adminZach Aldwyn Milkshake in the Boardroom
One thing about Zimbabweans, we sure know how to complicate lives for ourselves. A little foray into setting up a new premises, for which, in this particular industry, I require approval from three separate, fully legislated entities. They have a nice flow, one to the other where each one down the food chain requires a piece of paper from the previous one. Generally, if you please the one you will have already checked a few of the boxes in the next one. Except where the issue of toilets are concerned.
Department one (namely the Building Inspector from the City of Harare) wanted to be sure that I had separate male and female toilets in the building. Two stops down the food chain I know that the issue will not be male or female toilets, but whether or not I have separate ablutions for staff and clients. In order to please both parties I require four separate bathrooms that meet the specific requirements of sanitation. City of Harare alone requires four signatures from three separate departments before I can move onto the next phase.
Phase two approval committee only meets once every four months, and on it goes. Four months to get a rubber stamp from a committee! No wonder we seem to be slow at the mark when it comes to attracting investment. There is no way of getting approval simultaneously from each department. So, if you miss a deadline you can be stuck for months.
Now I have been informed that there is a faster way to get some of the stages done. The term used is called “lunch”. Apparently if you buy “lunch” for certain people somehow they will procure the signature you require. Of course, the valued and esteemed employees in various licensing departments would never take an off-the-record incentive to get a job done, I must have heard wrong.
Bureaucracy, I hate it! I don’t know a single person who gets a kick out of form filling and dealing with officials. I do not think that any department ever deliberately starts out to be inefficient, but as time goes on various checks and balances, laws and regulations get added to the checklist until a process becomes almost impossible to navigate. In an extreme situation you find that the Planning Department will not give you Form A until you produce Form B from Health, and that the Health Department will not give you From B until you produce Form A from Planning. I get a headache just reading that.
I suppose here is as good a place as any to point out that I am not against the appropriate regulation of business. There are laws to be adhered to and associated fees to be paid for services rendered by officials. I do, however, object to regulations that are outdated or duplicates of another department’s responsibilities. I object to exorbitant fees for a piece of paper that simply requires a stamp and signature. Most of all, I object to systems that waste my time. I think it is criminal to tell a person to come for an appointment at 8am, knowing that they will arrive with 100 other people and only be seen at 4pm. It is criminal to demand that I fetch an inspector when I have already paid an inspection fee.
I think it is counter-productive to our national interest to continue to trip up the opening of a business with long lead times between payment and action, with approval committees that sit quarterly, and by tolerating corrupt officials who demand “lunch” as a bribe.
Enough ranting, you do not read this column just to indulge in my ramblings about bureaucratic incompetence. What does this mean for us. Well, firstly, hold people to account, question and complain when faced with nonsense. Suggest solutions, it has been my experience that many decision-makers are open to feedback. Go up the chain of command to report bribe attempts.
Secondly, and here is where we need to watch ourselves, do not let your own business become so complicated that it resembles the very bureaucracy that you hate. Facilitate freedom for your staff. I worked in a department where it took three months to obtain a new printer cartridge (that particular incident pushed me to the point where I handed in my resignation).
It was not that I was dealing with incompetent staff, they were just bound by procurement regulations that made it impossible to get the job done faster.
An accountable petty cash system would have meant that I got the cartridge in a day. Check your systems. Then clean them out, refine and improve them. Take advantage of new technology to speed things up or to cut the paper trail. Investigate setting up online ordering for your clients. Speak to your staff on the ground, find out what is holding them back from shining. Fix it, at least until it clogs up again.
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