THE MAN IN THE GREY CARDIGAN.(political technique)

MY FIRST BOSS in the public service taught me many things--where to find a policy; how to write a letter; how to manage a file. He arrived punctually in the office every morning, took off his coat, and put on a grey cardigan, which he kept on a hanger behind the door. He was a man of the utmost regularity--he took his toilet breaks at exactly the same time each day.

It would be easy to make fun of him and others like him, yet the public really did have a servant in him. There was little he did not know, could not remember or was unsure of. He would not bend the rules for anyone.

He was not a man to head an organisation, and even in those distant times before public sector management was invented, this was well understood. But he was a loyal lieutenant to our ultimate boss, a genial man with a mind as sharp as a tack and a consummate skill at getting people to agree with each other, known to everyone as "Jack".

It was in watching Jack run meetings that I realised how much a good chairperson could accomplish. In the years since, as I have sat, frustrated, in countless meetings while poorly prepared or intransigent people wasted their own and everyone else's time I have often wished he would reappear and sort things out.

Jack would talk to anyone in the organisation, which was usually held to be evidence of his democratic style. But I think now that he was picking up information, sizing people up, while appearing to be passing the time of day. On one of these occasions, I remember Jack told me he disliked travel because he never knew what he was going to have for his dinner, an attitude I found incomprehensible at the time, but am now beginning to understand. I hope he enjoyed his retirement.

As for my boss in the grey cardigan, I imagine he has been packaged out of the new public service long since. He and his type would be regarded as living fossils, relics of an earlier era.

The Commonwealth public service I remember from those days--stable, capacious, careful--has gone forever, but it is difficult to get a feel for what has taken its place. There are fewer public servants than before, but in many areas, the jobs have simply shifted into the private sector as functions have been outsourced.