As published in The Mandarin September 27, 2024 by John Glenn and Kylie Pezdirc
If we want the best possible public sector, we need more leaders questioning what has always been done. Not to seek consensus, but to challenge it. To challenge themselves.
The status quo is yesterday’s answer to today’s problem. Consensus is the pathway to mediocrity. The opposite of courage isn’t cowardice, it’s conformity (Rollo May, 1909-1994).
Managers find a pathway through the jungle of bureaucracy. Leaders choose the jungle.
Jungle is a euphemism for strategy. Managers deliver a process. Leaders choose change. They set objectives that will take an organisation to a better place, defined by a better outcome, and give guidance on how to get there.
Choose to lead and you will be swimming against the tide. You will be confronting history and entrenched views. It will be a little unsafe, but being too safe is unsafe for a leader.
It will be hard, nerve wracking, challenging, stressful, and probably resisted. That’s why it takes courage.
Some people are seemingly born fearless, but we shouldn’t confuse rashness with courage. Truly courageous people are the ordinary putting themselves in the circumstances where they do something extraordinary. Bravery is choosing to face your fears.
Most of us learn courage. We abseil by starting with a small drop, not the tallest cliff. Scuba divers start in a swimming pool where they can stand up until they have confidence to venture deeper.
We don’t learn by ourselves, we seek a coach. Someone with experience, and insight into how change will unfold. They might not have crossed that road before, but they know how to cross roads. Experience matters.
Those who have never ventured outside their comfort zones aren’t going to help. They will pull you back. Those who built todays systems are, most likely, going to defend them. Why wouldn’t they? After all they are the architects of the past. For most, change will be challenging and unwelcome. It’s a leader’s job to help them along the path.
It’s not that people won’t change, usually it’s because they don’t know how, or where they are going. Its fear of the unknown, fear of failure, lack of trust, loss of stature, loss of control, negative past experience, and dissonance with widely held values and beliefs.
Workplaces with entrenched cultures, mindsets and perspectives are naturally resistant to change, particularly innovation. Constant tweaking, without a coherent pathway, leads to disjointed, siloed teams and band-aided processes. Fragmentation delivers inefficiency and complexity, not just driving up cost but also frustration and disillusionment. People want to do good work, and they become disenfranchised when “Frankenstein” practices prevent them.
Leaders must have the courage to show the way, to instil confidence with a well-articulated, sensible plan. You lead organisations with small steps, until their confidence is high, and their fears lessened—then they will follow you more readily into the unknown.
Take small steps, not giant leaps for mankind. The elephant of big change is eaten a bite at a time, but the bites need to add up.
You need a strategy.
Those with even a modest military background talk strategy. Business gurus ooze strategy from the pores of their skin. Sun Tzu was morphed from a Chinese General circa 500 BCE best known for his work “The Art of War” to a prophet for modern management strategists who apply his principles of warfare to business. Literally hundreds of thousands of books and articles with titles like “7 Business Lessons from the Art of War”, “The Art of War – a 13 Point Plan for Mastering Business Strategy”, and “7 Powerful Lessons Sun Tzu can teach you”. The list seems endless.
Then there is the need to be a strategist, because it’s somehow more important, more elevated. Hardly a business leader who doesn’t seek to have strategy in their business title somewhere.
So many strategies, so many strategic advisers, so little successful strategy.
I’m in the business of getting hard things done. Projects in disrepair, procurements off the rails, initiatives that are urgent, programs with multiple, opinionated stakeholders, and almost never with authority. I’m a strategist, but I need a special type of strategy. I need strategies focussed on getting things done.
You don’t need to be a movie director to know a movie is rubbish. It’s the same with strategy. Richard Rumelt, the author of “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy”, calls out the rise of bad strategy as a social contagion, the description of ambitious outcomes. They are unhelpful.
He suggests strategy is problem solving. It is how you overcome the obstacles standing between you and your objective. In my world, where success is only measured by “getting stuff done”, building strategies that get that stuff done are essential.
What makes a good, “get stuff done”, strategy?
You need to know your destination, or you don’t know when you have arrived. You need to know what “good” is, or you won’t recognise when you and your team have achieved it. These objectives aren’t necessarily detailed, or immovable. Equally, though, if they keep moving, they probably aren’t strategic.
Business strategists are focussed on competition: winning. They look for strengths and weaknesses, gaps and opportunities. It’s harder for the public sector, because competition is absent. The public sector works for a social good.
You need to create your own standards, in effect compete against yourself.
In a broader organisation or more general policy group, setting a goal is more complex. The question you need to answer is “what am I striving for that is better than today, and how do I know when I’ve reached it? This means diagnosing the core challenge, then setting policy and defining coherent actions.
You can layer a complex objective:
You have strategies within strategies. Strategies are the province of the top; they are the strength of leaders at all levels. They just get broader and more complex the closer you are to the top.
A strategy has two other elements:
A better public sector isn’t going to happen simply by reducing the reliance on contractors and consultants. The public service needs to be better at public service delivery. You can’t be better if you don’t know what better looks like, or how to get there. More people aren’t better, better outcomes are better.
You earn trust. It’s not only integrity and ethics – it’s being able to trust you with the nation’s money, with our future. The only reaction to the negativity that is often targeted is to prove you are better.
Strategy, objectives, executable plans, measures of success will defeat the naysayers.
Start with diagnosing the problem you, and your organisation face. Set an objective, a complex one if necessary. Ensure they have standards. Execute, and then show your success.
If you would like to talk about how you might do this, feel free to give us a call. If you have the courage to try, we have the courage to help.
We are on the lookout for those who can deliver outcomes, not just activity – could that be you? Why don’t you find out?
Available RolesIf past approaches haven’t worked, it might be time to try something new. Talk to us about what we have done, and what we might do for you.
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