Recently you have taken charge as the head of a government organisation. On the very first day in your office, you observe that the organisation is crippled with many irregularities such as: (i) The staff is not punctual. (ii) The staff waste their time in unnecessary talks. (iii) Speedy action is not taken on public grievances. (iv) There is rampant corruption at every level in the organisation. (v) The quality of the services provided by the organisation is very poor. How would you inspire your staff so that these deficiencies of the organisation get removed? Discuss.

First-day ethic: see, record, do not humiliate the whole cadre

• Walk the counter, the attendance, the grievance register, and one live file before any circular. Bandura’s staff will copy what the new head rewards, not what the joining speech praises.
• Separate the willing from the ring: most delay is learned helplessness plus a few who sell the window. Inspiration fails if the first act is a mass insult that unites the office against the chair.
• Put the five irregularities on one board as public facts, with dates, not as a moral sermon. People move when the problem is shared and specific.

How inspiration works (not only punishment)

• Example: the head arrives first, sits at the grievance desk one hour a day, and refuses the first envelope in public silence — social learning of a new honour.
• Meaning: tell the staff whose face they serve — a widow’s pension, a small trader’s licence — so idle talk has a rival story. Spirit of service is planted as a named person, not as ‘nation’.
• Voice: a short, recorded meeting where clerks name the real blockers (broken software, missing peon, a tout at the gate). Inspiration includes being heard; Herzberg’s hygiene comes before a pep talk.
• Peer pride: publish a weekly ‘closed with remedy’ list and name the desk, not only the defaulter. Reciprocity and Bandura’s vicarious reward beat a lone warning.

Mapping the five deficiencies

• (i) Punctuality: biometric or a simple public register plus the head’s own clock; flex only where field work is real. Late-coming is often a cue that nobody is watching; watch without theatre, then apply Conduct Rules to the repeat, not to the first rain-day.
• (ii) Idle talk: redesign the floor — a visible queue, timed windows, a canteen hour that is real so that gossip is not the only break. Idle talk is often a symptom of no owned task; give each person a named service and a number.
• (iii) Grievances: a single visible clock, an acknowledgement with a date, a daily disposal meeting that the head chairs twice a week, and RTI-ready speaking orders. Speed is inspired when delay is no longer invisible.
• (iv) Corruption: sunlight first — suo motu rates, a banned-tout board, e-payments, rotation of sensitive seats, and a safe complaint channel. Then PCA and vigilance for the ring, with protection for the honest clerk who was previously the bypass. Inspiration without teeth is a joke; teeth without cover for the honest is a purge that empties the office.
• (v) Poor quality: a citizen charter with two measurable standards, a sample of files the head reads, and training that is a workshop on the actual form, not a hotel lecture. Quality rises when the staff can succeed; learned helplessness ends when the tool works.

Sequence and limits

• Thirty days: example and sunlight; ninety days: rotation, charge sheets where evidence sits, and a celebration of clean disposal. Do not announce a war on day one without a file.
• Inspire, then institutionalise: if the head’s charisma is the only glue, the old irregularities return on transfer. Second ARC’s systems — charter, appraisal that counts integrity, e-office — are how inspiration becomes the organisation’s memory.
• Limits: a captured union or a political protector of the tout cannot be smiled away; document, escalate, recuse the desk, and keep the citizen’s window open through a camp if the building is sick.
• Case-ready: the staff is inspired when the honest see a future, the lazy see a clock, and the corrupt see a risk — all three on the same Monday.