A Passion for Leadership
Lessons on Change and Reform from Fifty Years of Public Service
Editorial Review
Everybody hates bureaucracies, even those who work in them. No one set out to make bureaucracies the enemy of ordinary people, resistant to change, impervious to new realities, and incompetent. Few if any individuals choose public service as a career because they want to make life miserable for people or to work for some hapless bureaucracy. Indeed, I can attest from decades of working with talented and dedicated public servants that the opposite is often true. And yet, the humorist Will Rogers said decades ago, “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”
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Wisdom to Share
No one set out to make bureaucracies the enemy of ordinary people, resistant to change, impervious to new realities, and incompetent.
Few if any individuals choose public service as a career because they want to make life miserable for people or to work for some hapless bureaucracy.
The obstacles to cutting costs and becoming more onerous for the public sector leaders in both the public and private sectors face multiple barriers to innovation and reform to cope with new and changing circumstances.
Visionary leaders at all levels can discern a different and better future for the organization, no matter its size, and can map a realistic path to attaining that future.
To be successful agents of change, leaders not only must be able to envision a new way forward but must also be practical, with the skill to build broad support and implement their vision.
To govern well requires two distinct kinds of ability: political skill and the administrative mind. Both are very rare, either in combination or separately.
Armed with clearly defined goals for change, a new leader will be tempted to plunge ahead and let the chips fall where they may.
For successful change at every kind of institution in both the private and the public sectors, a leader must win the support of those in the trenches who deliver the mission of the organization.
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