad­vance by em­brac­ing change. What peo­ple want to know is why the change is hap­pen­ing, how it would af­fect them in­di­vid­u­al­ly, and what their po­si­tion would be like when the changes are ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed. 

Busi­ness­es that do not adapt to mar­ket changes be­come dys­func­tion­al, mean­ing they could go out of busi­ness. If coun­tries do not adapt, in­dus­tries die or na­tion­al in­come de­clines. This risk is ubiq­ui­tous, even if we do not im­me­di­ate­ly recog­nise the threat. There are sev­er­al ex­am­ples. We live in an in­for­ma­tion age that is re­liant on tech­nol­o­gy, dis­rupt­ing many busi­ness mod­els. The ubiq­ui­ty of the in­ter­net has changed the way hu­mans re­ceive in­for­ma­tion. The wire­less in­ter­net now pro­vides re­al-time in­for­ma­tion and news at our fin­ger­tips through our mo­bile de­vices. 

No in­dus­try or busi­ness sec­tor is im­mune. Tele­phone com­pa­nies are chang­ing their busi­ness mod­el as wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion has ren­dered cop­per ca­bles and land­lines al­most ob­so­lete. Sim­i­lar­ly, the pub­lish­ing busi­ness is un­der­go­ing se­vere change as peo­ple do not nec­es­sar­i­ly want ei­ther to read or pay for a re­peat of yes­ter­day’s news in hard copy for­mat. News­pa­pers, mag­a­zines and books are in­creas­ing­ly be­ing pub­lished elec­tron­i­cal­ly.

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of so­cial me­dia has dec­i­mat­ed ad­ver­tis­ing agen­cies. The au­to­mo­bile in­dus­try faces a sim­i­lar chal­lenge as its busi­ness mod­el was based on the in­ter­nal com­bus­tion en­gine. It must ad­dress the move to elec­tron­ic ve­hi­cles and ad­dress the changes re­quired to ex­ist­ing pro­duc­tion lines and skill sets to ad­dress Chi­na’s su­prema­cy in this mar­ket seg­ment.  

T&T is part of this glob­al process, and every or­gan­i­sa­tion must ad­just its busi­ness mod­el to keep abreast to re­main com­pet­i­tive ei­ther in its home mar­ket or abroad. Per­haps many are ad­just­ing too slow­ly. These changes re­quire up­front in­vest­ment to re­alise the ex­pect­ed ef­fi­cien­cy gains, and this needs plan­ning, or­gan­i­sa­tion, train­ing and re­tool­ing of skills at every lev­el. The ad­di­tion­al com­pli­ca­tion comes from the coun­try’s chang­ing busi­ness mod­el, which has tra­di­tion­al­ly de­pend­ed on the en­er­gy sec­tor to pro­vide the fis­cal sur­plus to dri­ve in­vest­ment in oth­er sec­tors. 

T&T has made eco­nom­ic ad­vances and im­prove­ments in health care, ed­u­ca­tion and hous­ing since in­de­pen­dence. Per capi­ta in­come in­creased from USD 700 in 1962 to USD 19,692 in 2022 (IMF), and the un­em­ploy­ment rate is be­low five per cent down from dou­ble dig­its in the 1960s. How­ev­er, some of the in­de­pen­dence chal­lenges re­main. Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is still in­ad­e­quate, as the coun­try re­mains de­pen­dent on the en­er­gy sec­tor even as nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion is in ter­mi­nal de­cline. This is af­fect­ing many re­lat­ed sec­tors and for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tion. In ad­di­tion, pop­u­la­tion growth has slowed, as has the labour par­tic­i­pa­tion rate, as the num­ber of re­tirees in­creas­es. The crime sit­u­a­tion sug­gests that the so­cial fab­ric is weak­en­ing and is af­fect­ing busi­ness con­fi­dence. 

The econ­o­my has shown pos­i­tive signs of re­cov­ery by post­ing pos­i­tive growth rates over the past two years. How­ev­er, this spurt was due to for­tu­itous short-term price im­prove­ments in petro­chem­i­cal ex­port prices. Much more ro­bust growth num­bers are re­quired if the coun­try is to re­verse the “habit” of fis­cal deficits and ris­ing na­tion­al debt, nei­ther of which is sus­tain­able. 

Mov­ing the coun­try to a more ro­bust and sus­tain­able growth path will mean that change must be em­braced on many fronts. First, it must ad­dress pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is­sues in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors. This re­quires in­vest­ment in re­train­ing and the de­vel­op­ment of a new labour re­la­tions cul­ture. What­ev­er its fis­cal prob­lems, the Gov­ern­ment makes a mock­ery of the process by “ne­go­ti­at­ing” salary agree­ments nine years in ar­rears. Sec­ond, it must ad­dress the ease of do­ing busi­ness in prac­ti­cal ways. For ex­am­ple, a port is a 24-hour, not 12-hour, op­er­a­tion. Third, it must em­brace the pri­vate sec­tor as a part­ner in eco­nom­ic growth. Fourth, the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem must be re­cal­i­brat­ed to pro­duce bet­ter cit­i­zens. 

These tasks re­quire lead­er­ship that would en­gage cit­i­zens in a re­al dis­cus­sion about mean­ing­ful change and the nec­es­sary sup­port­ing mea­sures to get buy-in. That re­quires fo­cus­ing on the cur­rent chal­lenges and the re­me­di­al ac­tions to ef­fect mean­ing­ful ad­just­ments, not vac­u­ous promis­es of de­vel­op­ments in 2027. 

The suc­ces­sion is­sues in the ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties are dis­trac­tions, as they have yet to fo­cus on who has the at­trib­ut­es and skill sets to ad­dress the de­vel­op­ment chal­lenges. The re­al is­sue is that no po­lit­i­cal par­ty has dis­played an un­der­stand­ing of what is re­quired to move this pop­u­la­tion in­to the mind­set need­ed to sur­vive and grow in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Which prospec­tive leader is ar­tic­u­lat­ing the chal­lenges and so­lu­tions in crime, health, hous­ing, ed­u­ca­tion, trans­port, the en­vi­ron­ment, etc? Every chal­lenge re­quires that we do more with less in the com­ing years.

Com­mu­ni­cat­ing the ideas, if not the so­lu­tions, re­quires grav­i­tas, not shal­low plat­i­tudes. The na­tion needs a leader with the abil­i­ty, qual­i­ties and skill sets to ad­dress these chal­lenges.

The fo­cus should be on plans, poli­cies, pro­grammes and im­ple­men­ta­tion, not pol­i­tics. Which leader and which team mea­sure up to the op­por­tu­ni­ty to lead the coun­try through these changes? These are the first-or­der ques­tions.

Mar­i­ano Browne is the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness.