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Ethos Issue 6, Jul 2009
Leadership at a Time of Crisis
Peter Shergold
Execution is the second essential
leadership quality required of civil
servants. Once government has made
its decisions, it is the job of its public
administrators to deliver them with
vigour and commitment. A brilliant
policy, poorly executed, is probably
far more damaging to governments
than having no policy at all. That is
why I placed much greater emphasis
on project management skills when
I led the Australian Public Service. It
is also the reason I set up a Cabinet
Implementation Unit in the Prime
Minister’s Department to oversee and
report on the manner in which policy
decisions were being delivered.
The third leadership quality on which
I set high store is persistence. Ministers
love to announce new initiatives. Civil
servants enjoy mastering the latest
acronyms. Training courses like to
exhibit their cutting-edge credentials
by showing familiarity with the latest
mantras of management gurus.
There is nothing inherently wrong
with any of this. Better to have civil
servants understand that ongoing
organisational change and political
ambiguity is an inherent feature of their
working environment than to have them
believe that the goal of “best practice” can
be reached and turned into a comforting
status quo—especially at a time of
crisis, the dimensions and directions
of which are never precisely known. The ever-present danger, however,
is that new approaches are embraced
and then discarded before they have
had sufficient chance to work.
The good civil servant has the
resilience to overcome administrative
obstacles and to extract every last dollar
of value from the policy hand they have
been given to play. Persistence in the
face of adversity is a quality that serves
leaders particularly well at a time when
the exigencies of crisis management
twist and turn the normal processes
of government. Thought and planning
need to be balanced with action and
implementation. Civil service is as much
perspiration as inspiration.
A fourth quality, and one whose
significance I have only slowly come to
appreciate, is authenticity. During the
two decades I was an Australian
“mandarin”, the role changed
significantly. The quasi-monopoly which
characterised the working relationship
between Secretaries (or Director-
Generals) and their Ministers a
generation ago has been transformed.
The Westminster tradition has been
made over. Ministers now appoint their
own politically-sympathetic advisors.
The lobbying of industry, unions
and professional organisations has
become more skilled. Not-for-profit
organisations are now more important
as contracted deliverers of government
services, a development which (on
balance) has probably increased the
persuasiveness of their advocacy. Policy
think-tanks have emerged. In short,
the making and outsourcing of public
policy implementation has become
increasingly competitive.
Exciting opportunities are presented
by the emergence of “network
governance”. Civil servants need to
collaborate with a growing array of state
actors. They need to be able to negotiate,
with goodwill, in an environment of
asymmetrical power (for the civil service
remains a centrally positioned, wellresourced
and highly influential player).
The situation demands well-honed
communication and facilitation skills,
leaders who are able and willing to
manage relationships rather than simply
ensure compliance with contracts.
I now appreciate that collaborative
leadership requires something more.
Extolling the values of work-life balance,
I failed to recognise adequately the
important relationship between the
two spheres and the manner in which
it could define the quality of personal
leadership. Civil servants have whole
lives: they are parents and community
volunteers, with wide-ranging hobbies,
interests and enthusiasms. They are an
integral part of the networks that create
civil society.
Far too often the experience that
they have gained outside the civil service
workplace is inadequately applied to their
management behaviours within it. The
value of “life” goes unrecognised even
by themselves. Many times have I seen
civil servants talk about the rising cost
of aged care, the inadequate provision
of mental health services or the moralesapping
impact of unemployment without
ever explicitly recognising the realworld
knowledge that they have of
these issues. My view is that when the
going gets tough, authenticity is vital.
The civil service requires leaders who
have the good sense and the emotional
intelligence to bring their complete
self to the development and delivery of
public policy. Evidence-based decisionmaking
is not just a matter of book
learning, Internet searching or formal
training. It means using one’s own life to
imagine standing in the shoes of others.
Finally, the civil service requires
leaders who want to be civil servants. Pride in vocation is important. It means
understanding (and conveying to others)
the value of maintaining traditional
values within high-performing public
administrations. Crises are nearly always
accompanied by increased political
pressure. At such times, there is a
need to preserve values such as public
accountability, the honesty and integrity
of decision-making, appointments based
upon merit and always acting with
propriety within the law.
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