KZBlog

I mentioned the Doctrine of National Unity in an earlier post about language policy. Another issue that came out of the recent Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan was the issue of competitiveness and culture. Government ministries were sent requests to give recommendations on how to improve the economic competitiveness of the mentality of Kazakhs. Yes, the government apparently wants to influence mentality to create a culture that is more economically competitive (Competitive in the sense of being more economically efficient, not being more aggressive).

I wonder how they would go about it? Having Grandma tell stories about Ablai Khan and his remarkable ability to prioritize and delegate? Or retell the legend of Samruk to note that the bird was reborn from a golden egg only due to his inborn work ethic? Signs that say, “Real Kazakhs proofread contracts before passing them on to be approved?”

Now I really don’t believe that mentality or culture is something that is handed down by blood. I think if you raised a Kazakh and a Russian and an American in France with French parents, they would end up with very similar outlooks on life. I also don’t like the idea that culture somehow dominates everything and that individual experiences or choices don’t count for anything. Nor do I buy the idea that all Kazakhs have one single mentality. But maybe that’s my 20th century American mentality talking…

At any rate, this decree got me thinking about the inefficiency with which business is often done in Kazakhstan. Note that I am not targeting any one nationality here–I suspect these bad habits come from Soviet times when priorities and ways of doing things were very different. So here is a list of things Kazakhstan can do to improve its competitiveness.

1. The top down/micromanaging model has got to die:
   Anyone who has ever tried to get a decision made in this country knows how annoying this is. Say you want to work with a company or government organization in Kazakhstan. First, you meet with someone, say a head manager, but they are only repeating what their boss told them to say. Then, you have to meet their boss, usually a senior manager. This person is usually the person who actually knows what is going on and has the right information and ability to make the decision. He or she will answer all of your questions, ask good questions, and generally this conversation will be productive. But are you done? Oh no! Because the senior manager must now go talk to the vice director of the department. You might have to do this too.

   The Vice Director knows nothing useful about the project and will spend the time in the meeting with you asking the senior manager if everything is in order. He will then smile at you, shake your hand and thank you for coming in. Now someone has to go talk to the Director of the Department. Who in turn has to talk to the vice president of the company (or Vice Minister) who takes the matter to the president (or Minister). The president, who can’t realistically be expected to know everything about every single business deal the company does will rely on the vice president’s advice, who in turn is relying on the advice of the director who is relying on the word of the vice director who is relying on the word of that senior manager you met with 3 days ago, because that’s how long following this whole chain takes.

   If you think the matter is done now, that the president will make a final decision, you are quite wrong. Because now the president will authorize the lawyers and financial people to look the matter over. These two departments have their own chains to follow so it will take another week for the matter to go from a manager in each department to the head guy, and back to the president. Now the president will make a decision and sign a contract with you.

   In short, the most competent people do not have the authority to make a decision in Kazakshtan. Only the head person in an organization can make any kind of decision and because the head person has to make all the decisions, he or she is expected to know everything. Anyone who tries to know everything from what kind of pens the accountant uses to what the China office is doing about the increasing global demand in oil, to what the latest law says about taxation rates, will end up knowing very little. It’s simply impossible. So the system in essence screws itself up.

   If you think I am exaggerating, the next time you go to a cafeteria, look for the director of the company’s signature on the daily menu. They don’t even trust the cooks to come up with a menu without getting approval from the boss!

   Which brings me to the corollary:

2. Stop expecting the head to know everything
   and stop obsessing about rank. I have set up more meetings than I can count in which the Kazakhstan side brought someone they believed was equal in rank to the person coming from the other side. In high-level meetings this meant someone fairly high up. And low ranked people were excluded from the meeting. But that meant that those low-ranked people, who were doing the actual work on the given issue, had to spend days preparing information for the high-level guy who frankly has other things he has to be doing with his time. The result was always useless meetings where no questions were answered and no decisions were made. Invite people to meetings based on their usefulness, not their rank!
3. Make policies and stick with them :
   For some reason, in Kazakhstan, bureaucrats especially hate making policies that apply across the boards. People vastly prefer dealing with things on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately this means that everything that the company does has to go through the chain I described in question #1. It also means that no one can ever answer anyone’s questions and no employee can ever do anything without checking with the boss.

   Also as many expats know, any decision can be amended, reversed or rescinded at a moment’s notice. When a policy is made, there is no guarantee that it will be in place tomorrow. Nor is there any guarantee that it will be enforced. It makes it very hard to work with Kazakh companies when there is no stability. In fact I ma currently suffering from a relatively trivial example.

   The Prime Minister declared that all state employees will have the 16th – 19th off for Independence Day. Sunday, the 20th will be a working day in place of Friday. So I went ahead and made plans for the long weekend, only to discover that the state agencies I work with will only take the 16th and the 17th off. Now I suddenly realize that I forgot to ask about Sunday. And everyone is taking today off, so I have no idea if I work on Sunday or not–nor do I see how giving people a 4-day weekend leads to people getting only 2 days off plus working an extra day, meaning that people get the usual 1 day off a week.

   It’s not a very important example of course, but if the state can’t even decide on holidays and give clear information to its employees, how can they make important policy decisions?

So those are my pet peeves, that’s my list of the 3 habits of uneconomically inefficient people. What do you think? How can we improve the competitiveness of Kazakhstan? Or should we at all?