It is increasingly apparent that weakness in management more than anything else has hindered the progress of industries in developing countries. This is where education and training should be concentrated.
A.J. Leslie
A.J. LESLIE, a forestry economist, was Director of Forest Industries in the FAO Forestry Department at the time of his retirement in December 1981. He lives in Australia
Education and training have been in the forefront of FAO's activities since its inception. The programme in the forestry sector, with the benefit of guidance by the Advisory Committee on Forestry Education since 1963, has evolved along three main lines:
· Assessment of trained manpower requirements.
· Improvement of existing institutions and curricula.
· Establishment of new institutions.
Under this programme, a number of now flourishing forestry faculties and training centres in developing countries have been assisted or established. As a result, much of the backlog in professional forestry training in developing countries has been overtaken and some progress has been made at the sub-professional and vocational levels. As the objectives of forestry become wider, projects at the professional level tend to aim at filling the few serious geographical gaps, updating and strengthening courses, improving the methodology and efficiency of teaching in established institutions and re-orienting curricula. This latter activity looks like being a never-ending task. The demands on forestry grow and change while knowledge in the basic disciplines is virtually exploding. All of this has the effect of rendering existing curricula out of date very quickly.
In forest industries, education and training have not advanced as far or as rapidly as they have in the forestry sector. Some successful training courses in forest road construction and logging have been held and several seminars in sawmilling have had an impact. A few specialists such as saw doctors have been trained, mainly under the sponsorship of various field projects. Several training centres in sawmilling have been set up in developing countries but the impact has been largely temporary since they have not shown much ability to survive after the departure of the international staff. On the whole, therefore, it could hardly be claimed to be particularly successful. This extremely limited success with training for the forest industries compared with forestry per se is certainly not because of the insignificance of the need or lack of concern on the part of FAO. It is ironical to have a situation in which a well-documented and widely recognized need for training produces only spasmodic efforts and meagre results.
It could always be held that the meagre results reflect the inadequacy of the effort. In that case, the solution would merely be to provide for greater effort. That is the usual answer to problems such as this one and it sometimes is the right answer. However, in this case, more of the same could well be the worst possible course to follow. Therefore, before turning to what can be done about this situation, it is perhaps more sensible to see why the situation has arisen.
Traditionally, education and training needs have been analysed more or less from the point of view of the educational ladder - vocational, sub-professional and tertiary. This approach can produce results, as shown by the rather successful programme on the forestry side of the sector. However, as we are going back to first principles, it could be worth looking at the training and educational needs from a functional point of view - managerial, supervisory and operative - and to see to what extent these needs are met by existing institutions. One of the first things that such a review would have to take into account is the desperate weakness of management in the forest industries of developing countries. Symptomatic of this is the extremely poor utilization of production capacity in almost all forest industries in almost all developing countries. A hypothetical but still quite typical example in sawmilling would be a sawmill with an annual capacity of 15 000 m³ operating at a level of 5 000 m³. This condition could be the result of any one, or any combination, of a set of factors such as the following:
1. Lost time due to a shortage of logs.
2. Lost time due to a shortage of markets and, hence, of finance.
3. Lost time due to equipment breakdown.
4. Lost time due to equipment breakdowns aggravated by waiting for replacement.
5. Low labour productivity due to the crew not working.
6. Low labour productivity due to the crew not knowing how to work.
7. Low labour productivity due to poor organization of the crew's work.
8. Low labour productivity because of bottlenecks in the production line.
Training at the operating level would only improve No. 6 above. If this were the sole cause of the low capacity utilization, then the problem, in principle, is easily overcome. But, if it is not - and that is more likely to be the case - then training of operators will, in itself, make very little difference. If the principal cause is the shortage of logs, then nothing that is done in the mill will make any difference; the cure has to be found in the logging and transport part of the system. However, low productivity of the logging crew could be the result of having insufficient trees marked for felling by the silvicultural officers. Obviously, the question of education and training in the forest industries has to be looked at in the context of a rather complex system. An ad hoc approach is almost doomed to failure unless, by accident, it stumbles on the critical limiting factor.
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A built-in part of the manufacturing process is the tendency for things to go wrong. A good manager has the built-in ability to fix them. |
The functional operation which integrates all the elements in the system and, at the same time, controls the system is that of management. This seems, therefore, the logical place at which to start a training programme for forest industries. In this respect, there could be something to be learned from the way the education and training programme evolved on the forestry side. In practice, if not in intent, it first built up a corps of trained forest managers. These in turn were able not only to recognize the need for trained staff at the supervisory and operative levels, but also to do something about getting training started. This might be a good pattern for training in the forest industry. The forest industry side of the sector is almost completely opposite in structure to that of the forestry side. On the educational level, there is no single more or less identifiable discipline specifically training managers for forest industries. In forestry, there is the professional forestry school but on the forest industry side the managerial staff could be drawn from a multiplicity of disciplines and, in fact, there is no evidence of a compelling need for managers to have undergone any tertiary education at all. On the employer side there is, again, no single or even narrow range of enterprises employing forest industry managers. On the forestry side, almost all forest managers in developing countries are employed by state forestry services. Indeed, the structure of forest industries, particularly saw-milling, is usually so fragmentary that it gets close to the classical economic concept of perfect competition.
This amorphous nature of the target group, combined with the manifold potential of educational contributions, suggest that there is little that an international organization such as FAO can do in the field of forest industries education and training at the managerial level. If that is so, then it could be that the meagre results achieved so far are as much as could possibly have been expected. In other words, the programme has been an outstanding success rather than a dismal failure. Before that comfortable conclusion can be drawn, there are three things that should first be considered.
The first is that, if that is success, it hardly justifies the effort. The second is that, on the demand side, the situation may be less complicated than it appears to be. Admittedly, there is no single enterprise corresponding to the state forestry service, and industrial associations in the mechanical forest industries, if they exist at all in developing countries, are rarely strong or united enough to initiate cooperative action in training. Nevertheless, there is a trend, perhaps because of those features, toward the establishment of governmental timber industry boards or corporations to control or influence the development of the forest industries. While these boards differ widely between countries in their structures, powers and functions, they at least offer a central focus through which an educational and training programme could be directed. It might then, in time, diffuse through the industry generally.
The third consideration then follows from this second one. Although there is a very different structure on the educational side from that in forestry, the existence of a single focal point on the industry side may permit the development of a different approach that might just work. This is what the Forestry Department is working toward at the moment with a training course in management for forest industries.
The idea did not grow out of the above analysis; on the contrary, that analysis grew out of the idea. Over the last few years, it has become increasingly apparent that weaknesses in management more than anything else have hindered progress in the forest industries in many developing countries and, hence, their plans for forest-based economic and social development. No existing institute or course was found which would provide the type of training needed for the wide range of interests and backgrounds of the trainees in mind. As a first step at least toward overcoming the deficiency, it seems an appropriate task for FAO to develop and test a course that would meet the requirements and the constraints. The course was visualized as an integration of a number of activities in the forest industries and training programme. In putting the Programme of Work and Budget proposals together with this in view, the role of management emerged as crucial. Competent management is not just one of several important factors for lifting the level of performance of the forest industries in developing countries. It is, in fact, the absolute prerequisite factor. Thus, in a rather roundabout way, the case for a new approach to training and education for the forest industries that was argued earlier receives further confirmation.
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The nature of management is that it integrates and controls all the elements within a system. This makes it the logical starting point for training programmes within any kind of industry. |
However, to argue the case for a new approach is only part of the picture. It does not necessarily mean that the new approach will be any more successful than the one it replaces. The possibility that it will can only be anticipated on a judgement of the proposals for implementing the new approach. The thinking that is going into developing the course is along the lines of trying to determine first what the manager's job is and then what tools and skills the manager needs to acquire or have available in order to carry out that task. Without really trying, one could easily compile an enormous list of subjects under the category of what a manager needs to know. In order to reduce the possibilities to what might be achieved within the limits of a five-week course, the following internal questionnaire is being used as a means of identifying the minimum essentials.
· What does a manager do?
· What does a manager need to know in order to be able to do what he should?
· How does a manager find that out?
· What is so special about management of forest industries that makes this course necessary?
· What can go wrong?
· How can a manager find out that things are going wrong before they have gone completely wrong?
· What can a manager do to prevent things going wrong before they start to go wrong?
· What can a manager do to correct things when they are going wrong?
· What can (should) a manager do when what is going wrong cannot be corrected by anything within his power?
· What does a manager need to know in order to do each/any/all of the above?
· How does a manager find that out?
· What things does a manager need in order to do the job he should do?
· How can a manager make sure that those things are on hand by the time they are needed?
· How can a manager make sure that the right thing can be found at the time it is needed and put in the place where it is needed?
The implication is clearly that whatever aspect a manager is responsible for and whatever else a manager is to do, the job ultimately boils down to making sure that organizational targets are attained. In essence, that means that the manager's job is one of controlling a process or part of a process so that its built-in tendencies to go wrong do not negate those targets. Perhaps the manager's job is, therefore, best described as neutralizing Murphy's Law. Murphy's Law, if anyone needs to be reminded, is that in any endeavour it may be assumed that anything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong. A good manager is someone who is equipped by mentality as well as training to deal with this ubiquitous law. The ideal, therefore, would be to give this kind of training to people who recognize the need for it.
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