This book explores the thinking of Canadian federal public service senior executives through conversations. The transformation of the environment and of the institutional order has created quite a challenge: maintaining some sort of adequacy between these evolving realities and the frames of reference in use by public sector executives. Complexity is often nothing more than a name for a new order calling for a new frame of reference, and the reluctance to abandon old conceptual frameworks is often responsible for fundamental learning disabilities.
Through a series of conversations with Canadian federal senior executives about more and more daunting problems - from coping with an evolving context, to engaging intelligently with a new modus operandi, to trying to nudge and tweak programs in order to correct toxic pathologies, to reframing perceptions and redesigning organizations to meet the new challenges—weaknesses of the capabilities of the Canadian federal executives to respond to current challenges were revealed, and suggestions made about ways to kick start a process of refurbishment of these capabilities.
Authors
- Pages
- 152
- Published in
- Ottawa, CA
Table of Contents
- | Introduction 9
- Beyond the traditional clichés 12
- The rise of network governance 13
- The federal bureaucracy under siege 16
- The process 18
- The outcome: probing a mindset 20
- References 22
- Chapter 1 25
- | Cat’s cradling: the capacity to cope 25
- A syncretic view of each theme discussed 26
- Contextual issues and interpersonal rapport 26
- Diversity 26
- Security 28
- Ethics 30
- Disloyalty 33
- Organizational culture and new governance tools 35
- Corporate culture 35
- The Gomery world 36
- Public-private partnerships 40
- Partitioning anew the federal public service 42
- A personal distillation of what we learned 43
- The decline of open critical thinking 44
- Lack of gumption 45
- Conclusion 49
- References 51
- Annex : Basic documentation for each session 52
- Diversity 52
- Ethics 52
- Disloyalty 53
- Corporate culture 53
- The Gomery world 53
- Public-private partnerships 53
- Partitioning anew the federal public service 54
- Chapter 2 55
- | Cat’s eyes: the capacity to 55
- engage intelligently 55
- A syncretic view of each theme discussed 56
- Intelligent accountability 56
- Intelligent regulation 58
- Intelligent organizational design 60
- Intelligent public service 62
- A personal distillation of what we learned 64
- A cautionary statement 64
- Somebody is in charge and it is not me 67
- Déformation professionnelle 68
- Cognitive dissonance 70
- The presence of latent fear 71
- Conclusion 73
- References 74
- Annex: Basic documentation for each session 75
- Chapter 3 77
- | Not in the catbird seat: the 77
- capacity to collibrate 77
- A syncretic view of each theme discussed 78
- Perverse incentives 78
- Rewarding failure and deception 79
- Punishing success 81
- Positive discrimination 82
- Failure to confront 84
- Pathologies and challenges 85
- Quantophrenia 85
- Performance review 88
- Speaking truth to power 89
- What role for cities in public governance? 91
- A personal distillation of what we learned 92
- Moral vacancy 92
- Crippling epistemologies 95
- Risk aversion and fear of experimentation 97
- Conclusion 98
- References 100
- Annex: Basic documentation for each session 103
- Rewarding failure and deception 103
- Punishing success 103
- Positive discrimination 103
- Failure to confront 103
- Quantophrenia 103
- Performance review 103
- Speaking truth to power 104
- What role for cities in public governance? 104
- Chapter 4 105
- | The unwisdom of cats: 105
- the capacity to reframe 105
- A syncretic view of each theme discussed 106
- The political-bureaucratic interface 106
- The federal public service as a nexus of moral contracts 109
- From leadership to stewardship 111
- A personal distillation of what we learned 116
- Difficulty in thinking about systems 116
- Experts can’t learn … 117
- A tiny bit of intellectual nonchalance 118
- Conclusion 120
- References 121
- Annex : Basic documentation for each session 122
- The political-bureaucratic interface 122
- Federal public serviceas nexus of moral contracts 122
- From leadership to stewardship 122
- Deputy Minister: then, now and in the future 122
- | Conclusion 123
- Four layers of capabilities 125
- A syndrome … tentatively 127
- Cosmology-less wayfinding 130
- The way out and forward … a catwalk 133
- Toward a new covenant through 136
- a new inquiring system 136
- One starting point 142
- In summary 145
- References 146
- | References 149
