A Leadership Problem?

Two concerns about the public service census and its response

Last week The Post interviewed the Public Service Commissioner on his response to the results of the Public Sector Census. The interview didn’t exactly give much detail, so I thought I might get more depth on the PSC’s own site. I’m sorry – but the kind of reporting released there was an even bigger let-down.

Their news publication on the census itself lists some single stats, using the same language that we all know from staff surveys: “good news, we have some encouraging results!” followed by a few “areas of improvement”. This kind of sanitised language always sets on me edge, but my bigger issues is that there’s no interpretation, no commentary offered. They rattle off stats like “inefficient decision making (75%)”, “complicated or unnecessary business processes (73%)”, and “low appetite for risk/innovation (68%)” without giving us something to compare it to. Is that higher or lower than before? What is the development here, and how do you as specialists read this? That’s what I’d like to know, especially for a survey of this magnitude (44k responses!) I’m really hoping we’ll hear more still.

For now, we have to work with what we’re getting – and to me, that was two concerning signals of how the development of our public service will be addressed. So today I’ll work through that point by point.

“Preparing staff for the future”

The first quote of the commissioner’s comments in the Post article is:

“Good leaders prepare their staff for the future, and it’s a question I have for chief executives whether they feel they are doing that.”

Where does this come from, I wonder...?

This survey lists a whole lot of things that public servants see critically, mostly issues on operations, governance and risk-averse behaviour – which I assume were statements in the survey design that respondents ranked. I’ve even had a closer look at the census report on the open-ended comments (typically where you find some nuance), and the most common themes that people spoke to were “process and systems”, “staffing and resourcing”, and “organisational culture and values”. How do we get from those to “preparing”, and what for kind of “future"?

To me, “preparing staff for the future” sounds so personal. Like the staff are the object, and there’s an implied leadership failure where they don’t sufficiently steer them into whatever future is meant here.

I’m quite familiar with this thread in organisational change literature: that the realisation of a desired change depends on a leaders’ skill in convincing their staff to adopt a change or mindset, e.g. by “bringing them along on the journey”. And conversely, if a change goal is not met, it’s because staff have not been prepared well enough. So much of the academic literature in this field circles around the various leadership styles, communication strategies and engagement tools that leaders need to use to propel their staff into a desired direction.

One way to interpret these texts is that they fundamentally treat staff as objects to be coerced and manipulated in some form. Like a manual for which buttons to push on a robot to get it to waddle in the right direction, written by someone with a poor view of how human beings fail and function.

In such works, the value and righteousness of the intended change (here, “the future”) is self-evident, and any dissent from it is a failure to keep staff in line – not a potential sign that something is missing between intent and implementation.

You can tell I’m quite critical of such instructions, because I think they’re a flawed and patronising conception of leadership. But it’s less of an ideological problem for me, than a stunted understanding of human behaviour.

No leader, no matter how skilled, empathetic or serving, can “prepare” staff to act against their own interest, or to react positively to bad conditions.

Illustration that came up for “leader” Photo by Markus Spiske

So in the context of a survey that reports a whole host of sector problems, I’m confounded how one arrives at leaders not “preparing” staff well enough.

I have seen even very well-adjusted leaders flip the desk when they get the sense that their ideas for how their teams ought to change don’t seem to work. In the face of frustration, it can be easier to interpret unfavourable staff survey responses as symptoms of staff that “just don’t get it” – i.e. that have not sufficiently been drilled into seeing the great vision that the organisation has and “just get on with it”.

I can understand such frustration, and I know for sure there’s angry folk out there that throw rocks at any leadership initiative for change, regardless of any merit. But it’s also like shouting at a symptom to stop being a symptom, rather than wondering what the root cause might be.

Worst of all, it personalises issues that stem from systemic factors. So when we see staff raising issues on governance and process – we ought to switch out their leaders until they stop saying such things? Which leads me to the second point:

Asking the Chief Executives for action plans

The Commissioner has asked Executives to report back with their responses, “to engage, to understand what needs to be done, and if they can’t adjust things, they need to tell their staff why”.

Given his position, that’s an understandable action. The Executives report to him – he can’t do their jobs for them. A good leader sets expectations and allows their reports to work out how to meet them.

But I can’t help thinking back at Judith Collin’s “They don't want flow charts, frameworks, roadmaps, or bubble diagrams “. I’ve never agreed with her more, and I stand by my own comment around “not another operating model, please”.

Because, THAT is what I assume will be part of their responses: action plans, roadmaps, blueprints. And honestly – what else are they supposed to do?

Such a request from the very top creates urgency – they have to do something. And how can you show decisiveness and vision? By articulating what you will do, using the kind of strategy-language common in these spheres. And one of the most impactful ways to re-shuffle the deck is through the re-articulation and re-positioning of your organisation’s leadership via - you guessed it - restructures.

This is how our cycle of performative change is fed: some urgency trigger, make some kind of plan, take some action, fizzle out because the problems are wicked and a new urgency is knocking down the door, be ever-more weighed down by constant change and uncertainty, which adds to the next need for more reform.

I’m not saying the CE’s will jump to restructures straight away, but if you ever wonder why restructuring and similar forms of top-down change can feel like they’re constant when you work in the public sector - this is a major dynamic that drives that.

And I don’t write this to blame either the Commissioner not the CE’s for that. In light of the persistence of our sector issues, let’s ask this: is the PSC sufficiently positioned and resourced to deal with the problems that they identified in their census?

Missing Link?

In its current form, the PSC can diagnose issues in the public sector and put a spotlight on where something is not as it should be – but what can it actually do about it?

We know that there are some issues that need an all-of-government approach, so we have central agencies that are responsible for setting policy, as well as develop practical standards, guidelines and (to a small extent) provide active support, like DIA’s GCDO or MBIE’s AoG Procurement. It takes resource and legal leverage to fulfill such functions for the whole public sector, and I’d argue that at least the GCDO could do a lot more good if they had more of both (but that’s just me).

The census responses point to the same unwavering issues that ANY other analysis of public sector shows as well: operational processes, practices, decision-making and risk-aversion.

These are system-wide issues that may vary in their expression between agencies and functions, but they have shared root causes in the nature of public work. So why can we not treat these issues the same way we treat digital transformation or procurement practice and bring it practical advice and resolution into it?

For that’d we’d need the PSC to be much stronger positioned, resourced and leveraged, so that it can actively lead the development of systemic shifts on how we lead change inside public institutions. I’ve made the argument before:

We don’t need more piecemeal action plans; we need a stronger PSC!

Look across the pond where the Victoria state government has run an audit of the “Effectiveness of the Victorian Public Sector Commission“ , that begins by critically addressing the Department of Premier and Cabinet’s (DPC) position in it all:

“DPC could not demonstrate that it had adequately fulfilled its broader role as a portfolio department by systematically advising government about VPSC's performance, including VPSC's noncompliance with its legislated planning obligations.”

This was their reasoning why they needed to review their efficiency metrics and their approach for how this department was supporting and advising others better. Is that so wild to imagine here? Either at the PSC or perhaps the DPMC?

So is there a leadership problem?

Insofar as leaders are a powerful part of the system that keeps resisting change continuously - yes. But the comments on “preparing staff” and asking for responses make me seriously doubt that we have zeroed in on the neuralgic points in the public system that could actually lever us out of our sick cycle of performative change: the public service commission itself, and the accountability mechanisms that can give every player in the system more information, more foresight, more deliberation.