but it s interesting how we reward risk taking in the private sector. we allow the venture capitalists to brag about it, but as soon as a civil servant makes a mistake, front page of the newspaper. so the question you re asking is not onejust about long termism in the public sector, but also, what is the human resource strategy that we actually need within the civil service that allows both long termism, but also the welcoming of that kind of experimentation and trial and error and error and error, cos you won t learn how to ride a bike without falling off. if we don t allow those kinds ofjob structures and culture of experimentation inside the state, none of these missions will work. right, and to return to the little phrase i used at the beginning about earthly reality perhaps clashing with some of your more idealistic visions, earthly reality today is that across the world, in democracies and maybe in the not so democratic countries, what we see are rising, alarming levels of mistru
say, the electoral one. so the people who come in to lead it, they come in for 4 5 years. it s not necessarily with the electoral cycle, timed to those four years, and they literally are there to take kind of big bets, take risks, but on big public problems. the way that they ve actually organised their own institution is by welcoming risk taking and experimentation, which you talked about, because civil servants make mistakes. but it s interesting how we reward risk taking in the private sector. we allow the venture capitalists to brag about it, but as soon as a civil servant makes a mistake, front page of the newspaper. so the question you re asking is not one just about long termism in the public sector, but also, what is the human resource strategy that we actually need within the civil service that allows both long termism, but also the welcoming of that kind of experimentation and trial and error and error and error, cos you won t learn how to ride a bike without falling off. if
so the people who come in to lead it, they come in for 4 5 years it s not necessarily with the electoral cycle, timed to those four years and they literally are there to take kind of big bets, take risks, but on big public problems. the way that they ve actually organised their own institution is by welcoming risk taking and experimentation, which you talked about, because civil servants make mistakes. but it s interesting how we reward risk taking in the private sector. we allow the venture capitalists to brag about it, but as soon as a civil servant makes a mistake, front page of the newspaper. so the question you re asking is not one just about long termism in the public sector, but also, what is the human resource strategy that we actually need within the civil service that allows both long termism, but also the welcoming of that kind of experimentation and trial and error and error and error, cos you won t learn how to ride a bike without falling off. if we don t allow those k