My Journey to Tingtibi - The Beginning of My Civil Service Career

Article Series

Bronze Medal

Series of Articles

Receiving the Bronze Medal for 10 years of service to the nation is a deeply meaningful milestone in my civil service journey. Through this article series, I will look back on the past decade, reflect on my contributions, and share the experiences, challenges, lessons, and growth that have shaped my service to the nation.

In 2014, I appeared for the Royal Civil Service Examination (RCSE). When the results were declared, I was fortunate to be selected into the civil service fraternity. Like many young graduates, I was excited to have secured a job without having to compete in the job market. At that time, I did not fully understand what it meant to take the oath of a civil servant or the responsibilities that came with it. I was simply happy and proud to be employed.

After the induction programme, the placement process began. Many in-service candidates had also qualified through the examination, and postings were allocated based on merit ranking. My first choice was the Trashigang Regional Office under the Department of Roads (now the Department of Surface Transport).

During oath-taking ceremony

However, things did not go as planned.

During the placement discussions, some adjustments became necessary. It was then that I heard the name "Tingtibi" for the very first time. Nobody seemed willing to go there. The officer who had initially selected Tingtibi was reluctant to take up the posting, and the situation became difficult to resolve.

After some discussion among ourselves, it became clear that the issue could only be settled if someone volunteered to take the Tingtibi posting. For the greater good of my friends and colleagues, I agreed to choose Tingtibi—a place I had never heard of before.

That decision marked the beginning of an unforgettable journey.

After completing the induction programmes conducted by the Ministry and the Department, I received a sheet of paper containing the contact details of the Chief Engineers under the various regional offices. Soon afterwards, I began my journey to my first posting.

The route from Thimphu to Gelephu was familiar to me, as I had travelled there before. The road beyond the Gelephu Tshachu Junction, however, was entirely new.

At the Gelephu taxi stand, I hired a taxi for Nu. 3,000. The driver was a middle-aged Nepali-speaking gentleman. With my few belongings loaded into the vehicle, we set off towards my new destination.

As we passed the Tshachu Chorten and entered unfamiliar territory, everything felt different. The vegetation reminded me of places where I had grown up, but the landscape and surroundings were completely new. The road wound through lush green forests, crossed scattered settlements, and climbed steadily through thick jungle.

Eventually, we reached Tamala, the highest point between Gelephu and Zhemgang. From there, the road descended, passing the large white chorten at Tama. After travelling further, we arrived at a small town.

"This is Tingtibi," the driver said.

We asked a passerby for directions to the Department of Roads office. Following the directions, we crossed a brown-coloured bridge and drove past a chorten. A few small shops lined the roadside. Then I saw a pink building with a signboard in front.

A smile appeared on my face.

Tingtibi RO as is seen today. 

"Here we are," said the driver.

At last, I had arrived at my destination—a place that had been completely unknown to me only a few weeks earlier.

After paying the driver, I unloaded my belongings from the Maruti van. Looking at my few possessions, he quietly remarked, "It is winter and it will be cold here." His words suggested that I had arrived without many of the necessities a newcomer would normally bring, such as blankets and warm bedding.

But I was content.

I had always believed that people could adapt to any situation and that there was always a way forward. With gratitude, I thanked the driver and waved goodbye.

Standing in front of the office, I took out the contact sheet and called the number I had been given. The officer answered and told me that he would come outside.

A minute later, I saw a gentleman wearing a black gho walking towards the entrance. He waved at me, and I followed him inside the office.

It was during office hours.

We shook hands as we met for the first time.

"Welcome," he said.

"Thank you," I replied.

After a brief pause, he looked at me and asked, "Is this your first day in the office? You are reporting in casual clothes?"

I smiled and explained, "Yes. I have come directly from my journey. Headquarters gave me your number, and I called as soon as I arrived."

After some formalities, I was introduced to the caretaker of the office. He showed me to a room that would become my accommodation. It was a small, shabby room filled with old documents and files. There was a bed pushed against one side of the wall and a small attached toilet.

It was far from luxurious, but it was mine.

That modest room marked the beginning of my life as a civil servant—a young officer starting his career in a completely unfamiliar place, far from home, with little more than determination, optimism, and the willingness to adapt.

Looking back today, that journey to Tingtibi was not just a transfer to a remote office. It was the first lesson of public service: sometimes the most meaningful journeys begin in places we never planned to go.

Leading for Strategic Impact in Bhutan’s Road Infrastructure Sector

1. Introduction

Module 2 has deepened my comprehension of effective strategic leadership within the Department of Surface Transport, building upon the reflective principles established in Module 1, which highlighted integrity, ethical decision-making, and adaptive leadership as key themes. Module 1 helped me deal with moral dilemmas, figure out how to deal with paradoxes, and move from making decisions based on rules to thinking in a more flexible way. Module 2 has pushed me to think more about the future, expand my mental models, and understand how leadership choices affect systems on a large scale.

The knowledge areas of systems thinking, future-back strategy, Herrmann Whole Brain Thinking, complexity leadership, creative problem solving, and customer journey mapping all sent the same message: strategic leadership isn't just about making better decisions today; it's also about making better systems for tomorrow.

This reflective writing explains how I plan to use these ideas in my leadership practice, especially when it comes to making strategic changes in Bhutan's road sector. I also list specific, measurable goals, deadlines, and possible problems. I know that making a lasting difference requires planning, discipline, and hard work.

2. Systems Thinking and Minimizing Unintended Consequences

One of the most important things I learned in Module 2 is that infrastructure decisions should be seen as part of a bigger system, not just as separate technical choices. In the past, I put a lot of effort into making sure that projects had good quality, stayed on budget, and finished on time. I didn't fully understand how design standards, community expectations, maintenance budgets, and environmental resilience all worked together.

Systems thinking revealed how well-intended decisions can produce unintended negative consequences. For example:

• Increasing road lengths while staying within a set budget can unintentionally make them less durable over time.
• If you don't think about drainage or slope stabilization enough, you may have to do maintenance work over and over again, which will hurt public trust.
• Overemphasis on construction targets can overshadow the transformational potential of preventative maintenance.

Dedication and a result that can be measured:

• By June 2026, I intend to develop a System Mapping Framework for Road Planning and Decision-Making, capturing linkages among geotechnical, financial, social, and environmental variables and send each engineer from Regional Offices and Divisions at RIM for the Design Thinking training. The proposal was already discussed with the department and RIM.
• By December 2026, I aim to pilot this system map in at least two regional offices, evaluating its effectiveness in predicting downstream implications.

Possible Problems:

• Resistance from teams accustomed to linear planning methods.
• Difficulty in gathering multi-disciplinary data for mapping.
• Limited tools or software resources.

To deal with these problems, we will need to build our capacity, hold collaborative workshops, and implement things step by step.

The Goling Bypass Highway

3. Envisioning the Future and Applying Future-Back Strategic Management

Learning to think from the future backward instead of just projecting current trends forward may have been the most important change. The infrastructure sector in Bhutan often works in a reactive way, fixing roads after they break, changing plans when budgets are cut, or changing plans when political priorities change. Thinking about the future makes you more proactive.

I developed a 10-year aspiration for Bhutan’s road sector:
“By 2035, Bhutan will operate a resilient, climate-adaptive, and digitally enabled road network with predictable maintenance cycles, reduced disruption days, and 30% optimized life-cycle costs.”

The future-back strategy made me set goals that I needed to reach this vision, like:

• introducing digital asset management tools,
• making research and development stronger for materials that can handle climate change,
• institutionalizing maintenance culture, and
• making project planning better with data and foresight.

Promise and a way to measure success:

• By December 2025, write and give the Department a 2035 Future-Back Road Sector Strategy (Strategic Transformation Roadmap, which I am currently working on) that includes climate resilience, digital systems, and building human capacity.

Challenges anticipated:

• Getting different groups of people to agree on a long-term vision when funding is only available for a short time.
• Changes in politics or budget problems can cause deviations.

This necessitates continuous communication, evidence-based persuasion, and organized stakeholder involvement.

4. Identifying and Replacing the “Used Future”

One important idea from Module 2 was the "used future," which is when old ways of doing things that no longer work but keep going because people are used to them. I thought a lot about parts of our department where used futures are still around:

1. Overreliance on traditional construction materials even when climate-resilient alternatives exist.
2. Annual budgeting patterns that only last for a short time and make it hard to manage assets over the long term.
3. Prioritizing road length over performance as the dominant political and technical metric.
4. Monitoring and evaluation systems that still use paper, even though there are digital tools available.

Commitment and a way to measure success:

• By 2027, get rid of at least three practices that are currently in use through policy proposals, advocacy, and pilot projects.
• Use lifecycle budgeting, performance-based metrics, and digital workflows instead.

Potential challenges:

• Institutional inertia.
• How people think new technologies are risky.
• Need for support at higher levels of policy.

Recognizing used futures, on the other hand, makes it clear what needs to change.

5. Being the leader in Complexity

Module 2 made it clear that the road infrastructure sector is naturally complicated because of geography, climate change, political expectations, community needs, and tight budgets. To lead in such a complicated situation, you need to be humble, willing to try new things, and open to solutions that aren't perfect but are getting better.

Applying complexity leadership:

• I will support safe-to-fail experiments, like trying out new ways to mix pavement or drain water on small pilot sites.
• I will stop trying to control all the variables and instead learn from patterns that come up.
• I will encourage adaptive monitoring instead of linear planning. This means changing what you do based on feedback in real time.

Specific milestone:

• By 2026, should have pilot at least three safe-to-fail projects up and running. Use the Probe–Sense–Respond model to see how well they can be scaled.

Possible Problems:

• Fear of failure among teams.
• It's hard to set aside resources for experimental work.

It will be very important to create a safe and open learning environment.

Another section of Goling Bypass Highway

6. Herrmann Whole Brain Thinking

Another useful thing I learned was how to understand my own cognitive preferences and those of my coworkers. My initial inclinations are situated in the Analytical (Blue) and Practical (Green) quadrants. They are useful for making engineering decisions, but they stifle creativity and human-centered ways of doing things.

Module 2 stressed the importance of using the Red (Relational) and Yellow (Experimental) quadrants on purpose in order to be a balanced leader. These insights will change the way I talk to people, lead, and work with others.

My commitments:

• When planning meetings for a project, make sure that all four quadrants are covered: data analysis, operational planning, creative ideation, and people implications.
• By 2027, each regional office should hold at least one HBDI team workshop to improve collaboration between brains.

Key challenges:

• Some people on the team might think that cognitive diversity isn't important for engineering.
• To keep people on board, you need to show them real value.

7. Iterative Creative Problem Solving

The iterative design thinking model—define, empathize, ideate, prototype, test—directly helps me solve hard problems with infrastructure. I now see the value of cycles of experimentation and improvement instead of jumping straight to technical solutions.

Improving drainage in areas that get a lot of rain is a good example. In the past, the usual way to do things was to give out a standard design. I want to do the following with iterative problem solving:

• map drainage issues with communities,
• think of several options,
• prototype small sections of innovative channels or culverts,
• improve based on feedback from the monsoon, and
• scale up only after validation.

Commitment:

• By the middle of 2026, the Department should have a 5-step iterative problem-solving process in place, starting with pilot areas that are prone to landslides and surface failures.

Zalamchu Bridge on Thimphu - Trashigang Highway

8. Problem Formulation and Finding Root Cause

Module 2 stressed that poorly framed problems lead to solutions that don't work or cost too much. I went back to problems that kept coming up, like roads that broke down too soon, using tools like the 5 Whys and Fishbone Diagrams. Root cause analysis revealed deeper systemic contributors instead of just blaming them on "poor contractor performance."

• insufficient design investigations,
• weak site supervision,
• not taking into account extreme weather,
• not enough time between maintenance cycles.

A goal that can be acted on:

• By January 2027, all major failures must have mandatory Root Cause Analysis (RCA) protocols and standardized reporting templates.

Problem:

• People might first think that RCA is about finding faults. To lessen this, I plan to make RCA a tool for learning instead of a way to blame people.

9. Brainstorming Methods for Creative Problem Solving

Module 2 taught structured brainstorming methods like SCAMPER, brainwriting, and reverse brainstorming. These tools will be very useful for coming up with other ways to solve problems with road design, maintenance, and safety.

To make creative brainstorming a part of the culture:

• Project teams will apply at least one structured brainstorming method during the conceptualization of every major project by 2026.
• A digital idea board (Miro) will be tested for sharing new ideas across regions.

Challenges:

• Brainstorming sessions may not happen because of time limits.
• Teams might stick with ideas they already know.

Over time, regular help will make creative thinking normal.

10. Customer Journey Mapping (CJM) and figuring out what User Wants

Customer Journey Mapping was one of the most eye-opening tools from Module 2. It shows how real people, like road users, local communities, contractors, and maintenance crews, have used the service.

Through CJM, I recognized that users judge road performance based on:

• safety during monsoon seasons,
• comfort while riding,
• travel time reliability,
• availability of information on blockages or diversions,
• quick restoration after landslides.

This realization has led me to believe that engineering excellence is not sufficient; we must design the entire road experience.

Commitments:

• Starting in 2026, do at least four CJM exercises a year, focusing on roads and routes that get a lot of traffic and complaints.
• Integrate these insights into design briefs and maintenance plans.

Anticipated challenges:

• Engineering teams may initially find CJM “too qualitative.”
• Sometimes, users' expectations are higher than what resources are available.

It will be very important to communicate clearly and make sure everyone is on the same page.

11. Integrating Module 2 Learnings with Module 1 Values

It's clear that Module 1 and Module 2 are connected:

• Module 1 taught me how to be an honest, ethical, and flexible leader.
• Module 2 gave me the tools I needed to change systems, think about the future, and plan interventions that would have an effect.

Ethical leadership tells us why we do what we do. Strategic leadership decides what we do. They work together to make lasting change.

While I use systems thinking, complexity leadership, and customer-centric approaches, I will stay true to the RIGHT framework and the moral values I learned in Module 1.

Picture of ongoing construction of recently completed Khuru Khuenphen bridge

12. Conclusion

Module 2 has strengthened my determination to improve Bhutan's road infrastructure decision-making by moving it beyond just following the rules and into a place of foresight, creativity, moral responsibility, and design that puts the user first. I now understand that leadership for strategic impact requires both analytical rigor and human sensitivity, whether it's using systems thinking to reduce unintended consequences, coming up with a strategy for the future from 2035, getting rid of used futures, experimenting with complexity, or understanding user journeys.

Each of my commitments has a clear outcome and deadline, which means they are real steps toward making these principles a part of my work. I also recognize the real-world problems that make things harder, like institutional inertia, limited data, time constraints, and cognitive biases. But the core of strategic leadership is not the lack of problems; it's the ability to deal with them with clarity, bravery, and flexibility.

As I continue on this path to becoming a better leader, I want to do more than just build roads. I want to build systems that are strong, cultures that are creative, and leadership styles that are moral and ready for the future. This way, I help Bhutan reach its national goal of building infrastructure that is sustainable, works well, and puts the needs of citizens first.

Submitted by:                Sangay Duba

Executive Engineer

20150105089

Cohort 22

 

Hope on the Distant Horizon

For the celebration of the Bhutanese New Year, I went to the shore. The shore was dusty, dry, and cold. There were sounds of birds chirping. I looked up and saw flocks soaring high in the sky. Far distant, as I lowered my gaze, I saw the bright sun offering a comforting warmth. Here, I contemplate my thoughts, realizing we have a long way to go... 
Far beyond the horizon, you rise bright. Here, in the dryness of winter cold, I stare. Ponder my thoughts beyond, to achieve might, And vow that none shalt stand who does not dare. 

The bright sun from the shore.