The lesson of efficient management

At the end of last week, the trainers of the national gymnastics team, Octavian Bellu, Mariana Bitang and Ioan Suciu, gave us a lesion in utter professionalism. Particularly spectacular is the return of the former two, who took over the female team burdened by the glory of 30 years of medals and by the doom and gloom messages of many charitable souls who kept talking about how the well has dried up. When everything depends on innate talent and far too little on serious work and intelligent coordination, it is only natural that performance no longer remains constant, as its chart will follow a curve with frequent and random fluctuations.

I took the return of Bellu and Bitang after a hiatus of several years, to prove that things don"t necessarily have to be like that. The lesson they taught us no longer applies just to the narrow segment of sports, but also to politics and economics. With the same people, but with a different management the results would be different.

A nation that is well trained, carefully directed, efficiently motivated, will obtain a completely different set of results than one that was thoroughly lied to, continuously manipulated, cleverly impoverished, and divided with lots of effort.

The government, the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate, the Presidency, the Mayoralty, each need someone like Bellu who does what he"s good at and knows what he"s doing, capable of working hard and that would be able to shut his contesters off with his results. The policy of appointing charismatic leaders with the gift of the gab, who are capable to come up with excuses for any failure, superficially adept at everything, but without any true expertise at anything, can only lead to disaster.

Even Octavian Bellu hasn"t been as efficient during his tenure as counselor in the Presidential Administration or as head of the National Sports Agency as he used to before being appointed. Upon returning to what he does best, he more than proved his abilities. After his first mandate at the helm of the female gymnastics team expired in 2005, Octavian Bellu had gained 279 medals (106 gold, 86 silver and 87 bronze) at the World Championships, European Championships and the Olympic Games, a performance which earned him a mention in the Guinness Book of Records, in the category "most successful trainer in the world".

The FBI recently disclosed evidence concerning the presence of aliens on Earth. In a country ruled by slogans like "we have no capable people!", "it can"t be done!" or "would anyone else do any better?", Octavian Bellu is the alien calmly walking around in the training gym.