Ideas & Debate

How public servants can boost performance

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Many capacity building institutions are moving beyond training that involves passive participants who are lectured at and shown overloaded PowerPoint presentations that masquarade as visual aids. PHOTO/FOTOSEARCH

From time to time I am asked to be with the groups of senior public servants who gather together for the Kenya School of Government’s Strategic Leadership Development Programme (SLDP).

They are from various ministries, counties, state corporations and independent commissions. It is an opportunity for them to learn and to reflect, and to return to their work stations with new inspiration, energy and purpose.

The programme is designed to provoke participants to transition from being managers to being leaders, as they learn about leadership skills and attitudes and understand how to be champions of change and of building healthy cultures.

They are helped to think strategically and to deliver quality service. In a word, as they continue their rise through the public service, they are led to be high performers.

My sessions are either at the very beginning of the programme or at the end point. Either way, I urge them to be very serious about the “So what?” of the time they spend together.

I do so knowing that whereas by now around 8,000 civil servants are alumni of the excellent SLDP — of which 110 iterations have been run — too many of them, despite having learned so much and been so stimulated, fail to apply much if anything from it all.

Innovative initiatives

They keep on doing what they have always done, and so keep on getting what they have always got.

Why is this so? The first reason is timidity. Even now, as SLDP graduates are to be found in almost every State institution, quite a number fear applying what they have learned.

They worry what their bosses and colleagues will think if upon their return they suddenly launch new and innovative initiatives.

Will they be met with indifference, hostility even, and hence will any bold venture be doomed to failure? Will it be safer to pretend they did not learn anything sufficiently significant to warrant them changing their way of working?

Should they play safe and continue lying as low as antelopes or envelopes? Should they assume their circle of influence will remain unambitiously small? Often, the answer is yes.

The second reason is that institutions such as the Kenya School of Government have found it impossible to acquire the resources necessary to prepare the SLDP participants for their attendance in the programme.

Ideally, together with their bosses, objectives should be set upfront as to what they will do and achieve differently as a result of having attended. And just as importantly there should be follow-up to determine the extent to which such objectives are subsequently met.

I know from my experience in Nigeria that the equivalent institution there, the Public Service Institute of Nigeria, suffers from identical resource constraints, and hence it too can only recruit participants and then just deliver the programmes, without keeping in touch with those who attended on the consequences.

So my plea to those with whom I interact is to keep communicating with each other — more so if they come from the same unit — and also to link up with a broader coalition of the willing. This will give them more courage to actually try out what they think is worth having a go at.

They should start with the low hanging fruit, that is, projects that neither require increased resources nor are likely to generate undue resistance.

In such ways SLDP alumni do not need to be quite so bold as there is shared responsibility, with shared — and indeed lowered — risk.

I often introduce the classes to Kotter’s Eight Steps to Change, about which I have written in a previous column and with which I suggest every leader acquaints themselves.

Kotter understands how and why resistance to change manifests itself, and he understands how to go about softening and overcoming it.

He advises leaders to create a sense of urgency, develop the right coalition, create a change vision, communicate the vision for buy-in, empower broad-based action, generate short-term wins; not letup and make change stick.

And as I seek to embolden the SLDP cohorts I pass on his wisdom and have them discuss and internalise it.

Another common theme of mine at such events is cheerfulness. In my nearly 40 years in Kenya, I have all too often been struck by the unsmiling seriousness of so many civil servants, who believe that since their work is so important they must behave ever so soberly, so “properly”, so “professionally”, to reflect this.

I strongly disagree and challenge those I am with to consider the consequences of the absence of smiling, of laughter… of having fun.

We talk about how cheerfulness allows for a more relaxed atmosphere, in which people are less inhibited, less scared of failure, and hence bolder, more creative, less defensive. And we smile and we laugh as we talk.

It’s not rocket science to figure out the benefits of cheerfulness, and do watch Sunny Bindra’s recent “back seat” interview with Kenya Orient Insurance CEO Muema Muindi, which I happened to see just a day after my last SLDP outing, where as I often do I gave the participants permission — correct that, instructed them — to smile. I am happy to report that they readily complied… at least within the session.

Happily in many capacity building institutions, including at the Kenya School of Government, much thought is being given to moving beyond having people come for “training” as “students” who sit in “classrooms” and are lectured at and shown overloaded PowerPoint presentations that masquerade as visual aids.

Consideration is also being given to ensuring that those attending are not doing so largely so they can emerge with a certificate proving they showed up.

The challenge for all who contribute to developing professionals, whether in the public or private sectors, is to ensure that what happens within any event makes a serious difference to what happens thereafter.

Otherwise, while we are feeling we have done something good, actually we are simply wasting people’s time and money.

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