After managing the Covid-19 pandemic so well, why did Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley score this own goal with the high-power Venezuela meeting? His team was doing well. Couldn’t his handlers advise him to duck this one and move on to the good news of opening up the country? Instead, …
Read More »Demming: Dreaming of tomorrow, how recovery team can help T&T’s ease of business
There is always a gap between perception and reality. Communicators have to operate within that space trying to narrow the gap and strengthen their intended message. The government opted to use moral suasion to get citizens to stay at home, but a drive or walk through neighbourhoods, towns and cities …
Read More »Demming: T&T citizens have six identifying numbers, time to collapse them into one
Most of us have six unique numbers with which we are identified. They are our Board of Inland Revenue and National Insurance Scheme numbers as well as those found on our birth certificate, identification card, driver’s permit and passport. I posed two questions to my friends in the digital space: …
Read More »Demming: T&T must emerge from pandemic as healthier, more tech savvy nation
April 7th marked the 55th month of Trinidad and Tobago being under the leadership of Prime Minister Dr Keith Christopher Rowley and no one could have predicted the current scenario. Not in our wildest dreams did we contemplate that we’d be engaged in a daily tally of deaths versus confirmed …
Read More »Demming: Life after Covid-19, pandemic offers opportunity to rebuild society
Imagine the day when the minister of health announces that we have not just flattened, but broken the COVID-19 curve, and no new cases have been reported for the required number of days. For some, it will be a joyous attempt to return to life as we left it before …
Read More »Demming: Covid-19 demands leaders collaborate across party lines
Social media lights up every time Dr Michelle Trotman speaks about Covid-19, although she admits that she is not a ‘Facebook person’. The authenticity with which she delivers is endearing at a time when our officials just don’t understand how to engage the population. Dr Trotman spoke to us with …
Read More »Demming: Will a woman take the fall in Piarco airport corruption scandal?
It’s been more than 15 years since the Piarco Airport corruption scandal, and the once high-flyer Renee Pierre is before the court to answer three corruption charges. My late mother from behind–the–bridge used to say: “Friends will carry you, but they won’t bring you back.” This is still stellar advice—especially …
Read More »Demming: Caring for our helpless; to ignore them is to risk your humanity
There’s a human who walks in small tight circles on the pavement in Champs Fleurs in front of a successful company. His fingers on one hand are visibly rotting, his smell is putrid, he made me think of the personification of the ‘creature from the black lagoon’. I first saw …
Read More »Demming: Thanks, but no thanks Mr Prime Minister; George St no place for Despers
Desperadoes Steel Orchestra is in no position to refuse the generosity of the prime minister, but the population can. We can tell Dr Keith Rowley that the reasons Despers left the ‘Hill’ are still with us and may even be more deeply entrenched as we count the daily shootings, killings …
Read More »Demming: What if Tribe ran the country? T&T needs leaders with grit and imagination
Another Carnival is here again, and we are seeing examples of excellence in performance, delivery and customer service. If these things work in one area of society, why is the performance in other areas so dismal? The answer lies in the proliferation of square pegs in round holes. Visit Rosalino …
Read More »Demming: What steel bands can teach us about goals, leadership and teamwork
I have been mulling over the lessons of the panyard experience and continue to feel that the panyards are on to some yet unexplored management concept in the way they organise themselves for Carnival. Mind you, there are as many systems as there are bands, but what is common is …
Read More »Demming: Presidential ‘boof’ not enough to change MPs
A ‘boof’ from your ‘tantie’ will sting, but it will not necessarily lead to any improvement of the undesirable behaviour it was aimed to correct. At the opening of the refurbished parliament building, called ‘The Red House’ for over a century, our president, Paula-Mae Weekes, fondly re-named ‘Auntie/Tantie President’, ‘pelt …
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