bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1989), pp. 7–8
by William I. Warden
The month of August 1961 stands sharply etched in my mind for two reasons. On the tenth day of that month my wife and I took a taxi to Berlin’s Templehof airport and left the city where we had lived for two exciting years as students. The tension was thick enough to slice as Khrushchev threatened to close the Western sectors down, and indeed three days after our departure the infamous Wall was thrown up. The second memorable event for us was generated by the first. Our reason for leaving Germany was to return to Canada and join the Foreign Service, and thereby set out on a career that has been richly rewarding.
The following twenty-seven years have indeed met all our expectations and more. If we, the new “Class of ’61” had been handed a carte blanche to script our own careers as we sat under the spreading shade tree beside the East Block on that bright summer day for an informal get-together, I could not have done better in terms of personal satisfaction than to map out a scenario identical to the one events subsequently created. In retrospect, there is virtually nothing I would change — and I consider myself eminently fortunate in being able to say this.
However, a number of my colleagues have asked me why I chose to leave the Service at the age of fifty-four. A blunt question deserving of a frank response. I suppose the reason why the question keeps recurring in so many quiet conversations is that so many senior officers over the past decade, sadly to say, have left with a bitter taste. Sad, because in no other arm of Government in the past was morale higher, were the troops more dedicated or was the concept of public service more deeply entrenched.
Fortunately, bitterness was not part of the baggage I took with me. The reason first and foremost for my resignation was that I had long had an interest, at this end of the career, in moving into academia. While I might have preferred ideally to wait another three or four years and take another posting before making the move, it was a simple matter of seizing a good opportunity when it presented itself.
Another reason why leaving the foreign service caused little pain was because I had never during my career, including the nine years as head of mission, fallen into the trap of taking myself too seriously, of confusing official status with my own self-image, or of believing that my elevation to the ranks of the Excellencies resulted from charm and In a Department whose main resource is flesh and blood, personnel administration and management steadily deteriorated.
This is not to say that I view the Department in retrospect totally through rose-coloured glasses. It is, in fact, deeply distressing to have to acknowledge that morale in the Foreign Service at the time I resigned was probably at its lowest point in my twenty-seven years service. The slide which began in the late seventies apparently continues today. Contrary to the views of some, I do not accept that the decline was an inevitable consequence of consolidation Rather, there is no doubt in my own mind but that the lamentable state of affairs was the direct consequence of a decade of cavalier bureaucratic and political leadership in the Department. If one were to set out to construct the antithesis to the ideal “corporation” described in “In Search of Excellence”, one could scarcely do better than to use the Department of the past ten years as a model.
In a Department whose main resource is flesh and blood, personnel administration and management steadily deteriorated, not because competent administrators were lacking, but rather because of a lamentable lack of leadership. The most senior personnel administrators (and they were undeniably bright people) tended to distinguish themselves – at least in the perception of the people in the field — not with their vision and new and innovative ideas, but rather with the dexterity with which they unfailingly manoeuvred themselves into their favoured posts.
Senior management for its part, starting in the late seventies, gave the impression of feathering its own nest with perquisites rather than confronting prickly issues head-on. The most senior officers basked in first class travelling from Ottawa to Washington, while parents burdened with squirming children rode steerage to Bombay. Officers coming up to retirement — and this was a major cause of bitterness — were not infrequently treated as pariahs because of their age; experience became a seeming liability, rank, youth or gender the assets; stories of humiliation were all too common.
The telex from Bonn in April of last year, cited in Frank Howard’s “Bureaucrats” and which caused so much consternation in management circles, was right on the mark as far as many in the field were concerned (See Vignettes in bout Vol. 6 No. 1) At least the impression prevailed that promotion and senior positions were much more likely to result from cushy Ottawa jobs, from proximity to power, than from service in the far flung regions where threat to health and security were a constant in one’s consciousness. Senior managers in Ottawa, many of whom had scarcely served beyond North America and Europe in recent years, if ever, made no secret of their belief that service in Ottawa rated more highly than service, say, in Bangladesh or Baghdad. And in examining the promotion lists, who could fault them?
Moreover, is it any wonder that an appraisal and promotion system as inherently open to abuse as the Department’s should adversely affect morale? There can scarcely be any doubt that far more important than performance or job substance for an FS are the regard in which the appraising officer is held and the latter’s ability to write a good appraisal. There was a time when I myself used to do my best to be objective. I quickly learned as HOM that unless, in doing appraisals, I exaggerated out of all proportion, my own deserving officers never got promoted. Shocking, but accurate as a reflection of the sorry state of affairs, was one ambitious officer’s “confession” that she devotes forty percent of her serious thought-energy to the politics of career progression.
EXs in the field are even more disadvantaged. Connections, closeness to the under-secretarial row, membership in the Ottawa mafia all outstrip merit as factors bearing on advancement. What can one say of a system in which, in this age of intense career competition, an officer’s appraisal can be written by one’s Ottawa peers competing nose to nose for promotion and performance pay? This happens in many instances and with predictable consequences. The fact that the right of appeal is now denied to EXs is hardly calculated to allay concerns over abuse.
I was surprised, although not amused, on arranging my own resignation to learn that had I been incompetent enough to warrant the Department’s taking the initiative in seeking my early retirement, I might have negotiated a substantial incentive under a Treasury Board program which apparently is being kept under close wraps. In fact, the more incompetent, the greater the leverage and the higher the settlement. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I was quite unable to prove my incompetence and had to settle for zilch. A remarkable commentary on management values in the Department.
Perhaps the issue of greatest concern today is the perception of declining standards of service. And little surprise given the low morale. I think that the product coming out of the pipeline is, in spite of the laudable objectives of consolidation, inferior in many instances to what it was ten or fifteen years ago. The Trade Commissioner Service, submerged in the aconyms of the Pearson Building, is one glaring example. It has lost much of its former élan and its identity with Canada’s hard-driving business community. The decentralisation of CIDA to the field — in part a political gimmick and remarkable only because it took so long for us to pattern ourselves on the Americans — should be about as good for Canadian development efforts as the disembowelling of the trade service was for business.
Much has been said on the subject of patronage appointments and others under the guise of affirmative action. Given the malaise within, the unfortunate erosion of the merit principle, and a system which by the ’eighties was more likely to penalise candour, forthrightness and integrity, while rewarding powder-puff-ism, little wonder that successive Governments increasingly turned elsewhere to find their stars. We had mainly ourselves to blame, and unless the Service can reverse direction and devise a system for rewarding strong performance rather than mediocrity, the situation is bound to get worse.
When all is said and done, the fact remains that the Foreign Service, with all its faults and weaknesses, nonetheless provided, and 8 bout de papier Vol. n still provide, the vehicle for an exciting d richly rewarding career. Much more portant on leaving the Service, I think, is at one focuses on the peaks one climbed ther than on the valleys.
Nostalgia occasionally invades. But this is rickly submerged in the interest of a new id different career, and in the satisfaction I ke out of being able to share with young :ople in the university environment what-er wisdom the experience of twenty-seven ears in the Foreign Service bestows.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1989), pp. 7–8. Read the rest of this issue →
