14 / Canadian Government Executive // Summer 2023 CGE LEADERSHIP SERIES this is to prioritize empowerment by stripping away the procedural heaviness that tends to keep innovation and creativity from flourishing in the public sphere. “We have to do a real cultural shakeup of the executive class in the federal government who were raised in a culture calibrated to focus on risk management and risk aversion as the metric of success,” said Ms. Clarke. “I think we’re still largely putting those people in an environment that is far too bogged down in excessive process and oversight, and it leads to managers not pushing the status quo. Instead, they’re more concerned about mitigating the possibility of winding up on the front page for the wrong reasons.” Mr. Wernick added to this point with a future-focused perspective. “The federal government workforce has an eight percent yearly churn rate. So, half of the community turn over every five years. Young replacements coming in will obviously need to be trained, but they’ll be coming in with the latest knowledge. The intermediate and senior managers who remain are the ones who get neglected because there’s a major under-investment in their skills.” Not helping them build their knowledge sets or management competencies, not encouraging an attitude of innovation, and not creating an environment where innovation can thrive are major lost opportunities and could be detrimental in the future when these managers are tasked with making major decisions. The pandemic gave the public service a path forward The two years of WFH broke the default position of centralizing the federal public service efforts in Ottawa. It created a much larger pool of in-house and consultive talent to choose from across the country. This is obviously a boon for improving output, and it puts the federal government in parts of the country outside the national capital region. The 2020–2022 timeframe also forced the public service in general to rethink their rules of engagement, which Mr. Wernick noted was a major detriment to the way internal and external experts operate in the Canadian public sphere. “Our default response to problems is to add rules and process, both of which are difficult to hack away once they’re established,” said Mr. Wernick. The pandemic forced the public service away from that and, in the process, opened up new worlds of possibility. Now the public service can move in that direction, using the pandemic as a jumpingoff point to question more about how the public service works, how it works with external consultants, and how the two can work together affordably, collaboratively and effectively for the short- and long-term health of the public service. The consensus between the two panelists and the moderator was that outsourcing is valuable, it can work, and it has to be done and it can be done well if the in-house resources are trained to collaborate with consultants instead rather than simply being told to use them. Shifting to this mindset will help the public benefit from both sides of the equation. management consultants without a commitment to increase training and leadership development will leave us nowhere.” The investment has to start with people Regardless of how much is spent on external consultive resources, both panelists emphasized the need for government to rethink how top talent is compensated and empowered. On the renumeration side, Dr. Clarke pointed to other governments, the United States, the United Kingdom in particular, that have done a far better job of recruiting talent “by pushing salaries to a point that they’re not completely absurdly out of touch with what the private sector offers.” This is a trend the Canadian federal government has not followed for many reasons, but Mr. Wernick pointed to the basic nature of the Canadian public sector. “The federal government hasn’t historically been keen to undertake significant reform. But they have to be prepared to take political risks and say, ‘we’re going to professionalize and raise the game.’” More than money, though, the investment has to be in upskilling the people they have. Mr. Wernick posited that those energies be directed towards the 14,000 middle managers in the public service. “Middle management makes all the difference in culture and outcome and performance management and so on. A bigger investment in the middle management cadre would be enormous.” Dr. Clarke agreed and doubled down by saying that “middle management is where good ideas die or thrive.” Both panelists agreed that the way to do “Middle management makes all the difference in culture and outcome and performance management and so on. A bigger investment in the middle management cadre would be enormous.” — Michael Wernick 3rd Annual Conference
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