Arkady Dvorkovich, Aide to the President of Russian Federation: "Today Major Task of the State Officials Is to Demolish the Barricades between Them and the rest of People"

Arkady Dvorkovich, Aide to the President of Russian Federation, delivered this exclusive video master class to the Talent Pool of the United Russia political party and our club as an opening part of our joint special project "Leadership Lessons from the State". Arkady believes that the most important competencies of a state official are the ability to work in a team, the capacity to work hard as well as the ability to rapidly recover from failures and setbacks.

1.  What can you recommend to people who are just joining the civil service?

There is no single recipe neither example. It's a question of time, of learning and of the capacity to learn. Through all my experience in civil service I didn't meet anyone who needed less than half a year to start acting well in these coordinates. Sometimes it takes a year but half a year is an absolute minimum required to start feeling all the limitations, the challenges, the inputs. It is normal and it is impossible to demand from someone to start delivering solutions earlier than that.

2. What are the key factors of success in civil service?

First and foremost it is about readiness to work very hard for a while, to sacrifice something in the beginning in order to spend much less time of the same tasks in the future. Of course, each person has own limitations, family first of all. But if you wish to become a real leader not just an ordinary official you need to sacrifice something. It is inevitable.

Secondly, it is about ability to work in a team. There are always more and less experienced people in any team. On one hand, the most experienced people usually have more prejudices and you wish to overcome these prejudices by bringing new people in. On the other, these people have a lot of valuable experience that can't be abandoned. Sometimes if a newcomer starts to act as a sole player it doesn't work well. Only if the person starts to live as a part of a team, communicates with colleagues and ensures maximum exchange of information with them he/she can achieve the top level of performance.

3. What else is important for success?

Thirdly, it is about being able to overcome setbacks - not to be preoccupied with failures. In the first months, first half of a year there will be many failed tasks and low quality results on particular assignments. It is inevitable and you will be getting a lot of heavy criticism. If a person becomes preoccupied with these mistakes and criticism then she/he will have problems. If he understands that it all is taking place to help him to avoid repeating same mistakes in the future he will achieve results faster.

There are no simple prescriptions. Each person has his/her own individual situation, personal character and own way of doing things. One tends to independent work, another spends 90% of time communicating with colleagues. That's why the combination of different people in a team is so important to achieve top results. But the teamwork is the most important factor to pay attention to. You join the service and you find yourself on a soccer playground.  This comparison seems very close to me. You are not around a chess desk, you are in a soccer field, and you have to play in a team. Otherwise there will be no result.

4. What expectations a person should have while joining civil service?

First, each person joining civil service should discuss what aspirations he has in advance with his future leader. Otherwise there soon will be a gap between the aspirations and the reality. The leader may tell from the start if the aspiration of the future employee can be matched. It is quite normal in such situation to play with open cards. Otherwise you can end up with psychologically very difficult situation. Frankly speaking this was the case with me. When I firs started to work for the administration I was not yet employed by the state but worked as a consultant with one of the government structures. I simply had no time to thing of any aspirations or projects as we worked 15-20 hours a day. It was a very interesting and important job and I simply had no time to think of something more to be done. 90 percent of people I know were in the same situation at least in the beginning. When I was joining the civil service as a full time employee I already had some plans and expectations but these plans were at that time already declared in the programs of the party and the government. So I had very rational expectations that if at least 5-10% of these plans would materialize it wouldn't be for nothing.

5. What's your reaction on the fact that everyone has his own opinion on what is right or wrong for the state?

It is normal. It is a public service. It is a public activity observed by everyone by its external endeavors. Everyone knows about it. You have to simply live with it as with a given thing. It is normal. It already more is subject to the level of self assurance of a particular person if he/she believes he/she understands the subject and can professionally judge the state administration or some other areas. In such a case it is quite normal if a person criticizes and proposes solutions, at least in most instances. I wouldn't call it a view of the man in the street - it is rather normal reaction of the taxpayer on the actions of the state. After all the state takes decisions on money and unfortunately to certain extent also on lives of taxpayers - of people who live in this country. These people after all elect the state authorities in one way or another according to a particular procedure. Each person has the right to comment on the actions of the state authorities, to comment and criticize what is happening.  

6. How much really depends on the top state authorities?

Another question is which part of such criticism results from the lack of information,  the lack of knowledge of many facts and the lack of understanding of the wider context, and which  is a reaction of a particular individual to the consequences of the actions of the authorities which this particular person experiences. If things get worse, it means something really goes wrong. If a person works hard, tries hard but thing get worse, if whatever he tries - nothing happens, than something is wrong not only with this person but with the entire system. However very often when people start complaining it turns out that they themselves make wrong decisions.  They simply work in a wrong place, they go to work somewhere each day and don't earn enough money and complain that they leave poorly. There might be better vacancies available but a person doesn't want to be retrained, doesn't want to relocate, doesn't want to make a new step in life. May be it is a difficult step but he should probably take it to achieve better results. Each of other should look for causes both inside and outside. Trying to blame the authorities for everything is simply unproductive. It is a heritage of hundreds of years of paternalism in our county - looks like everything depends on the state authorities. There are very few things which really depend on the top authorities of the state. By the way it is good because a small group of individuals can't change to the good life of every person in a country. Such miracles do not happen. State authorities may create opportunities for people to improve their own lives by themselves. Or they may not create them.   

7. By becoming a state official a person is switching the side of the barricades. What would you recommend?

It is mostly needed now at this particular moment that people join the civil service with an intention to demolish these barricades, to change the feeling that the state authorities and the rest are at the opposite sides of a barricade. It can be the major objective. I think we started to do something in this direction recently, we even achieved some progress although not in every case, but this feeling that the state authorities and the rest of people, the rest of the nation have different interests is still there. If a person is taking a post of state official with the aim not to fire from behind the barricades, not even to try to change those behind the barricades but with the aim to demolish the barricades - this is probably the right objective at this particular moment and for our country.

8. How can power and principles get along together?

I think that power and integrity can live together absolutely hand in hand, but unfortunately you needs to accept the fact that nothing happens at once. The decisions taken by the authorities can't change everyone's life to the best instantly. There is also a risk that life of some people will get worse because there are mistakes and not timely actions. Sometimes it is not possible to find a solution that will be good to everyone because there are many factors beyond our control - we are part of the global landscape of much larger environment and is influences us, and it is normal. Sometimes it looks like principles are abandoned because of that. But it is not the case. The case is about the success rate and the efficiency of particular actions. You can take principle based decisions all the time but sometimes you may get the result other than expected. For me people, their lives, are the most important value, starting with the small circle around you, with family and friends, and trying to project the same attitude to a larger scale. Ability to project to a larger scope of people this core value of human life is probably the most important principle. Human life is the most important value. The rest is not so important.

9. Where do you find fun in the work of a state official?

It is in some results which might be small but still exist. For instance we managed to implement 13% personal income tax back in 2000 and it turned out to work pretty well and it is fun for me. Fun is something that improves life of many people. It can be very small - like we took the decision to improve the quality of food in school canteens and some positive changes are taking place. That's fun! A kid is eating a tastier and healthier food at the school canteen than half a year ago. That's fun!  It means we didn't waste our time when we worked out a decision sitting in an office half a year ago.  Or there is Internet available is one more school now and kids are making there a web site for the hockey team of their home town. It was impossible only half a year ago! That's fun!  We also figured it out sitting somewhere in an office and made decision to spend half a million on this issue instead of another that possibly wouldn't bring as much fun to people. I don't know if it is right at the scale of the entire country. I can't figure it out. But such things really bring in a lot of positive emotions. Or you just meet a stranger in the street and he says that he supports us, that we should continue the same way. It means that for this person in the street just like ten millions of others something changed for the best. It means that there is a chance that for ten million of people things at least didn't turn to the worse and may be even turned to the best.