Thoughtful and balanced. If only we had more of this in the public arena. A classic is Wellington Water. In my view this all comes down to a failure of central government to take on reform in local government. Auckland had a full Royal Commission to allow it to become a proper city, and it has benefited hugely - including turning WaterCare into a proper, independent, professional organisation that can get on and do the work required without political interference, but subject to (one hopes) proper scrutiny and accountability. Wellington had the chance to become a single city some time ago - courtesy of Fran Wilde -but as always parochial interests obstructed it, and so you are stuck with a mess of poorly performing organisations and a region and a city that is suffering accordingly.
If you want something professional on public service organisations, try the UK think tank The Institute of Government https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/. It's UK-focussed, but has generic suggestions - for example, they suggest that public service CEOs should be expected to turn over 1-2% of personnel (annually? not sure), with emphasis being on poor performers. Otherwise they never get weeded out and it is the high performers who look elsewhere.
Quick question; is there a canon (or recommendations) you're aware of for getting up to speed on civil service excellence? Have read some about Northcote Trevelyan, Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs, Dominic Cummings, and the like, but have been stumped trying to find the sort of case studies that show off these systems in practice. If you could point me in the right direction, would be greatly appreciated.
Hi there. The public sector obviously has an enormous scope and breadth of activities, so there's no single resource that I can point to. Is there a particular area you're interested in?
As I've alluded to above, much of best practice at the moment is in the private sector. I think Claire Hughes Johnson's 'Scaling People' is the best manual for daily, weekly, quarterly management. On the strategic leadership side, look to Amazon honestly. 'The Bezos Blueprint' by Carmine Gallo for strategic comms. 'How Big Things Get Done' by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner is a good starting point for project management, with plenty of case studies.
Meanwhile, I know Cummings has recommended Alanbrooke's War Diaries and Groves' 'Now It Can Be Told' - these are excellent studies into the daily challenges of a public 'executive' atop a huge bureaucracy trying to deliver enormous projects while managing/taking direction from politicians, etc.
Again, let me know if there are particular policy areas you're interested in, and I might be able to recommend something. I have written about some of the world-leading work Taiwan's public sector is doing, particularly in healthcare, metro design, and digital monitoring/automation. My Taiwan round-up (with an index to the other essays) is here:
Thoughtful and balanced. If only we had more of this in the public arena. A classic is Wellington Water. In my view this all comes down to a failure of central government to take on reform in local government. Auckland had a full Royal Commission to allow it to become a proper city, and it has benefited hugely - including turning WaterCare into a proper, independent, professional organisation that can get on and do the work required without political interference, but subject to (one hopes) proper scrutiny and accountability. Wellington had the chance to become a single city some time ago - courtesy of Fran Wilde -but as always parochial interests obstructed it, and so you are stuck with a mess of poorly performing organisations and a region and a city that is suffering accordingly.
If you want something professional on public service organisations, try the UK think tank The Institute of Government https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/. It's UK-focussed, but has generic suggestions - for example, they suggest that public service CEOs should be expected to turn over 1-2% of personnel (annually? not sure), with emphasis being on poor performers. Otherwise they never get weeded out and it is the high performers who look elsewhere.
Quick question; is there a canon (or recommendations) you're aware of for getting up to speed on civil service excellence? Have read some about Northcote Trevelyan, Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs, Dominic Cummings, and the like, but have been stumped trying to find the sort of case studies that show off these systems in practice. If you could point me in the right direction, would be greatly appreciated.
Hi there. The public sector obviously has an enormous scope and breadth of activities, so there's no single resource that I can point to. Is there a particular area you're interested in?
As I've alluded to above, much of best practice at the moment is in the private sector. I think Claire Hughes Johnson's 'Scaling People' is the best manual for daily, weekly, quarterly management. On the strategic leadership side, look to Amazon honestly. 'The Bezos Blueprint' by Carmine Gallo for strategic comms. 'How Big Things Get Done' by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner is a good starting point for project management, with plenty of case studies.
Meanwhile, I know Cummings has recommended Alanbrooke's War Diaries and Groves' 'Now It Can Be Told' - these are excellent studies into the daily challenges of a public 'executive' atop a huge bureaucracy trying to deliver enormous projects while managing/taking direction from politicians, etc.
Again, let me know if there are particular policy areas you're interested in, and I might be able to recommend something. I have written about some of the world-leading work Taiwan's public sector is doing, particularly in healthcare, metro design, and digital monitoring/automation. My Taiwan round-up (with an index to the other essays) is here:
https://alethios.substack.com/p/unexplored-unsaid
Try - https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/