Where To From Here?
A panel of chief executives, chaired by Ian Fraser, considers lessons for senior managers from the conference.
- Chief Executive Panel:
- David Butler, Commissioner, Inland Revenue Department,
- Anne Carter, Chief Executive, Ministry of Youth Affairs,
- Belinda Clark, Secretary of Justice, Ministry of Justice,
- Leith Comer, Chief Executive, Te Puni Kokiri,
- Howard Fancy, Chief Executive, Ministry of Education,
- Peter Hughes from the Ministry of Social Development,
- Fuimaona Les McCarthy, Chief Executive, Pacific Island Affairs.
Ian Fraser: I have seven chief executives up here with me. Our job is to try and tease some of the lessons, messages and themes out of the discussion that has taken place today and also the videos of the case studies we have just watched.
David, it is significant that none of the case studies actually focused on what you might describe as the harder side of the Public Service, branches such as Customs, Police, Inland Revenue - the enforcers of the Public Service, the people who make you do things. In your case it’s the people who make other people pay their taxes. Do the messages of the case studies apply to your department and to the enforcers of the Public Service?
David Butler: I think that clearly they do. There is an expectation on revenue authorities, law enforcers around the world that you become more innovative, working more with the community. Certainly, the themes might be slightly different because maybe it is more of an industry focus than a community focus per se. If you’re looking at business people perhaps the focus is the particular industries within that industry group, rather than the community as a whole. It might be the way you dissect the community that is the only real difference.
Certainly it is things like innovation, doing better and being quite international in your views. It is really important to know what is going on in the rest of the world because business operates globally, we all know that. It is a question of having the right sort of customs regimes, tax regimes, other law enforcement regimes that operate in a consistent way with other developed countries. I think it is in principle exactly the same sorts of things - innovation, doing better, and dissecting it differently - but also taking very much a global focus.
Ian Fraser: In a department like yours how difficult is the business of customer focus?
David Butler: We have a diversified business because we run social policy programmes as well as tax programmes. We actually give out money as well as collect money, so it is quite mixed and complex. Governments strive all the time to simplify tax systems and there are lots of good things about New Zealand and some things are happening right now. The more we can put ourselves in the shoes of the user of a system and try to modify our approaches to make it easier for the user, the more we can have tax systems and other law enforcement regimes that don’t force people to do certain things for tax or other reasons. They do it because it is a good business reason to do it.
I think that customer focus is certainly there, it is alive, but it has just got some subtle differences. It is like being professional, which was mentioned by Hugh [Logan]. We have to audit people, we have to make people pay money, but we need to do so in a way that means we listen to them, we clearly explain why we have a different view to them. At the end of a tax audit they might have a tax bill to pay. They may not like that, but if they feel they’ve been listened to, or have had it clearly explained, that we have shown empathy and understanding, that would be a great result.
Ian Fraser: Public Service, though Howard, consists largely of monopolies. You don’t have the price signals by and large as the private sector does, or maybe the tyranny of the bottom line to the same extent. I don’t think any department of State has actually gone bankrupt, for example. Without those signals how hard is it to develop a successful customer focus?
Howard Fancy: It has definitely got its challenges, but I think the key thing is to be very focused on what is it you’re trying to influence and how you’re trying to influence it. Being very clear about the outcomes you’re trying to influence and getting a culture that really supports that. That culture has to be one that is very strong about attitudes. So, for example, a lot of these stories and case studies we had this afternoon had a lot of attitude about them. They were about being open to ideas and receptive to ideas. It is about valuing. It is saying that we don’t have the monopoly on the truth. A lot of the ideas do exist out there in the different communities, the schools and the different sectors of the economy. Part of our task is to be really open to them, to be good listeners and then think about how we can support them working.
Ian Fraser: Are there cases where what you should be doing as public servants is actually getting out of the way?
Howard Fancy: Definitely. Where a school is doing brilliantly the last thing they want is the Ministry knocking on the door. But there are a whole lot of communities where schools really struggle for a whole lot of factors. It may be poverty, housing, transience and so on. Our role in there is to help facilitate ways in which the schools can do better. Not only the schools but how the schools can link into the communities, the early-childhood facilities. Some of the work we have done across agencies is saying literacy is a health issue. If kids are turning up without glasses, if kids are turning up deaf, then they’re not going to learn. So that is about seeing those connections and saying the Government has a really positive role. The more effectively we can coordinate it at a national level and the more effectively we can coordinate it at a local level, then we’re going to get win-wins.
Ian Fraser: Peter Hughes, almost from the moment that the Welfare State was born we’ve had critics. I’m sure at the beginning of the 1930s it wasn’t called the nanny State but that is the phrase that has been applied to it - the claims that we’ve set up a system that takes responsibility away from individuals and families and communities. The video suggests that the Public Service or areas of it are moving in the direction of handing that responsibility back. How true is that? How widespread is it?
Peter Hughes: I think individuals, in their families, in their communities are taking that responsibility back. In 1938 we put in the system in New Zealand. We were the first in the world to do it and over many many years and a number of generations we have taken responsibility off individuals and their families and their communities. When I started out as a front line worker in the old Department of Social Welfare we helped people survive when they had no income, but we were basically paying people money to go away. It was a very passive system. The exciting thing about some of the case studies today is you actually see communities or iwi or individuals taking that responsibility back and partnering up with central government agencies and central government agencies partnering up with themselves to enable that to happen.
Belinda Clark: If I could just add something to that. I think the case studies we saw today are not unusual in the sense that similar activities are happening all over the Public Service and I think it is important to remember that. From my knowledge anyway, they weren’t picked out as unusual cases to aspire to. They’re actually reflective of what is going on. I think what is happening is that we’ve got a Government that is very keen to emphasise the word service in Public Service, but in a new way. So the service that we offer is different because the public that we’re offering it to is different and they want a different relationship. As Peter said, I think it is about encouraging people to be self-managing and we do that with individuals through education systems and so on. We do it with communities as you saw in some of the projects. We are looking at ways of redefining what is Public Service and what are our aims in that new relationship.
Peter Hughes: Absolutely, and being very very mindful that we are monopoly organisations. In many instances people have to come to us at very critical times of their lives when they’re quite stressed and anxious and have big life change events going on and that makes us very, very powerful. So you really have to work at the client focus, being sensitive to the situation of individuals at that time.
Anne Carter: I think it is really important that we shift our thinking away from Wellington out into the regions. All those case studies show really good examples of where communities have been innovative and creative. I think it is important that Government are enablers, that we are flexible, that we do have guidelines and rules that we have to operate within. But I think it is important that we’re flexible and that we work together on how we can work round those where possible. At the end of the day we are using taxpayers’ money and we do need to be accountable for that.
Ian Fraser: Leith, if people are to be empowered to find their own solutions, rather than have the solutions dropped on them probably from the centre via the Public Service, where do public servants fit into that?
Leith Comer: Everywhere. I don’t think that we should look at the Public Service being one part of this process. I think one size doesn’t fit all and what I wouldn’t want to get is this ‘collaboration cooperation’ being the mantra of the time. That’s where we fit in. Working together is tough. Working together is hard.
There are some things that as a Public Service we need to take responsibility and accountability for ourselves. There are many times, on other occasions we’ll share that. There are many times that we should give the resource, get out of the road and let other people do it. Perhaps that is a long way of getting to your answer, but I don’t think there is a single answer to the question you posed me.
Ian Fraser: You are saying that collaboration and coordination for the wrong reasons, simply because they may be the current mantra are not necessarily an effective way to go?
Leith Comer: No, I think sometimes it is absolutely ridiculous. Collaboration and cooperation sometimes mean busy and busy doesn’t actually mean good. I think that the only reason we would get into this is if the outcomes that we’re trying to achieve are achieved. This is a bit trite, but I prefer the thought, ‘centrally plan, decentrally execute’. I haven’t seen a cobbled together world representative 15 that can beat a well-tuned trained team yet. So unless we’re going to practice, unless we’re going to work at this thing, we might play the game and we might get a lot of accolades for playing the game, but participation isn’t winning. We’re a little country and I can tell you we need to win.
Howard Fancy: I think that one of the things that is really important is being very strategic at all levels about what are important relationships and what you are looking to gain through those relationships from both sides. As part of that relationship it is really important to have an explicit dialogue about the role and also how that role can change over time. If you’re looking to work together you’ve got to have a common purpose, you’ve got to have some common understandings of where both sides are coming from. You’ve got to have some sense of where you’re trying to get to and how that might change.
Leith Comer: Shared visions, shared objectives are great, but clear responsibilities are also important and taking accountability for those responsibilities.
Ian Fraser: I want to bring Les in, because I’m curious to know in terms of the development of community-based solutions in pursuit of this business of collaboration and coordination, how much of your autonomy as Public Service managers do you end up having to give away? How much of your authority to manage have you got to be prepared to put on the line?
Les McCarthy: If you’re doing the job properly, none. Let me just explain. There is this warning about letting collaboration go too far, but it really depends on what size you are as a Ministry. We’re a very small Ministry. We’re not a monopoly. There’s a lot of talk here about the good old days of working in silos. The edifice that applies to the former Ministry was a tombstone. That really signified our credibility and effectiveness as a policy agency. But the process of collaboration has really meant we’ve been able to stage our resurrection as a policy agency. When we talk about collaboration in the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, what we’re actually talking about is going out to the people and treating them with respect. Listening and shutting up is a very major part of that process.
We don’t have to give away anything in terms of our values as public servants, our standards, and the communities are not looking for that either. What they’re looking for are credible public servants with that emphasis on service. If we go out there and sponsor these public meetings as we do, we listen to what they say, we take away with us that information and process it by way of negotiations with some of the departments that are sitting here and others among you.
We find ourselves more and more in the job as brokers, lobbyists. In a sense because we’re a small Ministry we’re moving closer and closer almost by definition to the communities in facing the monopolies together with them and trying to extract out of monopolies a better deal. That to us is what collaboration is all about. It may have the danger of becoming a meaningless mantra to people who can see a lot of flaws in the process, but for the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs and indeed for Pacific communities we’ve had 18 months to practise this and it is working. We have various examples of controls if you like. Our experiences proved to be successful because we haven’t ignored those controls.
We have the steering group of chief executives, which I chair, we have a senior officials group which meets regularly, formerly weekly and now fortnightly, and we have that type of control of Public Service values at the regional level. This doesn’t have to be something to fear. It can really pay big dividends.
Anne Carter: I want to add to Les’s comments. As the head of perhaps the smallest government department in the Public Service I can only achieve results for young people if I have the cooperation and collaboration of other departments. Effectively, what I do is leverage off other departments. While I think there is a lot of really good work going on between departments at the central level and at the local level it is actually up to chief executives and senior managers to drive that message of collaboration throughout the whole organisation. I don’t necessarily see it throughout the whole Public Service and I just wanted to issue a bit of a challenge.
Belinda Clark: I wanted to make a point in relation to what Les and Ann have said. They see themselves having to lever, as Ann says, off other agencies by virtue of necessity. In other words, they are very small agencies without a lot of resource. I actually think the whole public sector is a limited resource and that those comments could equally apply to us as an entity. I say that measured against the outcomes that we are trying to achieve. They are very ambitious and I think it is a credit to all of us that they are very ambitious. Seen in that context we are actually a very limited resource, in terms of people, money, experience and time. Many things therefore cannot be done on our own or directed centrally. Another point I’d like to make is that there is an increasing acceptance that many issues are multifaceted and they cannot be solved by the activities of one department.
The way the Public Service is structured is in many ways artificial and it has been done for administrative reasons and that is sound. Take an issue like youth justice, for example, which is something that very much exercises our Ministry. We won’t be able to achieve any improvements without collaboration from Youth Affairs, Maori Affairs, Pacific Island Affairs and obviously our sector agency departments like Corrections, Courts, Police, Child Youth and Family, and so on. It is just impossible to get any change without everybody committing to the same goal.
Pewter Hughes: Yes, I just think that we need to be a little sophisticated about this joined up stuff because it has become quite an industry in Wellington. I don’t know about you all, but I could certainly spend my week being joined up, mostly around other people’s agendas. The trick is to do what some of these people have been saying and that is to create an overarching agenda where we’re doing things that we can’t do on our own. It is to find those points of intersection where we can leverage off each other and actually make a real difference.
The two things that have made most difference in organisations I’ve worked in during my career have been leadership and teamwork. What we’re talking about is good old-fashioned teamwork here. It is just across agencies, putting an exciting, challenging vision that will make a difference in front of what is the leadership bit. That is the challenge going forward.
Ian Fraser: I’m interested in this process and what it means in terms of the possible paring back of the centre. You heard Enid Leighton issue a really powerful challenge to empower the regions and probably also empower further down the ladder. She said that you shouldn’t have to go through four layers to get to the centre in order to get your answer. What does it mean in terms of the relationship of the centre with the regions?
David Butler: One might start there. I think it starts with what Leith was saying before about perhaps having national approaches and more localised implementation. I’ve chosen to come to New Zealand to live this year. Coming from Australia and having lived in Canada I see the way governments run in those countries. There are lessons to be learnt by too much devolution to regions and to local communities. The Australian States have lots of powers. There are lots of resources spent in trying to bring the States together to get a national approach. We just need to be a little bit cautious about what we’re really talking about. To pick up Peter’s theme I think it is really about smart teamwork.
Others have said that when it makes good sense to do it, let’s do it, but let’s not do it for the sake of doing it. It is like saying that we must collaborate on everything. With IRD we certainly work with other law enforcement agencies and that has been going on for some time. We want to keep enhancing those sorts of things. It is really a balancing act as much as anything else and being clear about what are the benefits. Let’s describe those and realise them and not rush down a pathway without thinking through the possible consequences.
Howard Fancy: Again a lot of it comes back to having a very clear focus on organisationally, what are you trying to influence? What are the outcomes you’re trying to influence? That provides a broad framework that gives you a lot more flexibility across different parts of the organisation as to how you work. But also recognise that working in that way actually requires a lot of rigour and a lot of discipline. You’ve got to know where your boundaries are, both in terms of that fact that you’re still working to a Minister, you’re still working in a government system.
You’ve also got to be quite rigorous about the fact you should only be doing something if you are convinced that it is really going to make a difference. You can say yes to one person and no to another person and be very clear about why you are differentiating between those two, the framework in which you are making those decisions. The more you can go down that track, the more scope there is for local decision-making, local flexibility but within an overarching framework.
Ian Fraser: I wanted to raise an issue that is a sort of risk around values. I don’t know whether this is a real issue or not. When you’re working in collaboration with other organisations that march to the beat very much of their own drum they have their own different cultures. How high is the risk that you’ll end up compromising the Public Service’s core values of integrity, honesty, the careful stewardship of public resources and so on? Is that a real risk?
David Butler: Possibly, if you were silly enough to get into a relationship where you were going to put those sort of things at risk. Relationships are very important with whoever you deal with, but why would you get involved in a relationship where those things were put in jeopardy? They would only be a risk if you let them be.
Howard Fancy: You just need to be aware when staff are recruited from other sectors of the economy which is what Vicki Buck I think was saying earlier. There is a much higher level of accountability and transparency about working in the public sector than there is in the private sector. Again, you’ve got to be aware of that. You’ve got to think about how you manage that and your induction programmes and your management culture, your risk management cultures.
Belinda Clark: There is a tension between, in particular, the good stewardship of public funds and the urgings to be innovative and look at doing things differently. Some of the rules and regulations that we are under with respect to expenditures and approvals have developed over time to protect against a lack of accountability, misuse or unwise use. I think that we would be resigning from the truth if we didn't admit that and say, actually some of the things we've all been exhorted to do this morning and this afternoon about being innovative and looking at new ways to do them, they are risky. Ministers too, they make those exhortations to us to take risks, but amongst Ministers themselves there is a very varying threshold of acceptance of risk. It is a judgment that each senior manager has to make all the time in a number of different circumstances as to the balancing of those. Because we want to get good outcomes, we can see that past things haven’t worked and we need to look at new ways. But we’ll also have to be mindful always of these risks and it is not easy.
Ian Fraser: Yes, well this is the big paradox, the theme of the day that I said at the beginning I hoped would not turn out to be an oxymoron or a contradiction in terms. As public servants, how do you go about balancing innovation and creativity with the prudent management of risk?
Peter Hughes: Being innovative and creative is not a licence to do dumb things. It is not a licence to be heroic. We work in a political environment. It is a very challenging and difficult environment to work in. You’ve got two choices really. You can recline into the corner of the room and that’s nice and safe and you’ll never make a mistake and get caught, but you don’t make a difference.
The people that work in these organisations care about the work that they’re doing and they’re here to make a difference. You have to get really good at managing risk and managing the environment. Get out there and get control of the environment. The ways you do that are through relationships and through really superb risk management. Relationships are absolutely critical to success in the public sector. You need people to understand what you’re doing and why. And you need them to own it, everybody, because if they don’t you will fail in my experience. I put relationships in there alongside risk management.
Leith Comer: From a Maori point of view I think what Maori are saying is let’s have a justice system or a health system or an education system, but give us one that has sufficient stretch to enable different pathways through that. All Maori are asking is to take a risk, if you think it’s a risk, but to enable Maori to design some of those pathways. Some of our systems have been so damned constrained that there is no ability to develop these different pathways. So the way you contain risk is to have your systems sufficiently broad and stretchy but to allow plenty of room for people to take a different way through them.
Howard Fancy: I always keep a couple of questions in mind. One: am I going to have to seek forgiveness for what I’m about to do? Could I defend it in a select committee? Am I avoiding being first item on ‘Morning Report’?
Les McCarthy: As far as risk management is concerned I agree with Peter when he said you’ve got to make those relationships strong with all your stakeholders. In my view it is much more important to get the values within your own organisation sorted out because as a chief executive you’re going to be in a position of hearing different innovations. Rather than being the only person in the Ministry actually saying yay or nay, a much more preferable situation is to have everybody in the organisation knowing exactly what the ground rules are, what the criteria are, what the political risks are, the environmental risks. By the time they bring things to you they’ll have all that enthusiasm, but there won’t be any stark stupid ideas coming to your table.
Ian Fraser: I want to bear in mind Belinda’s point about the difference in the kind of reaction that you will get depending on who the Minister is. How do you balance the business of being properly responsive to the will of the Government of the day with the business of having ideas of your own and being proactive in pursuing them? If we’re talking about risk management I would have thought that that was fairly high up the agenda.
Howard Fancy: Again, I think it is very important to know your Minister and where his or her boundaries are. But also there is huge scope for innovation about how a policy is implemented. It is actually about making a policy work, rather than necessarily thinking about innovation as just a new policy.
Peter Hughes: Identify the free zones basically and that is a function of the Minister’s level of tolerance with risk taking. It is a function of the environment and how that is at the moment and the work that you do. Where are the free zones within that?
Les McCarthy: I think as someone else said here before with journeys, knowing what your Minister wants is a continuing journey.
Ian Fraser: A journey without end I would have thought. Going back, Helen Clark has made a number of statements and a lot of Ministers have too, that Ministers are seeking a whole of government approach to a whole range of issues. We get maximum leverage when departments and agencies are working in a coordinated and collaborative way towards common goals. I’d like to know, going on from the comments made this morning by Trevor Mallard and Pete Hodgson what politicians have to do to allow that to happen?
Peter Hughes: the single most powerful thing that happens in an organisation is how you respond when your people stuff up. I always say you can’t change history, but you’ve got 100 percent control over the future and the opportunities to do a brilliant recovery, if it is a stuff up. Part of doing a brilliant recovery is learning from what happened and building it into what you do next. So my expectation of Ministers would be, when things go wrong how do you respond? Do you respond in that way or do you respond in a way that is punishing. If you want to stop innovation dead in its tracks that is the way to do it very quickly.
David Butler: I think it is the old adage of keep Ministers well informed of what may be the risks. If we were not to collect the $30 billion per year we’ve got to collect then the Government would be pretty concerned about that. It is really knowing what is happening, knowing your business, knowing the trends and patterns and keeping well briefed and well informed. I agree with Peter. If something goes wrong, understand why it has gone wrong and have a strategy to deal with that. Moving forward, that is really important as well.
Howard Fancy: It may well be to allow different people to pop up and have different views. I just bring to your attention the Knowledge Wave Conference where the Reserve Bank Governor said something and the reaction to that probably for us all made us think about how we might push out a few waka and fly a few kites. So it is a question of whether as a Public Service we are brave enough to actually do the thinking that needs to be there about what’s next. I think that is a real issue for us.
Ian Fraser: OK. Let me finish on what maybe is the biggest issue of all, which is the issue of leadership and where that leadership comes from. Your troops have heard a lot of these vision statements and these buzz words - flexibility, innovation, collaboration, coordination, whole of government, risk and risk management. I would think that many of them are probably pretty cynical about those terms. How do you get them from here to there where you want them to be?
Howard Fancy: I think all Governments in their own way want similar outcomes. You know they want a fast-growing economy, they want cohesion in your society, and often the differences between governments are in the means they prefer to get there. When governments have preference to different means that is saying for policy to work you've got to implement it differently and the factors that make that policy work are different. It is still possible to have a whole organisation, a whole department, focused on where the things are that you’re doing in your particular area that are designed to make a difference. Just be well aware that the Government has certain preferences. Some [governments] may be more inclined to central approaches, others more devolved approaches. That is just the reality of being a public servant and you work within those frameworks. But you can still have the same outcome goals and the same opportunities to innovate.
Belinda Clark: I don’t think that cynicism is as much of the problem as keeping up with information. In each area and each agency there is a huge amount going on and it has been going on now for a number of years. It is quite a struggle to expect staff at all levels to keep au fait with that I find. Let alone saying, this is what is happening in other major areas of government activity that you need to be aware of, so when you get an approach from agency X this is the context and so on. In our organisation I spend a lot of time trying to contextualise our business against other government business because a lot of staff are not exposed to it if you don’t give it to them. It doesn’t come to them naturally through their daily interactions. One of the biggest challenges is to try to keep a sense of what it is that we’re trying to do in our particular agency and keep a focus, but understand it in a much broader initiative. I don’t think it is a matter of cynicism, but of coping with an information overload.
David Butler: Yes. My experience around that is to try to translate the messages or the initiatives and the words into things that are practical for people in the work they do through stories or case studies or examples. Just say that this is what it means for you in your job, type of thing. To be consistent in your language, too, is very important, to keep reinforcing the same messages time and time again.
Leith Comer: I think leadership from a Public Service point of view, as a new chief executive looking at my own performance, I’d give myself a good tick for management. I think we all do reasonably well, but I give myself a small tick for leadership. Part of the problem is I’m not sure we’re investing enough of the heart into things. It is too much of the head. That is what our people are looking for and that is how I think we will get our organisation from being good to being really good.
Ian Fraser: That is a really good place to end this. Thank you very much.
