Responsible management to the fore at CMI AGM

• nMalraj Kiriella re-elected as President

The Chartered Management Institute, UK (CMI) Sri Lanka Branch held its 16th Annual General Meeting (AGM) recently, at which Malraj Kiriella was re-elected as President. 

Deputy High Commissioner for the UK in Sri Lanka Laura Davies attended the 16th AGM of CMI Sri Lanka as the Chief Guest. The event, which featured a large gathering of its members, was held at Movenpick Hotel, Colombo.

Delivering an interesting speech, Davies pointed out that Sri Lanka was in a sweet spot where talent and location were complementing each other to reap the full benefits of the impending trade ties, and insisted that managers as well as leaders shared a responsibility in making that happen. 

“Sri Lanka has so much potential – its location on key trading routes, its partnerships from the Commonwealth to the wealth of FTAs, and its people, with their exceptionally-high literacy rates and ability to speak in English, the language of business. But it could do more to capitalise on these advantages.

“Sri Lanka’s scores on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business report and the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness report aren’t bad for the region, but Sri Lanka can and should aim much higher.  All managers and leaders share a responsibility for making this happen, by rooting out corruption wherever it is lurking, helping to broaden the tax base, making procurement more transparent, and promoting genuine equality across the workplace,” she added.

Highlighting the importance of CMI to uplift businesses, she said: “The old management models have been turned on their heads. As managers and leaders, what we need to do changes every day, is the easiest part of the business to get wrong, and the hardest part to get feedback on – until it’s too late.  It can also be a lonely place.  That’s why it’s so good to see associations like CMI thriving, and to hear of all the excellent initiatives that have taken place over the last year: training, peer to peer support and inspiration, and enabling the public and private sectors to learn from each other.”

She said it was particularly positive to hear how the CMI Sri Lanka Branch had been promoting and demonstrating in its new executive committee gender equality and ethno-religious blindness. “Those are two terms that really only mean recognising and responding to merit: a critical skill for all leaders and managers. And there’s more to come with the Awards of Excellence later this year.”

Relating to the many links the UK and Sri Lanka enjoy, Davies pointed professional associations were one of the highlights, enabling the growth of business, education and people-to-people links.  

While acknowledging last year’s CMI Sri Lanka Branch highlights, CMI Sri President Kiriella outlined four goals that he wished to implement during his tenure, which includes membership development, introducing a recognition scheme for management excellence, developing a Chartered Manager program and organising programs to develop knowledge and skills of managers. 

He said that during his visit to CMI UK recently he had discussed introducing a more attractive rate structure to increase membership. Last year the branch was able to increase membership by 16.

Noting that considerable groundwork had been completed to stage the branch’s hallmark event, ‘CMI Management Excellence Awards’, he said it would be held in December with the fullest cooperation and advice of CMI UK and would enable CMI Sri Lanka to be taken to great heights.

Kiriella also said with CMI UK’s assistance, they would launch the Chartered Manager program soon in Sri Lanka. “CMI UK is already making arrangements with some local universities to deliver this program and we expect to launch it within this year. With this we expect to reposition the management quiz with partnering education institutions as a biennial event.”

In addition the association will organise events that can develop knowledge and skills of managers. “We are planning to organise at least one event per month which will make the CMI Sri Lanka brand more visible and stronger while achieving the core objective.”

CMI Sri Lanka branch is planning to organise knowledge seminars with professional bodies in marketing, finance, engineering, human resources and information technology within the year.

“We believe that these will pave the way to achieve our final goal ,which is to be the most recognised and respected professional body in Sri Lanka,” he added.

In conclusion, he highlighted contemporary urgent issues and said that the country needed good managers who were effective and efficient with core values of empowerment, perseverance, equality, discipline and accountability.

“We need to focus on building managers with more professionalism to achieve the development goals of the country. A country that is envisaging to reach greater heights must equally focus on HR development on this key aspect. In doing so the core values should come to the forefront. As a leading professional association in management, we have to understand this issue to make a positive contribution towards it,” Kiriella stressed. (CDS)

Pix by Upul Abayasekara