In the post-election landscape, the challenge of public leadership under huge spending constraints will be very difficult.
There is widespread agreement regarding the complexity of leadership in the public sector. Much of the focus in the past has been on "management" as opposed to leadership both in terms of "hands on" management as well as policy development through new public management (NPM).
It is our view that the time is right to move towards a new leadership practice through a collective approach that develops a policy shift away from NPM towards new public leadership (NPL) but drawing upon the best of the earlier approaches.
The public sector is highly diverse in character, governance and size and there are competing needs within and expectations from diverse stakeholders, and tasks involve different types and sizes of organisations. Added to this, is the need for public sector organisations to work in increasingly collaborative ways.
This applies at all levels of public leadership from Whitehall to Wigan.
We recognise the commentary of the National School of Government entitled Whole Systems Go and agree that leadership and management development has been a neglected area of both theory and development.
Devaluing of public services
We believe higher education institutions, by virtue of thought leadership and the experience underpinning it will help in turning what some describe as a crisis or threat into a period of innovation and one of opportunity. The period of criticism and the perceived devaluing of public services in recent times, fuelled more recently by the economic crisis, present key challenges but also significant opportunities to influence both current and future top leaders to think differently about leadership.
The development of inter-connected and inter-dependent approaches to leadership across public services as a whole system represents the key challenge for public leaders in the future.
This will also be critical after the election on 6 May, across government and in relation to the localism agenda.
The traditional view of leadership is that followers will look to leaders to provide the right answers particularly in times of crisis. We argue that the role of the leader is to ask the intelligent question rather than give the answer. This is not without historical precedent.
Writing over half a century ago, Selznick described the leader as offering "a guiding hand to a process that would otherwise occur more haphazardly, more readily subject to the accidents of circumstance and history" and, in separating institutional leadership from interpersonal leadership and administrative management, extols the virtue of leaders as statesmen by asking a range of questions which touched on tradition, long established practice and self-restricted outlooks.
As with Heifetz, Selznick argued for adaptive change.
When considering why Selznick's ideas were not popular (in the sense of generating a leadership paradigm) one has to consider the context in which he was writing. At the time of writing the Human Relations School was becoming very influential, but Selznick expressed concern in relation to the growing conflict in which individuals sought 'place' and 'preferment', in rivalry among units.
At an institutional level, one could argue that the tension between new public leadership as opposed to new public management has similar challenges in 2010 and beyond.
Total Place
We acknowledge that Total Place – as a means of changing the focus of public services -has the potential to deliver a step change in both service improvement and efficiency at the local level, as well as across Whitehall in providing what the Treasury refers to as "strong local, collective and focused leadership which supports joined up working and shared solutions to problems with citizens at the heart of service design".
Our approach is premised on the view that the development of whole systems of thinking and delivery requires an understanding of, and commitment to, the development of intelligent leadership through networks and improved knowledge and skills in a collective environment.
It requires a different way of thinking about leadership from the most senior levels of government through to those who deliver public services at the point of contact or encounter. This is increasingly difficult in a complex world where an issue, problem or strategy of one organisation has an impact on other organisations across the public sector.
Indeed, collaboration in tackling these issues or problems through joint strategies is now becoming essential rather than just desirable. Although most acknowledge the benefit of partnership working, research suggests that the evidence of impact of partnerships on improved performance is not readily sought.
This article is an edited extract from an article first published in Transforming Management
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