What can the public sector teach the private sector?

Ask private sector managers what the public sector could learn from them, and you’ll get a fairly consistent response: ‘rigour’, ‘delivery’ and ‘focus’. But you might not get such a clear answer if you asked them what they could learn from the public sector.

The public sector is indeed quick to adopt private sector ideas, vocabulary and even people. But the favour is rarely returned. An indicator of this one way traffic is the use of non-executive directors. Of 59 non-executive directors currently sitting on the boards of government departments, 51 have predominantly private sector experience. Amongst almost 800 non-executive directors sitting on the boards of FTSE 100 there are five former permanent secretaries and no former local government chief executives.

This is very odd. Managing in the public sector is not just different, but in many respects it is more challenging. The lack of simple success measures and the demands of accountability make the key tasks of setting strategies, delivering efficiency and motivating people exponentially harder to achieve. Or to put it another way, public sector managers play chess, private sector managers play backgammon. And yet the backgammon players seem to be running the chess academy.Good private sector managers should be looking at ways of bringing these different approaches into their workplaces, just as the public sector has done in reverse...

Read on at Ethos Journal

Ethosis aimed at public sector leaders, politicians, academics and policy specialists debating the future of public services today.