Canadian Government Executive - Volume 21 - Issue 8

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Our mission is to contribute to excellence in public service management
Editorial
Editor-in-Chief: Patrice Dutil
Associate Editor:Jason McNaught
Contributors: Gail Vallance Barrington, Chris Brown, Tony Dean,
Louise Gorby, John Kung, Jeffrey Roy, Harvey Schacter, Benjamin
Selinger and Gabriel Flores, Lisa Sullivan, Betty Ann M. Turpin,
Mathieu Weber, Rod Windover, John Wilkins, David Zussman
Editorial Advisory Board
Vic Pakalnis, Mirarco, Laurentian University; Denise Amyot,
CEO, ACCC; Nick Frate, Federal Youth Network; George Chin,
Provincial Interministerial Council, OPS; Lisanne Lacroix,
CEO, APEX; Jodi LeBlanc, Veterans Affairs
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4 / Canadian Government Executive // October 2015
Regular readers of CGE know how obsessed we are with public sector leadership.
For over twenty years, from one editor to another, the question of leadership keeps
coming up. There’s a good reason: answers about the necessary traits to succeed in
public sector leadership are imprecise, subject to very particular conditions and al-
ways defy measurement. We search for answers in employee surveys, in evidence of
performance, but mostly find them in anecdotes.
Tony Dean, a long-time Deputy Minister and Secretary to Cabinet in Ontario, put
himself to the task of actually writing down his impressions of leadership after he
ended his career in the public service. Now having joined academia, he’s discovered
that there is an urgent need for more writing on this subject —material we can discuss
with students, of course, but also with colleagues.
Last month, he offered encouragement to those who actually do “walk the talk”
(many in leadership positions just like the talk) and actually work to bring innovation
to government. This month, his contribution is equally enlightening as he examines
what gets in the way and offers strategies to overcome the obstacles.
To see beyond the barriers, one needs guides. Lisa Leblanc, in her column for New
Professionals, offers advice that applies to all of us: make contacts. Marcel Weber
makes the same case when it comes to becoming comfortable in using open systems
in government. It is difficult, and many in the public service are too content to keep
to their knitting, but government today needs to give public servants the freedom to
make connections with the outside. It is the secret to success. I discovered this as I
studied the more successful secretaries to cabinet. For more on that, see the book I
edited, Searching for Leadership: Secretaries to Cabinet in Canada (University of Toronto
Press, 2009).
The good news is that the spirit of breaking out, of creating networks of knowledge
to improve policy development and program delivery, lives. Rod Windover’s inter-
view with Ms. Winter Fedyk and that old fox Dan Perrins about creating a policy book
club in Regina speaks to it loudly. Fedyk brought the idea from Ottawa to the prairies;
it should spread like a July wildfire across the land. Improvement in management,
like improvement in leadership, in not something that comes by chance. It is the prod-
uct of dialogue and of an endless search for better examples and models.
Searching for Leadership
editor’s note Patrice Dutil
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LEADERSHIP SUMMIT 2015
THE DEST INAT ION 2020 LEADERSHI P JOURNEY