Public sector leadership in quiet times: readiness

I wrote a Wednesday Wisdom last week, that I had to do an emergency withdrawal for on Tuesday night, after the Prime Minister’s COVID announcement. I talked about the uncertainty in our current environment, and how a changing public sector was more important now than ever to step up and lead through it. It was a long one, and a good one, but it felt hugely inappropriate once the landscape changed.

I just re-read it, and I’ve changed my mind. Every word still counts, although the dates are probably off. Time is funny – everything changes, but at the same time it all stays the same.

Enjoy.

It feels a bit odd to be in New Zealand right now. Life feels close to normal here, while the rest of the world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket. It also feels completely different, in ways we can’t necessarily describe, but we can intuitively feel.

I went to Hanmer Springs for a few days last week. It was the same as it’s always been, except for all the ways that it wasn’t. The pools were busy. The restaurants were full. But everything was touched by change.

What a baffling and uncertain context. This is how crisis seems to go, isn’t it? Whether it’s public, professional or personal. Some things stay eerily, persistently the same. Work needs doing. Lunches need making. Emails need answering. At the same time, nothing feels the same. Every decision we make is tinged with uncertainty and strangeness.

The success of New Zealand’s pandemic response was due to unparalleled commitment at every level. There was no room for hedging. No way to be half-in. No what-about-ism. No greed. No selfishness. No grandstanding. Once we were in, we were in.

We didn’t know the future then, and we still don’t. Nobody does. We certainly didn’t know what was coming after we hit the shutters. It wasn’t what everyone else was doing, but that didn’t matter, did it? We knew what was right, we knew it would be hard, and we had the courage to knuckle down. It’s the New Zealand Way.

Our lives have changed forever, in ways we haven’t fully understood yet. It may all be for nothing in the end. But that’s not how we judge a good decision. We might have another fight on our hands in 3, 6, or 12 months, but we can’t let that fear stop us from doing what’s right.

Last week, we talked about finding the balance between the now and the new. The nexus is in the next - the things we’re always fixing, changing, building, trying and learning. Here’s the secret: we’re always in the next. Always. As soon as we’re better, we see how much further there is to go. Sometimes it’s big, obvious, jarring, inescapable and turns everything upside down. Other times it isn’t. It’s quiet, insidious and shifty.

We need to be careful of the quiet times. It’s much easier to be a hero in a crisis than it is to be open, aware and committed in the quiet. It’s easy to push for transformation when the sh*t hits the fan. When we capsize, we can be the best version of ourselves. It’s much harder to keep things in the open and rock the boat when everything is going OK.

Last week saw the passage of the new Public Service Act. After decades of contractual, siloed public management, we’re changing the game. After years of doing our best, in our own corners, in a system that wasn’t working how we needed it to, doing what looks good and silencing our fears, trying hard and coming up short, we’re trying something new.

It’s not going to be easy. We need a completely different approach to how we tackle the hardest, deepest, ugliest stuff. The stuff that doesn’t feel good to acknowledge and is easier to put in the too-hard basket. It’s an uncomfortable dissonance. We’re a good country, doing our best, with many good things to show for it. Yet our children are still dying, our families are still struggling and our environment is still suffering.

We need a new commitment to tackling what lies beneath the surface. Real acknowledgement of how we keep setting ourselves up to fail, because we don’t know how to work together and we’re too busy protecting our patch. It’s time. The stakes are high and the conditions are right. While we still realise how important that leadership is, before the memory of our latest crisis fades, we need to commit.

It’s OK that we’re changing things. We’ve been battling away, with flaws and unintended consequences, and that’s OK too. Our now is rarely the result of ineptitude or personal failing. Our now is rarely unreasonable. Our now is the way we’ve had to respond in the past, for reasons that make sense, and it served us… until it didn’t.

And it doesn’t anymore. The future, which we never know and never will, will depend on showing the same courage we’ve demonstrated in the last few months. A commitment to working together, putting away the scorecard and self-protection and closing the gap between what we think and what we do. To stop pointing the finger and hiding behind our titles, our identities, our barriers and our differences and get real about change.

The next is here. The new is within reach.

But there’s work to do.

The new can be anything we need it to be. It can be open. It can be collaborative. It can tackle the hard stuff. It can be focused on what really matters. But it won’t happen by accident. It needs us to do the work. It needs us to build the systems, support and accountability that will guard us against our most deeply ingrained behaviours.

The bones are there – we have a new rulebook, a new structure and a lot of goodwill. The devil will be in the detail.

The detail needs commitment. It needs readiness. It needs you.

Are you ready?