Speech by Mr Leo Yip at the Annual Public Service Leadership Ceremony 2024

Speech by Head, Civil Service Leo Yip at the Annual Public Service Leadership Ceremony on 17 September 2024

Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong,
Minister Chan Chun Sing,
Chairman and Members of the Public Service Commission,
Colleagues and Friends,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Tribute to Senior Minister Lee

A very good afternoon to all of you. This is the first event of the Public Service, that Senior Minister (SM) Lee has attended since he handed over the premiership to Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, on the 15 May.

2          It is therefore only apt that I begin with a tribute to SM Lee, on behalf of the Public Service. SM, your leadership truly exemplified what Public Service is about and set a good example to all of us. You taught us what it meant to put Singapore above everything else.

3          You exemplified integrity. Your call to us remains clear — to uphold the highest standards of integrity because it is essential to building trust with the citizens that we serve.

4          Thank you for leading us with clarity, courage, and conviction.

5          In crises, you gave us the confidence to press on to weather the proverbial storm when the seas were rough and the skies were dark. You led the way in convincing Singaporeans about the tough choices we had to make, and in the darkest of nights assuring everyone that we had a clear path ahead to deal with our challenges and bounce back stronger.

6          In good times, you urged us to never cease our efforts to make Singapore even better.

7          Thank you for being a strong supporter of the Public Service and our work. You led the way in persuading Singaporeans to accept the difficult choices and policies the Government had to make, creating the political space for good policy work and sound execution to take place.

8          Thank you also for caring deeply for public officers — for our welfare, and for our growth and development.

9          Your lifetime of selfless service and your relentless push to make and keep Singapore exceptional, have inspired us all.

10        To say that Singapore, and the Public Service, owe you a debt of gratitude, is an understatement.

11        Senior Minister Lee, on behalf of the 152,000 public officers, thank you very much.

Celebrations

12        Let me continue. To the 16 Public Service Leaders who have retired or relinquished their appointments this year, I commend each of you for your contributions and years of service.

13        I want to specially thank two of my Permanent Secretary colleagues who had retired this year — Ravi Menon, and Gabriel Lim.

14        I am especially grateful to Ravi and Gabriel for their strong support, counsel, and camaraderie over many years. Please join me in thanking them for their contributions to the Public Service and send our very best wishes to them and their families.

15        I also congratulate the 30 officers who have been appointed as Public Service Leaders, and the 113 officers appointed to both the General and Sectoral phases of the Public Service Leadership Programme (PSLP).
I welcome you all on board this leadership journey.

16        Every year at this ceremony, we rededicate ourselves to our leadership of the Public Service. All of us here today are members of the Public Service leadership community, either through your leadership position, or your leadership potential, or both.

17        This is a gathering of those of us with leadership responsibility entrusted to us, as leaders of departments, professions, statutory boards and Ministries. You are our Public Service Leaders.

18        This is also a gathering of officers from the Administrative Service and both General and Sectoral Phases of the PSLP, who are developing to be future leaders, or for now exercising leadership of smaller work units.

19        Whichever group you belong to, all of us here are assigned the honour and the responsibility to lead. In the Singapore Public Service, leadership is about the exercise of stewardship, not privilege or entitlement.

A New Phase of Nation Building

20        We are assuming the mantle of leadership of the Public Service in a new phase of our nation building. We have a new Prime Minister charting the way forward, and ahead of us, new challenges to tackle and new opportunities to seize for Singapore.  

21        Many of our nation building pathways ahead are uncharted. We are leading the Public Service in an era of rapid change.

22        The challenges before us are becoming more complex, and increasingly require a multi-disciplinary and cross-agency approach. Our Public Service will need to be even better co-ordinated and aligned in working as one.

23        Take climate action for example. Managing this national response is a Whole of Government, in fact a whole of nation, endeavour requiring many Ministries to work together in a coherent and co-ordinated manner.

24        Another example is our work to support caregivers. With an ageing population, caregiving needs have grown — from caregiving for seniors with care needs, to persons with disabilities, persons with mental health conditions, and caregiving for children. The need to better co-ordinate and synergise the approach being taken by different Ministries to support caregivers – that has grown in tandem.

Vertically Stronger

25        I would characterise the structure of our Public Service today, as being stronger vertically than horizontally. Let me explain what I mean.

26        We have strong verticals, and these are the Ministry families (Ministry headquarters, their Statutory Boards). Each Ministry is properly resourced, and capable of achieving its mission.

27        However, the work of the Government is not merely an aggregation of each Ministry’s work. We also need, apart from the strong verticals, a strong horizontal to synergise and integrate cross-Ministry efforts.

28        We need to be deliberate in strengthening this horizontal.

29        We have made progress in recent years to strengthen our alignment and co-ordination across the Public Service.

30        Today, various sectoral fora bring agencies together to address cross-cutting issues — in the economic, social, infrastructural planning and geo-strategic domains.

31        The Committee of Permanent Secretaries meets weekly to take collective decisions on key issues.

32        The senior leadership community also comes together a few times a year, to take a Whole of Public Service perspective to issues such as Public Sector Transformation, digitalisation and leadership development.   

33        Part of this effort is steered by the central Ministries — Prime Minister’s Office-Strategy Group, Ministry of Finance, the Public Service Division, the Smart Nation Group and Science & Tech Policy and Planning Office.

34        But because our Service is predominantly structured as verticals, we need to continue working deliberately to strengthen our horizontal capability to synergise and integrate work across all our agencies.

35        This is as much a mindset as it is about co-ordination mechanisms. 

36        And this leadership community – all of you – constitutes part of this horizontal capability.

37        As leaders, our role is to steer and guide our colleagues to think, act and strengthen how we work together as One Public Service.

38        And as fellow members of this community, we provide the glue to galvanise and align the different parts of our Service, to work in concert.

Our Leadership Responsibilities

39        This afternoon, I want to reiterate six leadership characteristics that underpin how we work as leaders, as One Public Service:

• First, this leadership community – all of us – is a Whole of Government community.

• Second, leaders maintain perspective of the best interests of the country, not just our own organisations.

• Third, leaders uphold a common leadership ethos.

• Fourth, leaders demonstrate leadership with a set of competencies, tailored for our context, the context of our Public Service.

• Fifth, leaders exercise the initiative to drive change.

• And finally, leaders work closely with the political leadership, to ensure that the Public Service is fully aligned and in support of the priorities of the government of the day.

40        Let me elaborate.

41        Firstly, this leadership community is a Whole of Government community. As a member of this community, we are part of a central resource that serves the entire Public Service, regardless of the organisation or scheme of service. We must think and act collectively, in the interests of the Service, the Government, and the country.

42        Since leadership is a central and valuable resource, we must optimise:

• the development of our leadership talent,

• the leadership contribution of this group, and

• how leaders work together for the Whole of Government.

43        This is why this leadership community is managed centrally through a system of personnel boards and Sectoral Leadership Committees, comprising Permanent Secretaries from the different Ministries. Together, these Committees identify the officers who are suitable to be part of this community, and carefully manage their development, deployment, and progression of each and every one in this community.

44        Another example is the manner in which we rotate both current and developing leaders around the Public Service for development. We leverage the full breadth and depth of work across the Service, to make available varied and challenging development experiences for our leaders. As a result, our leaders have a broad understanding of the varied demands across the Service and develop the instincts to join up the work both within, and across agencies.

45        Secondly, we must understand the national realities and imperatives and always see the purpose of our work through the broad lens of what is in the best interest of the Government and the country, and not just in the interest of our respective organisations.

46        This means that each of us must be able to connect the dots between the work of our agencies and that of other agencies, as well as to the Government’s broader objectives. This inter-relatedness helps us to integrate and synergise work across agencies, and address gaps that invariably would cut across different agencies. It also helps leaders bring to bear the full range of capabilities within the Public Service in dealing with important national issues, and be able therefore to put up recommendations to our Ministers that are more robust.

47        Thirdly, all members of this leadership community uphold a common Leadership Ethos. We exercise responsibility not just for ourselves, but for a higher purpose — the collective ownership of our Public Service priorities and goals. We are held to a higher standard in our mindsets, conduct, and competencies so that we can lead by example and inspire trust in our people.

48        This ethos is expressed in the Leadership Statement that is presented to all newly appointed leaders of organisations. This Statement is not just a certificate to receive but a leadership creed to live by — and it covers our stewardship role, our duty, and also our collective responsibility as Public Service Leaders.

49        Fourth, in this community, we seek to build, and are held to a set of leadership competencies that are applicable to the level of leadership responsibility that we carry. For example, in ‘Working as One Public Service’, middle managers are expected to reconcile different opinions, and identify opportunities for collaboration with their counterparts. Public Service Leaders are expected to do this too, but at a larger scale — to build networks across the Service, lead inter-agency efforts, and forge partnerships to achieve Whole of Government outcomes.

50        Each of us has the duty and responsibility to grow our individual competencies and at the same time, develop the officers working for us.

51        To help us in this effort, we have launched a set of common tools across the Service, such as the 360-feedback exercise.

52        We have also implemented a network of leaders helping to develop fellow leaders, and this is known as the Leadership Xchange. I have joined over a hundred colleagues in this network, and what we seek to do is to volunteer our own leadership experiences, that might be helpful to a situation or challenge you are facing. I encourage you all – if you are already a leader,  sign up to the exchange to share your experiences with others, and for the rest of us, do  tap on the leadership experience and advice of volunteer leaders.

53        My fifth point is on the responsibility of leaders to initiate change. To continually make the Service and Singapore better, the Public Service must drive change, and not just respond and react to change. SM Lee characterised this as a sense of “divine discontent” — not being quite satisfied with what we have, and always driven to do better.

54        It is with this spirit that we must make continual efforts towards improving, transforming and renewing the Public Service, even when things are not broken. This is the spirit and practice behind our change movement, Public Sector Transformation.

55        Driving this conviction requires a forward orientation. It means always thinking about and planning for the future, even while we deal with the needs and the problems of today. This will become increasingly important. The Government will have to contend with a more contested political landscape. The Public Service, and especially us as leaders, will need to better support our Ministers to think ahead about the longer-term challenges and opportunities for our country.

56        Finally all of us have the responsibility of working closely with the political leadership. We have to be politically sensitive and understand the need for policies and public services to be responsive to the needs of citizens and businesses.

57        We advise our Ministers on policy design and implementation. Discharging this responsibility is straightforward when our advice coincides with the Minister’s thinking. However, there will be occasions when our assessments may not align with what our Ministers want to hear. In such situations, as leaders, we must never flinch from the duty of speaking truth to power.

Conclusion

58        Let me conclude.

59        As Singaporeans, we take pride in the progress we have made as a country and as a people. As fellow members of the Public Service today, we take pride in the contribution that the Public Service has made to this journey of nation building. We also take pride that we are able to play a part in writing the next chapter of the Singapore Story.

60        The Public Service is fundamentally a purpose-driven organisation. Our public officers join and stay because they can connect with the mission and the purpose of their work. We must continue to be a good and progressive employer, so that public officers continue to see a purpose and role for themselves both now and into the future. And that good people continue to want to join us.

61        As leaders, we must ensure that this purpose remains clear to our officers all the time. It must not be clouded by cumbersome organisational processes that make work a drudgery. It must also not be clouded by the lack of focus, and where everything is a priority.

62        Rather, we must have our people contribute in strong organisations, where opportunities abound for growth and development. We must ensure that we build supportive work cultures that our officers can thrive in, where they feel cared for, and know that their leaders have their backs. This is the job of not just the PSD, but every single one of us as leaders.

63        All the roads to achieving these desired characteristics lead back to good leadership for our Public Service. They lead back to what we as leaders do well, or do not do well. This is reason enough for each of us to be the best leader we can be, and a leader that our officers can be proud to call their own.

64        This is the reason for this community, and for today’s gathering — to remind, to reflect, and to rededicate our efforts to be better leaders of the Singapore Public Service.