Five important lessons from working in the public sector by Dr. Firas Abiad (shared by Fouad Kronfol)
Five important lessons from working in the public sector.
1. APPRECIATION: Public service does not always come with gratitude. This does not mean that people are ungrateful. But when people are afraid, angry, displaced, unable to access care, or worried about their families, gratitude is rarely the first emotion they express. Sometimes their anger is directed at the very people trying to help. One has to understand this without becoming bitter.
2. MEDIA: The media should be taken seriously, but not personally. The same person can be praised one week and attacked the next. Hero and villain are sometimes only two versions of the same story, depending on what attracts attention. Communication matters. Transparency matters. But the media cycle cannot become the compass.
3. FOCUS: Distraction is one of the most underestimated risks in public work. The mission is usually difficult enough. There will always be noise, rumors, attacks, side battles, and attempts to pull attention away from the work. If one is too thin-skinned, the day can easily be spent reacting rather than delivering.
4. PEOPLE: In most places, there is a small group of good people who will work hard whatever the circumstances, and another small group of self-serving or corrupt people who will resist, obstruct, or exploit the system. The real struggle is often to sway the large middle: those who are watching, waiting, and deciding whether change is serious enough to support.
5. TIME: The system can wait longer than you can. Public institutions have a way of absorbing delay. A minister, director, or reformer has only a limited window. This makes prioritization essential. Not everything can be fixed. But some things must be moved before the window closes.
These lessons may sound harsh. But they do not make public service less meaningful. They simply make it more real.
Thanks for sharing this Fouad. Certainly this resonates with my experience as an international civil servant -- a public sector of sorts. UNICEF has struggled at times in all 5 of these areas noted.--particlualry on 3, 4 and 5 - but all of them at times. Also the perspective of national staff and international can vary - nationals sometimes have time on their hands - they can build a small kingdom over decades in the same job and strong alliances with government - and the internationals come in for 2 or 3 years and cannot chip away at this - which has pros and cons. Continuity (an asset) vs change (also an asset). I had one unique experience in which I served in the same country office twice- with a 6 year gap. What I found was that the conversations did not change much - we discussed the same things internally in the office and with our host government for decades. Ideas that were shut down by one Rep (perhaps following an evaluation that a pilot could not be replicated) - just went into the drawer - only to re-emerge 2 Reps later as a new idea - when in fact it was an old idea that never worked the first time. The tendency was to recycle things and time was on the side of some to do so. It was a game of to and fro and times - to bring in innovation and ideas from global experiences and to also bring in home grown ideas that work. This struggle cuts across the 5 areas covered in this article. I saw this as both strength and a weakness in UNICEF - and wonder as UNICEF struggles to rebuild from the ashes after abolishing over 3000 posts and budget cuts last year - if we will get this right going forward. Food for thought for sure.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thoughts and commentary, thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI've worked both for a government and for UNICEF. My work was on the "back-line" in accounting, budget, grant management and overall ops. From this perspective, I relate a bit more toward 1 (and then 3), 4 and 5, but there is also something to be said about media as I wonder on the impact of the bad publicity the non-profit world suffered in 2025.
I look at the appreciation (1) in the sense of the tension that exists between Finance & Operation vs Programmes. I am sure most people in Programmes have felt, at least once in their career, as though their efforts were undermined, or made difficult, by changes or the (sudden) reinforcement of policies. Sitting somewhere in between Programmes and DFAM, a buffer of sort for the teams I worked with, I know I often felt that way, trying to understand where the organization/DFAM was coming from while assessing the impact and designing the next step the team to minimize the effect of crisis. Which brings me to 3, focus. I often wondered if the different organizational structures that exist in UNICEF were optimals and really allowing programme colleagues to focus on the expertise and results we hired them for.
4-5- People and Time. From a local perspective, the almost cyclical recycling, and dismantling of operational ideas, was, at least in NYHQ, a bit of a running joke, although people were laughing a little less at each iteration. Centralization, decentralization, centralization, decentralization. I did not witness all the iterations myself, but many colleagues who've been in UNICEF NYHQ for 15+ years have. I have no met many abusive local staff, beyond perhaps milking sickdays, but I have met many desilusionaed local staff that were harder and harder to convince and bring onboard with "new" initiative. Their contributions were key, but their resistance to ideas and changes were just as real, and made even more real during HQEI and then FFI. International staff bring rich and valuable experience and perspective, but IPs also come a ticking "rotational" timer over their head and over any changes they may seek or were hired to implement. In that sense, changes and roll-outs in HQ often felt rushed, with little to no local buy-in needed for a long-term, sustainable implementation.
It will be fascinating to see how things play out for UNICEF, our colleagues, and the work that is being done, once the "shock" period is behind and things settle.