Lord Horatio Nelson’s famous message “England expects that every man will do his duty”, signalled from HMS Victory to the fleet before the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, is just as relevant in today’s COVID 19 and other planetary crises including global warming, the toxic pollution of our environment, and the genetic modification of our food threatening our health and consciousness. Nelson’s message is now applicable to everyone on Earth irrespective of race or creed or whatever roles they may perform.
All in the same boat
Never has there been a time when we have become so conscious that we are inescapably all travelling in the same boat and that each of us must selflessly do our duty for the greater good of humankind and the planet. It is a time necessitating a one-for-all and an all-for-one approach – a time for pursuing win-win outcomes everywhere.
Our duties are multi-faceted embracing personal, employment, economic and social behaviours. But above all, we have a duty to focus on maximising the greater good through cooperation, coordination and acting responsibly and constructively according to our individual and collective competence and opportunities. Whatever our portfolio of personal, business, and social roles, we each have a duty to think, make decisions and act with respect to everything considering how it relates to the whole while making the best use of resources. This is the essence of integrated management which needs to operate on every level of human endeavour throughout the world to realise optimal, sustainable and equitable stakeholder satisfaction.
Duty to behave responsibly
The COVID19 crisis and other global threats imposes duties on everyone to respect Nature, make wise use of all types of resource, and to cooperate and acquiesce to coordination. The focus should be forward looking and constructive and avoid energy wasting retrospection, point scoring and pointing of fingers. Any needed retrospective observations and reviews should assist a learning and improvement process by being timely, objective, informed, impartial and systematic. Unless the need is urgent, there will be time enough for review after the crises has subsided, a time when everything can be viewed holistically and analysed in the round based on informed analysis and more complete information and knowledge.
In a crisis we should not mindlessly jump to dismiss U-turns as incompetence – managing a crisis demands dynamic, intelligent, and creative review. During a crisis new data and knowledge are revealed at a much higher frequency than normal times demanding a different more intelligent or creative response to the new circumstances or superior data. Managers making U-turns is often an indication of being competent and on top of the evolving situation and not lacking the courage to make a difficult call in front of a hostile set of stakeholders.
Those with degrees only in hindsight, often with a propensity to cast the first stone, should hold their council and not add to the relentless pressures on those tasked with managing the mind-boggling and uncertain multiple facets of the ongoing evolving predicament. We should support and be very tolerant of all personnel participating in crises and emergencies, not least because of the enormous extra pressures placed on them and the accumulating fatigue.
The media exercises considerable power over the communication of the key messages that are so critical to managing the crisis. Their professional duty is to communicate critical information without bias or speculation or comment and ensure its clear understanding. This should be separated from adversarial politics and sensationalism. After all, the degree of success in managing a crisis acutely depends on the individual and collective behaviours of people, and are heavily influenced by the quality of communications.
The bottom-line duty for everyone is to exercise common sense while acting decently, cooperating with others, and acquiescing to official direction and guidance for the common good. Those shaping policy and exercising power and influence should use a joined-up thinking holistic approach. In this time of accelerated dynamic change it is our duty to not to resist it blindly and obstinately. We should focus attention and resources on putting humankind back on the right path to sustain the holistic health and wellbeing of the planet through re-alignment with Natural Law. We have a duty to future generations to leave an enduring legacy which is safe and totally fulfilling .
Masterclass in joined-up thinking
Humankind is being subjected to the most all-encompassing global stress test in recent times and indeed will act as a masterclass in the application of joined-up thinking to governing and managing local, national, and global human endeavours. The current COVID19 and other global crises are like being confronted with three-dimensional chess with rules of play that initially are only partially known, then gradually revealed and change as the game is played out in front of a baying audience and press.
It will be a time when we will all be repeatedly reminded of our duty to respect everything in creation that nourishes humankind and the precious environment that sustains everything. We will be reminded of the complexity and interconnectedness of Nature and human endeavours, and its intended and unintended impacts. Serious though the current impact is, we will doubtless become increasingly aware that COVID19 is only a transient within a much larger ongoing crisis of humankind behaving badly and that it would be foolish to manage COVID19 impacts in isolation of the larger long-term picture that will impact future generations.
Strangely COVID19 has lifted the veil on many ill-conceived harmful human behaviours and endeavours and the all too common, fragmented and self-serving management which has failed to equitably deliver the needs, expectations and aspirations of all stakeholders while making the best use of resources. While many leaders have preached the necessity of joined-up management thinking, it has not been generally followed by its systematic implementation.
World leader’s duty
The world’s leaders have an urgent, challenging, and solemn duty to cooperate and coordinate at local, national, and international levels. Leaders must provide a clear vision and direction. The strong should help nurture the vulnerable and not profit through their exploitation. The scale of the problem requires all nations, bodies, organisations, and individuals to act responsibly in harmony to solve them while safeguarding wellbeing and the economy in the short and longer term. Silos, fragmented thinking, and narrow focused self-interest impedes our likelihood of ultimate survival and enhanced quality of life. Radical intelligent and creative reform and is essential to future generations surviving and flourishing. This demands the integrated management of the COVID19 pandemic and other global threats. Nature has put humankind on the ropes because of our hitherto ignorance and bad behaviours and only a fresh integrated and holistic perspective will free us from our troubles.
Critical role of directors and managers
Directors, managers, and management professionals have a special role to play in jointly leading, guiding and educating. While maintaining compliance with applicable national COVID 19 regulations and guidance, it is essential that organisations continue to maintain a dynamic perspective and vigilance to ensure that all the prospects and risks recognised and managed by organisations in delivering their purpose in normal times, do not escape their attention during the crisis and are appropriately reviewed, updated and promulgated. In practice, this means ensuring that changed structures and processes designed to deliver the purpose of the organisation during the COVID19 Crisis remain fit for purpose and the duty of care to all who participate in delivering goods and services is fully discharged. This requires the application of intelligence, creativity, professionalism, and integrated management thinking to maintain and enhance the reputation of everyone and the principal participating management professions. Failure to do this will leave professionals and organisations open to criticism, prosecution, and civil claims. In general they will be criticised for failing to satisfy the needs, expectations, and aspirations of stakeholders, including the young and those yet to be born.
Duty to implement excellent management systems
At this time excellent management systems are critically important and need to be ideally fully integrated without boundaries. This empowers the whole organisation to operate intelligently and creatively in unison to coherently deliver its purpose, equitably satisfying all stakeholders and making the best use of resources. Such management systems help manage normal and contingency processes during a crisis, enhance personnel performance and reduce stress. Without management systems, everyone is not only making everything up on the hoof but potentially creating harmful variations, conflicts, and resource inefficiency. It impedes what should be natural cycles of continual learning and improvement.
Management systems ensure that our shared values, goals, and objectives are defined to satisfy the needs, expectations, and aspirations of the global stakeholders, optimally and equitably, while making the best use of resources. This is the foundation principle of integrated management which was defined by the CQI Integrated Management Special Interest Group in 2002. This group later published the Universal Management System Standard MSS1000 in 2014 and may be freely downloaded globally via the world wide web.
Fully integrated and boundless management systems
Our collective duty to act in optimal unison, necessitates establishing, operating, and complying with integrated governance and management systems that are fully fit for purpose. Such systems facilitate, make transparent and provide confidence that we are all singing from the same hymn sheet and marching in step. This contrasts with the hitherto less effective and inefficient fragmented silo management systems, driven by ISO multiple fragmented management system standards.
Accreditation and certification streamlining
Management system accreditation and certification bodies have a special and urgent duty to streamline their services to deliver enhanced improved effectiveness, efficiency, and value. Their services need to align with the needs, expectations and aspirations of organisations and their stakeholders. Standards bodies need to halt their proliferation of fragmented silo-based management system standards and replace them with full scope one-stop boundless standards like the universal management system standard MSS1000. One-stop full scope boundless universal standards such as MSS1000 are possible because they employ integrated management thinking i.e. a universal hierarchical management taxonomy unlike the ISO partial taxonomy that only aligns headings of multiple fragmented standards with everything that doesn’t fit set aside in appendices.
We are making history for future judgement
In the longer term everyone alive today will have passed. The COVID19 era may well be remembered not so much for the large number of premature deaths but for the lessons it taught us and the resulting positive changes and progress that put humankind back on a right and sustainable path. Looking back on our own lives there are many uncomfortable and painful events we wish we could have avoided but we generally would not want to be without the subsequent knowledge and wisdom that resulted.
Future generations and historians will no doubt lookback and judge us on how well we individually and collectively performed our duties. Where were we coherently cooperating and acquiescing to coordination and governance to achieve win-win outcomes for the greater good? Where were we self-serving and incoherent? Did leaders and managers take a more holistic approach? Were they supported by professional, accreditation and certification bodies streamlining and integrating their services? Did standards bodies such as ISO, switch to universal one-stop universal management system standards focused on the needs of organisations operating full scope boundless integrated management systems? Which leaders and bodies helped drive the changes and which ones hindered it?
The reputations of organisations and each of us are being formed at this critical time. Let us pray that future generations will be able to look back with pride and know that we did our best to secure their future and that the global consciousness and behaviour was never more coherent in responding to extraordinary global challenges.
We each have our personal portfolio of duties according to our life roles. We pray that we are granted the courage and capacity to discharge them competently, professionally, and honourably. Some of us may sadly fail to meet the challenges or may choose self-interest over the greater good. But the actions of this minority will surely be outweighed by the heroic souls that go beyond the normal call of duty in any great crisis.
Biography – IAN DALLING
Ian Dalling DipEE, BA (Hons), CEng, MIMechE, MIET, MIOSH, FCIQ, CQP, RSC Chartered Electrical and Mechanical Engineer and Integrated Management Practitioner
Ian’s 50 years of experience has spanned design, construction, commissioning, operation, and decommissioning of nuclear power plants and other industry sectors. While at CEGB/Nuclear Electric, he was a senior authorised person for nuclear, mechanical and electrical systems up to 400 kV and held posts in operations, commissioning, management services, planning and quality assurance.
From 1990, he was a quality and risk management consultant with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. He managed the peer review of the decommissioning safety case for the UK Steam Generating Reactor, was the quality manager for a European Notified Body administering product safety regulations, and worked on a variety of safety cases and management systems for major organisations. He served on the European Process Safety committee and the British Standards Committee that developed the occupational safety and health standard (BS 8800:1996). He was a member of an international team that reviewed the safety management arrangements of the Lithuanian Ignalina RBMK nuclear power plant following the Chernobyl accident.
He has operated his own quality and risk management consultancy since 1999 with clients in the nuclear, construction, rail, oil and gas, medical devices, medical services and laboratory services sectors in the UK and overseas. He chairs the CQI Integrated Management Special Interest Group, which produced the universal management system standard MSS 1000:2014.
Ian Dalling
Integrated Management Community