In defence of all-rounders
Senior Researcher
In 1969, the Fulton report on the Civil Service found a class of officials unchanged from the 19th century ideal of the “gifted amateur”: one lacking in the kinds of expertise needed to administer an increasingly complex government machine and with few formal training opportunities.
It’s a critique that still resonates today. As in 1969, civil servants are overwhelmingly incentivised to move on after “two or three years” in post and are not rewarded for becoming subject matter experts. A former permanent secretary told me last week that the Civil Service “places no value on knowledge whatsoever” when deciding who to promote.
Yet while moves to professionalise the Civil Service and embed more specialist skills are very welcome, including the introduction of functional standards for areas like finance and analysis since 2013, we shouldn’t throw the concept of ‘generalism’ out with the proverbial bath water.
The things that make someone an exceptional leader — high conscientiousness, charisma, confidence, vision and creativity, for example — are not specific to a profession or specialist area. Someone can of course be an exceptional accountant or data scientist and a terrible leader.
Had Steve Jobs been twice as talented in engineering but lacked any of these leadership traits, there’s little doubt Apple would have failed. In debating the very real pitfalls of gifted amateurism, we must avoid conflating leadership potential with excelling in a single domain.
What’s most important is having the right, general expertise to make well-informed judgements across the breadth of what an organisation does, and to confidently and liberally delegate decisions to subject matter experts when required. Capable, ‘all-rounder’ leaders are able to motivate organisations to achieve ambitious ends, build the right teams, and join-up different functional areas, even if it’s experts who will ultimately implement their vision.
Whitehall must therefore be somewhere that enables these leaders (the Steve Jobses) to thrive while also being obsessively focused on hiring and developing experts (more Steve Wozniaks). And as far as possible, experts should be empowered in their respective domains. It’s why Re:State has recommended creating a dedicated route for specialists to progress in Whitehall without needing to leave their area of interest or take on extra management responsibility; and at the same time, argued for introducing a Fast Stream scheme focused on “cross-functional” leadership.
Leaders should have enough of what it takes to ‘get into the weeds’ across a lot of areas; experts should aim to be the best in their field. The Civil Service must be a true meritocracy for both forms of talent. The problem isn’t all-rounders, it’s that it’s currently a meritocracy for neither.