Sunny is right.

When you have nothing to lose, which is never really the case, there are certain risks that are not really risks. Usually, I think, it is when one has finally given up, knowing that they will not benefit regardless of the amount of effort expended, fatalism comes very easily. Everyone has something to lose and every now and then, someone usually decides that, win or lose, they will act. Sunny Bindra says, "It's not your competitors who will finish you. It's your own employees and customers." I hope he knows how apt that statement is when it comes to the public service.

I don't think my boss's boss thinks he has any competitors. He is a genius in his field. He sits or sat on the boards of blue chip companies. His annual income statement could have been filed by a mid-level sole proprietorship for the zeroes it has on the bottom line. He is among the best-paid of the senior ranks of the public service. 

Yet, never mind what he says, he has competitors, both in the public service and out of it. If they were to be ranked on customer satisfaction and value for money or profitability, he wouldn't make it to the top ten. He probably wouldn't crack the top fifty either. And it has nothing to do with the quality of his staff or the size of his budget. It is all about incentives, of which there are precious few.

I undertook my unpaid apprenticeship at a mid-level firm. My master was unlike any other boss I had ever worked for. He took a very keen interest in my apprenticeship, ensuring that we sat down at least twice a week to go over what I knew, what I thought I knew, what I didn't know and what I needed to know. As a professional, I have very little to criticise him about. But he took it beyond that also. Lunch at his home and at his members' club were surprises I never expected.

Of course he kept a keen eye on how I carried out his instructions, though without a heavy hand. He was not a back-seat driver even when there were millions at stake. His instructions were frequently concise and clear, written down in his neat hand and signed with his customary flourish. There were no doubts about what was expected of me or when. He did not simply demand the impossible and then hit the roof when he didn't get it. He and I knew that I would not hold over when the apprenticeship ended, but he encouraged me to spread my wings and here I am today, mfanyakazi wa serikali.

My boss's boss, on the other hand, has been infected by the serikali aversion to written instructions. Joyce Nyairo covers one side of the problem when she writes about a peculiarly Kenyan aversion to responding to written communication. I wonder how shocked she will be when she encounters the corollary: few public service bosses want to give written instructions, preferring instead informal verbal ones in which details remain unclear, expected outcomes are made up as the instructions are carried out and which are frequently altered, sometimes even without knowledge of the one instructed. That's my boss's boss.

In the private sector, incentives are sometimes monetary, but frequently involve nothing more complicated than making the workplace conducive to work. Vast swathes of the public service would qualify as hostile work environments. Mine is not, touch wood, but it has more disincentives than incentives, the greatest being my boss's boss and his attitude towards the less intellectually gifted. 

When he refers to us and some of our seniors as idiots without finding ways to help us mitigate our idiocy, we have little incentive to make him look good in comparison to his peers, whether in the public or private sectors. He can boast his fat pay packet as an achievement, but it is a uniquely selfish achievement. When measured in terms of performance, output and quality, he can only hang his head in shame, cast down his eyes in embarrassment and mumble under his breath about sabotage. Unless his attitude changes, when the performance accolades are handed out, he will not be taking home any gongs.