Picture this: Two policy experts disagree on first principles. Real principles: Should we tax carbon or subsidise green energy? They research, debate, and marshal evidence. The disagreement escalates to a senior manager who boasts three degrees in management excellence and zero in the subject at hand.

Unable to judge the substance (what is carbon, really?), our manager reaches for their toolkit. “Let’s find middle ground,” code for being wrong in a way that offends everyone equally. “Draft something we can all live with,” meaning something so beige nobody could object to it or, heaven forbid, implement it. The seasoned managers choose Option C: “Let’s take this offline,” bureaucrat-speak for “let’s bury this until I get promoted.”

The experts watch as a decision descends, recommending “a framework for considering potential pathways to explore options.” Nobody can defend it, explain it, or remember requesting it. This explains Treasury’s new motto: “Better silent than sorry.”

When advice finally emerges, after six committees, twelve working groups, and a workshop on workshops, it convinces nobody. But it has signatures! The experts learn quickly: Draft not for the problem, but for Sharon from Risk Management, who once vetoed a paper for using “urgent” too urgently.

Real judgment lives at the working level, where people can still tell good policy from bad. Decisions live at the executive level, where people can only tell loud from quiet. So, workers stop offering judgment and start offering whatever creates the least noise. Ministers receive advice so neutered it could be read at bedtime.

The bright ones leave first. They came to solve problems, not watch executives transform solutions into process maps. Those who remain master pre-emptive blandness.

Sir Humphrey would be appalled – not at the outcomes, which he would have cheerfully engineered, but at the sheer incompetence of it all.

Yes, Minister. No, Minister. We will form a working group, Minister.

Benno is a Research Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative with a wide range of policy interests. This article was first published HERE