Feature Address at the Launch of ODYSSEY CONSULTinc Limited

Cascadia Conference Centre
St. Ann’s, Trinidad W.I.

The tide is turning … the tide has turned.
As we survey the seas of social and economic activity we see vast amounts of flotsam and jetsam, the debris that results from catastrophic activities and events. The evidence is all around us.

Major organisations are listing precariously. Others are on the verge of going under. For the faint of heart there seems to be no hope. The currents of globalization, and their related eddies and swirls, strike fear even into the most daring and intrepid sailors on this sea of organisational life.

Trinidad and Tobago, in fact the Caribbean, has always been at the heart of the globalisation vortex. This space has always been at the frontline of cultural collisions with their normal wear and tear, a panorama of survivors and victims. As European colonial expansion gained momentum, there were successive waves of products and people moving in and out with the tide.

The Spanish, French, English, Portuguese and Dutch soldiers, sailors and traders criss-crossed the region in an endless stream. With the Cedula de Poblacion, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, a major wave of immigration took place in Trinidad, catapulting us to a new level of economic activity and social change.

African peoples had been brought here as slaves, and the East Indian, Portuguese and Chinese joined the mix as indentured labourers. Subsequent waves (even as late as the twentieth century) occurred in response to the social upheavals and wars in Europe. A strong Jewish influx in the years leading up to World War II has left its mark on our social fabric.

For many years our products (mineral and agricultural) moved out to other centres of economic activity. People moved out too. The waves of emigration to the United Kingdom in the middle decades of the twentieth century led that outstanding figure of Jamaican folklore, Louise Bennett, to comment (half-jokingly and half-seriously) about "colonisation in reverse".

Whether it was the physical, material product or the human resource, value was added by the journey outwards. In the case of cocoa and bauxite, the raw material was sent to Europe and North America and returned to us as more expensive, value added chocolates and aluminum.

Over the past few decades, and noticeably in more recent times, the tendency to turn the tide has become more evident. An examination of the production process reveals that more and more value-adding activities are taking place here. Oil, gas and the related methanol and ammonia industries spring easily to mind.

This Caribbean capacity to add value is not by any means restricted to the energy sector. In the manufacturing and food and beverage industry companies like the TCL Group, S.M. Jaleel and Associated Brands have blazed a trail in terms of exporting finished products to new and expanding markets.

At the recently held Prime Minister's Exporter of the Year (2001) Awards Ceremony, National Flour Mills and Caribbean Packaging Industries were two of the companies recognised for their export sales. Another company, Label House Limited was honoured for Best Performance in penetrating new markets, a critical element for continued business success. The list of awardees for quality and competitiveness reads like a litany of hope.

In the financial services sector, the expansion of our locally based financial institutions into the Caribbean and around the world bears testimony to our capacity to meet and exceed the demands placed before us by the evolution of the world economy.

In fact it can be seen as a celebration of our entrepreneurship, business acumen and our ability to compete globally, to compete on a world stage. And a world stage it is !!!

The script is being written and the plot is unfolding before our sometimes incredulous and disbelieving eyes. Trade liberalisation strides across the stage while world quality requirements (in the form of ISO standards) make their entrance. Apparent reductions in protectionism and the lowering of tariffs and trade barriers make only cameo appearances but seem unable to hold a steady place centre-stage. Even within local economies, the protectionist barriers (regardless of the reason) seem to be collapsing as Governments reduce or remove their protection of and support for State and Quasi-Governmental institutions, challenging them to be more competitive, profitable and less dependent on the State Treasury.

Technological developments in communication, manufacturing and transportation place increasing pressures on local enterprise as competition and the demands we face increase. Interestingly though, so do the opportunities for innovation and expansion.

The stark reality is that this is no longer "Village Olympics". This is the real thing. It is no longer good enough to be the best athlete in your community or in your village. To hold the National Title is not good enough. The world is at the door, ready to compete. The margins have narrowed considerably. The difference between gold and silver is now ".01" seconds.

Raw talent is no longer sufficient. We have seen it in cricket, where science, long-term application and development by our opponents have made the West Indies an “also-ran” among cricketing nations. In athletics, in spite of having produced hundreds of world class athletes with world class raw talent, we have no more than a handful of Olympic medals to our national credit. In calypso, in spite of our over-abundance of sweet voices and composers of class, Arrow continues to keep the world "hot, hot, hot", not because of any superlative talent but by strategic marketing, networking and positioning.

To have raw talent as we have in Trinidad and Tobago is not enough. In fact if that is all we have, we will soon be cooked in the heat of the globalization furnace.

This is not windball cricket - this is test cricket. This is not about playing pan on the corner, this is the "Big Yard". This is not "small goal" - this is Premier League. Get used to it!!

As business leaders in Trinidad and Tobago and in the region, what must we do?
We have to expand our "outer world". The traditional boundaries of language, history and historical allegiances have to be ruptured. Those cliffs have to be scaled. I remember with a residue of unease and nostalgia, my first trip on an aircraft in 1968, as I made my way to Toronto. My world opened up. My range of possibilities expanded. My world-view was changed forever. Life would never be the same again. So many more things were possible.

Tradition is a killer! I migrated to an English-speaking country. Suppose I had broken the mould, broken a boundary and decided, against all odds and traditional wisdom, to migrate to a Dutch or Portuguese speaking country? How would my life have been different? What different opportunities would have been available to me? What different challenges would I have faced? And with what results? The fact is that I will never know. But the possibilities were there!
What about our businesses? What boundaries can we break? How is tradition keeping us in a place that deprives us of additional opportunities? Should we not, as Trinidadian and Tobagonian, as Caribbean business leaders, put ourselves in that place where we take a bold step into a world that is there waiting for us?

Very often what this requires is that we expand our "inner world", our attitudes, our mind-sets, the perceptions that keep us imprisoned. Our traditional views of what is practical, what makes sense, what is reasonable, all serve to keep us away from a world of opportunity that beckons us.

“Be warned, if we sail too far west we will fall off the edge.” For years this notion kept many people in their place. What is the edge that strikes fear into you and your associates? Has it struck you that when you fall off this edge you will fall into something else? Space explorers and science fiction writers refer to "black holes". What is the "black hole" in your thinking, that place which takes you into a new and different way of doing business?

To face the expanded outer and inner worlds, we need to ensure that we are competent to do so. As Caribbean business people with a world around us we must increase our capacity to deliver. This means expanding our personal competence, skill and knowledge or ensuring that our organisations have access to the things that will ensure its success.

And lest you think that it cannot be done, think for a moment about all the things that you can do today that were just not possible five short years ago. All too often, the competence and skill that we do not have today comes to us by getting out there and doing what has to be done.

The notion of “the frontier” persists in this place that we call the Caribbean. Cultures continue to collide, the stresses and strains persist but the opportunities for forging new relationships and partnerships have never been greater. Given our social history of recurring cycles of turbulence alternating with periods of uneasy calm, how do we turn the page? How do we punctuate this “social conversation" and begin a new sentence. Because the "sentence" that we have been expressing is just that – a sentence. It has us imprisoned. This is what has us where we are politically, with its economic and social consequences. Among the "territories" of the Caribbean, the dynamic is not very different.

While we fiddle and keep reading the same sentence from the same page, the world moves on. The global plot unfolds and new players make their way across the world stage. Have we missed our entrance? Have we muffed our lines? Even if we have, the show goes on, but it is not over. How do we make another entrance?

Should we seize the opportunity to expand our outer and inner worlds, to build our capacity to deliver and engage actively in building new working relationships, we will be able to establish our presence with confidence. We will be able to take our place on the world's turbulent and uncertain business stage. We will take that place that is as much ours as it is anyone else's.

Should we seize that opportunity, we will be able to compete bravely wherever and whenever we need to, secure in the knowledge that while some of it is about winning and losing, it is also about having been there and done what we had to do when it had to be done.

Should we seize that opportunity, we will become service-providers who live the realities of our clients who are themselves expanding their presence and their “business space” while they compete and partner around the world.

The Team that used to be Watkins and Associates ODCS has taken a bold decision to go where we have not ventured before, to do what we have not done before, to break the boundaries that we have not challenged before.

The die is cast … there is no turning back. Today is the day!! We are about the business of going beyond! See you when you get there!!L.

Anthony Watkins March 13th 2002