FRANKLY SPEAKING
A Management Story
During the first week of December 1998, the Ministry of Education of Peru, convened a seminar in the country's capital Lima. The subject matter of the seminar was the problem of spreading education to the remote corners of the vast country of Peru and its management. Officials concerned with the formulation of education policy of the country attended the seminar. So did officials of the World Bank and the European Union, the two organizations that picked up the tab of the seminar and education experts from Peru's South American neighbouring countries of Columbia, Mexico and Chili. We were two from Asia, an Indonesian education consultant and myself, representing BRAC, the organization that I work for.
"Why BRAC"?, I asked one of the organisers of the conference. He replied that BRAC with 34,000 one-classroom non-formal primary schools in Bangladesh with 1.2 million students had perhaps the largest private educational network in the world. Although he did not mention, it did occur to me that President Alberto Fujimori of Peru, during his visit to Bangladesh in May 1997, had come to the BRAC Centre and was given a fairly detailed briefing on our non-formal education system. The impressions that he might have carried with him about the quality of our education management, could have had, I suspected, something to do with BRAC's invitation to the seminar and consequently with my being on my very first visit to Peru!
Be that as it may, this write-up is not about Peru or the heights of its Macchu Picchu mountains, made famous by the immortal South American poet Pablo Neruda, nor about the magnificent capital city of Lima, still living under the threat of terrorist insurgency. This is about the pleasing experience of being a beneficiary of good management, in unexpected situations, on my long journey from Dhaka to Lima. I narrated this experience at the session of the seminar discussing the importance of good management in an education system, for I believe that the ingredients of good management are universal, no matter what the area of concern may be.
The first serious problem for a Bangladeshi wishing to travel abroad, concerns his obtaining a visa (besides of course arranging funds; which in my present case came either from the World Bank or the European Union, through the Peruvian government!). The long and patient queues seen outside the visa offices of foreign missions in Dhaka bear testimony to what I say about visas and my compatriots. The number of people emerging successful out of those queues with visas on their passports is usually quite small. Peru, I was told over the telephone and e-mail, by Signor Zorababel Cancino, one of the principal organisers of the conference, had visa abolition agreements with no less than 85 countries. But alas, Bangladesh was not one of them. One wondered why. Peru has made good economic recovery in the Fujimori years with job opportunities being created in fairly large numbers. It was therefore quite likely, one thought, that the country did not wish to be caught unprepared in staving off an onslaught of job seekers from this distant land!
My problem lay in the fact that there is no Peruvian Embassy in Dhaka. Why Peru, indeed there are no South American embassies in Bangladesh. Once there used to be Brazilian and Argentinean missions here. They have closed shops and gone away, not before, one dares say, creating vast support bases in this country for their respective soccer teams! Their national flags proudly fluttering in the breeze over hundreds of Bangladeshi households, during the last World Cup Soccer game spoke of good work that must go to the credit of the two departed missions!
Going back to my visa question, Signor Cancino disclosed that under normal circumstances visa clearance for Bangladeshis takes about three weeks. But invited as I was by the Peruvian Education Ministry, my case was different. Instructions, he said, had been sent to the Peruvian Embassy in Washington to issue me with a visa. I could pick it up from there on my way to Lima. (The reader could rightly worry here about my US visa. Luckily the US visa authorities perhaps do not consider me good enough for a job in the United States, for they have issued me with a multi entry visa of reasonably long validity, which has proved its usefulness on a number of occasions!) But then there was another problem about my Peru visa. I was required to be in Lima on Monday, November 30, 1998. The four days preceding that happened to fall within the long Thanks Giving weekend, when all government offices, including the foreign missions in Washington would be closed. Signor Cancino had thought of that and had made arrangements accordingly. His instructions to me were to go to the Peruvian Embassy in Washington on Friday November 27, at 11 am, and he said that although the day was a holiday, Signor Huegeras, the First Secretary of the Embassy would be there to grant me the visa. However, I should confirm my arrival in Washington on November 26, over the telephone to Signor Huegeras, and he e-mailed to me the First Secretary's home telephone number.
This I did, and Huegeras said that anticipating of my call he had stayed home that evening. He confirmed the next morning's arrangement. When at the dot of 11, next morning I rang the door bell of the Peruvian Chancery it was Signor Huegeras who answered the call. It took only a few minutes for the visa to be issued and what initially had seemed like a cloak and dagger operation ended happily. A case of perfect management, I thought. Sitting in Lima, Signor Cancino had planned my 'Operation Visa' thoughtfully and everything went like clockwork. I thanked Signor Huegeras and merrily drove back from the Peruvian Embassy, through Massachusetts Avenue, on that bright and crisp November morning to Potomac, where I was staying, not knowing that a good deal more of 'management' was needed to ensure my smooth arrival in Lima.
As scheduled, I presented myself at the John Foster Dulles airport on the morning of November 29 for my 12-30 pm American Airlines flight which was to take me to Dallas, Texas. There, after an hour and a half's wait I was to board another flight of the same airlines in the evening reaching Lima, at 1-15 am the next morning. The Lima airport is not quite safe for strangers, certainly not at that hour of the morning, as Signor Cancino had warned me, adding reassuringly however that he would personally receive me at the airport.
I duly checked in at the American airlines counter for my 12-30 pm flight and just as one was waiting for the boarding call, came the announcement that the flight had been delayed by an hour. While other passengers took the announcement in their stride, my case was somewhat different. The one hour delay would leave me with barely half an hour for my change of flight at Dallas, a time gap which, even under the best possible circumstances, was not enough for the transfer of my luggage at the Dallas airport to the Lima-bound flight. I was in a quandary and rushed immediately to the American Airlines passenger service counter at the departure lounge. The counter was unattended, but just as my impatience was turning into anger, at what I thought as the indifference of the airlines to the plight of passengers, an official with a sheaf of papers in her hand appeared at the counter and immediately thereupon started concentrating on the papers in her hand. The clock was ticking away and my patience gave in. I announced my name in a tone that must have sounded louder than necessary. But she did not appear to mind.
On the other hand, for a change, my name seemed to have worked wonders. She treated me like a long lost friend and said that she had been working on my schedule for the last few minutes, and that, subject to my approval, had taken some actions regarding my journey to Lima. She said that if I took the delayed American airlines flight, even if I succeeded in boarding in Dallas the scheduled flight to Lima, it would not be possible to affect my luggage transfer. She had therefore taken the liberty of having my lone suitcase unloaded from the aircraft. Since I was the only Lima-bound passenger in that flight to Dallas, it was easy to identify my luggage. She said that the next flight going to Lima on that day was a Delta Airlines flight, that would leave Washington at 8 pm and stopping over at Atlanta, Georgia, would reach Lima at 7 am the next morning. When I agreed that I take that flight, she disclosed that she had indeed done the booking, again anticipating my approval!
She then told me what to do next. I should go downstairs, she said, to the American Airlines luggage carousel to retrieve my suitcase. I should then check in at the Delta airlines counter where my booking has already been made for the Delta airlines flight to Lima. The airlines official handed over two food coupons to me - a lunch coupon for seven dollars and a dinner coupon for 10 dollars. She said that since my flight was at 8 pm, I could utilise these two coupons at any of the food stalls or restaurants at the airport for my next two meals. She then wished me 'bon voyage'. I regard this an excellent example of good management in an unexpected situation. The airlines official recognised my flight problem when it arose because of the delayed flight, identified the problem areas and came to me having ensured the solution of these problems.
As instructed by the airlines official I went to the baggage collection centre and there indeed was my familiar black samsonite suitcase circling in solitary splendour on the American Airlines luggage carousel. I took it down to find that one needed two dollars to release a trolley. I happened to have only one one-dollar bill in my wallet and I therefore needed change. Leaving my suitcase I approached a gentleman standing some distance away. I narrated my predicament and asked for the change for a ten-dollar bill. The gentleman found it easier to part with a dollar bill to enable me to secure a trolley. Thanking him for his consideration I walked back to the place where I had left my suitcase. But lo and behold! It had disappeared! The suitcase that basically was the root cause of my changing my Lima flight was nowhere to be found. While looking for it in a desperate state I must have attracted considerable attention, for an uniformed armed security personnel slowly walked up to me to ask whether anything was the matter. I told him of my missing suitcase whereupon he described it perfectly and informed me that he had removed my suitcase. He added that anything lying unattended on the floor of the hall was handed over to the police routinely. He showed me where to find it and the security people handed it back to me without any fuss or bother.
The entire incident starting from my asking that benevolent gentleman for change could not have taken more than seven minutes, although the missing suitcase made it seem more like an hour. But at the end of it all I was left highly impressed with the security arrangement at the Dulles airport. A picture of the miserable little ZIA airport with all its perennial confusion and laughable security failures came to mind. The contrast could not have been greater!
I then wheeled my suitcase to the Delta Airlines counter where the check-in hardly took five minutes. The cheerful girl on duty at the Delta Airlines counter even gave me a forward row aisle seat that I wanted and for the second time in the day I was all set for my Lima flight! It was just then that I thought of Signor Cancino in Lima! He would be at the airport at 1-15 in the morning to receive me while because of the changed flight schedule, I would now reach Lima at 7 am by a different airlines.
I rushed back to that cheerful girl at the Delta airlines counter to recount the likely situation. She listened to me with rapt attention and asking me to wait, disappeared into the room behind the counter. She emerged out of the room after quite a while, with the copy of a fax that she had just sent to the Delta Airlines office at Lima. Explaining my story she had, in the message, underlined the urgency and the necessity of letting Signor Cancino know of the changed schedule to save him a futile early morning trip to the airport and me arriving there with no one knowing about it. The concluding sentence of the message said that the day, ie, November 29, 1998 being a Sunday, Signor Cancino was not likely to be available at his workplace. His residential telephone number would therefore have to be found out by the Delta Airlines, Lima, from the telephone directory! Here again is an example of clear understanding of a problem and of advance thinking and initiative in resolving it.
Upon my arrival at the Lima airport at 7 am, the next day, I was pleased by the reassuring sight of Signor Cancino standing at the airport with a placard bearing my name for identification. He said that he had been informed of my delayed arrival by the airlines well in time, thanks to which he had been spared a time-consuming midnight drive to the airport to meet my earlier scheduled flight.
I recounted my recent experiences to the seminar's concluding public session on 'Management' and said that my presence in it, for whatever it was worth, was the result of good management, starting from the 'Operation Visa' in Washington to the warm reception accorded to me at Lima airport by a placard holding Signor Cancino. I emphasized that it was the utmost importance attached to good management, that had made BRAC programmes including the one on Non-formal Primary Education, successful and worthwhile.
I happen to be an indifferent public speaker usually used to a polite applause as I sit down. But on that evening in Lima, as I concluded, the applause, I felt, was somewhat louder than what mere politeness would call for!
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