LEADERSHIP

Problems and solutions are shared

As a leader, you must get used to not only focusing on your own problems and challenges. Public management must go across sectors and problems, believes professor of public management Carsten Greve.

Today's and tomorrow's leaders must bring their organisation into play with others to a much greater extent and solve the problems that way. This places demands on public leaders, who must facilitate collaboration and multidisciplinarity to a greater extent, rather than optimising their own organisation. This is the opinion of Public Management professor Carsten Greve, who teaches public managers the challenges of joint public management on the Master of Public Governance (MPG) at CBS.

The individual educational institution alone cannot solve the dropout rate, the social administration alone cannot eliminate homelessness, the job centre alone cannot get young people into jobs, and the Danish Energy Agency alone cannot create the green transition. In other words, the major societal challenges cut across institutions and sectors, which is why, according to Professor Greve, public management needs to follow the same path.

"The sector division is disappearing in the public sector. It's a development that is problem-driven. For example, the challenges with ghetto areas, youth initiatives, unhappiness among young people or in the healthcare system, where citizens' treatment involves both the municipality and the healthcare system," says Carsten Greve and mentions two concrete and current examples where solutions require joint public management with both private and public actors.

"The Covid-19 effort is a good example. From the start of the pandemic, we worked across the public sector. Professional boundaries changed when it came to finding concrete solutions. And it was less important whether it was one hospital or another that solved the task - or in which departments. It was more about creating a Covid-19 department as quickly as possible. There was a lot of solution-orientation across the board," says Carsten Greve and continues with another current example:

"The climate crisis requires joint public solutions. A good example of this are the so-called climate partnerships, where companies have been put together with the government in a partnership to try to come up with solutions. It's a form that I think can spill over into other areas. In Denmark, several of the major reform initiatives in recent years have already been conceived as arenas for partnerships on common problems. Public schools and healthcare are areas where partnerships have been sought and where there is a national dialogue on issues that affect organisations and citizens," says Carsten Greve.

In Denmark, in recent years, several of the major reform initiatives have already been conceived as arenas for partnerships on common problems.

Seek out collaboration

However, both cross-sectoral problems and partnerships place new demands on public sector leaders, according to Carsten Greve. Because the individual manager's focus shifts from the organisation to the problem and thus the collaboration with others outside the organisation.

"Shared public management is driven by problems. Just as problems are cross-cutting, so will responsibilities. Now you can no longer say that it's only the social services' problem, for example, and then other authorities can sit back. Now they are forced to find common solutions through collaboration. Therefore, designing and entering into co-operative institutions becomes an essential task for joint public efforts and management. But the challenge is that there is no manual. As a leader, you have to take it upon yourself to prioritise creating public networks and forums where you can meet and develop solutions. You have to seek it out yourself. That's also why we at MPG try to give them a ballast to be able to handle it," says Carsten Greve.

Another challenge, according to Carsten Greve, is that as an organisation, you have to relate to and collaborate with a much wider range of actors. Both private organisations and NGOs can be central to the joint public effort.

"For example, there are many social organisations that you can collaborate with in the social area. These organisations are politically controlled and often run by volunteers. This raises some dilemmas about volunteers and how much they can contribute to the task solution. The same goes for the private companies that help develop new and creative solutions. Private companies are often very solution-orientated and want to develop concrete solutions. The same goes for the public sector, so there is a common interest. However, in implementation, this is challenged by the need for competitive tendering and the need to treat all companies equally so as not to eliminate competition. The tender processes can be somewhat cumbersome, and you may be forced to set very precise requirements for problem solving. This limits how innovative the collaboration can be, and it makes it harder to develop creative solutions together," says Carsten Greve.

Shared public management is driven by problems. Just as problems are cross-cutting, so will responsibilities.

Optimising the common good

While shared public management is becoming an increasing necessity, it faces challenges in the governance of the public sector in recent years.

"In recent years, the public sector has been split up into smaller units and, through New Public Management, each of them has been turned into individual "result centres". This challenges leaders who rely on collaboration and joint public sector solutions to achieve their goals," says Carsten Greve and continues:

"When problems become a common concern, there is less reason for them to be solved by individual organisations or individual sectors alone. If joint public management is to have better conditions, the public sector must turn away from focusing only on optimising the performance of individual organisations towards the possibility of optimising the common good," says Carsten Greve, and he mentions performance management as one of the challenges for joint public management.

"The individual leader must relate to some goals within their own organisation. But here, you have to try to negotiate some common goals. It's hard work, and it requires that top management is given the freedom to try to find creative solutions. There are still a lot of specific performance targets hidden in the legislation that many institutions have to live up to. If you're the head of a municipal job centre, it's no fun to see your employment figures suddenly no longer stand out because you've spent three months working with others to come up with an initiative that doesn't produce results. It can be difficult for an individual public sector leader to deal with this dilemma," says Carsten Greve, who believes that joint public sector solutions require a greater willingness to take risks in both the political system and the civil service.

Requires a cultural change

"It's kind of the nature of partnerships that unforeseen things can happen. The different parties may pull out, or it may not work out, and then you have to be prepared to give up again. You move out of your own comfort zone. Both the municipality, institutions and the individual public manager may not always be comfortable with this situation. It's clear that you're taking a risk in an area, and I'm not sure that municipalities' top managers always think that's a great idea. There is rarely a common understanding or perception of how much risk you are willing to take. It's very different from municipality to municipality and from region to region," says Carsten Greve.

He sees a contrast with the private sector, where people are more used to taking risks. In the private sector, you go in with more financial calculations and think about what the company could potentially risk and what it could potentially gain. But Carsten Greve doesn't see the same willingness to take risks for mistakes in the political system, and according to him, this can hold back creative solutions across the board.

"There is not much room for error in the political system. If something goes wrong, the responsibility quickly returns to the municipality and city council. But it's about creating a cultural change. The willingness to do this varies between political systems. For the individual public manager, this means that they need to get their bearings and take the temperature of their own municipality and assess what it really looks like. Do we want to cooperate, or is it, for example, a more cautious city council?" says Carsten Greve.

A constant state of change

The fact that public leaders must create strategies together with others implies that leaders no longer only have to deal with their own organisation, but are dependent on the organisation's collaboration with other actors. This means that it becomes part of the leader's role to assess which joint public strategies to opt in and out of. And according to Carsten Greve, this means being able to manoeuvre safely in a constant state of change with shifting demands and reforms.

"The basic condition is that the public sector is subject to continuous change. So in almost all areas there are reforms and new organisational changes all the time. In this way, you could say that the Danish public sector model today is extremely flexible. But when you have so many reforms in the public sector, you also have many different demands, and if you, as a loyal civil servant, want to comply with all demands, you will be blown away. Because if you as a leader have to comply with all the demands and take a position on all the things that come from above, it becomes very stormy," says Carsten Greve, who therefore believes that public leaders today must be able to prioritise in the constant change.

"As a leader, you have to be able to live with change. At MPG, we try to give leaders different tools for this. As a leader, you have to be able to prioritise what is most important right now, both for the organisation and across the organisation. You need to be able to collaborate with other actors to assess which joint public strategies to choose for and against. And on a leadership program like MPG, you get the opportunity to meet other leaders with the same challenge and thereby become wiser about your own leadership role and collaboration with others," says Carsten Greve.

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Problems and solutions are shared

In Denmark, in recent years, several of the major reform initiatives have already been conceived as arenas for partnerships on common problems.

Shared public management is driven by problems. Just as problems are cross-cutting, so will responsibilities.

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