‘Lack of crosssectoral collaborations is the bane of a public manager’s life’
Being a public manager in today’s world full of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) is no easy job. The working environment comes with its share of challenges, often unknown and unexpected, says Zeger van der Wal, whose new book
addresses key trends, challenges and opportunities facing public managers across contexts and regimes. In an email interview, Wal, Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, explains the kind of roles a 21st century manager has to play to succeed and stay relevant. Edited excerpts: we see lots of type 1 behaviour: hierarchy and procedures are still valued, and going against the boss is often not done. Many Asian countries including India have inherited career-based and exam-based public-sector personnel policies with heavily unionized and tenured public sectors. Public managers have to be politically astute, meaning that they have to be able to read and manage their rapidly changing political bosses. We live in an era of so-called authority turbulence, in which authority is acquired, lost, and recognized in ever changing ways. Across the world, “strong man” populist leaders are elected into office on bold and uncompromising platforms. Such leaders may be difficult to work with for public managers whose role it is to provide frank and critical advice, to speak “truth to power” as the classical adagio goes. Still, it is important to realize that political leaders and public managers need each other to succeed. Ultimately, politicians want to be successful and get re-elected, and they’ll find out soon enough they rely on bureaucrats for this. Media management including the framing, branding, and ‘selling’ of policy plans will become even more important and public managers will have to engage in more direct communication with stakeholders instead just operating behind the scenes.
Lack of cross-sectoral collaborations is the bane of a public manager’s life. How can a manager ensure that public private partnerships, or contracting out work gets desired social impact?
Invest in understanding the drivers of your cross-sectoral partners. Smart contracts are important, but networking, facilitating behaviours that breed trust may ultimately be more effective. Public managers who want to get anything done know they can no longer do this without leveraging the ideas, resources, and expertise from other sectors. Making cross sectoral collaboration work requires a genuine investment in the worldviews, interests, and agendas of partners from other sectors.