bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1993) — Spring 1993 // Printemps 1993, pp. 37–38
Summer is upon External Affairs. The bulletin boards of the various towers of the Lester B. Pearson building are festooned with red, white and blue posters announcing the annual competitions for outstanding achievements in foreign policy making.
In a small office in the basement of Tower B, next to the Printing Requisition Office, John Henry Keenleyside III, former Canadian Ambassador to the Cayman Islands and the PM Sherpa to the Summit of Small Anglophone and Francophone Island States, explains his role of Special Advisor to the USSEA for Competitions and other Morale Boosters.
The unpretentious card table that serves as his desk is squeezed between the steel lockers of the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires which line the walls of his office. He sits on a folding chair. His In Basket is full of administrative notices.
He talks slowly. “Senior Management was quite aware of the morale problems in the Department. You know — all that downsizing, lack of promotions, public distrust of diplomats, difficulty finding good jobs for senior officials, etc., etc. Something dramatic had to be done. That’s how the Eighth Floor hit upon the idea of SSEA Awards for Excellence in Policy Making.”
“Here let me show you the posters for this year’s awards. I think they will give your readers a glimpse of the challenge of Canadian foreign policy making in the nineties.” With that, he places a series of colourful posters on his card table.
Red Poster: SSEA Award for Foreign Policy Excellence to ADMS
Objective: To recognize selfless individual contributions to mega-policy making, careerism, managerial excellence, hubris, policy innovation, and unbridled ambition in the pursuit of Canadian geographic or substantive foreign policy objectives.
Criteria:
• Demonstrated organizational excellence in maintaining schedule of power lunches around town, especially in a period of crisis overload in your Branch.
• Innate survival instincts for not saying anything derogatory about the Deputy Ministers while inadvertently not noticing them in the same elevator.
• Policy creativity to volunteer a think-piece paper for production in a few hours in response to any question from the Minister’s or Undersecretary’s office.
• Managerial leadership to delegate the drafting of the think-piece paper to DGs for production in two hours.
• Overall policy vision, breadth of knowledge, historical perspective, and strategic overview so as to tackle the biggest foreign policy challenge of the decade: downsizing.
• Ability to talk dirty and colloquial when discussing big policy options with other senior officials (even though all present have postgraduate degrees from the best universities in the world) and to speak in sentences with subordinate clauses to their children.
• Demonstrated ability to make the best “show and tell” presentation to Executive Committee.
• Demonstrated ability to mobilize one’s Branch for a one-month period to put together the best “show and tell” presentation of Executive Committee.
• Demonstrated ability to forget how to operate a telephone in the absence of a secretary, even though there are five phones in your house.
Eligibility: All ADMs. ADMs can nominate colleagues; they cannot nominate themselves. ADMs’ secretaries must hand deliver the nominations immediately by close of business.
Blue Poster: SSEA Award for Foreign Policy Excellence for DGS
Objective: To recognize outstanding individual contributions in search of a role setween the ADM and Director.
Criteria:
• Demonstrated ability to meddle in all issues in a manner which constitutes an invitation to murder by all concerned.
• Innate survival instinct for not saying anything derogatory about the ADM while inadvertently not noticing them in a crowded elevator.
• Policy leadership to respond to ADM action on ministerial requests with the promise of a think-piece paper in two hours.
• Managerial excellence to delegate the drafting of think-piece to Directors for production in one hour.
• Sustained ability to hide one’s panic from ADM on any given day and to pretend that everything is under control.
• Overall policy vision, historical perspective, breadth of knowledge and strategic overview so as to infuse any briefing note, Q and A, memo to the Minister, and ministerial correspondence with key stylistic and editorial changes.
• Determination to be first in the ADM’s office for debriefings, even if it means pushing fellow DGs down the stairwell.
• Sustained ability to act enthused by ADMs’ debriefs of senior official meetings.
• Determination to volunteer your Bureau for any task, even though half the Bureau’s staff is attending stress seminars at lunch and your divisions may not have the experience of putting out a briefing book with glossy colour pictures and hologram graphs, with a turnaround time of an afternoon.
• Sustained determination to keep a colleague of similar level waiting on the phone, even if it means looking at the framed pictures of your presentation of credentials to President Kerekou in Cotonou, Benin in 1981.
Nominations: All DGs. DGs can nominate DGs in the same branch, although by custom this is highly unusual. Nominations should normally be drafted by one of the Directors or Deputy Directors for DG review and refinement.
Yellow Poster: SSEA Award for Foreign Policy Excellence to Directors
Objective: To recognize outstanding individual performance in an environment of panic, confusion and hierarchical layering.
Criteria:
• Innate survival instinct for not saying anything derogatory about the Director General while inadvertently not noticing him/her in a crowded elevator.
• Policy leadership to respond to DG’s action on the ADM’s idea for a think-piece to a ministerial request with the promise of a paper in one hour.
• Managerial excellence to delegate the drafting of think-piece to Deputy Director for production in half an hour.
• Sustained ability to hide panic from DG at any given moment and to pretend everything is under control.
• Overall policy vision, breadth of knowledge, historical perspective and strategic overview so as to fight for more staff, to solve the coffee fund deficit, and to referee fisticuffs between secretaries.
• Sustained ability to act enthused during DG’s debrief of ADM debrief of senior officials meeting.
• Determination not to volunteer your Division for anything, even though the House of Commons has called for an emergency debate on the war in your region, and the Minister is still using speaking points your division drafted three months ago.
• Determination to keep the phone call-forwarded to the Royal Bank branch (located downstairs) even in the midst of crisis, turmoil and administrative anarchy.
Nominations: All Directors. Directors may be nominated by anyone in the Bureau as long as the DG does not find out about it.
White Poster: SSEA Award for Foreign Policy Excellence to Deputy Directors
Objective: To recognize outstanding performance in a managerial job that has no staff.
Criteria:
• Innate survival instinct for not saying anything derogatory about the Director while inadvertently not noticing him or her in a crowded elevator.
• Policy leadership to respond to the Director’s action on the DG’s response to. the ADM’s initiative on a Ministerial enquiry with a promise of a paper in half an hour.
• Managerial excellence to delegate the drafting of think-piece to Desk Officer for production in 15 minutes.
• Sustained ability not to panic in front of the Director and to pretend everything is under control.
• Sustained ability to act enthused by the Director’s debrief of the DG’s debrief of the ADM’s debrief of senior officials meeting.
• Overall policy vision, historical perspective, breadth of knowledge and strategic overview so as to pass on the Director’s drafting changes faithfully to the Desk Officer.
• Unrelenting desire to call forward your phone, even though this is impossible because there is no secretary and the desk officer’s phone is always busy.
Nominations: All Deputy Directors, but who really cares?
Grey Poster: SSEA Awards for Foreign Policy Excellence to Desk Officers
Objective: To recognize outstanding individual performance on the front lines of Canadian diplomacy.
Criteria:
• Innate survival instinct for not saying anything critical of the Department in crowded elevators, cafeterias, to Frank Howard’s Bureaucrats or before Don MacKay’s, President of PAFSO, next press conference.
• Policy excellence to draft a critical think-piece in fifteen minutes, on a subject about which you’re not sure of topic or context, nor had the time to research but you know it’s important because the Deputy Director needs to give it in a half hour to the Director, who in turn needs to review it in one hour with the DG, who in turn needs to present it in two hours to the ADM, who in turn wants to speak to it in three hours to the Minister’s office, who in turn wonder why the Department has produced such a paper, when all the Minister wanted was the first name of the President of Ecuador so that she can send him a thank-you note for dinner in New York during the General Assembly. •. Policy maturity to realize that redratting the think-piece fifteen times over a period of three days was in itself a useful exercise.
• Unceasing curiosity at what the ADM had debriefed to the DG, who in turn debriefed to the Director, who in turn debriefed to the Deputy Director, who in turn told you to act on it.
• Sustained ability to panic over an extended period of time as you realize nothing is under control.
• Work performance at an unusually high level over an extended period of time (N.B. Photocopying is not eligible this year).
Nominations: All Desk Officers: Deadlines for nominations are at the end of the month. There can be no slippage on deadlines, although in exceptional cases, nominations can be in the first part of the next month.
Pink Slip: SSEA Award for Foreign Policy Excellence for Support Staff
Objective: To honour outstanding individual performance by support staff in the making of foreign policy.
Criteria:
• Demonstrated ability not to be downsized over an extended period of time.
Eligibility: Answering machines are not eligible.
The Special Advisor to the USSEA on Competitions and other Morale Boasters puts away the posters. He smiles ruefully, “I guess you are wondering why we don’t have an SSEA Award for Foreign Policy Excellence for a Deputy Minister. We tried but we could never get the two of them to agree on a winner.”
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1993) — Spring 1993 // Printemps 1993, pp. 37–38. Read the rest of this issue →
