New leadership for new times?

The days of central command and control are over. The future means a devolved approach to government with network structures and greater use of private and civil society collaborative arrangements. Government departments will have a new role as coordinators, leading the direction of policy. This will be a sea change in the way government operates. It will have major implications for the way the public sector is led and for the type of leader needed to make it work.

What will public sector leaders need?

There will need to be a new cadre of public sector leaders properly equipped to rise fully to these challenges. At the very least they will need:

• a premium given to the skills of leading and managing complex organisations – and creating and driving organisational agility
• the capacity to create a vision of where the public sector is going – shaping the agenda and communicating it with passion, commitment and authenticity.
• a real understanding of the new social context – which will mean getting hands dirty through frontline experience
• a genuine readiness to engage with staff – not in a top down, authoritarian way but through being open and responsive
• sufficient self confidence to implement real change – but in a collaborative and co-productive rather than overbearing way
• Technical know-how – including project management capabilities, the ability to understand the role of engagement, an understanding of performance management and a grounding in finance and accounting practices. Whilst the need for these skills has been recognised for some time, they are still not sufficiently embedded.

None of this will happen without fundamental changes in how public sector leaders are developed. People will have to move in and out of public service, getting experience from different organisations and situations. Working on the front line close to the public, with other sectors and in large people management environments will be essential as will be experience in driving forward change agendas. Public sector leaders will need to move away from the trappings of power – and the distancing that creates – and get stuck into multiple networking. This will have to be underpinned with coaching and mentoring and exposure to broader skills such as organisation design, team building and conflict resolution.

Professional career planning and development

None of this is rocket science but that doesn’t mean it will be quickly welcomed with open arms by a public sector sometimes slow to embrace change. The bottom line though is that there has to be a more professional and targeted approach to career planning and development which is more specialised, focused and experiential and draws from a deeper well of talent and knowledge. This can come from within the organisations and encourage a more open minded and creative use of the talent they already have. In spite of the recruitment freeze, this has not discouraged potential applicants from the fast streamers. There are now more applications received than ever before. The relationship between politicians and public servants will also impact on leadership and effective delivery. Greater emphasis on innovation in policy making and delivery underpins the coalition’s agenda which, to succeed, will depend upon close interconnecting relationships between politicians, administrators and those delivering at the frontline, drawing on each other’s strengths. There is a lot of difficult work for everyone to do but with the right entrepreneurial, opportunity focused mindsets and a determination to succeed, the prize potentially is there for the taking.