Professor Glyn Davis is ploughing through sea of the legislature and the Public Accounts Committee and NSW as well as ANAO audit reports as best of the public services is yet to come.
People were rocking with laughter; some were in tears. Deadpan, Don Watson waited. One audience member said later it was the funniest dinner of academic deans he had ever attended. But Watson was not joking. He was reading from a university mission statement and other material on its website.
"To provide outcome-related research and consultancy services that address real-world issues" - shrieks of laughter. The university's "approach to quality management is underpinned by a strong commitment to continuous improvement and a whole-of-organisation framework" - uproar in the room. (Fighting the long death sentence)
There are various factors that will impact on how successful PACs will be in performing this function. However, in order to add optimal value, PACs should be seen as more multidimensional than just a means for a Parliament to compete with the Executive arm of Government. The aim should be appropriate balance rather than adversarial competition. A properly operating PAC should complement as well as confront; support as well as scrutinise; and co-operate as well as challenge. In this way, good governance and democratic process can be better promoted, with the public more likely to be declared as the winner.
The role of public accounts committees
Public servants told to let go of their org charts
Public service leaders should not rely on formal structures and organisational charts to assert their authority and do their work, says the newly appointed head of the federal public service and prime minister’s department, Glyn Davis.
His call for leaders not to be beholden to hierarchy follows a recent decision not to change job titles and flatten the federal bureaucracy, as was recommended by a review panel.
The key recommendation of the review, to reduce the number of job classification levels from 13 to eight, was not taken up because department heads were concerned the change would be too complex and distract from other reforms.
Glyn Davis highlighted the imperfection of leadership, which he said was “about people, not abstraction”. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
The review proposed abandoning job titles based on classification rank, noting it too often determined “who to listen to, who to consult and who to value”.
Professor Davis was part of the 2019 Thodey review of the Australian Public Service. It found the APS unfit for the modern world, pointing to bureaucracy that typically operates in “silos, rigid hierarchies and traditional ways of working” and calling for it to “become a much more dynamic and responsive organisation”.
Professor Davis, speaking on Tuesday at a seminar on public leadership hosted by the Institute of Public Administration Australia, called on leaders to look beyond formal structures.
“I know we organise ourselves in neat structures, in clear departmental hierarchies with apparently orderly flows of accountability,” he said.
“But this is not our lived reality. If you have to rely on an organisational chart to assert your authority, you are not much of a leader.
“But if, regardless of formal lines, you can share ideas, empower others and draw on diversity of opinion and experience to achieve a shared goal – then you are exactly the leaders we need in the Australian Public Service.”
Speaking at the brutalist-style National Gallery in Canberra, Professor Davis noted the famed building’s tessellating concrete triangles on the ceiling.
“The triangular pattern builds into a honeycomb, multiplying into tetrahedrons and octahedrons; replicating what the architect Col Madigan calls a ‘timeless order’,” he said.
“The strict lines, the order of a space, the logic of pure form, are a vast distance from the messy, contingent, unceasing business of leadership.
“And geometry may tell us much about knowledge, but about leadership not so much.
“For the strict lines, the order of a space, the logic of pure form, are a vast distance from the messy, contingent, unceasing business of leadership.”
His call for public servants to embrace the uncertainty of the modern world echoes the work of the late British organisational theorist Ralph Stacey.
Professor Stacey pioneered what was known as the Stacey matrix, and argued for governments to be better at working with uncertainty and disagreement, rather than falling back on the usual certainty of rules and regulations.
Professor Davis highlighted the imperfection of leadership, which he said was “about people, not abstraction”.
“As Immanuel Kant wrote, ‘out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made’.
“Kant said this not in despair, but as recognition that people don’t follow neat lines, stand in silent order.
“Knowledge can be expressed through art, but its practical implementation requires conversation, negotiation, dealing with flesh and blood. Leadership must take an abstract – a goal, a mission, a task – and co-operate with others to make something happen.”
Professor Davis, most recently vice chancellor of Melbourne University, said it was an unexpected honour to return to Canberra “to become one more piece of crooked timber in the collective effort we call the APS”.
The freshly appointed head of the 170,000-strong public service noted there were a variety of management styles.
“Of course, working from the materials at hand implies an uncomfortable truth: there is no single formula for good leadership. People matter, as do circumstances, in shaping what is possible.”
Professor Davis applauded the development of a new Secretaries’ Charter of Leadership Behaviours. The work was led by Climate Change secretary David Fredericks and former Infrastructure secretary Simon Atkinson.
“It includes many of the qualities in leaders I admire: an enquiring mind; a positive attitude, active listening, and treating people with decency and respect,” Professor Davis said.
“These are values. They can also become lasting habits.”
Tom Burton has held senior editorial and publishing roles with The Mandarin, The Sydney Morning Herald and as Canberra bureau chief for The Australian Financial Review. He has won three Walkley awards.Connect with Tom on Twitter. Email Tom at tom.burton@afr.com
Part diatribe, part cool reflection on the state of Australia's public language, Don Watson's Death Sentence is scathing, funny and brilliant.
' ... in public life the language has never been held in less regard. It withers in the dungeons of the technocratic mind. It is butchered by the media. In politics it lacks all qualifications for the main game.'
Almost sixty years ago, George Orwell described the decay of language and why this threatened democratic society. But compared to what we now endure, the public language of Orwell's day brimmed with life and truth. Today's corporations, government departments, news media, and, perhaps most dangerously, politicians - speak to each other and to us in cliched, impenetrable, lifeless sludge.
Don Watson can bear it no longer. In Death Sentence, part diatribe, part cool reflection on the state of Australia's public language, he takes a blowtorch to the words - and their users - who kill joy, imagination and clarity. Scathing, funny and brilliant, Death Sentence is a small book of profound weight - and timeliness.
From there it’s not too far a stretch to George Orwell, who wrote of politics and the language: “Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.”
Box of Spice: The death sentence: bureaucratic gobbledygook is killing our language
