Front And Centre: Putting Public Service Leadership In Its Place

Citizens are showing increasing concern about public services and the certainty of future provision1. Public sector productivity is now estimated at a lower level than in 20152. The traditional boundaries of public, private and third sector are increasingly irrelevant, with all now involved in public service delivery. Today's public service leaders need much more support to lead services across boundaries in a dynamic and volatile context.

The Centre for Public Services Leadership should make a significant contribution to enhancing this capability. The concept behind the Centre is that there is a need for step change in how we build a pipeline of leaders ready for principle executive responsibility. Specifically, a development focus that enables leaders to work effectively across complex systems to deliver outcomes in new ways and improve the quality of services.

We have seen through our own work on the ground with senior leaders across public services that delivering an innovative, context-driven approach to development is key to delivering real improvement in the sector.

What is a context-driven approach?

Traditional leadership programmes are often built around individual capability development. Learners go through each skill area learning new concepts, theories and models, and then are assessed on their ability to grasp the concepts, link theory to practice and communicate their arguments clearly.

One of the earliest pieces of Deloitte Leadership thinking on teams that work, highlighted the importance of high performing teams doing real work together and learning from it3. The Deloitte Leadership approach to developing "future-ready" leaders builds on research into adult learning, psychology and neuroscience and focuses on how learners think, as much as what they do4. A context-driven approach offers a unique opportunity to focus on specific leadership challenges relating to "place", build a collaborative leadership team across boundaries and focus on a citizen-centred approach. This is crucial for driving culture change across public services, enabling integration, helping to drive up...