In my working life I have experience of managing people, or managing to manage people if you will. The only way you can bring individuals and teams with you is by example. Telling someone to do something that you won't or can't do yourself, is a recipe for resentment which will bite your bum at the first available opportunity. So doing and showing that you can do the things you are asking others to do brings willing co-operation, or at least that is what I have found. Willing co-operation then brings efforts well beyond what was ever asked or expected. It is a recipe for success.

The other aspect of leading by example is fairness. Okay, I got paid a bit more for the extra responsibility of being where the buck stopped but if I was allowed to stay overnight in a given hotel, then my teams had to able to stay there too. Put another way, if my team were confined to a certain price category of accommodation then I had to be also. That is giving example and it always works both ways. At staff meetings it was customary to discuss successes during the previous period, (this was a sales operation). I kept that custom but added the proviso that fuck-ups had to be equally discussed openly without judgement from either me or the team. I always kicked off the fuck-ups with an example of one of my own and then it went around the table one-by-one. I can't remember any of them claiming to be perfect. Again it was example and the purpose of it was that we all learned from ours and other's mistakes as well as the things we did right. We all got extra dough for getting it right but vice versa of course.

So here's the rub. If we applied this leading by example stuff to Government whereby we all said, "If that's what they do themselves, then that's what we'll do," what would it look like if we did that. Let's have a little fun shall we. Take any or every company in the country and apply the current top method of leading by example. Well firstly, we'd all be able to claim a minimum of €37.00 every day we showed up for work. It's more the further away you live. Then there is unvouched fuel expenses for your car at civil service rates, which are brilliant. Middle-managers would be able to claim an amount of €50,000 a year for their personal secretary and the beauty of that is that it could be the little woman in your life, your brother or your Mom at home if you wanted. That's up to you who you nominate. Naturally you'd be entitled to a full bar in the workplace and it would have to operate a slate system for employees that they never pay on time, if at all. Nobody could object to when or what you drank there and you would be entitled to go to work full to the gills, even for important meetings. 

But it gets better than that. Pay disputes would cease to exist because  we already have a glorious example of how to sort those out. The employees would just get a generous fund from the company and then it would be up to them to appoint an, "Independent Committee," drawn from friends and family, to adjudicate on what pay increases we should get. These recommendations then become entitlements and the grateful committee is paid off. And working hours are easily decided because the Dail sat for 123 days last year so you'd have 242 days off next year. But don't worry about any of those 123 days because there's a work around in place for that too and used widely. Four of you just get together and rotate who actually goes to the workplace. The nominated guy on any day simply claims the other three are also present and hey presto! You're all there. And the beauty of this is while you're at home in bed, you can claim the showing-up allowance and the generous mileage rate for getting there. Don't say we don't look after you. And holidays? You'll be shit sick of holidays. But get this! You and the other people in the office can take a vote to extend the Christmas holidays by a week if you all agree, and you can do that again at Easter and summer. Brilliant, isn't it? 

Accommodation is expensive but we've thought of that too. There's a hugely generous overnight rate and you don't need proof you stayed anywhere to get it. If your home base is getting a bit cramped, stick on an extension and send the company the bill. And while the company provides you with plush office space at the workplace, you are entitled to your own office closer to home. So go and buy a big one freehold, even if you never open the door of it. It's yours to sell as an investment property when you leave.

Added to this, all your business travel can be of the  first class five-star variety, no questions asked. And your reason for travel needn't be legitimate or even yield any advantage for your company. It could be a whim or the lure of a big sporting event somewhere that interests you. How's that for decent working conditions. But that's not all because what will you do when you get old? Well, that's sorted too. You see, you're entitled to a pension from your last job, the one you're in and the next one you get too. And if all those pensions don't keep you in style, all previous jobs you had, have to be kept open for you to return to should you not like the company you're in. But if you don't avail of that, you still get the pension from those jobs too. The cheques will just be falling in the letterbox for you when you're old and your only problem will be bending down to pick them up. Isn't that great? And you get to retire sixteen years before everybody else. We can't say fairer than that.

And then there is the golden handshakes because we can't have you waiting for all those pesky cheques. A fellow needs hard cash and lots of it. Sums as high as half a million are available here for people who have really done a most awful job and the longer they've done so, the more they get. 

You'll have a clothes allowance to claim, free smartphones, pads and laptops ecry year, research funds to give away to friends and if you have no idea how to actually do your job, don't fret your little head. You'll have six figure sums to pay out to experts to do it for you and though there is a nominal cap on these funds, you can, apparently, ignore that kind of shite and just spend away because there really is no limit to the funds at your disposal. And none of the above is wrong because it is the golden example of our betters in Government. It is the blueprint for every workplace and they've shown us how. Oh, and the starting basic salary for novices is €80Kp.a.

Is that good Government example or what?