The note sent around a fortnight ago (June 12, 2026) underlines the need to improve every year, to get the “small things” right, and to “pause and revisit” matters which may seem “routine”. The Cabinet Secretary asked Secretaries to circulate the guide on holding effective meetings, drawn up by the National Centre for Good Governance (NCGG), to all civil servants. The Cabinet Secretariat, along with the NCGG, would circulate similar guides on various topics. The conduct of meetings was chosen as the first topic as meetings take up a lot of time in an officer’s day.

Dr T V Somanathan also wrote that several middle-ranking officers had told him that they were happy with the subject-matter training being imparted to them, but needed more practical advice on “so-called routine matters”. “’Routine’, though it may seem boring, is often extremely important and, thus, during our long careers in the civil service, we may need to pause and revisit it.”

It would be useful for civil servants to ask themselves if they were improving each year or simply going down the beaten path. “If we are simply following a beaten track, then towards the end of our career, we may be faced with the question of whether our experience was ’30 years’ experience’ or ‘one year’s experience repeated 30 times’,” he wrote.

The 10-page guide on holding meetings starts with the basics, including being clear about why a meeting is being called, who is to be called and the timing. It advises that if the purpose can be achieved through email, phone or text messages, then a meeting should be avoided.

If certain specific opinions, including on sensitive issues, are needed, then “calling a meeting may not be helpful as people may suffer from ‘herd mentality’ and they may not come out with their inspiring ideas in an open meeting because no one wants to upset the status quo. In such cases, a one-to-one interaction may be more fruitful.”