This month marks the end of my first year as Director of Lantra, and as I look back over the last twelve months it has certainly been busy, but also hugely enjoyable! I have a great team here in Perth and have enjoyed meeting many new people and learning more about a wide range of industries and organisations within the sector.
It has also been a reflective time for Lantra Scotland for another reason, which was the loss of supporter and friend from Scottish Government: Anna Murray, who passed away recently after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
However, I am torn. Much as I want to pay her a full tribute in this blog, I also know that if she were here, she would rather tersely tell me not to be daft and to get back to the day job!
Civil servant. An important role yet one with challenging connotations, not least because of programmes like “Yes Minister”. But Anna’s approach was very different from Sir Humphrey’s.
“The perfect civil servant is the man who has a valid objection to any possible solution.“ A H Keates
She worked in the Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate, and despite the demands of the role1, her positivity and energy will be sorely missed by those of us who worked with her. In fact, she was so full of enthusiasm that I had no idea she was seriously ill until recently.
Since coming to Lantra and leaving the college sector, I have needed to work more directly with representatives from a wide range of agencies and government departments. When I explain this to ex-colleagues, there often follows a raised eyebrow, a sharp intake of breath, or a sympathetic hand placed on the shoulder in solidarity. I might have done the same in their place, particularly when considering the complexity of procedures, systems, acronyms and discussions required to work with such groups and organisations!
And of course, if life was simple and straightforward, we wouldn’t need civil servants. But life doesn’t work like that. It’s complicated, messy and wonderfully, interestingly, diverse. But it is not simple.
Simple solutions to complex problems might sound good but are normally brutal in application. Simple is often unfair, and certainly in the case of land use, often wrong.
“...government will never run the way Silicon Valley runs because, by definition, democracy is messy. This is a big, diverse country with a lot of interests and a lot of disparate points of view. And part of government’s job, by the way, is dealing with problems that nobody else wants to deal with.“ Barack Obama
What I have found over the last year is that the kind of complex conversations that Lantra is involved in every day are not brought about through interactions with difficult people (although I’m not saying there aren’t any …), but rather they arise from complicated situations.
Of course, I may be biased. Lantra receives funding from the Scottish government. However, all the individuals in government that I have met and worked with the last year, regardless of department, have been enthusiastic and supportive, and none more so than Anna. She was always positive (even when the outlook was bleak!) and got stuff done. Nothing seemed to be insurmountable. Things could be challenging, sure, but that just made achievements all the more worthwhile.
I think key to this was her fundamental belief that when people work together, anything is possible. Which is why Lantra have decided to dedicate our new ALBAS ‘Partnership working’ award to her memory.
“Being a good civil servant is about squaring the circle – analysis combined with persuasion, vision combined with realism.” Jonathan Portes
So, I would like to propose a toast. Even if it is just the last (and best) cup of tea of the working day, here’s to all the invisible heroes who work so hard in the background to ensure that — despite the complexity of issues they face — ‘stuff gets done’.
A toast to all those who work within government departments as well as those working in partnership with others, finding solutions to complicated problems.
A toast to all those who work away quietly in the background. Those who don’t make it into official publications, reports or press releases. They might not appear as case studies or in good news stories, but without their work behind the scenes, much less would have been achieved, and the impact of the work much reduced.
Without them, the world would be a harsher, less effective, more unfair, and simpler place.