One of my good friends is a senior civil servant. As he joined government service straight from the college and his career experience was only in the government sector. He is a very diligent officer and likes to give his best to the assignments at hand. He is familiar with the general public complaint about government servants that they are bureaucratic, slow, process oriented than result oriented, corrupt, insensitive and so on in contrast to the private sector which is result oriented, quick on their feet, nimble and innovative. The difference portrayed is often that of hellhole and heaven.
Recently he had an opportunity to work in a team, which consisted of civil servants and veterans from private sector, offering a public service. He was excited about the opportunity to work in such a dynamic team which combined best of both worlds, working for a common purpose, to make a meaningful contribution to the society. He looked forward to working in a place which mixes the divergent ideas and culture. In this post I take a peep into one of the interesting observation by my friend regarding the working style of people from both sides of the divide.
As per my friend, he experienced very similar bureaucratic tendencies even among the representatives of the private sector. “What is the big difference that you guys talk about?” he asked me. He confessed that he may have been expecting magic or may have had excessive expectation from the experts from private sector.
My take on this is as follows. In private sector creative and entrepreneurial people set up new companies and new businesses. They get a team to work with them to implement these enterprises. As the companies get bigger, more of the managers and the employees that join the team are normally risk-averse and are happy to do what they are told to do. Some organizations maintain the dynamism and have dynamic growth while the others settle down to maintenance mode.(Read “Be Relevant or Perish – Part II for some more thoughts on this)
In government too we see similar pattern. Outstanding and dynamic officers set up new departments, new organizations, new services or new ideas. Then they move out and maintenance managers take over.
In both cases, when the organizations get to be under the control of managers and administrators comfortable with ‘status quo’ the service level deteriorates and the organization becomes moribund. The big difference is that in private sector, the competition and limited entry barrier for new ideas, may force the dinosaurs to extinction and new and vibrant companies will eventually take over. (Unless they are sort of utility companies existing as natural or legal monopolies).
But in government sector neither the moribund institutions or departments die nor new departments are created in competition with the existing ones. (Have you heard of competition for police, registrar of companies, pollution control board, land registration department etc?). This could lead to eventual degeneration in service quality. Sometimes a new dynamic officer comes in for a stint and situation improves till he lasts. The cycle goes on.
As far as the public is concerned their experience shows that they have to deal with a large cross section of non-performing government departments which frustrates them in their day-to-day life; both for normal living and in their business ventures. They have no other option or competing choices. On the other hand, when they deal with private sector service providers they have different service providers, which give them a choice, freedom to demand service and walk out if they are unhappy. (There are many cases where the private sector can get away with shoddy service levels).
So in the end what drive this divergent behavior? Nature or Nurture? When it comes to risk taking every human being lie somewhere in a continuum with extreme risk averseness on one end and extreme risk taking on the other end. Risk averseness come out of our basic survival instinct of the human ape. As we progressed the survival has grown to encompass survival in the society, protecting our economic security, pride, career, acceptance and so on. Risk taking comes out of the other dimension of survival that tries to find new opportunities for food, a mate and position which in the modern society also takes the form of riches, social standing, prestige and so on.
Majority of people are risk averse in nature and their actions are determined by this need to reduce uncertainty, what in corporate circle refer to as CYA (Cover You’re A…). Such people try to play by the letter of the law, make no judgment calls, or tilt the apple cart. This means that it is in the nature of most of the human beings to build up rigid, straight jacketed restrictive systems. On the other hand there are some who are very comfortable in challenging the status quo. They try to venture to road less travelled and create environment that encourages many to follow. This means it is also a matter of nurture.
The companies, institutions and society need both; a healthy ecosystem that safeguard its citizens from excessive uncertainties in social and economic spheres at the same time encourage and support innovation and risk taking, The challenge for the leadership is to find this healthy balance with the right mixture of rules, norms and incentives.
"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt
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Recently he had an opportunity to work in a team, which consisted of civil servants and veterans from private sector, offering a public service. He was excited about the opportunity to work in such a dynamic team which combined best of both worlds, working for a common purpose, to make a meaningful contribution to the society. He looked forward to working in a place which mixes the divergent ideas and culture. In this post I take a peep into one of the interesting observation by my friend regarding the working style of people from both sides of the divide.
As per my friend, he experienced very similar bureaucratic tendencies even among the representatives of the private sector. “What is the big difference that you guys talk about?” he asked me. He confessed that he may have been expecting magic or may have had excessive expectation from the experts from private sector.
My take on this is as follows. In private sector creative and entrepreneurial people set up new companies and new businesses. They get a team to work with them to implement these enterprises. As the companies get bigger, more of the managers and the employees that join the team are normally risk-averse and are happy to do what they are told to do. Some organizations maintain the dynamism and have dynamic growth while the others settle down to maintenance mode.(Read “Be Relevant or Perish – Part II for some more thoughts on this)
In government too we see similar pattern. Outstanding and dynamic officers set up new departments, new organizations, new services or new ideas. Then they move out and maintenance managers take over.
In both cases, when the organizations get to be under the control of managers and administrators comfortable with ‘status quo’ the service level deteriorates and the organization becomes moribund. The big difference is that in private sector, the competition and limited entry barrier for new ideas, may force the dinosaurs to extinction and new and vibrant companies will eventually take over. (Unless they are sort of utility companies existing as natural or legal monopolies).
But in government sector neither the moribund institutions or departments die nor new departments are created in competition with the existing ones. (Have you heard of competition for police, registrar of companies, pollution control board, land registration department etc?). This could lead to eventual degeneration in service quality. Sometimes a new dynamic officer comes in for a stint and situation improves till he lasts. The cycle goes on.
As far as the public is concerned their experience shows that they have to deal with a large cross section of non-performing government departments which frustrates them in their day-to-day life; both for normal living and in their business ventures. They have no other option or competing choices. On the other hand, when they deal with private sector service providers they have different service providers, which give them a choice, freedom to demand service and walk out if they are unhappy. (There are many cases where the private sector can get away with shoddy service levels).
So in the end what drive this divergent behavior? Nature or Nurture? When it comes to risk taking every human being lie somewhere in a continuum with extreme risk averseness on one end and extreme risk taking on the other end. Risk averseness come out of our basic survival instinct of the human ape. As we progressed the survival has grown to encompass survival in the society, protecting our economic security, pride, career, acceptance and so on. Risk taking comes out of the other dimension of survival that tries to find new opportunities for food, a mate and position which in the modern society also takes the form of riches, social standing, prestige and so on.
Majority of people are risk averse in nature and their actions are determined by this need to reduce uncertainty, what in corporate circle refer to as CYA (Cover You’re A…). Such people try to play by the letter of the law, make no judgment calls, or tilt the apple cart. This means that it is in the nature of most of the human beings to build up rigid, straight jacketed restrictive systems. On the other hand there are some who are very comfortable in challenging the status quo. They try to venture to road less travelled and create environment that encourages many to follow. This means it is also a matter of nurture.
The companies, institutions and society need both; a healthy ecosystem that safeguard its citizens from excessive uncertainties in social and economic spheres at the same time encourage and support innovation and risk taking, The challenge for the leadership is to find this healthy balance with the right mixture of rules, norms and incentives.
"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt
If you liked this post, share it with your friends
We make the society and the norms, it's essentially us who should change to have the change! Liked your post. Keep writing!
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