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It's tougher to manage in the public sector

A personal view

Written by Bruce Holland

In my view it's far easier to manage a private sector organisation than a public sector one.

It's much easier to focus on how to increase shareholder returns by 10% than it is to balance the many (and sometimes conflicting) broad social goals of a public sector organisation where there's far more ambiguity and fuzziness.

It's much easier to make change when your governing body is primarily interested in a single stakeholder (the shareholders), than it is to keep many and different political masters happy. This takes real skill and a strong sense of political nous in order to succeed.

It's easy to target product sales and make deals with individual customers. It's much harder to work through totally different organisations necessary in order to be successful. Hardly ever can a single public sector organisation achieve its outcome on its own because it is part of the larger system that needs to work together in a fairly seamless sort of way. This means loads of co-operation and collaboration between quite separate organisations. The successful public sector manager has to be far better at managing P.A.L.s (partnerships, alliances and linkages) beyond their organisation than their private sector counterparts do. For more on this...

But public sector organisations also have advantages over the private sector counterparts. The main one is they have a job that's worth doing. I know that people are motivated by body head, heart and soul and that they become more motivated as you move towards the soul end. In other words they're motivated by the physical things: salary and conditions, but these body things are at the low end. They're motivated by intellectual stimulation: new ideas learning, growing and these head things are the second level. They are even more motivated by heart things like reputation, self worth and respect. But they are most motivated when they're able to contribute to the soul things like wider good and leave a legacy of real value. This is what attracts many people to the public sector and is a valuable but often untapped motivating factor. For more on this...

For example, when I worked in Government House with the people who look after the Governor General you could see the pride when they realised that they were central to the way Kiwis think of themselves. And when the people from the Auditor General's Office talked about safeguarding the public dollar you could see their body language totally change. Compare this with a manufacturer making toothpaste. The toothpaste itself may have a part to play in keeping mouths clean. But does it really matter whether it's Colgates or Mc Leans?

Good people are attracted to the public sector for heart and soul reasons. They are people who care, or least, people who once cared.