Canadian Government Executive - Volume 23 - Issue 1

January 2017 // Canadian Government Executive / 29 Culture the selection, promotion and deployment of executives. While this requires no change in legislation or policy, it would call for a significant modification in prac- tice. The definition of the executive po- sition and the choice of the incumbent would be made in effect not only by the supervisor and the Public Service Com- mission, but also by representatives of the different stakeholders (employees, peers, major client groups, etc.) under the guid- ance of the PSC to ensure due process and impartiality. The inclusion of the stakeholders would force dialogue among them, which can only help anchor the process of organi- zational learning. Critics will argue that this would require time and dilute man- agement’s authority to deploy personnel as it seems fit. That is precisely the point. Meaning-making, shared understanding, community building, and organizational learning cannot occur without dialogue. Dialogue takes time and is costly (and I am aware that recruitment in the federal service is already absurdly long). But poor selection, based on a very partial identi- fication of needs and leading to demoti- vated employees, can only translate into organizational sclerosis or in-fighting, reduced productivity, low creativity and innovation, and dissatisfied clients. This is much more costly. Our second proposal deals with how, once appointed, managers are supported, coached, mentored and developed. At the risk of generalizing, the current model is one of “sink or swim.” Executives are ex- pected to be quick studies, and to possess almost instantly all the knowledge and skills of their new positions. Some manag- ers at all levels are known to boast not only that they expect instant high performance, but expect such performances instantly under the most extreme and demanding conditions. This sort of situation has led to organizational disaster, and would, if any- thing, be exacerbated by a shift to the mar- ket employment (or contract-employment) model. This proposal calls for personal development to be regarded as a planned process of learning, through feedback, coaching and mentoring, as well as other self-directed activities. The third proposal calls for a new pro- cess of evaluation for executives, and a rethinking of the whole incentive-reward system for this category of personnel. Just as the stakeholders must be involved in selecting executives, so they must also be involved in evaluating them. The 360 degree appraisal must become the norm and, as a result of it, a process of dialogue and values clarification must be insti- tuted. Deputies and central agencies will be expected to reward both formally and informally those persons who meet all as- pects of the successful profile and to avoid celebrating those who excel in certain ar- eas only to the detriment of others. This proposal is the kingpin of the trans- formation process. No cultural change will occur if employees continue to per- ceive that rewards go mostly to those whose policy skills and political savvy are geared entirely to serving mindlessly the whims of their superiors, irrespective of their capability for meaning-making, their capacity for community-building and their ability to inspire trust and con- fidence, and to deal with people at all levels. What is at stake is nothing short of a new covenant for the public service. The traditional employment framework can- not simply be replaced by a nexus of mar- ket employment contracts. We have to provide some basis for the development of the new moral framework that will be required as an essential complement to the market contracts. This process de- pends first on the recognition that market employment contracts will not suffice. The moral framework has to provide two things. First, a way of dealing with multiple loyalties by public servants in the modern age and, secondly, ways of affecting the moral contracts for the new moral framework to coalesce. To forge the new moral framework, a six-step process can be anticipated. Each of these steps will be very difficult because each calls for a genuine revolu- tion in the mind, a new manière de voir . On the governance front, wide-ranging consultations can lead (1) to a reconfigu- ration of the new federal public service (a sort of Program Review, Phase II); and (2) to the replacement of the Westminster model by a more modern version, taking fully into account the multiple loyalties of public servants; (3) a major redirection in the guiding principles of public adminis- tration toward a social learning process is absolutely necessary. On the stewardship front, the general features of the new stewardship in a new non-centralized, distributed governance system would require dramatic modifica- tions in the machineries that govern (1) the entry and promotion of executives in the federal public service; (2) the nature of the support and training they get in the process; and (3) the process of evalua- tion and the whole incentive-reward sys- tem for executives. These changes point the way to a new moral framework that would appear to fall half-way between the old model and the idea that public servants only be hired on contract that is often presented as the only workable alternative. This may provide for the federal public service what has been provided by suc- cessful private sector enterprises for their employees: not a naked market-based employment contract, but a two-tier con- tract, with a tacit unwritten but centrally important component to ensure a reason- able degree of risk-sharing between em- ployer and employee. The full burden of risk will not be shouldered entirely by the employer, as in the old moral contract, nor by the employee, as in the market-type employment contract, but will be shared after extensive negotiations involving not only those two parties, but by many of the stakeholders who have such an interest in these negotiations that they will no lon- ger permit that negotiations be carried on without them. Adapted from Driving the Fake Out of Public Administration: Detoxing HR in the Canadian Federal Public Sector , by Ruth Hubbard and Gilles Paquet (Invenire, 2016). G illes P aquet is currently Professor Emeritus at the Telfer School of Management and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre on Governance of the University of Ottawa. The new governance system requires a thorough renewal of our way of selecting, evaluating and coaching executives.