To change the civil service, you need to understand its psychology

What you need to know:

  • New governments come with a new Parliament, and a new top-tier civil service. However, a large section of the civil service and Judiciary remain intact, with some members having multiple loyalties.
  • People need to be talked to with the right attitude, but this simple virtue is sometimes rare in some departments where staff have to endure regular threats.
  • While the Head of State expects change to reflect his agenda, change does not come easily because the Civil Service has some of the most rigid systems around.

This is my 255th article on this blog, and I take this opportunity to thank those who respond to my provocations.

Many, I have come to understand, have no clue how the government functions. Perhaps that is why they keep asking why I did not share the ideas I write about here while I was in government.

It is for this reason that in this write-up, I attempt to explain how government functions and why an individual, regardless of the validity of the ideas he or she may have, may simply not make any impact outside his or her docket, but can significantly change things for the better within their docket.

There are several assumptions about government that one must understand before we interrogate further how government functions. Let me start with Abraham Lincoln’s famous quote, “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

In theory, this is what the government should be. All actions of the government must be validated by the voters or their representatives, simply because the government is “owned” by the people and supposedly acts in their interest.

In the Kenyan context, we pretty much aspire to this idea of a people-centred government. We have enshrined this idea in Section 1.1 of our Constitution, where it says, "All sovereign power belongs to the people of Kenya and shall be exercised only in accordance with this Constitution".

MULTIPLE LOYALTIES

However, this is impossible, because this power cannot be exercised in every action or decision.

When a new government comes into office, the assumption is that if it was elected by the majority, then the people must have endorsed the new government’s political agenda.

The process of government of the people begins with the election, where the people decide, but many other issues that may not be in the manifesto form the basis of the party ideology, such that when we vote we can fairly predict how the government will treat some key issues that the majority subscribe to.

In practice, this does not happen here in Kenya. We do not vote along ideological lines and we rarely know what is contained in any manifesto. This is where the problems in government starts.

New governments come with a new Parliament, and a new top-tier civil service. However, a large section of the civil service and Judiciary remain intact, with some members having multiple loyalties.

The civil service is further divided into multiple silos along the ministries and departments. Parliament and the Judiciary are supposed to be independent, but Parliament can be tamed through political party structures.

The Executive, through the Cabinet, brings together different departments. The head of Public Service can also convene meetings that bring together all branches including the Judiciary and Parliament through their accounting officers. Indeed, the agenda for the common meeting is centred on inter-ministerial issues.

Every head of the ministry or department is assumed to be an expert in their line of duty and as such it is rare for an expert in health matters to comment on agricultural matters.

The structuring of ministries and departments is the prerogative of the Head of State, based on service delivery and optimal resource utilisation.

SUBTLE RESISTANCE

While the Head of State expects change to reflect his agenda, change does not come easily because the Civil Service has some of the most rigid systems around. Some senior civil servants are also unhappy because they feel they have been passed over when top tier civil servants were appointed yet they could in fact be more qualified and experienced.

To add insult to injury, they are often expected to train the new comers. It requires a lot of skill on the part of change agents.

There are many theories that can form the basis of a change framework, but the new teams never apply these basics. In some cases, the civil servants face the wrath of new and inexperienced managers.

This further alienates the civil service from the leadership and sometimes can lead to serious disruption of service delivery. Sometimes, subtle resistance goes unnoticed. When any team fails to work together harmoniously, you are bound to have many problems.

In the early 1960s, a social psychologist from MIT, Douglas McGregor, attempted to explain human motivation through two contrasting theories on human motivation and management.

McGregor’s X and Y theories have been used here in Kenya over the past 50 years with astonishing performance outcomes.

The government of Kenya’s founding father, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, and that of President Daniel Moi, were strong governments that subscribed to theory X, which assumes that employees are naturally unmotivated, dislike working, and require an authoritarian style of management.

It is for this reason that decisions of the two governments were highly centralised and often intervened in virtually everything to get things done. The consequence of this was resistance that severely affected any form of development.

'PEOPLE ARE NOT JUST COGS'

President Mwai Kibaki’s administration was the opposite, more of theory Y. This was a more participative, decentralised style of management. In most cases Ministries made decisions without necessarily referring to the centre.

This style, and theory, assumes that employees are happy to work, are self-motivated and creative, and enjoy working with greater responsibility. It is perhaps the reason why most ministries took responsibility and were motivated to fulfill the Vision 2030 goals that had been agreed upon.

This participative management is more widely acceptable, since it allows people at lower levels of the organisation to be involved in decision-making and have more responsibility.

In relative terms, there were more achievements during Kibaki’s tenure than in the previous governments combined.

I don’t have the inside knowledge of the style adopted by the Jubilee government. What I can say is that President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration needs to learn from the past and chart into the future with the kind of legacy they want to leave in mind.

The import of these theories is that democratising institutions pays. People are not just cogs in their work places. They need to be talked to with the right attitude, but this simple virtue is sometimes rare in some departments where staff have to endure regular threats.

In such a situation, new ideas are often resisted and service delivery is even compromised. Success in any task is a product of leadership, the people, and the technologies used to enable greater productivity.

The Japanese have what they call Monozukuri with Hitozukuri, which means "production or manufacturing excellence achieved through people excellence".

In a similar manner we want service excellence achieved through people excellence in the civil service. Without happy people, we shall forever be complaining why things aren’t working, even with the best ideas floating around.

FRUSTRATING BUT VITAL

I have sat in meetings where a Minister walked in with a 12-item agenda and talked through it, without any input from senior civil servants.

Some, if not most, bureaucrats are completely inaccessible, even to their senior staff.

The little that we achieved at the Communication Ministry was due to the fact that there was constant interaction between industry, the general public and the Ministry.

We leveraged technology to gather information from platforms such as KictaNet (where the public vented their anger towards government and we responded to each and every question).

Some of the issues raised on the platform led to policy statements. We need such a window in every ministry. It gave me a chance to regularly write and explain our actions, and how much we had incorporated ideas from the public.

Granted, it is a frustrating thing for a leader to do, but it is the best way to gather ideas that will change our current status. This is the age of collaboration. Every idea has its place in creating change.

Humility does not cost anything but, in my view, it is the missing link between what the public expects and the goals that the government wants to achieve. Leaders need time to listen and actively learn from others since no one has the monopoly of ideas.

But even as this sounds simple, it rarely happens. When we crafted the Vision 2030 with the help of McKinsey, a team of consultants led by a young Kenyan, Dr Gachao Kiuna, encouraged the free flow of ideas. It is because of that kind of openness that the document remains relevant today.

Even though the firm had a global network, it relied on local input to come up with a comprehensive vision. It is a lesson most of our leaders need, because sustainable solutions will only come from within and we cannot afford to ignore input from those we work with.

INFORMAL MEETINGS

In my view, every new top civil servant, especially from the private sector, should never start working before undergoing an intensive induction process to understand how the civil service works.

As I suggested earlier, the civil service is a complex, rigid system that can only be changed when its psychology is properly understood. I was able to make changes after understanding the system. Keeping in mind Lewin’s theory of change, we made sure the changes were acceptable.

For example, the system has no safety valves on risk taking, but what the public expects from government will simply subject you to taking personal risk.

There is a need for top leadership in ministries and departments to meet with the entire staff and address some of the issues. Sometimes, it helps to get to know the staff as a strategy for motivating them to serve the people.

Some of the informal meetings have far-reaching implications because this is where change begins and you get to learn more.

Some of the problems, you get to know, do not always require money. If you read Mark 4:3-8, you will understand why ideas fail to take root in some areas of government. It reads:

Listen! A farmer went out to plant his seed. 4 While he was planting, some seed fell by the road, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some seed fell on rocky ground where there wasn’t much dirt. That seed grew very fast, because the ground was not deep. 6 But when the sun rose, the plants dried up because they did not have deep roots. 7 Some other seed fell among thorny weeds, which grew and choked the good plants. So those plants did not produce a crop. 8 Some other seed fell on good ground and began to grow. It got taller and produced a crop. Some plants made thirty times more, some made sixty times more, and some made a hundred times more.

We need to develop good grounds for ideas to flourish.

The writer is an associate professor at University of Nairobi’s Business School. Twitter: @bantigito