Managing warlords in the workplace: Inside Australia’s bureaucratic feudalism

The Australian Civil Service has become a rotating order of consultants working for petty warlords, he writes Vince Hooper.

AUSTRALIA’S PUBLIC SERVICE does not operate by politics or politics. It works with feudal instinct.

The Australian Civil Service once prided itself on being the silent guardian of the Westminster ideals of impartiality, competence and faintly redolent of instant coffee. But those days are gone. The modern department is not a workplace. This is a feudal map. And if you’ve spent more than a week inside, you know there are warlords on the map.

From Treasury to Transport, from Canberra to the states, every bureaucracy is now home to its own mini-monarchs. They manage teams, hoard resources, and issue decrees from open-plan fortresses with titles like “Assistant Director” or “Deputy for Something Or Another.” Their weapons? Outlook is a rare mastery of calendar control, strategic ambiguity, and “playing it down.”

The map is redrawn with each new minister; new banners, same castles. Each change brings with it a new round of “strategic realignment,” meaning that last week’s priorities are now aberrations that can be punished by a working group.

Australia’s public servants face a challenge no management consultant dares name: how to survive in the Age of the Warlord. Forget “adaptive leadership.” What you need is conflict diplomacy.

Rule One: Pledge loyalty early

Describe your local warlord who enjoys answering all emails and “urgent” meetings regarding future meetings. Discover what they adore most: KPIs, “innovation” or “stakeholder engagement”. Then pledge your commitment via PowerPoint. If you can align your deliverables with empire-building narratives, you may live to see the next reporting cycle.

Rule Two: Never outshine your boss

In today’s bureaucratic fiefdoms, success is measured by optics, not results. Your boss doesn’t want your ideas; It demands your commitment, presented in a color-coded Excel dashboard. Any attempt to increase efficiency risks being seen as rebellion, especially if it involves evidence.

Rule Three: Avoid Canberra’s eye

Just as medieval knights avoided the royal court, rulers should fear email from the “Ministerial Office.” This heralds a reshuffle, or worse, the creation of a “task force,” a modern-day campaign that begins with fanfare and ends with an unfinished SharePoint site.

Regional departments, meanwhile, operate as semi-independent duchies. Canberra may issue decrees, but local barons interpret them through the ancient art of selective enforcement.

Then there are mercenaries. Consultants move between fiefdoms like hired armies, wielding PowerPoint spears and brandishing words like “synergy” and “transformation.” Their daily rates might fund a small hospital, but their final reports always conclude that “further investigation is warranted.”

Every fiefdom now has its own “Digital Transformation Leader,” equipped with acronyms and no budget. Artificial intelligence is the new alchemy that promises to automate everything except accountability.

At the upper echelons the satire becomes sharper. Deputy Secretaries now resemble serene monarchs surrounded by scrolls of parchment bearing the runes of bureaucracy: “interagency collaboration,” “digital ascendancy,” and “fitness for purpose.” The courtiers, a rotating cast of advisors, are drafting vision statements that will never be implemented but will look great on the Senate Estimates file.

The tragedy is that the warlord system was never settled. It developed organically through funding cuts, political upheaval and the strange Darwinism of middle management. In an ecosystem where budgets are shrinking and egos are swelling, the fittest are not the competent, but the cunning.

But somehow the public service still works. Australians still benefit from roads, benefits and (mostly) border policy. Beneath the feudal layers persist quiet professionals who have mastered the ancient art of serving both royalty and common sense.

Maybe that’s the genius of the system. No matter how many warlords ascend, merge, or rebrand themselves as “Executive Sponsors,” the civil service endures; stoic, understated, and forever reorganizing itself into new forms of confusion. Australian-style civilization continues; one committee meeting is held at a time.

Bureaucratic field handbook

If you can’t identify your local warlord, take a closer look. This could be you!

Vince Hooper is a proud Australian/British citizen and professor of finance and discipline at the SP Jain School of Global Management, which has campuses in London, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney.

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