The archives

There are a number of archives in the Maltese islands, all of which are of historical importance. The largest must be the National Archives in Rabat and Mdina. These contain the “history” of our islands. The problem is that they are bursting at the seams, although it is understood that the government is seeking a long-term solution.

The author (left) receiving a copy of the book from Charles J. Farrugia.

I have some personal knowledge as I have donated all my works to the nation. But the main scope of this letter is to praise the curator who, for many years, has been guiding such an important and delicate activity.

In 2019, Charles J. Farrugia compiled a thick and heavy volume which, in itself, is a work of art, and the curator has to be praised for such an effort. It is not something to rush through but has to be enjoyed in small doses. It contains many facts of importance.

It must have taken him much time, effort and research but the end result was worth it.

Good show.

Frans Said – St Paul’s Bay

The art of managing people

What primarily guided me throughout my long management career was my firm belief that professionalism is not negotiable and that mediocrity is the recipe for failure. 

I am very much impressed by the way Edward de Bono expresses the need of all of us for continuous improvement. In his Sur petition – Beyond Competition he writes “when it comes to improvement, the Japanese are also concerned with removing obvious faults. But that is only the beginning, not the end, of the matter. The Japanese then go to say ‘this is perfect – so now let us make it better’.

“This is perhaps the single most significant difference between western industrial thinking and the Japanese industrial thinking. The result is the Japanese habit of continuous improvement, of improving things even where there are no faults at all.”

Michael Allsopp, in Management in the Professions, asserts that the reputation and prosperity of a firm will largely be the sum of the quality of its principals and staff. Allsopp quotes Machiavelli as saying that the first impression that one gets of a ruler and his brains is from seeing the men he has around him.

It is an indisputable fact that the most valuable resource in any organisation is people. One of the main goals should therefore be to instil in its human resources a deep sense of professionalism. 

Throughout my entire management career, I have consistently refused to subscribe to the mentality that anything or almost anything goes and that the highest level has been reached.

Indeed, the three pillars on which business success rests are people, performance and profits – the three Ps as I like to refer to them. People always come first – performance and profits follow.

People entrusted with human resource management should never be satisfied with a ‘status quo’ mentality.

The global company of today needs global vision but, more importantly, it needs human resource professionals capable of recreating the very basics of managing people in organisations with a heavy dose of professionalism.

Managing people is an extremely satisfying task and, at the same time, an arduous task that must be handled with extreme care, dedication and forcefulness and paved all the way with professionalism.

J. W. Humble, in Management by Objectives, holds that the central objective of a business enterprise is to maximise the return on the resources employed. This ‘return’ rests to a great extent on the degree of professionalism injected in human resources.

We need to accept the fact that the level of performance we aim at is not at all times attained. However, Peter Drucker, in Management, Tasks and Responsibilities, emphasises that “what performance has no room for are complacency and low standards”.

Paul Xuereb – Balzan