Exemplify high performance and exceptional leadership?

Performance maximisation requires role clarity. Role clarity, in turn, requires knowing what is required of me and how these demands fit into the bigger picture of the organisation. Sadly, however, role clarity is fragile. It is eroded by changes in personnel, organisational context and strategic direction. This means that an ongoing investment in role clarity is required to underpin performance maximisation.

I have seen many public sector organisations develop performance management frameworks that provide generic outcome statements and behavioural attributes. At best, such frameworks provide useful language to inform goal setting, performance feedback and coaching. The are not a substitute for these processes.

Leadership is a social dynamic. It occurs ''in the moment.'' It can be developed, but this needs to start at the top of the organisation, because leaders learn best from other leaders. This process ignites when leaders are held to account for their organisational impact. This impact should be measured, because only then can it be managed.

Managers (even accidental managers) need to be guided and trained to maximise their teams performance - being able to connect and identify what drives other people is not something that comes naturally to everyone (anyone?).

Complementarily though, we as staff also need to learn how to own our performance, and be driven in order to maximise our performance. We need to keep appreciating respectful and constructive feedback, even if critical, and be rewarded for responding positively to the feedback.

Principles based performance management frameworks (rather than prescriptive rules based performance frameworks) are ideal, but they can only work if all the parties agree to those principles in the first place, and are then guided to interpreting and applying those principles.

More 360 feedback mechanisms that are regular would remove the burden exclusively from the manager to observe and "administer" feedback. Mechanisms to incorporate co-worker, stakeholders and client or customer feedback into performance discussions would also assist.

I love working for the APS, it provides me with an awareness of serving the public but also understanding government policy making and implementation. However my enthusiasm is dwindled by lack of opportunity to participate when located outside of Canberra. I understand that there are advantages of having work groups in the one location. However, this creates a 'silo' mentality and one In which employees do not look for opportunities as they do not want to relocate to Canberra. I personally would love to see perhaps teams with employees from every state. For example if the Department of Social Services has a policy team on Family Violence measures, maybe that team has a person located in every state so that there is a whole of Australia reflected in innovation and implementation. This might also offer more robust opportunities and policy problem solving and flexiability.

In terms of Performance Management, I believe this is a very important area of public sector management. However, I would prefer it to be focused on positive development and skills acquisition rather than a deficit model. I would also encourage managers to reflect on the overall outcomes of employees rather than myopic procedures. Thus accept that there is more than on way to achieve a desired outcome.

It's very clear that people want to live in certain places in Australia. For instance, Byron Bay or Townsville, IN SPITE of the atrocious employment rates. In contrast, people live in Canberra typically because of employment opportunity. By moving our operations to places in Australia such as Byron or Townsville, we can attract people who are interested in a better lifestyle (access to the coast, thermal comfort) who would otherwise not be in our workforce.

We need to move away from work based on inputs and move towards outpute and outcomes. We are overly concerned with bums on seats and hours put in, rather than the quality of the work produced.

Many people in my team complete their work promptly yet drag themselves into the office merely vecause we have a 7h 30m workday. Are staff more likely to be happy if they can work from home or do other things if the work they produce has been completed?

Reduce the levels of decision making as these turn into filters. From a personal perspective where I have had some innovative but contentious ideas to improve work matters I have seen these get filtered so that by the time it hits the decision maker (approver) the idea has been watered down so much that it has become virtually ineffective or even changed completely. Where I have been able to have honest open frank discussions with leaders (who actually understand the work) I have managed to have greater impacts on direction of work and have taken greater ownership of outcomes including understanding why something cant be done.

Using technology to overcome traditional barriers of communication would be of greater use to harness capabilities of all workers. What is the difference between sitting beside a person to sitting in another city/town/state with good technology that can share work in real time and allow collaborative communication while working on the same work?

Trust will always trend to allowing your staff to seek maximisation.

There needs to be simplified mechanisms for promotion/advancement that doesn't rely on the vagaries of recruitment processes, or provides greater weighting to having acted in the position.

An individual can be competently acting in a role for months or years, patiently waiting for a recruitment process to happen. One day, a process may begin, which is likely to drag on for 6 months or so.

When the decision finally arrives, they may not even be found suitable for the role, or land in the merit pool. Meanwhile, the work still needs to be completed and they are still more than capable of doing so, so their acting position continues.

This is a bizarre outcome. I have personally witnessed an individual who has been acting in a position for over a year be found suitable, but not be offered a position. She was, however, extended in her higher duties and asked to train the person who came in. If the incumbent is that capable, how can they not be provided with a permanent position?

How is the APS going to exemplify high performance when it doesn't reward it?

If you want to encourage APS staff to be innovative and take risks, they need to know that success will lead to promotion. Currently, promotion is a quagmire that needs to be carefully navigated, requiring as much luck as skill.

Business agility is all about cultural change. It's about creating a safe place for people to learn from failure, continuous learning and applying a growth mindset. These things are hard to do in any organisation and the APS is no different. We can't just lay Agile over the top and expect it to work, because it doesn't without the underpinning culture to support it. This is where we've gone wrong in the past. It is not a one size fits all.

We also need to be accountable for our outcomes, not so much of our outputs. This is where things like five day work days that smaller companies are modelling (with lessons learned of course) could assist in encouraging real innovation, efficiency and effectiveness.

Too much of what we do is justifying, when we could spend less time just doing a better job for the community. I'm not saying we throw all reporting or paperwork out. I'm saying we focus less on saying what we're doing and do it more.

As a public servant for over 20 yrs in State and Federal government I have seen many changes and the “outsourcing “ of jobs has negatively impacted the public sector. I work beside someone who costs more and often is paid more, and is not always better trained and often does not better understand the processes and requirements of government. This has impacted the morale overall of the APS. The pride there once was is dwindling with the newer breed of employees and the preparedness to move to gain experience, better opportunities or promotion. I feel that for me there is less and less incentive to stay within the public sector. Yes there is good super, but that is a delayed reward. So how do you empower APS to proactively manage their career within the APS and be fulfilled, especially if you are in a region. I have worked both in Canberra and a region. The opportunities and pathways are very limited in the region and often more senior promotional roles are filled by people on a retirement trajectory returning to the region. I recently lost an APS staff member who is one of the smartest people I have had 5he pleasure yo work with, why? The job was not as advertised and not nearly challenging enough. I had to actively encourage him to look to move on to not ‘deskill’ which is one of my greatest fears for myself. Eight yrs of university and senior roles in State government are being eroded by a system that has not adapted well to the modern needs.

In relation to performance, many departments just pay lip service to it. When I started in my current role I put a lot of effort in to the process setting out the APS level and job role along with requirements under our business plan all to be told that is not how they do it and to basically just write anything.