The world is in an economic crisis of a degree not seen before. There are no historical parallels that may be referenced as a way of defining the paths out of this meltdown, the experts tell us, but I am inclined to assert that there is, in this crisis, a tremendous set of opportunities!

The management guru Tom Peters, in his classical work Crazy Times Call for Crazy Organisations, argues, "imagination is the source of value in the economy". He contends that "bold ideas vault business thinking beyond change - toward invention and revolution". In a similarly exciting work entitled Thriving on Chaos, Peters posits that businesses and organisations that will succeed in difficult times are those that, among other things, achieve flexibility by empowering people, learning to love change (which involves a new view of leadership), sharing an inspiring vision and building systems for a world turned upside down. Coincidentally, this latter work was published the same day of the 1987 stock market crash in the United States.

The opportunities that present themselves in this crisis will not tumble out at us. They have to be constructed from the raw material.

The Gleaner reported recently that workers at Berger had negotiated a 20 per cent cut in wages, while Guardian Life, the second-largest life-insurance outfit in Jamaica, was reported to have lost out on a scheme that covered thousands of sugar workers and was bracing for a dramatic fall-off in group-life business. The company's president, Earl Moore, was reported to have said the unending job cuts throughout the economy would likely erode more group-life business, forcing Guardian to look to product innovation and marketing aimed at individual policyholders to take up the slack.

Donna Duncan-Scott of Jamaica Money Market Brokers (JMMB) shared that some 50 jobs in her organisation would be made redundant and that workers were integrally involved in the decision-making process as to who would lose their jobs. At The Gleaner, a number of employees opted for early retirement and other separation alternatives as part of the organisation's cost-saving measures.

Lessons learnt

The lessons here are striking: Workers called upon to help shape the future of their organisations by making sacrifices, and leadership affirming the need to become more innovative - to infuse operations with a bit of craziness, perhaps.

Therein lies a major opportunity for how we will move through this crisis and what lessons we can carry forward when the crisis is past. We would have wasted an opportunity for advancing an agenda of social partnerships if we failed to carry these lessons forward.

But the practice of the most vulnerable workers being called upon to make sacrifices is not new and one would hope that the brunt of the burden is not being borne by the most vulnerable workers, for if this were the case, the society would have missed the opportunity to extract even more social capital and goodwill from the current situation.

Thus, while there are opportunities in the present scenario, they have to be harvested carefully and with tremendous self-discipline.

One of the themes that runs through the narrative of sacrifice in the stories from Berger, JMMB and The Gleaner is how the responsibility for leadership, which (in these instances) means visionary thinking and sacrificial action, is placed on those who hold less power.

Our collective destination beyond the chaos of today will require that power be shared in a more ongoing and thorough-going manner with those members of the society who have been traditionally deprived of power.

Notions of power-sharing in the workplace are not new.

Creative and innovative

It is my contention, however, that if the current crisis is to be beneficial to us (that is, if it is to prove a grand opportunity), we will have to become more creative and innovative in how we teach. Thus, the strategies for extracting the most from the present crisis must involve a re-definition of the practice of teaching and learning in schools and specifically, must pay attention to greater power-sharing between teachers and principals on the one hand, and students on the other.

Based on research I did in order to determine the extent to which the education system was preparing students for meaningful power-sharing in the workplace, I have come to the conclusion that the secondary-education system in Jamaica is not sufficiently attuned to the new modes of leadership that are being practised in other organisations and that are demanded in the post-modern age in which we live.

Accommodating new ideas

In this post-modern age, which will continue beyond the current crisis, the classroom needs to become more democratic and dialogical and greater consultation needs to take place with students concerning decisions that affect them. In this post-modern age, leadership will need to be more accommodating of new ideas and mindful that knowledge is now a commodity and the access thereto is no longer restricted. Thus, schools may need to adopt Wal-Mart's metaphor of referring to workers as associates, by using the same term to describe students, many of whom bring to the learning enterprise far more knowledge in some critical areas than the teacher does. In this era, the teacher is no longer an expert (in much the same way that there are no experts to take us out of this economic mess); the teacher is a facilitator and a fellow sojourner on the path to enlightenment and insight.

By adopting these assumptions, teachers will help to prepare students to survive in a society where ambiguity and uncertainty are the norm and where certitude and dogma must give way to openness and tentativeness, a world where all truth is subject to challenge and where there is no longer a boss who knows everything.

The end of expertise is the lesson of this current crisis and that lesson is one that the teaching-learning enterprise must learn as it seeks to prepare students for the next uncharted crisis!

Dr Canute Thompson is assistant vice-president at the International University of the Caribbean. He may be reached at canute_thompson@hotmail.com.