These days, it seems as if customer satisfaction for tourists is at an all-time high, while local businesses and government-run institutions have a bad reputation for customer satisfaction. One doesn't need to look further than K.B.'s hit song "Civil Service" to see how this attitude has become a familiar part of Bahamian culture.
Yet paradoxically, another part of Bahamian culture, Junkanoo, seems to bring out the best in Bahamians, who will spend a year of hard work, dedication and discipline to produce costumes for a single festival -- without pay. Just what is it about Junkanoo that turns us into dedicated hard workers?
It's something that Michael Diggiss and Roosevelt Finlayson set out to explore ten years ago through their Festival in the Workplace Program, which has just positively transformed another Bahamian workplace. "Festival in the Workplace, what it actually means to us is a metaphor for a new and more creative, passionate way of looking at your culture, but it's also a literal expression of the power of the festival to transform people and relationships," explains Finlayson.
For the second time, Finlayson and Diggiss set out with the One Love Junkanoo shack family to comprehensively institute their program with a government-run institution -- the National Insurance Board. "The focus of this group is how to develop a culture of excellence," Finlayson explains. "So we're using the festival process to help them to develop an environment that can be more open to new thinking, different ways of doing things, different ways of relating to each other, and even a different way of looking at what the organization should be, what kind of culture the organization should have -- should this be a place where people could be playful at times and enjoy what they're doing and still be productive?"
"This is what happens in Junkanoo -- Bahamians are their most productive and creative in this process and most of them are not paid for it," he continues. "Because they're playful, they can be creative, because play and creativity go together, you see?" Essentially, Finlayson explains, Festival in the Workplace puts people from a business or corporate environment into a creative situation to introduce playfulness and creativity into the workplace and to strengthen coworkers' relationships. That creative situation is the Junkanoo shack -- appropriate, Finlayson believes, because it's the perfect combination of work and play in Bahamian culture.
"I'm interested in how we can develop a creative society," he says. "So I think the roots of a creative society are already here, in people involved in Junkanoo in certain communities -- that is a part of living, not just something we do for the economy. We haven't made the switch about how we can take what is a part of our creative community, our creative society, and use it to create an economy."
The way they do this is by dividing the nearly 450 participants into smaller groups, which undergo a series of music, dance and professional workshops together during work hours, which Finlayson believes breaks down barriers between them and teaches them the value of synergy, as every member plays an instrument that makes up a larger rhythm.
"Synergy is so critical if you want to have excellence," Finlayson says. "They were able to, with all that difference, come together and play together. When a group of people is able to work together so well, you can feel that, you can feel that harmonizing. They'll then be able to do that in the workplace."
Overall what those workshops also do is help them to get comfortable with their creative abilities -- something which most corporate environments traditionally discourage. Yet more and more in modern workplaces, creativity is encouraged and even required to move up through the ranks, as businesses recognize that creativity builds more engaged, invested and dedicated workers, confident in their creative problem-solving abilities and happy that they matter in their workplace.
What Festival in the Workplace is therefore able to do is highlight the need to develop our creative economy -- something which, workplace by workplace, they hope to transform at a corporate level and that will hopefully have far-reaching effects as the positive impacts are seen by the public.
"Creativity is important in the economy because it enables us to tap into resources that are hidden -- and if we can tap into those, we can be able to translate them into professional as well as a positive working environment," says Director of NIB, Algernon Cargill. Even he participated in a group -- the Executive Senior Management Team.
"The program enables us to improve the morale," he continues. "There is a strong synergy between teams working together in the social setting as well as performing at the same level professionally. This program gives us the opportunity to help us to ensure we are prepared to serve the public. We believe this will translate into strong service externally."
The major component of the program, and which takes that initial confidence in creative development and helps it flourish, though, is the Junkanoo shack activities at the One Love Junkanoo shack. Each group was handed over to Junkanoo experts Anton "Froggy" Newbold, Camillo Gibson and Perry "Pumpkin" Nicolls -- part of One Love Junkanoo group -- to undergo exercises that formed the design of their Junkanoo banners, which each group built and finally paraded outside of their workplace on Friday July 8th, to compete for the banner that best exemplified NIB's vision statement.
Anton "Froggy" Newbold starts the participants off by reading through NIB's mission statement -- which many workers may not have even known about until then -- and drawing out keywords that pinpoint the essence of the company's aims. Once they've gathered many words written out on a piece of cardboard, they're handed over to Camillo Gibson who helps them to transform the words into strong images. It's natural for them, he points out, because it's what they do.
"It's a condensed version of the process we go through every year to create our costumes for Bay Street. We start with a few key points and try to flesh it out into an image, arrange it and assemble it into a way that's design-friendly," says Gibson. "What I do is very stream-of-consciousness, word association -- what do you see when you hear the world 'effectiveness', 'dependability' or 'reliability'?"
The result is a culmination of images that he and other Junkanoo artists help them form into a banner that participants work on for the parade. At that stage is usually when the workers start to see how everything fits together, and the creative spirt then takes over, explains Newbold. Participants will usually get so involved they'll visit the shack after work hours
-- for no overtime pay -- just to work on their banner or additional parade materials they may get inspired to create.
"The fact that we work basically from material that's regarded as having no value and at day's end we have a marvellous and magnificent piece of equipment is something that people don't recognize, how the transformation occurs," explains Newbold. "The same transformation occurs in the individuals when they do these things, because they basically conceptualize these ideas and the satisfaction and gratification comes when they bring this into fruition."
What this starts to do in the workers is shift their mindset and show them how seeing a project through pays off in the long run -- skills they can utilize in the workplace. It also shows them that every component deserves the same amount of attention, no matter how small -- every part and person matters in the larger machine of a business. Newbold himself credits his time in Junkanoo with teaching him that.
"With Junkanoo I learned a bucket of sand starts with the first grain. Junkanoo and art in general is sometimes a slow and meticulous process but it has to be done right, because every stage of the building block goes towards the final product," he explains. "If you can take that process into the workplace where every stage, every process, is fundamental to making the next process correct and in alightment, then you would have done a lot generally for working people in this country."
Anyone who saw the banners that Friday would be surprised to know that most of the participants initially rejected the idea of working in a Junkanoo shack, refusing to fulfill that component. Once they saw how the members who did attend became inspired by the process, though, more and more participants opened up to the idea and flourished.
"The ones who resisted it the most have become the most vocal champions of this program, talking about how it personally changed them and their relationship with coworkers," points out Finlayson. For the participants themselves, this exercise proved to be hard-going at first, but in the long run, brought out the best in the workers and created their most rewarding experiences.
"I told somebody I never had a Junkanoo shack experience. I said, 'Junkanoo shack? I don't know if I want to go to a Junkanoo shack.' But I said let me see what it's all about. And I've been back ever since," said Carolyn Strachan, Assistant Manager in Customer Service for NIB.
"It makes you feel you could do almost anything. You truly see synergy at work, because you realize you need all these people, every part of it, to get somewhere," she continued.
"You can see how it can improve the working relationship in the organization, and once you have a better working relationship within the organization, it transfers outward, so it makes it better for customers as well." In her group -- Group 12, which ended up winning the banner competition that Friday -- was also Trevor Brice, an Executive Officer
in the NIB. He and his fellow group-mates were working overtime, making hats and shoes to wear during their performance in the parade. "For me I think that it's helped me to tackle an aspect of my creativity that I wouldn't have ordinarily, being in the Junkanoo shack. I admire seeing them on Bay Street, but never imagined doing it. It allowed me to express my creativity differently," he said.
"One of the experiences that stands out for me is when we got together to come up with concept for our banner. Considering everyone's ideas and interpretations was really powerful, and to see how those words and ideas can be translated into pictures was really amazing. What it says is that in every group, every idea has some place in that group, so every person has something to add to it, to bring some value, so that's something essential," he continued.
That kind of breakthrough and pride in their creative work is exactly what Finlayson and Diggiss hoped the workers would experience. They hope now that what they've learned will stay with them and essentially help them transform their workplace into an inviting and engaging creative atmosphere -- that essentially, they will look forward to and take pride in their work, either directly in their workplace or in conjunction with their workplace. "We're hoping they develop their own Junkanoo group, that we end up soon with a Junkanoo group that are only made up of people who were involved in the Festival in the Workplace," he says.
"That's not something where you have to have fancy costumes, but that you're in this in part because of the importance of you engaging in the creative proces and expressing yourself creatively." Surveying the participants in their groups putting finishing touches on their banners in the One Love shack while it poured rain outside that night, Finlayson was again enthralled by the level of change he saw occur over those few weeks.
"For me, I'm doing this work because I'm fascinated by the power of the creative process. It transforms the way people think, the way people behave, the way people interact."
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