Chris Wood’s Post

To ALL the HARD WORKING PUBLIC SERVANTS - are YOU ONE in a MILLION To anyone who has NEVER worked in the public service, it all looks very simple and easy. Underworked and over paid. And if I'm being honest its what I thought of you until I did it for five years. Turns out its way harder than you might think, if your motivation for being a public service is to improve things for people. I was very fortunate to be the right person at the right time, which is NOT THE NORM. Someone I worked alongside in another government agency had been trying to make the change I did for ten year before I showed up. Thats the norm. And then you have the politicians, with there self interest and politically leaning, telling you whats best when you know it will lead to intended and unintended consequences counter to the publics best interests. However I did not have to be a part of accepting some really crazy stuff such as 'gender ideology' that has infected all our government agencies. It must be VERY difficult working for the MoH or HealthNZ when there pushing such a harmful misogynistic ideology. And having talked to police officers from Hamilton to the North Shore I can tell you they are not comfortable with what has happened at police over this ideological nonsense. I also found the Ministry I worked for did not have some reasonable 'bottom lines' they would not cross. Again if I'm being honest my Ministry, along with other government agencies, were my many barriers to change. Good thing I don't listen to idiots but then I was not making a long-term carrier as a public servant. After a meeting with a not for profit CEO at another government agencies she said "I would never, ever, ever work for a government agency". I asked why? She said it was "a total waste of time". To which I replied 'no we learned a lot'. The next day I got off the bus early to fortuitously bump into the CEO of the government agency we had had the meeting with the previous day. Two days later our not for profit CEO got a call from said agency saying she could have what she had asked for after all. However the reason for this post is 'I see all you public servants' trying hard to make things better. And in spite of what Thomas Sowell teaches us - "There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs" I know there are some of you who really are one in a million. I met a few of you in my time in Wellington as I worked with ALL government agencies. So as you sit back down at that desk and work on that unsolvable problem - let this play in the background to keep you going in spite of all the barriers in your way. Keep going because you might be THAT one in a million. So All the luck in the world to YOU Oh and the video is also worth a watch TOO