ADDRESS BY THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY GENERAL
AMBASSADOR ALBERT R. RAMDIN
DURING THE ANNUAL STAFF ASSEMBLY
JULY 18, 2006
Good afternoon to you
all!
First of all, thank
you very much for having me here. Let me say here that we are all
colleagues in this organization, from whatever grade level and from
wherever we come.
We are lucky as a
multilateral organization to have such a diversity of people, not only
from different countries, but also in terms of gender, culture and
length of service––it’s indeed a quite diverse community.
I must say that we
have a lot of challenges ahead but at the same time I have to recognize
the enormous value that you represent for the OAS and for the member
states. Basically, you represent the Americas in terms of what we need
to do and how we do it.
The member states
issue mandates and provide funding -- although sometimes the tools are
insufficient for the task. However, you, the ones that carry out the
work, are without doubt the flagship of our organization.
On behalf of the
Secretary General but also on behalf of the General Secretariat staff, I
want to thank the President and the whole outgoing team for their
efforts over the past year. I understand that this is your last
meeting, so it is part celebration and part, probably, sad occasion.
Thank you very much for all your contributions.
In my view, it is
important that we always maintain a good relationship between the
leadership of this organization and the Staff Association. In that
regard, I was pleased to have the Staff Association a couple of times in
my office over the past year to discuss some specific issues. One of the
important roles of the leadership is to discuss issues of importance
that are relevant to you.
Let me also welcome
the new President, Mr. Gutiérrez, and his team. There is a lot of
experience in this team. I told Bruce Rickerson a few minutes ago that I
know he is an experienced politician and I hope he doesn’t give us too
many punches now that he has come on board as part of the Staff
Association’s leadership.
Let me say something
about how we look at the Organization from the leadership and policy
perspective. The OAS stands for something. It is a working and
relevant organization, and it needs to be recognized as such.
We know about the
criticisms of this Organization as well as of other subregional or
regional organizations. Regardless of the criticism, I always say that
the OAS stands for something that is unique in the hemisphere but its
mandates can only be fulfilled and its objectives achieved if we have a
staff that can dedicate its full attention and expertise to what needs
to be done.
As a member of the
OAS staff, I feel comfortable being here with you. I understand that
this kind of direct engagement with the organization’s leadership
happened before, but not often. I would like to see this happening more
consistently, not only at the annual meeting but on a regular basis when
there is need for direct communication and engagement.
In building a solid
organization, in my view––and I come from the private sector, and many
of us here come from the private sector or have some private sector
experience––you basically need four elements.
One is, clearly, that
you need a purpose and a vision, and I have no doubt that there is a
purpose and a vision for this organization as outlined by the Secretary
General Insulza last year when he spoke about where we want to be.
What you need also,
in second place, is good visionary leadership, leadership that knows
where it wants to take the organization in five to ten years so that you
have benchmarks to measure performance. I think we have that. If you
are not convinced, I’d like to hear how we can improve.
Thirdly, you need
good facilities, good equipment, an entire infrastructure and
environment that is conducive to optimal performance. Nobody likes to
work in an office that is broken down, or is leaking, or the air
conditioning is not functioning. That kind of environment negatively
affects the ability of staff to deliver.
And the last element
is having good, qualified, dedicated, and committed personnel, and I
think that’s what you all represent here today.
If you bring all
these four elements together, you can build a solid organization that
can present itself as a viable and important organization that can
deliver high quality and in a timely fashion.
I believe that we can
be even stronger than we are but we have some challenges ahead of us.
First of all, Rosa
María Barreiro sits here, and we have spoken about this on many
occasions in my capacity as Chairman of the Selection Committee. I
strongly believe in a fair, transparent, accountable organization. We
need to put in place better systems to hire people. I know we are part
of a political organization but we need to focus also on the
functionality and the quality of the work that needs to be delivered,
and that cannot be solved only by geographical and political
representation. We need to create greater confidence in your ability to
trust us, so we need to put in place much more transparent and fair
procedures. We’re going to look in depth at what needs to be done to
accomplish this.
The second challenge
I see––and this is not meant as a negative, because every organization
goes through this––is that many of you have given so many years, some a
lifetime, to this organization, and at some point there comes an end to
that. A significant number of our staff will be retiring in the next
few years. This is normal. People join an organization and at some point
leave the organization because of retirement or to pursue another
opportunity. As an organization, we have to be prepared to respond to
transition. We have to be an organization that is capable of functioning
without interruption, and we will not be able to do so if we do not have
succession planning and career planning. Training interests are also
going to be looked into and I believe that a survey is being conducted
as a first step to identify the training needs of our staff. So I
believe that’s the second challenge which we need to address.
Of course, we will
have to strengthen capacity in certain areas. In Conferences, which
falls under my responsibility, we need to improve and to increase
capacity. I’m going to ask for that, and I will beg for your support
because I believe that this is important. This organization thrives on
meetings, on the service of meetings, on the reporting, on the
documentation. If we do not have that right, in 20 to 30 years we will
not know what this organization did or what were the member states’
positions on issues that may have impacted the hemisphere in profound
ways.
The last challenge I
see––and there will be many more that you can identify––is strengthening
the culture of this organization, the culture of unity, of working
together. I’ll be frank about this. In the past months, I have
observed areas of strain in the organization e.g. inadequate
communication, lack of unity on policy implementation and insularity of
different units. We have to become more cohesive. We represent only one
organization, and that is the OAS.
Our vision is to
further build an organization so that at the end of five years we can
say this is a solid, respected organization that gets the job done.
That’s basically what
I wanted to say to you all. The Secretary General and I are ready to
meet with you to discuss long-term strategic planning, to talk about
career planning, to talk about improving equipment and facilities. I’m
not promising that any of that will be realized to your optimum needs,
but at least there is a willingness to start working toward
improvement.
I’m prepared to come
anytime you wish to these meetings, but also to the different units of
the organization.
Once again, thank you
very much for having me here. It’s not the last time, I hope, and I
wish the new board good luck and success, and I look forward to your
vision in terms of strengthening this organization.
Thank you very much.
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Following please find the links to the videos of the other presentations
given
during the Annual Staff Assembly
Address by the President of the 2005-2006 Staff Committee
http://www.oas.org/OASpage/videosasf/2006/07/PresidentaStaff_3.wmv
Address by the Staff Association Representative to the
Retirement and Pension Fund Committee
http://www.oas.org/OASpage/videosasf/2006/07/jubilaciones_5.wmv
Address by the President of the 2006-2007 Staff Committee
http://www.oas.org/OASpage/videosasf/2006/07/Gutierrez_7.wmv
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