"The Winning Side Prime Minister" - Direct Entry into the Diplomatic Service

Sir Humphrey: "Now, Minister, if you are going to promote women just because they're the best person for the job, you will create a lot of resentment throughout the whole of the Civil Service!"

The Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt has caused mild rustling of Daily Telegraphs across Whitehall and beyond with his suggestion that in future the FCO should look to appoint Ambassadors from external industry figures, and not rely purely on internal appointees. Cue much harrumphing from those who feel that this move has the potential to be a disaster.

Traditionally the FCO appointed its most senior posts from within its own ranks, occasionally permitting other departmental staff to join on loan. Today while the system is opaquer and more open to competition from within the wider Civil Service, it is still exceptionally rare to see FCO opportunities advertised externally.

Of all Whitehall departments, the FCO is the one that has perhaps been the most resistant to the hugely welcome influx of fresh talent from across the private sector recently. In the last few years the Civil Service has mostly moved from a model where posts were jealously guarded and recruited inside their Department to one where people can actively compete from across the Civil Service in open competition – this has opened up a very healthy flow of people moving around departments to upskill themselves and develop their experience.

The next logical steps were to extend recruitment for posts out to external competition, ensuring that unless there were pressing operational reasons, posts should be advertised externally as a matter of routine. Almost all Senior Civil Service (in military speak the band of jobs occupying the 1* plus range of appointments) are now open to external competition, allowing anyone to apply for them. What appears to be proposed is that Ambassadorial jobs, previously the preserve of serving civil servants now be openly competed too and the best person is appointed to the role. Already Ambassadors have been appointed who have not spent their career in the Diplomatic Service.

The role of British Ambassador is a peculiar one – on the one hand it conjures up images of steely individuals with plume hats and feathers delivering strongly worded messages implying that their host nation has incurred the wrath of Her Majesty’s Government. On the other hand many of them are surprisingly normal individuals who have roles that are as much about networking, business management and trying to run a small company with a diverse range of staff and roles.

Traditionally the FCO was almost the sole part of the Whitehall machinery that sent staff overseas, and the Diplomatic Service was seen very much as the elite within an elite. These days the combination of reduced opportunities for overseas postings, particularly for junior staff, as a savings measure (many posts rely almost exclusively on locally employed civilians for staff), and the growth of other departments sending staff overseas means the Diplomatic Service has lost some of its lustre.

Today it is not uncommon to see individuals from a range of Whitehall departments based in foreign nations, doing everything from defence policy advice to lobbying for British industry. While the Embassy or High Commission may be the hub of the UK presence, there may well be plenty of other small UK enclaves in country too.

A good insight into the role of Staff in Post can be gained from the BBC comedy show ‘The Ambassadors’ by Mitchell and Webb, packed with all manner of gentle observations and very subtle in jokes (such as the security classification of the FCO Wine list in the credits) that demonstrate just how much research was done when making it. A finer insight into life at Post is hard to find!

Jim Hacker: Who knows Foreign Office secrets, apart from the Foreign Office

         Bernard Woolley: That's easy. Only the Kremlin.

Anyone who has seen the average CV’s of most senior diplomats will realise they do not necessarily spend their careers building up knowledge and experience of one country with the goal of being Ambassador there in 20 years time.  The modern Ambassador spends as much time managing staff, handling financial management, supporting British business, representing UK domestic policy issues and reflecting in country views back to Whitehall as they do being a diplomat. The skills required here are not necessarily hard to come by – a small amount of training, a suitable reading in period and the support of an effective team who can deliver support to the Ambassador are as critical as anything else.

The key point is that diplomats may rely on a skill set to do their job, and prior experience in the Diplomatic Service is handy, but it is not essential. These skills can be acquired through other means too, and there is a wealth of talent in the private sector who may be able to fill these roles equally well.

There is a well-worn path of former civil servants, particularly Diplomats, leaving Whitehall early due to a combination of factors, including the realisation that while the pay at Post is good, the pay in London is particularly bad (the FCO has a reputation as one of the lowest paying Whitehall departments), and the career progress can be glacially slow.

Many staff leave and move onto a variety of interesting and well-connected roles outside of Government, such as working in consultancies, project management or international relations roles, all of which test their soft skills, and grow their network. But currently once you leave, there is no easy way back into the Diplomatic system, not without either taking a very substantial seniority and pay cut or applying for very senior jobs in other departments and taking a few years to transfer over.

Although the wider Civil Service has an ability to apply for direct entry, as seen by the late Sir Jeremy Heywood who left the Civil Service for the private sector, only to return and become Cabinet Secretary, or by John Manzoi who spent much of his earlier career in the Private Sector.

There is an untapped pool of talent who could offer more to Government given the right opportunity, and who could be particularly well suited as Ambassadors – but the system gives them no way to do this. The suggestion then that some Ambassadorial appointments should be openly competed is welcome. It will expose to hiring managers the breadth of talent on offer and could significantly change the way that the UK develops and sends out senior diplomatic staff.

 Bernard Woolley: What if he demands options?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well, it's obvious, Bernard. The Foreign Office will happily present him with three options, two of which are, on close inspection, exactly the same.

Sir Richard Wharton: Plus a third which is totally unacceptable 

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Like bombing Warsaw or invading France.

Why Does This Matter to the Military?

While the subtleties of the FCO career structures may be of limited interest to many readers of a military blog, there is an important read across to the MOD here that does matter. Namely the recognition that direct entry is the best way to ensure the best possible pool of talent to compete for some of the highest profile jobs in Government.

The FCO have realised that to get the very best talent pool, they must open up their processes to outside competition. Whilst it may be tempting to rely on internal candidates, this doesn’t take account of the fact that you can only work with the talent pool you have to hand, and if the person best suited to be British Ambassador to Obscuristanalonia left two years ago in frustration, they have no way back in.

The question is what is more important for talent management and filling posts. Is it the idea of ideological purity in the pool, ensuring that everyone in the system at senior levels is a ‘lifer’ and who may stack up well against their peers, but may not be the best possible person for the job. Or is it better to accept fresh talent, broaden your experience pool and take a training risk on getting someone up to speed quickly but get the right person for the post?

The Armed Forces rely purely on the former, ensuring that the pool of officers you can draw on at age 50 is the same cohort that entered the system 20-30 years previously. Their foibles, skills and limitations are known, and the ability to upskill them to meet new requirements is limited with the time left in their career.

There are plenty of their peer group who have left for a multitude of reasons and gone outside who have done incredibly well, and others who have never served but gained skills that could be of enormous value. Despite this, there is a strong refusal to contemplate an idea that entry can be anything other than as a junior officer. This feels like an enormous rejection of a talent pool, particularly at senior levels of individuals who may not have worn a uniform for 30 years, but who could wipe the floor when it comes to change management, project leadership, logistical improvements or service delivery.

“Sir Arnold: If once they accepted the principle that senior Civil Servants could be removed for incompetence, that would be the thin end of the wedge. We could lose dozens of our chaps. Hundreds, perhaps.

Sir Humphrey: Thousands.”

At senior levels it is as much about setting visions and empowering your team to do stuff and letting them do it as it is about being a technical expert. It is unlikely that the average General knows much about how to reload a Challenger 2 main gun, operate the winch on a helicopter or dive to clear mines from the bottom of the sea, but we still assume they can rely on the skills of their staff to make sure this happens.

While there will always be a need for ‘warfighting’ senior officers who need to have a deep background in the profession of arms and decades of experience in operations, there are plenty of senior posts (e.g. 1* plus) that probably don’t need this. What they do need is someone with business acumen, experience of changing things and working with diverse stakeholders.

With the greatest of respect to the senior Military, having spent 30 years inside a deeply risk averse organisation that finds change difficult (just look at the ‘sleeves up or down’ issue) are these really the right people to be charged with leading the redevelopment of the ‘business’ side of the armed forces?

We often forget that much of what the Military do is as much about delivery and project management as it is about kinetic action. The recent exercise Saif Sarrea 3 could be seen as much about years of project management, logistical planning and training delivery as it was about showcasing warfighting skills.

One only has to look at the work of DE&S to realise that a big chunk of the military is involved in delivering a £178bn portfolio of capability over the next 10 years, encompassing everything from nuclear submarines to ration packs. This requires an astonishing range of skills and experience where industry would seek to use head-hunters and an aggressive talent management system to bring in the right people for the job. The Armed Forces rely on a ‘can do attitude’ and the realisation that OJAR glory is just one bright idea to change things up away.

Israeli Ambassador: It's well known that in the British Foreign Office an instruction from the Prime Minister becomes a request from the Foreign Secretary, then a recommendation from the Minister of State and, finally, just a suggestion to the ambassador. If it ever gets that far.

Direct entry?

This may sound harsh, but in a world where the concept of a cradle to grave career in one organisation is all but dead, clinging to the idea that people cannot possibly be a senior officer in the Royal Navy managing part of a nuclear submarine delivery programme unless they’ve learnt to do a Spanish Windlass in Dartmouth aged 22 (for example) seems ever more out of touch with reality.

While direct entry wouldn’t work for the more junior officer posts (e.g. SO3/SO2) when people are still learning their specialist roles for the front line, there is a point when the talent pool thins as people move to new roles, and fresh blood is needed. Arguably this is at the OF5 / 1* level, where the direct involvement in many directly and tangibly ‘military’ roles starts to diminish as people move into far more managerial posts – at this level your direct knowledge of how something works is less important than your ability to lead the teams that do.

In many ways this is like how Ambassadors work – they are required to work across multiple issues, handle many different responsibilities and lead a multi-national team drawn from multiple agencies and departments to deliver successful outcomes – usually on a shoestring budget and under tight media scrutiny.

It would be particularly ironic if given the howling that occurs anytime the dreaded phrase ‘direct entry’ is spoken that a former military officer applied for and became an Ambassador. Trying to understand how people could defend saying that you can have no prior experience in the system but that resettlement training means you can become an Ambassador, whilst watching usually the same suspects go ‘oh but its all far too complicated for an outsider to be a Brigadier’ will be highly amusing.

We do seem to be approaching a pivotal moment in how we look at the concept of the military career, particularly at senior levels. While there is no suggestion that you should run a vacancy for anyone interested in applying to become the Platoon Commander for B Coy in the Loamshires, there is perhaps a good discussion to be had around whether the military always produce the right person for the job.

An Officers selection and capacity is arguably only competitively tested at entry, when the Commissioning boards assess someone on their potential over two-three days to be a future junior officer. Once they enter the system, they are never tested or compared again except to their direct peer group. Career managers are only able to work with the talent pool that the Boards give them and must nurture and manage it for the next 30 years.

It is entirely possible that the people chosen because they demonstrate the right skills and qualities to be a good junior officer are utterly unsuitable to be a senior leader and manager. Yet, the system will need to select and promote from this pool because no other means of putting better qualified or experienced people into the system exists. How many other industries or Civil Service departments manage their workforce in such a similar manner?

Providing the career managers with the ability to bring in people at key career checkpoints, such as OF5 or 1* not only reinvigorates the talent pool where gaps have occurred due to wastage, but also sends a clear signal to the people coming up through the system that they must work hard to secure a deserved promotion.

This may sit poorly with some, but the fact is that the military is one of the few closed systems out there where it is almost impossible to be fired for poor performance, but equally possible to coast along doing very little of tangible value for decades, safe in the knowledge that a large pension awaits.

By allowing an option to escape, to do something new and then consider coming back in again later, two things happen. Firstly the system allows access to new pools of talent with prior experience and skills at the right point in time – why not, if you need to appoint 20 Captains, but only have 10 deemed suitable, open up a competition to recruit 10 more?

Bringing in the right talent is better than appointing the wrong person to a role – the military is full of tales of over promoted officers causing chaos as they prove their unsuitability for a job, causing a chain reaction of unhappiness and PVRs. Not only would direct entry help make sure the right people are in place, but also allow people who left earlier a way back in if they want it.

Secondly, it moves the military to the mentality that it may be a life long calling, but a short term career for people. Letting someone serve a few years, leave, gain new skills and come back to offer more to the system grows a culture where they see the military as a life long career option. Moving to treat the pool of manpower as a flexible body that ebbs and flows in size and composition over a 20-30yr period, rather than a homogeneous block formed on entry to BRNC will shift the mentality about how careers are developed.

People leave for different reasons, people want to join at different times and for different reasons. Showing flexibility to rejoiners, applying a common sense approach for 50 year old new entrants with valuable skills and trying to move to a truly ‘life long career’ mentality, much as the civil service has done may upset traditionalists, but it will go a long way to solving manpower gaps in an organisation that struggles to retain talent.

Ultimately the decision may be forced on the military as the modern generation, who are far more focused on ‘portfolio careers’ simply don’t stay in the military system for long enough to make the future manpower model sustainable. This year sees the first time that millennial officers can join (e.g 18yr olds), and they have the potential to be in the system until 2060 plus. To keep them in will require an entirely different approach to the 20^th century model, and one that if not changed and adapted could cause the collapse of the armed forces manpower system as we know it.

The stakes are high, the need for change is even higher, but is the willingness to change there or is harrumphing and rustling of papers while the system slowly burns going to win the day?

Hacker: If there were a conflict of interests which side would the civil service really be on?

Bernard: The winning side, Prime Minister.

Dedicated to the memory of Sir Jeremy Heywood.