[BITList] Fwd: Foreign Office is beset by culture of timidity, say staff

[John Feltham]

See the following in the Independent newspaper:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/foreign-office-is-beset-by-culture-of-timidity-say-staff-1651331.html

Foreign Office is beset by culture of timidity, say staff

Internal audit says pervasive fear of failure allows mediocrity to  
flourish

By Brian Brady, Whitehall Editor

Sunday, 22 March 2009

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been condemned as a "timid"  
organisation, terrified of failure and incapable of defending itself  
within Whitehall, let alone around the globe. Worse, for David  
Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, this withering assessment of his  
department's performance has come from his own staff.

An unprecedented internal report on how the FCO does its job has laid  
bare employees' concerns in a catalogue of areas, including "risk- 
averse" management, "political jockeying" and what they see as the  
triumph of mediocrity over talent.

The audit by the human resources specialists Couraud begins with a  
quote from Oprah Winfrey: "You can have it all. You just can't have it  
all at once." It says the department is "a fairly enlightened  
employer" and most staff enjoy working for it. But the internally  
commissioned report, compiled after interviews with almost 50  
employees, goes on to list a series of complaints about politicians  
and senior civil servants.

"Participants complained of the Office being insufficiently brave; of  
it over-anticipating likely press coverage; of it being poor at  
defending itself within Whitehall... and – perhaps most depressingly  
of all – of people getting to the very top of the Office by never  
making any mistakes... To this extent, we believe the Office to have  
been seriously and consistently under-led," the report says.

Veteran diplomats, MPs and opposition parties last night claimed the  
unrest revealed by the survey had contributed to the department's  
political failings. Craig Murray, the outspoken former British  
ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the "touchy-feely" approach  
demonstrated by the audit exercise highlighted a significant problem  
within the Foreign Office: "If management feel the need to pay a  
private organisation to tell them what is going on with their own  
staff, then that should tell us something about how out of touch they  
have become.

"But this is not confined to how they treat their staff. The results  
show that the timidity that has prevented Britain taking the  
initiative over issues like Zimbabwe and Darfur runs right through the  
organisation."

The shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said the findings  
confirmed that the Foreign Office had been undermined by the "sofa- 
style decision-making process of the Labour government". He said: "As  
we have long argued, we need to restore proper cabinet government and  
let the Foreign Office to do what it is supposed to do, which is to be  
the lead department in dealing with our foreign policy."

Couraud analysts questioned 47 FCO employees on issues ranging from  
decision-making, "communication and knowledge-sharing" and "thriving  
in the FCO" to leadership and the working environment.

They found that "the risk-averse culture is fed in part by the  
perception that failure is not acceptable, at any level. As a result,  
mediocrity flourishes because mediocrity is seen to be safe." The  
report added that the FCO recruits bright young people "but then  
proceeds, both intentionally and unintentionally, to apparently  
'clone' them".







ooroo

Bad typists of the word, untie.




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20090322/935a28d7/attachment.shtml