1 The Facts of Life for Public Service Managers

Struggling to cope with the maintenance of normal service provision alongside coping with the implementation of multiple change are facts of life amongst managers of public service organisations in the many countries whose governments are pursuing service reforms. Professionals with formal leadership responsibility charged with putting reforms into effect have to deal with their complexity and multiplicity, alongside local and organisation-level initiatives, unplanned changes which require a response, and all the rest of ongoing work. Reforming public services means successfully implementing change for the good (according to the values of stakeholders with the power to define what counts as improvement) while maintaining normal provision. But so also do more incremental improvement efforts generated locally or from inside service organisations. Although here the scope of change is likely to be more modest, incremental improvement efforts are typically undertaken alongside reforms and with the encouragement of government politicians. In consequence, the role of public managers is becoming relatively more unmanageable as their capacity to control their work declines in the face of mounting pressures. It is also common experience that ‘stuff happens’, to quote ex-US Secretary of State for Defens