A dozen years ago in my first presentation to an audience of senior civil servants, drawn from across the whole of what was then the Inland Revenue, I put up this slide:
The quote at the bottom was drawn from a memo that had crossed my desk reporting on progress on a major programme that the department had underway. I was struck, dumbstruck even, by the leack of certainty both in being “into its stride” and “the autumn”. The slide – with its animation – became widely known in the department as the “falling leaves” slide.
So I certainly chuckled when I saw in the action summary for the Civil Service Reform initiative:
By autumn we will have a cross-Civil Service
capabilities plan that identifies what skills are missing and how gaps
will be filled.By autumn the Cabinet Office will have completed a review with
departments to see what further examples of change in delivery models
can be implemented this Parliament
I then read @pubstrat’s thinking on bowler hats and was drawn to remember another slide deck from around the same time:
I remember being told shortly after I joined the civil service, \”There are only two seasons here, spring and autumn\”.