LAST week I was invited by the Human Resource Department of LGU San Carlos City to facilitate their team building activity in La Libertad. About 60 participants from three frontline departments were the first to undergo my module.
Unlike the usual team building modules that promote team spirit and camaraderie, my passion for good governance and my exposure with the bureaucracy made me craft a module just to hit the usual gaps in the delivery of public services at the local level. The idea is that team buildings are not just meant to be a feel good activity, rather it should disturb the inner heroism of people who have been in service for quite a while and must have had countless experiences of successes and disappointments. In them lies the efficient, effective, transparent, and accountable public service.
You see, a great factor of the success or failure of any LGU is actually the people working everyday to deliver the services. No matter how brilliant the leaders are, they are only as good as their people. And so common to visionary leaders is that they always invest in capacitating their workforce to catch up with their visions otherwise things will always be business as usual.
For that whole day activity I prepared 5 games with 9 lessons to live by in their work. Let me spare you of the fun in the games and the dynamics they have as a group but allow me to share at least 5 of the 9 takeaways in the activities we had at Lalimar Beach Resort.
1. Set a target. Almost always we just go through the motion of showing up to work and doing our thing without a conscious effort of setting a target for the day. If we have no specific target then we cannot assess whether we did well or not at the end of the day. A simple target like processing 10 papers a day or vaccinating 30 kids per week is always better than just marching to the battlefield without an idea of how many people to serve.
2. Strategize. If we have a target, we make sure we also have a plan on how to accomplish them. However simple the task may be, it needs a strategy on how to carry it out. A simple task of cleaning the toilet or doing inventory needs good strategy so as not to waste resources such as time and effort. Strategies builds assurance of efficiency and effectiveness in delivering the services.
3. Innovate. There is always room for improvement so let us always try something new while we continue to do the things that worked. With innovations we can always expect better outcome than before. Because if we only do what we always did, we will only get what we always got.
4. Benchmark. The problems that LGUs have in their offices are not uncommon. They are also the same problems that other LGUs face. The fastest way to learn how to improve things is to learn from the best practices of other LGUs. You do not have to always reinvent the wheel, you just have to replicate success stories for things to work better.
5. Play to win. We grew up with a culture of competition and we always find ourselves in a tug of war. But in all situations there is always a middle ground. The challenge therefore is to explore ways where we come up with a win-win situation. That way all parties go home happy. Instead of competing, we collaborate, we team up, and we join forces.
But the most important thing is for people to be reminded why they are in government service. We may have been there because someone in power got us in. But we stay to work everyday not only because we have families to feed, but ultimately because at the end of the day, the local government is still the only hope of the poor and the marginalized.
To the employees of LGU San Carlos who joined the team building, the true measure of whether you learned something or not was not how fun it was when we had those games or how good you were at articulating your insights, but how much change can you bring into your respective offices when you go back to carry out the public services you are tasked to perform. As for the time, the opportunity, and the friendships it was a great pleasure.