Tag: Leadership
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Directors General and the Power of Decision: Where Culture Meets Accountability
DGs at the Crossroads Directors General (DGs) are the backbone of Canada’s federal public service. You stand between Assistant Deputy Ministers (ADMs) who provide strategic direction and Directors who manage frontline delivery. In this pivotal position, your choices determine whether programs advance with clarity—or stall in layers of hesitation. The DG role is not simply…
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ADMs and the Weight of Responsibility: Culture, Accountability, and the Need to Decide
The Tightrope of ADM Leadership Assistant Deputy Ministers (ADMs) live at the critical juncture where government policy meets organizational reality. Unlike Ministers and Deputies, you are not setting the political agenda. Unlike Directors General (DGs), you are not solely responsible for operational delivery. Instead, you occupy the middle ground where policy intent must be translated…
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Decisions in the Middle: How DGs Move Beyond Advice to Action
Directors General (DGs) hold the pivotal middle ground of the federal public service. You are close enough to operations to know the realities, yet senior enough to influence strategy. In many transformations, the success or failure of implementation comes down to how DGs interpret their role: are you merely an advisor, or are you a…
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ADM Balancing Act: Expertise, Culture, and the Courage to Decide
Assistant Deputy Ministers (ADMs) occupy one of the most complex leadership roles in the federal public service. You are expected to be the expert in your portfolio, the translator of political intent, the manager of vast operations, and the bridge between Deputies and the Directors General who implement on the ground. It is, quite simply,…
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Everyone Nods But Nothing Moves: The Hidden Drag on Government Transformation
Transformation in government is never about technology alone, nor about bold political vision in isolation. At the highest levels of leadership—where Ministers and Deputy Ministers carry responsibility for both vision and execution—the challenge is subtler and more insidious. It’s the silent drag on change that arises when everyone around the table nods in agreement but…
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Transformation lessons from the Double Lift
At sheepdog trials, which I’ve written about before, there is a challenge called the Double Lift. The trials test shepherd and sheepdog to run a herd of sheep through a course and into a pen. The Double Lift is the challenge for champions that requires two groups of ten sheep be acquired from different parts…
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Be a transformation shepherd
My wife’s love of animals occasionally takes us to a sheepdog trial. This is a competition for shepherds and their border collies entailing the herding and moving of sheep through a course, splitting the large group, then penning the smaller of the two new groups. It always strikes me as eerily similar to transformation and…
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Involuntary buy-in: the truth about change
I know it’s received wisdom, even catechism that everyone in any organization can and should be bought in to change. I know this is essential to address resistance, often sounding like, “If they only knew better… we can help get them there by informing, educating…” I know within organizations we’re, “Not dealing with 5-year-olds,”…
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Unlocking Change: Embrace Forward & Backward Lookers
A recent experience crystalized for me an essential, binary nature of organizations: some people look forward, some backward. There ought to and will always be both in any given organization. That there might be all one kind or the other is unlikely. More probable is overrepresentation or, at the least, an unbalanced influence or control…
