Senior Civil Servants Should Model Speaking Truth to Power
They should share their experiences more with staff
One of the core elements of being a policy civil servant is speaking truth to power. One of the main reasons that a permanent civil service exists is so that advisers can speak openly to ministers without fear of losing their job. As Martin Stanley notes in the blurb to his short book on the topic, nobody teaches civil servants how to do this. However, another factor that doesn’t help is that speaking truth to power is hidden within the civil service. Hence the title for this post - I lack the evidence to answer the question. This post is a brief urge to senior civil servants: when you speak truth to power, tell your staff. Help us learn how to do it, make us better civil servants, improve staff loyalty and challenge your assumptions about working with ministers.
For context, I am a relatively junior civil servant. For those who it means something to, I am a grade 7. Some grade 7s work a lot with ministers, for example those in private offices, but most do not, or at least do not for an extended period of time. Often where my work is discussed with ministers, it is part of the wider efforts of a team, and so someone more senior than me will be the one in the room with the minister. Written submissions (which I have drafted) will rarely contain elements of speaking truth to power. They will contain the opinions of the civil service team, but the elements expected to be more controversial are usually glossed over in neutral tones. It is rightly considered better to deal with these matters face-to-face, rather than deliver a hard message behind the shield of written submissions.
The problem is that unless I am working directly on something where civil servants need to deliver a tough message to ministers, I won’t even know that my managers have delivered one. As this is relatively rare because most policy work does not require tough messages to be sent, the perspective of a junior civil servant is that ‘speaking truth to power’ almost never happens. I am not saying that it doesn’t occur, merely that from my perspective I see no evidence of it. The direct evidence I have is compatible with a spectrum of possibilities, from “civil servants never speak truth to power” to “civil servants always tell their complete and honest opinion to ministers.” I have enough awareness to know the truth is in the middle. But it requires conscious effort to overcome the default assumption my mind makes if I see no evidence of something - that it doesn’t exist. I only know it does through a sort of ‘book learning’ rather than direct experience and apprenticeship.
It’s understandable why this happens. It would be an appealing story for journalists that civil servants had strongly disagreed with ministers on certain issues. In general the issues where speaking truth to power is needed most are those issues that are also most likely to generate an interesting news story. So senior civil servants are wary of informing too many people, due to the risk that it becomes public knowledge. But I suspect it doesn’t happen mostly because of inertia and culture, rather than conscious distrust of junior staff. There are ways of informing staff discreetly, in a non-sensationalist manner.
This is important because the formative years of someone’s career have a disproportionate impact on their professional behaviour long-term. Failing to show junior civil servants how to speak truth to power is essentially teaching them not to do it. It is one of many things that contributes to private office roles being the most desirable in Whitehall, because you actually get to see how things really work.
It is also bad for morale. It makes it seem like senior civil servants are uninterested in bringing uncomfortable truths to ministers, which doesn’t inspire confidence. Ultimately it comes down to trust: I have to trust that my managers are speaking truth to power. I generally do trust them, but a lot of that is based on vibes.
So my plea to senior civil servants is to provide that trust back to staff. Explain to us when you have done this, and give us an insight into how you dealt with it. It will help us be better at our jobs. It will make us trust you more. It sends a message to junior staff: “let me know when your expertise says we’re making mistakes, and I’ll ensure that perspective is heard”. It will help build a culture where expertise is respected and staff feel valued, encouraging people to stick around. I also think that justifying decisions and your actions to junior staff will help make senior civil servants be better at the job, as it encourages them to be explicit about their often instinctive behaviours with ministers. I appreciate that this requires that trust back - you are trusting us not to then leak that you had this difficult conversation.
I’ve seen this done, albeit rarely. Sarah Munby, BEIS Permanent Secretary, recently addressed a group of staff and described in a decent amount of detail how she had difficult conversations with ministers on a particular issue. It was a real insight for me into how to deal with a contentious issue with professionalism and tact. My experience of Sarah is that she is unusually honest and upfront with staff, given the constraints on a Permanent Secretary. I’d like to see this sort of conversation normalised at all levels of the senior civil service.
Agree with this, with one further extension: it would also be beneficial for policy SCS to extend these discussions to other professions. Taking one example, my last department there was a long trend of analysts moving into policy at G7/G6, but analysts get even less experience working with ministers on the day to day so the learning curve is even steeper. If we want to see more people able to move from delivery and other backgrounds into policy, we need to make sure that the tricks of the trade are not limited to those starting in the right silo.
your posts seem to be 2 years old. when can we expect a new post?