The ADM’s Balancing Act

For Assistant Deputy Ministers (ADMs), leadership in transformation is uniquely challenging. Positioned between the strategic vision of Ministers/Deputies and the operational realities of Directors General and front-line staff, ADMs must constantly reconcile competing pressures.

On one hand, Ministers and Deputies push for urgency—quick wins that show tangible progress in politically relevant timeframes. On the other hand, the machinery of government requires patience—systemic redesigns, cultural changes, and long-term reforms that often take years to realize.

ADMs, therefore, live in the “pressure cooker” of transformation: they must deliver immediate results without sacrificing structural integrity, and sustain long-term reforms without losing momentum. This blog explores how ADMs can successfully navigate this paradox, acting as translators, integrators, and cultural stewards of urgency and patience.

Urgency from Above, Resistance from Below

The demand for urgency often flows downward from political and senior bureaucratic levels. ADMs are expected to:

• Produce visible results to demonstrate government responsiveness.
• Accelerate implementation to align with electoral cycles.
• Manage optics—ensuring progress is framed positively in reports, speeches, and media releases.

At the same time, ADMs encounter resistance and complexity from below:

• Programs are entangled in policy, legal, or IT constraints.
• Organizational cultures are skeptical of “the latest reform.”
• Front-line staff balance transformation with already heavy workloads.

This dual pressure puts ADMs in a unique leadership crucible. They must ensure urgency is translated into credible, sustainable change without overwhelming their teams (Aucoin, 2012).

Patience as Strategic Integrity

While urgency is critical to sustain political momentum, patience is essential for organizational resilience. ADMs must safeguard the institution from superficial reforms that risk collapse. This involves:

• Building systems that can withstand leadership turnover.
• Cultivating trust with staff and stakeholders through gradual cultural adaptation.
• Staging transformation into manageable phases that reinforce rather than erode capacity.

Patience, then, is not about slowing down. It is about pacing reforms strategically, ensuring that urgency is matched with absorptive capacity (Kotter, 2012).

The ADM’s Paradox: Translator and Integrator

ADMs sit at the nexus of urgency and patience, translating political ambition into implementable programs while integrating institutional realities into political strategy. This dual role makes ADMs both:

1. Translators – framing urgent political priorities in terms that staff and partners can operationalize, while tempering unrealistic timelines.
2. Integrators – aligning short-term deliverables with long-term reform pathways, ensuring they reinforce rather than undermine one another.

As Bakvis (2013) notes, mid-level executives in Westminster systems are critical “connective tissue,” mediating between political responsiveness and bureaucratic durability.

Strategies for Balancing Urgency and Patience

ADMs can leverage several strategies to successfully manage this paradox:

1. Develop Dual Track Plans

Establish both a short-term plan with visible deliverables and a long-term roadmap with staged reforms. The short-term plan satisfies urgency, while the roadmap sustains patience.

2. Frame Transformation as a Journey

Communicate change as a progressive narrative—quick wins are milestones, not endpoints. This maintains momentum while validating patience (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2015).

3. Leverage Pilot Programs

Pilots allow ADMs to show progress quickly while testing solutions in smaller, lower-risk environments. Scaling successful pilots demonstrates both urgency and patience in action.

4. Manage Stakeholder Expectations Proactively

Stakeholders—whether staff, unions, or external partners—often resist accelerated change. Transparent dialogue about timelines, risks, and milestones helps balance urgency with patience.

5. Build Capacity While Delivering

Pair urgent initiatives with training, resourcing, and process improvements that enable staff to sustain reforms. This avoids the trap of short-term results that erode long-term capacity.

Case Example: ADM in Digital Transformation

An ADM in a large federal department was tasked with modernizing digital service delivery. The Minister wanted results visible within a year.

The ADM responded by:

• Delivering a quick win: a streamlined online form that reduced citizen processing time by 40%.
• Communicating this as part of a longer digital journey, showing staff and stakeholders how it connected to a five-year roadmap for full system modernization.
• Using the early success to build trust, securing resources for the broader reform.

This approach balanced urgency (visible progress) with patience (structural reform), preserving credibility at both political and organizational levels.

Risks of Overemphasizing One Side

When urgency dominates:

• Staff experience burnout and disengagement.
• Programs are rushed, creating fragility.
• Trust is lost when quick fixes fail to endure.

When patience dominates:

• Ministers perceive inertia, undermining political support.
• Transformation loses momentum and visibility.
• Organizational energy dissipates.

The ADM’s leadership lies in avoiding these extremes and modeling both urgency and patience simultaneously (Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009).

Modeling the Culture of “Disciplined Urgency”

Culture flows from leadership. ADMs must embody what can be called disciplined urgency: moving with energy while respecting process integrity.

This involves:

• Setting ambitious but credible timelines.
• Encouraging innovation while protecting quality standards.
• Recognizing both rapid achievements and steady, incremental progress.

Staff take cues from how ADMs balance these dualities. Leaders who model panic erode trust; leaders who model inertia sap motivation. Those who demonstrate disciplined urgency create resilient, adaptive cultures (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2015).

Role of Independent Partners in Supporting ADMs

Independent advisors and facilitators can provide critical support by:

• Offering neutral assessments that help ADMs defend realistic timelines.
• Designing frameworks that show how quick wins contribute to larger reforms.
• Coaching leaders in communication strategies that align urgency and patience narratives.

Such support strengthens the ADM’s ability to navigate pressures from above and below.

Conclusion: The ADM as the Paradox Leader

The success of government transformation often hinges on ADMs. They are the ones who must embody the paradox: urgent enough to deliver results, patient enough to sustain reform.

This duality is not a weakness but a strength. By balancing urgency and patience, ADMs protect the credibility of political leadership, sustain organizational integrity, and cultivate cultures capable of delivering lasting transformation.

The art of ADM leadership lies in recognizing that transformation is neither a sprint nor a marathon—it is both.

What’s Next?

Institute X equips ADMs to thrive in the paradox of urgency and patience, offering frameworks, facilitation, and coaching that strengthen leadership and build resilient transformation cultures.

References

• Aucoin, P. (2012). New Political Governance in Westminster Systems. Public Policy Forum.
• Bakvis, H. (2013). “Prime Minister and Cabinet.” In B. Guy Peters & J. Pierre (Eds.), Handbook of Public Administration (2nd ed.). Sage.
• Denhardt, J. V., & Denhardt, R. B. (2015). The New Public Service: Serving, Not Steering. Routledge.
• Heifetz, R. A., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. Harvard Business Review Press.
• Kotter, J. (2012). Leading Change. Harvard Business Review Press.