Brian Paxton, the managing director of Mbendi, an Internet publishing company recently wrote the following editorial on the fortnightly newsletter of www.mbendi.com, the popular business directory owned by them. I thought it made for great reading:
“This week I thought briefly of redeploying MBendi’s crack software team from writing business applications for MBendi.com to developing Revenge of the Entrepreneur. This would be an online computer game that could only be played by senior politicians, civil servants and policy makers worldwide. However, on second thoughts, I reflected this might lead to loss of productivity, more civil servants and yet more taxes to pay them as they played the game, spellbound, during office hours. Perhaps, instead, they should be given a taste of their own medicine and conscripted for a two year business internship before promotion to higher things.
The first year would be easy. They would be assigned to a large corporate. There they would learn about order and discipline. You know, things like hierarchical organisation charts, job descriptions, tangible targets, deadlines, appraisals, punctuality at meetings and how to fill in expense claims accurately. One of the problems with working for big organisations is that you tend to be a small cog in a big wheel. Your salary gets paid into your bank account like clockwork but you have little sense of what the company is making, product or profit wise, nor of how your efforts are contributing to success or not. So you go to meetings regularly and get comfortable.
As a result, the second year comes as a shock when they are given a minuscule amount of capital and told to go off and run their own business. Their first decision will be whether to try to use the services of their old colleagues, who have now forgotten them, to register their venture or pay more for an instant shelf company. Some high rollers might think step two is to sign the lease for a fancy office and employ a receptionist to paint her nails while waiting for the phone to ring. Then, of course, luck might be on their side and the corporate they worked for previously will sign a big order and tell them to send an invoice immediately. While they wait for payment, it will suddenly dawn on them that the revenue authorities require them to hand over the VAT on the transaction at month end and the bank has not granted them overdraft facilities while they wait for their legal standing to be officially documented.
Some will overcome these initial hurdles and even profit enough to employ a couple of lackeys to do the making and the selling while they do the whining and dining. At month end the bookkeeper will arrive with cheques to be signed to pay the bookkeeper, the landlord, the telephone, the bank charges and, for the new employees, their salaries and employment tax. But what are these additional cheques? One is for a training levy when they know quite well they can’t afford to let their staff take a coffee break let alone spend a week or two on a non-essential course. And this other one? Why, of course, that’s what their old buddies in the civil service used to call a payroll tax for healthcare that doesn’t affect the employees’ remuneration, just the bottom line. Speaking of remuneration, why is there no cheque to pay the boss who took all the risks and made the big calls? The bookkeeper just shrugs and reminds the boss that next month there will be further cheques for an audit, for reregistration on the official companies’ database, an importer’s licence, official accreditation……
Some interns will make such a good impression on their corporate bosses that they are lured into the private sector. Others will surprise themselves by becoming entrepreneurs rich beyond the wildest dreams of a mere bureaucrat. The survivors will return to their jobs serving the public civilly and prudently. To keep them focused, half their pension contributions will be invested in large company equities, the other half in a venture capital fund to be used solely for small start-ups. Maybe we could even get a donation from this fund so we can pay our next batch of civil service interns to write the software for Revenge of the Civil Servants!”
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