Induction Training of newly appointed Directors at the Kenya School of Government in Kabete
To enhance Economic Planning in the Country, the government through the Public Service Commission has appointed 47 Directors of Economic Planning who will serve at the State Department for Economic Planning.
Another group of 47 Economists have been promoted to the level of Principal Economist to support the Directors in the execution of the wider mandate of the National and sectoral Economic Planning.
The appointments of these two cadres will enrich the State Department for Economic Planning mandate of supporting County development Economic Planning.
The State Department develops and provides guidelines for County Integrated Development Plans (CIDPs) and the guidelines for the development of government Strategic Plans for uniformity and harmony in planning among Ministries, departments and Agencies.
In the last one week, the appointed directors spent their seven days at the Kenya School of Government in Kabete, where they undertook an intensive course in leadership development programme.
The State Department for Economic Planning Principal Secretary James Muhati closed the training on Tuesday 22/8/2023.
The training was meant to induct them on the roles and expectations of where they were placed. They shared ideas and experiences which turned out to be beneficial for everyone.
The training was also expected to make the directors come out as better public servants who will be relied upon by the citizens to deliver on the promises of the government in coming up with concrete and implementable plans that speak to creation of more jobs, poverty reduction and improved livelihoods among many other areas.
In a well thought presentation, the PS took them through a generalized overview of what goes on at the State Department, the vision, mission, mandate, functions, unbundled mandate and also gave a short history of Economic Planning in Kenya.
Giving a traditional analogy of a racing competition between the Hare and the Tortoise, the PS demonstrated to the directors that success is attained through delivering as one, avoiding unhealthy competition, engaging in consultations, building trust and continuously improving working relationships with all staff.
The PS creatively used the tortoise and hare’s competition story to vividly inform the directors of their expectations. The main moral of his story was that, it is good to be individually brilliant and to have strong core competencies; but unless one is able to perform in a team and harness each other’s core competencies, the performance will always be below average. He said that in life, it is appropriate to work hard, change our strategies along, and use different methods to improve performance in the specialized fields. Teams perform much better when they compete against the situation instead of competing against each other.
The PS urged the directors to embrace teamwork, integrity and leadership, apply key operating principles such as regular communication and respect for one another, meeting the Performance Contracts objectives, creating operational excellence and most importantly marketing the State Department for Economic Planning through informing stakeholders what the State Department is implementing.
The Director’s Class President, Dr. Isaiah Kipyegon thanked the PS for keeping them in mind and giving them an opportunity to train together as a team before reporting to their respective departments. He said that the relationships they have established will help them create synergy and collaboration whenever they are placed to serve.
Dr. Kipyegon also said that they acquired the necessary tools and skills for service delivery from the training. He thanked the school for giving them top class Resource Persons for their training. The participants were looking forward to apply what they learnt and plan for the government.
The Human Resource and Development, Director for the State Department for Economic Planning, Mr. Charles Ahenda congratulated the directors for their promotion and thanked them for cooperating and accepting to attend the training, even though they received the invitation in a short notice. He thanked the KSG team for accepting the participants and organizing the training programme.
Mr. Ahenda was also grateful to the PS for facilitating the training despite the limited training resources.
The KSG Deputy Director Dr. Lukia stated that the participants were the first cohort for training in this newly introduced programme adding that by being pioneers of the cohort, they are now up to the task to take up responsibilities as directors. She told the participants that they were privileged to attain those positions but they still had huge obligations and expectations to deliver with excellence.
She outlined three components of a high performing team which include; a high performing individual, understanding one’s team and facilitating the team. She called upon everyone to be good ambassadors of KSG in order to enable the National and County Governments to push their agendas.
In attendance were Heads of Directorates and Departments at the State Department for Economic Planning and the Kenya School of Government.
