A strategy that cannot fail

During September 2016, a distinguished ceremony to launch “The National Strategy for Human Resources Development” took place in Amman under royal patronage. 

Queen Rania stated the following during her opening speech: “Education reform is not easy, and it demands an unprecedented effort in order to achieve unprecedented results. We must rethink structural issues such as education management and introduce policies that bring highly qualified teachers into the teaching profession, and maintain their level of competence. Of equal importance are issues such as accountability and taking responsibility for poor educational outcomes.”

This implied that the government should think thoroughly about the required changes to guarantee a successful design of objectives and execution plans for the needed programmes, in a timely manner, to ensure the sound implementation of the new strategy avoiding what was wrong in other earlier strategies.

Having mentioned that, it is crucial to look at the government conduct with a critical eye. 

One example where we had a strategy but failed in execution is the energy sector.

We have had a department of “alternative energy” at the Royal Scientific Society since the early 1980s, when we were still getting oil from Iraq at low cost.

Furthermore, in 2007, a committee was formed by Royal Decree to undertake a comprehensive review of the 2004 strategy for energy, to analyse the challenges to its execution, and suggest ways and plans to overcome them.

Despite that, the revised strategy did not include much regarding alternative energy, yet there was a clear recommendation to find alternative natural gas suppliers that do not threaten the national energy security, to be achieved by establishing the liquefied gas station in Aqaba and ending the monopoly of the Jordanian Refinery Company.

If those recommendations had been properly executed in a timely manner, it would have saved Jordan 20 per cent of national debt, generated by the energy bill during the last few years when Jordan’s energy imports increased from JD1.755 billion to JD4.334 billion in 2014.

During the same period, the trade deficit increased from around JD4.5 billion to more than JD8.2 billion, with energy spending accounting for more than 60 per cent of the increase. 

If we had executed properly the recommendations, it might have been possible to avoid the challenging “correction” plan that has been recently agreed upon with the IMF.

The failure to execute the strategy for energy caused all the above, but the failure to execute the national strategy for human resources development could lead to much more.

The successful implementation of any strategy is based on two pillars: motivation and governance.

Adherence to good governance, where the decision-making process is transparent and in which the relevant bodies/people participate, and the implementers are held accountable to the public for their actions, forms the major guarantee for informed planning and sound implementation.

This also helps the government accumulate experience and improve its learning process, and thus avoid shortcomings related to hasty implementation of strategies and temptation to go for quick and easy gains, and failure to make the needed tough decisions in a timely manner.

The second pillar to successful execution is creating the right motivation for the people responsible for the execution.

An example of the need to motivate is what happened when the teachers were asked to introduce minor changes in the amended curricula: a considerable percentage of teachers exhibited strong resistance.

This could have been avoided if the Ministry of Education had explained better the need for the changes, offered better incentives and remuneration, and make the teachers feel involved in the change process.

There is need for concrete evidence of the viability of such changes to make the teachers adopt the changes before they are asked to adapt to them.

This would create a sense of ownership, which is a major factor in a smoother transition, better conduct and sustainability.

The government’s justification for not providing a good compensation system proved its failure and tapped into the teachers’ justified anger.

Investment in human resources demonstrated its positive effect in any country’s conduct in all realms.

It is about time for us to move beyond celebrating key messages in designation letters every time a new government is appointed, towards revising execution processes following the best global practices, setting clear goals and priorities, measuring progress through clear indicators and establishing clear accountability systems for success and failure.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel, but steer the one we already have towards success.

The writer is a telecommunication and technology expert, blogger and political activist. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.