The Changing Nature of a Civil Servant's Job

Young women and men!

Welcome to the Masterclass!

Today I would like to begin by telling you about the changing nature of the job of the civil service. This is happening in two ways: the increasing importance of positional power as compared to personal power, and the surge in amorphous posts.

There are two types of power - personal and positional. Civil servants acquire positional power because of their position in the chain of command. In contrast, personal power is centered on a civil servant’s character, skills, and recognition by people and other officers. Personal power cannot be taken away from a civil servant officer, but positional power ceases upon transfer from a post.

There are, also, two types of posts - crystalline and amorphous.

Working in long-established structures, as district collectors and in the secretariat are crystalline positions, while others are amorphous posts. Positional power works in crystalline posts, but is inadequate for amorphous posts.

The role of civil servants, particularly the IAS, has expanded beyond revenue collection, coordination, maintenance of order and some quasi-judicial work to being called upon to deal more and more with complex changes. This has led to a shrinking of the number of crystalline positions and a concomitant increase in amorphous posts.

Performance in amorphous positions depends on topping-up positional power with personal power. Lack of personal power in amorphous positions leads to just “getting by”, where one ends up making jaded, recycled decisions in different posts.

 How does a civil servant officer develop personal power?

In his book Third Wave, futurist Alvin Toffler says that,

“The uneducated of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”

In short, we have to become lifelong learners, and just passing one examination and resting on our laurels will not do.

How do you become a life-long learner?

First, develop curiosity.

Develop the skills to ask the right questions for which you want answers. This is the starting point for all innovation and progress, right from the time of Socrates.

This requires developing a mindset that is uncomfortable with the existing status quo. The civil service allows you to be content with the situation you are in and bask in its comfort. You have to feel discontent and start asking questions on how the existing scenario can be improved. This is more difficult as many of us have grown up in environments where questioning one’s elders or existing practice is considered anathema.

So, developing a healthy disrespect for the status quo is a prerequiste for the emergence of questioning behaviour.

Second, the questions must be evocative. They should provoke even experts in the field and create a healthy tension among them. David Hilbert, was a famous mathematician who asked 23 questions on mathematics that are now called “Hilbert’s problems”, have influenced much research in the 20th Century.

Evocative questions come from a mind that is willing to delve deeply into a problem at hand. This is the third requirement to develop personal power.

Take the question of why an apple falls downwards. This did not pop into Isaac Newton’s brain in a flash. It was the result of a whole year’s research in a lab in Cambridge University. Due to the plague he had taken a break and was resting in his aunt’s house. It was at this time that all the work he was doing was encapsulated in a single significant question. Remember, the quality of a civil servants’s question is directly correlated with the depth of their knowledge in the field.

Asking questions reflects a desire to learn and creates commitment because civil servants who ask the right questions in the right way are motivated to take ownership of their learning. The more questions you ask, the more will be your eagerness to learn.

Let us now begin the masterclass.