After four generations, there is a change in thinking and in work ethics which will pose problems for future leaders.
To understand government, one must understand the civil service. The Malaysian public services comprise around 1.6 million employees across ministries and agencies. The figure includes the military.
There is a hierarchy of rank in the public services, spanning some 25 levels from clerk to director-general and secretary-general. Civil servants are usually on tenured employment; once they are confirmed as permanent staff, they have a lifelong career and a pension at retirement. They witnessed Merdeka as adolescents, and generally had a strong work ethic, using their knowledge and experience to serve and develop the nation.Most senior positions and those in upper middle management are now in the hands of Gen X. Gen Xers also have a strong work ethic and have kept the system intact. They have tended to be more pragmatic and thus more political than their former bosses.
Millennials see KPIs or key performance indexes as their objectives. As long as issues and objectives are clearly defined, Millennials will work towards those goals. Ambiguity is not liked.Millennials are also products of the local education system, which slants the way they see issues. The civil service is now much more a bastion of conformity and compliance. Being outspoken is not a positive trait.
Work ethics will also be very different, especially when the Gen Xers leave the top echelon of the service, over the coming decade. The next generation of the civil service may be much more rules based, than project based than it had been in the past.