I’ve written a great deal about employee engagement, management renewal, and future directions for the public service. In many cases, I’m covering ground that has been explored at length by others. There exists a wide community of public servants and stakeholders with (at least loosely) overlapping visions of what the organization should become.
And there exists a slew of counterarguments. Many business writers have tackled the entitlement culture of my generation of workers, and raised questions about our naiveté and expectations.
I’ll grant the naysayers this: Change-seeking progressive employees need to be practical. Even if we’re right, change can’t happen instantly, and we need to learn to respect and navigate the organization as it is. Otherwise, we’ll never have the opportunity to influence the as it will be.
However, senior leaders: You need to be practical too.
Even if your change-hungry employees are dead wrong, you need to attract and retain them. You may have a solid business model and a winning formula, but that counts for nothing if you don’t have the talent to execute. Make no mistake, you’re competing for skill. Making some compromises on your business model to appease employees – yes, even if they’re unrealistic, entitled, or flat-out wrong – may be the practical approach compared to the cost of lost talent.
That all said, check back in a few days, because there’s an easy argument against everything I’ve just written. It involves Mitt Romney, and I’ll lay it out and look for input.
Aaah so timely! What a relevant article to what innovators within government face. Great to keep things in perspective and to build patience into our approach for change. I vented my frustration over at GCConnex but it’s nice to read a balanced view on change within Government.
Nicely written!
well put kent. I always find these discussions very circular. its nice to focus on one point and open the discussion on both sides. change is huge for large organizations. a skill or competency we really need to entrench is the idea of deferred gratification. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on a balanced long term vision for government based on our senior management of tomorrow essentially. I realize this is a sidenote. cheers.
I’m looking forward to that, although I suspect we’ll just end up discussing it in person.
Question for you: in the public service, is employee retention/attraction considered an issue? I suspect that a lot of what you see is based on the fact the PS actually hangs on to, and attracts, employees at a rate that a lot of private enterprises would find enviable. Some would argue they are competing for talent based on benefits, pensions and some intangibles. I would love to see the actual numbers, but if the PS has a low attrition rate, you probably have identified a major obstacle to change – the lack of a compelling reason to do so.
Brent, I view the issue not so much as retention, but rather the PS attracting the types of individuals that it needs. While the benefits (pension, benefits, etc) of the PS are enviable, a lot of talent avoids us because of bureaucracy, therefore (to an extent, and maybe less so now than it probably was) giving people jobs who are otherwise unhireable/fireable.
I find that NY Post article infuriating – given the fact that wages at the median and below have stagnated or declined in most markets (adjusted for inflation) over the last 30 years, I suspect what most gen Y are expecting is the same purchasing power that generation X and the baby boomers had when they started.
This is ignoring the fact that any gen Y employee with advanced computer knowledge can be exponentially more efficient in their job than someone in the 1960′s.
This is also ignoring the fact that the cost of an advanced degree has increased WAY, WAY past wage growth since the 1980′s. Fact is, it’s more expensive to be an entry-level employee now than it was then…and as a result, to have an at par quality of life as previous generations, we’d have to be paid more…but we aren’t, and we’re still demonized for not just accepting a job as “good enough.”
I go on record stating that this is another example of a small percentage of a couple of generations who could not afford their standard of living and who’ve borrowed (economically, environmentally) on the backs of future generations and the rest of the population. If you look at wealth concentration since the second world war, you see that anyone without capital has been getting squeezed and the NY Post wants to make their cumulative displeasure about inflated sense of selves? Please.
Thanks, everyone, for the comments. Sorry it took so long to reply.
Georgina, I saw your blog on GCConnex. Rather shocking, I guess I’ve been lucky to have avoided anything similar in my career.
I’m not sure who the second commenter is, but cheers. I’ve added delayed gratification and long-term vision to my topics whiteboard.
Brent, I suppose I meant that post as an all-inclusive concept, but yes, I referenced public service. I suspect the PS does have a low departure rate – I’ve had trouble finding clear stats on it, believe it or not. But the real question is the relative caliber of those that stay versus those that go.
And Dave, yup. I would also like to explore things like average years in post-secondary of new professionals. I have an additional thought that I’ll post separately.
Cheers, all.
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