In Defence Of Groupthink - Why the Civil Service Works

 

It has been claimed that the Civil Service is the home of groupthink, and that this is holding the UK back. These claims, made by the former vaccine lead, Kate Bingham, point to a culture paralysed by consensus building, where specialists are in short supply and mediocrity is promoted over talent.

Are these criticisms accurate or fair, or is there an alternative perspective to consider here?

The challenge with comparisons between the Civil Service and industry is that the focus is usually on small or medium start ups, able to operate with agility, speed and flexibility to get things done in an incredibly fast time scale.

That makes perfect sense in a small organisation of 20 or 30 people, all of whom are often doing multiple jobs, but are fundamentally dedicated to delivering a single product or small range of services well.

In these environments it is easier to focus on delivery at pace, trying to bring in experts and draw on their knowledge for product development or delivery, and focus on success. The problem is that at its heart though, the UK government is not a small organisation of 20-30 people.

Modern government is complex, and the range of policies and issues which impact on peoples lives grows ever more challenging. Government does not have the luxury of focusing on a single issue or problem most of the time – COVID was perhaps the first time since WW2 that the machinery of government could be refocused to deliver against this challenge, and it came a significant cost.

Delivery of routine government policy is not, and never will be a speedy process most of the time. Doing government well is about listening to the policy priorities of the Ministers of the day and identifying how these can be delivered – one of the often forgotten strengths of the British Civil Service is that it can elegantly shift from delivering one Governments goals to another seamlessly and act as if this has been the policy all along.

Policy requires engagement to understand the issues, the challenges and the problems and identify what needs to be fixed. It requires listening to pressure groups, allies, partners and other stakeholders to assess evidence, generate a set of proposals and turn this into an achievable strategy.

It is important to make sure that what one Department is doing does not disrupt other departments-  for example what impact would windfarms have on everything from fast jet flying and use of drones through to development of trade export campaigns and the like. Unlike in a small company focused on a single product, government is not done in isolation, and policies cannot be designed without considering the impact across a great many strands of work.

While it is tempting to say ‘JFDI’, and insist that Government does stuff, because doing stuff is better than talking about doing stuff, the results can often be catastrophic. A rushed policy decision can lead to poor contract awards, that in turn raise propriety and ethics questions. An accelerated move to do something can result in legal challenge, which in turn can result in further delays, or acute embarrassment when the Government is told by the courts that ‘no, it cannot do as it pleases’.

Part of the challenge of governing is developing implementable policies that can be delivered in a way that works for all concerned. This is not easy, and arguably one of the often forgotten strengths of the British system is that it is remarkably good at building consensus, generating good policy options and turning policy into delivery.

This may sound like risk aversion, but the challenge is always how much risk can be taken when you are trying to deliver policy outcomes for everyone – not just your customers?

While complaints that the Civil Service lacks experienced people from industry and scientists sound reasonable, it is also possible to ask whether they are necessarily a fair complaint.

To try to bring in people with experience in these sectors into the civil service requires people to be willing to step away from a successful career, often taking a substantial pay cut and making a mid career move where they need to essentially start again.  While some people are prepared to do this (and the significant opening up of CS recruitment to ensure open competition for most jobs helps), how much value would it add?

For example, you are only as good as your representation and if you haven’t got people with industrial experience of the right sector, then are you really gaining credibility by bringing on scientists or industry types who may have no direct relevant experience? In reality it requires a lot of luck to find people with these skills and have them in the right place at the right time.

There is no call or demand for a ‘ministry of skilled labour’ able to dole out experts at short notice, and how many people would want to walk away from an industry that they are known in, and take a career limiting move in this way. Far better is perhaps the governments use of advisory committees like SAGE that provide access to insight, even if it is not permanently based in house.

For those that do join, there is the challenge of persuading people to take the pay hit. The constant problem is one of trying to balance off compensation with experience. Whitehall isn’t necessarily stingy in its pay bill, but for those with the deep technical expertise and skills, a move into the public sector can result in a massive pay cut – there being little scope to pay outside of tightly controlled pay bands.

While upskilling the public sector remains desirable, and so is bringing in experienced people to help change it for the better, paying for it remains unpopular. Just look at the attack on the head of DE&S for being paid a bonus this week – an individual leading an organisation covering tens of thousands of people, a global supply chain and responsibilities ranging from rations to nuclear weapons and a budget in the billions – most private sector companies would be paying their CEO a lot more than £200k per year for that sort of work.

There is the curiously British demand for both hair shirt salary and genius public sector workers – you cannot have both. In a battle for talent, if you really want the best, you need to be prepared to pay for it, and make it feasible for individuals with skills to consider a mid career move to the public sector without causing themselves financial harm.

It is all well and good to call for senior leaders and officials with science backgrounds, but what is the career path for them in the public sector? Government is not the ideal place to carry out a deep career in science, notwithstanding some very niche work, so how do you create a STEM career path where there are limited opportunities to work in this field in the public sector?

This is the problem – Government is about development and delivery of policy, which requires generalists able to develop ideas and deliver them in a manner that work. Very few roles call for scientists or engineers as leaders, and you have to ask why these people would want to step back from those roles to become generalists.

For the public sector the challenge is working out how to harness off different problems – firstly, it is about retaining the workforce for the long haul, building a deep pool of expertise and experience that can be used as required. But it is also about being accessible to bringing in talent at the mid and senior level that can provide deeper experience and advice in a way that is listened to. Finally it is about ensuring that in all it does, the Civil Service remains objective, professional and follows the rules of law.

Solving the first problem is a challenge – public sector pay does not keep up with private sector rates. It is a common situation to see civil servants bailing out for industry to be properly paid for their skills and experience. At the same time there has been a growth in supposedly senior level jobs (the Grade 6/7 and SCS roles) to the detriment of more junior roles.

This perhaps reflects the fact that the only way to get a payrise in the Civil Service is to be promoted – people move jobs regularly to gain experience to then promote and get a payrise. The decision to scrap in band pay progression was hailed by some in the media as a means of stopping gold plated civil servants enjoying pay rises for nothing, but it also meant that lots of people had no financial incentive to stay in their job for the long haul, knowing that low pay rises and high inflation meant they were taking year on year pay cuts to stay put.

One means of countering the exodus has been to create more senior posts, that can be filled to offer pay awards to mid seniority staff who can do these roles rather than move to industry. What will be interesting will be to see if the move to regional hubs, and locations around the UK other than London drives a downgrading of jobs, as lower banded roles offer a more locally appropriate salary, and in turn the ‘grade inflation’ of old drops away.

Retaining people means paying them for their experience, and giving them the space to develop and retain long term knowledge, rather than forcing regular moves which can be career damaging. It also means rewarding experience, not seniority – the Civil Service is not as rank focused as the military, but a key move to helping retain skills and talent at working level would be to delink pay from grade- pay people what is appropriate for their skills set, not the grade they hold. This may help recruitment in pinch point areas, or encourage retention in others.

Accessibility is key too to ensure that people can enter and be valuable. The Civil Service used to be a very closed fortress, while today it is much easier to enter at mid career level, bringing experience with you. The challenge is about bringing this talent in and training it and helping it develop and leverage networks that work, to help build better government for all.

The argument for direct entry is one that the armed forces look at and get very twitchy about – yet the US Marine Corps has moved to this recently to help bring in skills at meaningful levels. There is perhaps a strong argument for adopting the Civil Service approach in the UK military – where specialist skills are needed, recruit people into the roles at a rank/rate that means you can bring specialists in now, rather than recruit and hope they’ll stay in the service long enough to do the job in 15 years time once they are deemed senior enough for the post.

Breaking the links between rank, experience and bottom fed entry will be an increasingly important challenge for the military as it finds itself in a war for talent with a  labour pool that is far more comfortable moving about at will. A failure to offer anything other than a straitjacketed approach may well cost it dear in terms of talent and outcomes.

The final point that must be addressed is ensuring that delivery is done legally and appropriately. It may sound terribly boring to want to do a procurement competition properly, but the government of the day must follow the rule of law – otherwise how can it expect others to do the same?

Ensuring that the Civil Service remains a delivery machine capable of enacting Ministerial direction in a way that is appropriate, objective and legal is enormously difficult, but it is something that must be protected at all costs – turning into a ‘cut corners to save time’ machine may work for industry, but what does it mean for the taxpayer whom the Civil Service serves?

We must be wary of saying that the Civil Service must be more like industry – it’s a tired old cliché that gets trotted out regularly – the Civil Service is not industry or the private sector. It can learn and see what works and adapt it, but it is a fundamentally different organisation.

Doing Government well is not fast, but it is important that it is done properly. Short cuts, quick fixes and breaking rules can and does work well in isolation, but what is the long term impact of these actions – can they cause more problems than they solve in the medium to long term? How many well intentioned ‘JFDI’ moments have resulted in extended chaos as the short term solution was delivered in a way that caused massive disruption for others, and ended up costing more time and money than doing it properly in the first place?

We are lucky in this country to be served by magnificent men and women who choose to work in the public sector. They are not feted or seen as heroes or worthy of praise and adulation, unlike the NHS or Armed Forces. They are seen as blockers, obstinate and difficult and unwilling to change, yet at the same time they are wickedly Machiavellian and determined to shape the state in a way that works in line with their hidden plans, treating Ministers as fools.

“Hooray for the Civil Service” is a cry unlikely to be heard across the land, but perhaps we should be more willing to stand up and acknowledge what good the Civil Service has done. It has over the last 5 years managed to deliver the withdrawal from the EU in a manner that met the policy demands of the Government of the day, and has almost simultaneously delivered the response to a major pandemic that has seen it take extraordinary measures to keep the NHS supported, and then deliver vaccines into over 50 million people in under 11 months.

This has been done against the backdrop of supply chain crises, global security challenges and three different Prime Ministers and two general elections and countless Ministerial resignations and reshuffles and a complete shift to working at home.

This calls for skills, commitment, and a willingness to do everything possible to make it happen – yet it has been done in a way that has been objective, professional and legal – all important considerations.

We are genuinely fortunate with the calibre and quality of the Civil Servants we have in this country, and maybe we should stand up more for them and accept that maybe we should embrace our policy wonks and defend the groupthink as it seems to be doing an incredible job of keeping us safe and functioning.

Let us be grateful for those people who serve and say “Yes Minister”.