“Half-hearted” management reflects weak primary education

A recent international survey explains a great deal about the quality of management we have in Brazilian companies today. It is a study carried out by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), "Education at a Glance," which shows, once again, shortcomings in Brazilian education, especially at the primary and lower secondary level.

Just to cite some data from this study: 50% of Brazilian adults (aged 25 to 64) have not completed upper secondary school, against an average of 22% in OECD countries (which bring together 35 developed nations). Many (17%) do not even finish primary and lower secondary school in Brazil, while the OECD average is 2%.

As for resources, we spend US$3,800 a year on each primary and lower secondary student, well below the average of OECD member countries, which is US$8,700 per student. When it comes to higher education, however, the picture changes: the amount invested by Brazil is more than US$11,000, which is very close to what countries such as Portugal and Spain invest.

At both ends (basic and higher education) there are countless shortcomings and scarce, poorly applied resources, but the situation is certainly far more dramatic in basic education.

What does this have to do with management? Everything.

It is increasingly understood today that the quality of a company's management cannot depend solely on the competence or education of its top leaders. You cannot count only on a few executives who had a good education and are therefore able to sustain excellent management, regardless of the rest of the company. That is an old view of management, the one of the “super-executive” who solved everything.

Today, there is growing awareness every day that excellent management can only be the fruit of using everyone's full potential. Only then is it possible to truly stand out in today's hypercompetitive market. If only executives and specialists have had a solid educational background, and the rest of the company has not, it is very likely that you will have “half” good management. A “limping,” “halfway” management, in which good results depend on a few rather than on many. The company moves forward, of course, but stumbling along, with weak points here and there...

Ideally, the vast majority of the company should, every day, look for problems and waste. Investigate and find root causes. And, through experiments, implement plans to solve problems and improve the work. Only then will there be a growing and unbeatable continuous improvement, making any organization more sustainable, efficient, productive and value-adding every day.

But for this to really happen, the vast majority need a solid educational background. And of course this task cannot be left to higher education alone.

It is in basic education that much of an individual's intellectual formation develops. It is there that logical and mathematical operations are first and best assimilated. It is also there that writing, narrative, the capacity for expression, and for telling and listening to stories evolve. It is also there that the sciences and their capacity for experimentation should be settled in students' minds. It is there, in basic education, that people learn things they will never forget. It is where citizens are formed with such important foundations as responsibility, honesty, ethics, critical awareness and a real capacity for efficient work. Without this minimum foundation, each employee's participation in the daily improvement of work is impaired.

The problem is that, as we know, these very important educational foundations are not developed as they should be in most of our primary schools, especially public ones, but not only in them. The importance of basic education for a country's development is widely known, but it always ends up taking a back seat, not least because it does not lend itself to simple or short-term solutions.

In addition to the important points on the political and economic agenda this year and next, the quality of basic education needs to be among the priority issues for society to face head-on, because it is also a bottleneck for the country's development.

Companies operating in Brazil will only be competitive with complete management that leverages the capabilities of 100% of their people. For that, a solid education at the base of the pyramid is needed, along with management that involves everyone in problem solving, every day.