At Veredus we have been directly involved in numerous appointments of people with private sector backgrounds to the public sector. We have teamed up with the Sunday Times to start an online debate over the issues surrounding attracting private sector executives to the public sector.
Executives entering the public sector from the private sector can experience a considerable degree of culture shock. Any senior position can involve a degree of risk, but this can be exaggerated when the organisation is alien to the incoming executive.
The process of decision making can be different, a wider range of interest groups are involved in decision-making, the motives of the people that you are working with will can be different and the outcomes of your decisions can affect a far wider range of people.
What are the key challenges that people should expect when they take on a public sector role from a private sector background?
How can these challenges be mitigated?
I have over 25 years experiences running commercial business development and service teams in the private sector, and after having applied for over 20 public sector roles, I won one 12 months ago. Now reflecting back on the time and looking to the forward what have I found and what do I see?
Great friendly people to work with who genuinely are about providing a service, however, whilst they readily talk about wanting to change, get more with the outside commercial environment, very, very few make that paradigm shift. Little pockets of resistance try to undermine you at all times, taking more and more of your energy away. Senior executives say they support you, however, not totally convinced they would pull you out of the wreckage. HR functions are at best toothless, preferring to keep everybody happy. Things take for EVER to happen. I’m used to sorting meetings, and moving on. Here, endless meetings about meetings, then even more meetings.
The future. Well, the new Government just might make a difference. The cuts that are coming, will mean that all public sector organisations will have to take a hard look at themselves and try and do things differently and more quickly, otherwise, more jobs will be lost than need to be lost. The ones that drop the old baggage more quickly than others will be fine and move on with the brave new world, the rest, well, the gravy train is coming to a rapid halt and a great number are sleepwalking to the precipice.
And me, I’ll stick around a while longer. Only this week, a senior person in the organisation did say, and genuinely, I had made a great difference in the time I’d been there. Sad thing is, if they take the shackles off, I can do so much more, and would happily.
From my experience having worked 21 years in the private sector then 5 years in a public corporation the biggest challenge for some one crossing over the cultures is to harness the passion and enthusiasm of the majority whilst steering everyone towards more tangible outcomes. As well as securing greater and wider support - or less criticism - highlighting value allows people to have a greater feeling of personal and organisation value and a sense of achievement or contribution.
Most people in the public sector genuinely believe in what they do and the greater good. What they sometimes lack is an appreciation of the need to show value - doing a good job, for a worthwhile cause is sufficient. Unfortunately in the modern world, value has to be demonstrable and everyone has to manage internal and external stakeholders, beyond their own small domain.
Encouraging people to take responsibility, fulful their potential and break some of the shackles about managing risk also allows managers to manage - as they are freed from the detail they should not be involved in. The efficiencies this delivers can come quickly - but it needs clear and agreed priorities and it needs focus and consistency.
But perhaps the greatest challenge inherent in these issues is to recognise and build on the strength that exisit - not jump on the band wagon that seems all too prevalent these days to be universally critical and dismissive. A private sector, commercial background does not provide all the answers; but equally the public sector should not be written off as quickly as popular press and some political agencies might encourage. You have to recognise those who want to engage in the journey and take them with you, which may include some who do not recognise their own potential because of the paradigms they have long operated under.
Its not easy, but its worth it.
I have worked for a District Council in a change enabling and business improvement role for the past nine years. Previous to that I had a short spell working for a private company, and before that several years as an academic researcher and lecturer.
I have seen private sector consultants being absolutely bamboozled by our organization. I have also had experience of a very able ex private-sector person being brought in to manage my department, only to leave a couple of years later in frustration. Meanwhile, every local authority is under incredible pressures to deliver better service with budgets cut to the bone and “customers” who usually only see us in an antagonistic light (e.g. being chased for late payment of council tax; complaining about pot holes or the local schools; rubbish bins not being collected… I could go on!). So we need innovative, focussed and sustainable strategies to get us through the hard times and to use our resources wisely in the good times.
So I see the key challenges for private sector individuals wanting to make it in the public sector as these:
PRAGMATISM - It is difficult to apply a direct private sector model to the vast majority of public sector services. Be prepared to adapt… and to hold your nerve through what will inevitably be a labyrinthine decision making process. Which brings me onto…
POLITICAL INSIGHT - Many private sector personnel fail to realise that every strategic decision (and often operational ones too) requires political sign-off. Easy if the CEO and the ruling group Leader see eye to eye, not so if the council is hung or there are ties between certain councillors and their pet service teams. Also remember that much of what local authorities do is ruled by central government - we have a remarkably small say in use of overall funds.
SERVICE ETHOS - Yes the customer is king in the private sector, but in (local) government, our approach to customers is more complex. They will often need support, they may actually need prosecuting! But we are all in this because we believe we provide essential infrastructure to the way in which all citizens run their lives. Often our time is just spent listening and problem solving… there is no direct financial outcome or benefit to us. Relax into this way of thinking and you can start enjoying being ‘part of the community’.
Of course, one way for private sector workers to be involved in the public sector is through taking on our services through outsourcing and partnership contracts, of which there are many. But even here, the cultural differences make for so much frustration and back-biting that economic efficiencies seem to be swept away by the amount of time taken up in disputes!
Finally, I would add that us public sector types might also feel we have a lot to offer to the private sector. We cover so many services and deal with such a range of challenges that I hope private sector employers can see beyond the public sector headline to realise how very business focussed we are.
Regards, Jeremy.
I have had very similar experiences to those other private sector senior people, when it comes to gaining an interview within the public sector. Which is why I decided to accept my current opportunity within the Manchester Metropolitan University Business School (the largest business school in the North) which is refreshingly low in the number of academics within the management structure.
Private sector candidates respond to employment agency advertisements which are by their very nature created within a PC environment. But one should remember that many of the recruiters that have been tasked with sourcing candidiates for public sector roles are taking the safe route, recruiting from the sector; rather than standing up for the right candidate they seek the easiest candidate to sell. This is a purely business minded decision and one which I can fully understand. I have been a recruiter/head hunter for over thirty years as well as a strategy consultant so I know the dynamics of the business only too well.
If you are in the private sector and would like to ‘put something back’ you would make more progress by becoming a Non-Exec somewhere rather than attempting to enter public service via an agency route.
I’ve read the previous contributions with interest and would agree (and sympathise) with many of the frustrations expressed. My background is public and voluntary sector, so I cannot offer any personal comparisons on the private/public sector issue. I would suggest, though, that the picture is not as black and white as some contributions have suggested. Veredus are probably better placed than any of us to view the landscape, but my impression is that there are a number of markets within both the private and public sectors between which it is hard to move. A previous contributor mentioned Financial Services, which seems to be almost hermetically sealed to outsiders, and Professional Services seem also only to look for their own. In the Public Sector, the NHS and Central and Local Government maintain that they are looking for external experience but often don’t ‘walk the talk’. The voluntary sector may be more open-minded and certainly have a tradition of importing experience from outside, often because they attract experienced people who want to “put something back” having gained experience elsewhere.
Rather than rail against the shortsightedness of the public sector, I would like to suggest that it is more productive to speculate why they are as they are. Think, for example, of the Chief Executive of an NHS Trust who is making an appointment to his/her senior team. They will be very conscious of the impact that the individual will make to the Trust’s success, especially as measured by external stakeholders such as the Care Quality Commission. He/she is faced with an ‘outsider’ (i.e. non-NHS) candidate and an experienced NHS candidate. Which is the less risky choice? You may not agree with the decision, but it is easy to understand why the NHS candidate looks a safer bet. I am sure that this phenomenon is not unique to the NHS. While it sounds depressingly negative, recruitment is often a process of deselection rather than selection, i.e. you find reasons to eliminate candidates until you have only one (or, sometimes, none!) left. I am sure that there are honourable exceptions, but public sector managers generally don’t reach senior posts on the basis of their propensity to embrace risk-taking. Other contributors have commented on the differences between the spirit/atmosphere/ethos of the public and private sectors, and this seems to be a key one.
But the rules of the game may be about to change. Certainly, whoever comes out on top after the next general election, it is hard to believe that there won’t be a dramatic change in public sector finances. I heard the Chief Executive of Swindon Borough Council recently cite some work by PwC who were estimating an overall reduction in public finances of 25%-30%. Even allowing for some exaggeration in that projection, reductions on the scale which will be experienced in the next two years can’t be achieved by ‘salami-slicing’ budgets. So new (or at least different) thinking will be at a premium. Those without sector-specific experience but with a demonstrable ability to achieve change in different circumstances will look very attractive. I am not suggesting that private sector candidates should offer themselves as experts in ‘slash and burn’ initiatives to drive down costs at any price, but a different perspective from the home-grown variety might be more welcome in the future. Current objections to change may no longer be sustainable in the new financial austerity. Certainly the balance between risk and benefit may change in incomers’ favour.
Or are public sector habits too engrained to change?