Thoughts: The Twelve Contributions I’d Make to the Civil Service
After years of working closely with organisations, across sectors, departments and levels, I’ve often been asked what would genuinely help the system work better. This reflection is my answer for the civil service - an institution I have come to care deeply about. It is written with care for the organisation, respect for the people within it, and a belief that meaningful reform begins by changing conditions, not by blaming individuals.
A Twelve Days of Christmas Reflection · 22 December
I have worked with many civil servants over the last few years, across a wide range of departments and levels. I care deeply about this institution, not because it is perfect, but because it is profoundly important.
When it works well, it serves millions of people with integrity, continuity and care.
This is not a critique from the sidelines. It is written from inside the work - supporting teams, coaching leaders, and seeing first hand where the system enables good people to do their best work, and where it quietly makes that harder than it needs to be.
I have sat in rooms where people knew the right question and chose not to ask it. Not through lack of care, but because the cost of challenge felt too high.
As the year draws to a close, I have been reflecting on what would genuinely make the greatest contribution to civil service reform. Not everything. Not a grand redesign. Just the changes that, in my experience, would matter most.
Twelve feels about right.
Nothing in what follows reflects individual failure. It reflects what happens when capable, committed people are asked to operate inside conditions that quietly work against the role the system needs them to play.
1. Use hierarchy and experience wisely
Experience matters. Institutional memory matters. But hierarchy should be used to create space for the future, not to defend the past.
There are senior roles held for long periods by people who have understandably become guardians of what has been, rather than stewards of what could be. That is not a judgement. Accepting change is difficult, especially after multiple reform cycles that promised transformation and delivered disruption.
Stewardship is not preservation. Its task is renewal. Seniority should enable that renewal, not slow it.
2. Let Directors actually direct
I consistently see Directors buried in delivery detail. Not because they want to be, but because the system pulls them there.
Across the system, many Directors want to step fully into the directing space. They want to set direction, make trade offs clear, and design for sustainability rather than survival.
What holds them back is not intent or capability, but lack of permission, protection and support.
As a result, they often do work that others could do, while the work only they can do goes undone.
Too many do not feel genuinely empowered to direct. When they try, they are rarely supported by line management or the wider system to do so in a sustainable way. I regularly see Directors step back into delivery not because they doubt their leadership, but because directing without cover feels professionally risky.
This is not a pattern limited to particular individuals or departments. It is a systemic response to how authority, assurance and risk currently operate.
If Directors who want to lead cannot step into that space, the system cannot steer.
3. Redesign roles around reality, not aspiration
There is a quiet mismatch between what senior roles are meant to be and what they now demand.
Expectations have grown. Capacity has not. The result is overload, constant switching, and exhaustion becoming normal.
This is not about resilience. It is about realism. No amount of individual coping can compensate for structurally overloaded roles. Sustainable stewardship starts with roles designed around what is humanly possible.
4. Be honest about the real role of the civil service
We need a clearer shared understanding of what the civil service is actually for in practice.
Short term political cycles drive short term thinking that the civil service is expected to absorb. That tension is rarely named honestly, yet it shapes almost everything.
In most large organisations, a new chief executive does not rewrite the entire strategy every few years. They align to a longer direction and interpret it through their leadership.
The same principle should apply here.
Expecting the civil service to deliver long term stewardship while operating within short term political incentives creates a structural tension that no amount of internal reform can fully resolve. This is not a failure of civil servants, but a design reality that requires shared ownership.
5. Create long term alignment beyond parliaments
Complex societal challenges cannot be solved one parliament at a time.
What is needed is an agreed long term direction, stewarded across governments. Continuity is not stagnation. It is what makes serious progress possible.
Stewardship requires continuity of intent, even as leadership changes. Without longer horizons, reform becomes episodic rather than cumulative.
6. Clarify and connect test, learn and grow at a systemic level
There is real and welcome progress in how learning approaches are being used across the civil service. Test, learn and grow is happening, and in many places it is working well.
The challenge now is not introduction or expansion, but clarity.
Too often, test, learn and grow is understood and applied locally – within individual products, services or teams – rather than as a system-wide way of working. As a result, learning remains fragmented, and iterations struggle to connect.
Test, learn and grow is not a tactic. It is a systemic mindset. At its best, it shapes how risk is held, how decisions evolve, how learning is shared, and how the system adapts over time.
For it to operate systemically, those conditions need to be named and aligned - psychological safety, clear decision rights, proportionate assurance, and genuine permission to stop or change direction when learning suggests it is right to do so.
Where these conditions are unclear or misaligned, experimentation becomes performative. I have seen teams encouraged to test and learn while still being judged through assurance lenses designed to eliminate variance. The signal is mixed, and people respond rationally by playing safe.
The next phase is about making this way of working more legible at a system level - clarifying what it really means in practice, and how it connects with governance, assurance and more traditional change approaches – so learning can compound rather than dissipate.
Without that clarity, even strong reform intentions will struggle to land at scale.
7. Blend old and new change approaches
Once test, learn and grow is legible and connected, the next challenge is integration.
Change is often framed as a choice between old methods and new ones. That is a false choice.
Some traditional approaches worked and still work well. Newer approaches bring adaptability. The opportunity lies in discernment - knowing when each is needed, and resisting the urge to replace rather than integrate.
I see value pools, governance rhythms and formal decision gates work extremely well when paired with iterative delivery and user feedback, rather than positioned as their enemy.
8. Change the conditions, not just the people
One of the biggest mistakes in reform is assuming that changing individuals will change outcomes.
It will not, unless the conditions change too.
Incentives, assurance processes, decision rights and cultural norms shape behaviour far more powerfully than intent. If these remain unchanged, patterns repeat.
This is not a motivation problem. It is a design problem hiding in plain sight.
9. Break groupthink with honest external challenge
Relying only on current or former civil servants to design reform can unintentionally reinforce groupthink, even when everyone involved is capable and acting in good faith.
This is not because former civil servants are not excellent. Many are. It is because long lived systems condition thinking.
Reform needs both deep internal knowledge and external perspectives that can ask the harder questions - not consultants who arrive with answers, but partners who are willing to sit in the discomfort, notice what is not being said, and name patterns that insiders have learned to normalise.
The goal is not disruption. It is clarity.
10. Invest in leaders with people who can deliver change
Leadership development matters. Who delivers it matters just as much.
Familiarity and theory alone will not fix what is broken. Sometimes the system needs people who understand consequence, trade offs and delivery, and who are there to serve the work, not themselves.
That requires procurement approaches that value impact over comfort and long term change over neat, short engagements.
11. Treat time, learning and certainty as strategic assets
The civil service often treats time as something to compress. But the challenges it faces are complex and human.
Reform needs longer arcs. Slower beginnings. Space to think, learn and integrate, so delivery can be stronger later.
Some leaders - particularly in system stewardship roles - need more time, not less.
More periods of certainty.
More intentional pauses.
More change freezes.
Time and certainty are not operational luxuries. They are stewardship tools.
I have seen what happens when leaders are given space to lead without constant movement. Trust grows. Teams align. Cohesion builds. The work deepens. Performance does not stall; it accelerates later because decisions are better, people are steadier, and intent is shared rather than assumed.
This is not about avoiding change. It is about sequencing it wisely.
12. Re centre stewardship and give people permission to be brave
The civil service exists to serve people.
Not departments.
Not ministers.
Not metrics.
People.
Stewardship means holding today’s decisions in trust for tomorrow’s citizens. That requires quiet bravery. The courage to challenge when something drifts away from purpose.
For that to happen, people need permission and protection to speak honestly. To question speed over value. To name misalignment between intent and impact. To ask whether the work still serves the purpose it exists for.
If compliance is rewarded more than conscience, good people will stay silent. Not because they do not care, but because they do.
A reformed civil service treats challenge as service, not resistance.
Why the civil service must steward, not just be led
Leadership is essential, but leadership alone is not enough for a system designed to outlast individuals, governments and moments of crisis.
Leaders act within time bound mandates. Stewardship acts across time.
The civil service exists precisely because democratic leadership changes. Its role is not to compete with elected authority, but to hold continuity, memory and consequence - to ensure that today’s decisions are understood in the context of yesterday’s commitments and tomorrow’s citizens.
Without stewardship, leadership creates motion.
With stewardship, leadership creates progress.
That distinction matters.
I am writing this not as a critic, but as a contributor. I have spent over two decades working with leaders across public and private systems, and I have seen how good people get trapped by structures, and what becomes possible when conditions change.
The civil service does not need more effort or more churn.
It needs clearer stewardship, longer horizons, braver truth telling, and systems designed for humans.
For me, the civil service should be the waves, not something endlessly battered by them.
Shaping direction.
Holding rhythm.
Carrying energy forward over time.
When the civil service becomes the waves, it does not just absorb political weather. It gives form, momentum and continuity to what comes next.
That is stewardship.
And that is the work.
I’d genuinely welcome reflections from those working inside the system, especially where this resonates, or where it misses something important.
And…
If any of these ideas resonate, and you’d like to explore how they might play out in your organisation or leadership team, I’m happy to have a conversation.
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I am…
An executive coach and the CEO of Be The Waves, growing stewardship for a thriving planet.
I helping good people lead great things; in other words - I empower Stewardship
Good people care about others, our planet and beauty. Great things are changes for the betterment of society and all that lives within an around it. It sounds big and fun - it is.
I'm also an endurance racing cyclist and a go getter.
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