DEVELOPMENT OF MANAGEMENT GUIDE ON LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT

INCEPTION REPORT

by

M J BALOGUN Consultant

14 September 2010
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Background In line with the strategic thrusts of the Governance and Public Administration Programme adopted in October 2008 by the 6th Conference of Ministers of Public Service (hereafter referred to as CAMPS or Conference of Ministers), the CAMPS Secretariat, with the support of the UNDP, identified areas that needed to be systematically researched prior to the preparation of standards, guidelines and instruments that could be readily applied in responding to broad developmental and public service management challenges. As one of the thematic areas in which studies have been commissioned, leadership and management development offers an opportunity not only to interrogate the various actors notions (or conceptions) of their developmental roles, but also to capture the diversity as well as the convergence of perspectives on the strategies, competencies, and capacities essential to successful implementation of home-grown but credible socioeconomic, governance, and service delivery strategies. 2. In the paragraphs that follow, this inception report proceeds from the project terms of reference, through the discussions held thereon in Maputo, Mozambique, on 6th September 2010, to an understanding on the concepts and issues that need to be addressed to facilitate the preparation of a Guide on Leadership and Management Developmenta Guide outlining practical yet innovative approaches to governance, development and public service management challenges. 3. The report starts with the very idea of a Management Guidefocusing on its nature, objectives, scope and limitations. It then proceeds in the second section to clarify the concepts of leadership and management vis-a-vis the long-term governance and public administration strategy adopted by CAMPS in 2008. The essence of leadership and management development is the subject taken up in the third section. Based on the conclusions emerging from the preceding sections, sections four and five make another attempt at clarifying the terms of reference and at pin-pointing the deliverables. The sixth section focuses on the methodology to apply in undertaking the study. I. Management Guide: Objectives, scope and limitations 4. As set out in the project terms of reference, the consultancy entails the preparation of a Management Guide on Leadership and Management Development. The question is what constitutes a Management Guide. Briefly put, the Guide will be a compendium of good practices in leadership and management
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development across the continent. While not totally disregarding concepts and models, its underlying objective will be the enunciation of practical, easy-to-apply leadership and management development standards (and supporting instruments), particularly, standards geared towards the attainment of good governance, development, and quality service objectives. II. Leadership and CAMPS long-term strategy: clearing the conceptual, methodological and empirical hurdles 5. The Guide on Leadership and Management will, besides serving as a reference material (that inspires and encourages the adoption of consistently high leadership and management standards), make a serious attempt to clarify the key concepts. Examples of terms that need clarifying are leadership, management, development, and the linkages between and among the terms. To aid understanding and assist the process of data gathering, the conceptual part of the study will examine the taxonomy and ideal-types of leadership, management and development. It will also discuss the merits of the indices (including the Mo Ibrahim Governance Index) applied in assessing the performance of government and public service leaders over time. 6. Everything being equal, the study will explore the feasibility of developing a new Indexthe CAMPS Leadership and Management Development Index. The CAMPS Index will be formulated based partly on the analysis of Africas governance and development challenges, and partly on the emphasis given by the Conference of Ministers to the articulation of an inward-oriented strategy of development, as well as to the six pillars on which the long-term governance and public administration strategy rests. In specific terms, the Index will: (a) Seek to highlight Africas governance and development challenges and, of greater significance, the efforts made to recapture the initiative for the formulation and implementation of strategies and policies geared towards anticipating and responding to the challenges; (b) Pay particular attention to the capacities needed by government and public service leaders to proffer genuinely indigenous, innovative and rational solutions to governance, development, and service delivery challenges; and (c) Identify the competencies that government and public service leaders need to acquire and develop (or regularly upgrade) to achieve consistently high standards in six critical areas, notably, service delivery,
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human resources management, ICT applications to public service management and to service delivery, organization and institution development (including the promulgation of public integrity anticorruption measures), budget, finance and resource mobilization, and monitoring and evaluation. III. Leadership and management development

On the need for further boundary definition 7. While leadership and management development is most often narrowly conceived as training or human capacity building, the Guide will take a broad and holistic view of the subject. It will, for instance, go beyond the strategies and tactics applied within and across public service agencies to impart new knowledge, skills, attitudes, and examine the practices adopted at different times and places to, among other things: (a) anchor leadership selection (and retrenchment) practices on public yearnings for competence, integrity, professionalism and citizencustomer preferences in state institutions, as well as for a public service that is fired by the determination to improve Africas place under the planets sun; (b) nurture the brains in the heads of current and aspiring leaders and stoke the fires in their bellies, with a view to igniting in them the will to excel in global competitionsbe these sporting, cultural, or economic; (c) create an atmosphere conducive to strategic visioning, creativity, innovation and the application of the intellect to basic human problems; (d) integrate a knowledge management and perpetual learning infrastructure into the structure of the public service; (e) provide a framework for internal knowledge sharing and for exchange of good practices with external institutions. Survey of contemporary practices 8. Suffice it to say that approaches to the development of leadership and management capacities vary from one country to another. Even within the same country, it is not unusual for public service agencies to beat different paths to leadership and management development solutions. However, and regardless of variations within and across countries, the general practice is to establish formal
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staff development institutions (Civil Service or Administrative Staff Colleges, Ecole National dAdministration et de Magistrature, Institutes of Public Administration or Development Management, or in Arabo-phone Africa, al maahad lil-idarah) and to sponsor the participation of different categories of officials on training courses organized by the institutions. One question that the study will need to answer concerns the capacity of the training institutions themselves. As adopted here, capacity includes, but is by no means limited to, the balance attained by each institution between theory and practice, the knowledge and experience quotient of the average faculty member, level of investment in library facilities and multi-media presentation technologies, and the link between the institutions training, research, and consulting programmes, on the one hand, and the clients leadership and management development needs, on the other. 9. In some countries, civil service training policies stipulate participation on specific training programmes as a condition for career advancement. In others, no such linkage exists between attendance on training programmes and career progression. There is also no uniformity in approaches to identification of public service training needs. Whereas agencies with fairly specific mandates (e.g., engineering and construction, health and medical care, accounting and auditing) most often require their officials to possess specialized skills before being recruited to various positions, and to participate in job-related post-entry training courses, the training of generalists tends to be supply-driven. Considering the tendency of generalist administrators to be confronted with increasingly specialized challenges (like whether or not a country should waive sovereignty to allow prosecution of its nationals at international tribunals, how to get the best deals from trade and tariff negotiations and negotiation of PublicPrivate Partnership Agreements, how to anticipate roadblocks ahead when designing performance management and measurement contracts along with the supporting information systems), the Guide will examine the mechanisms established to respond to this felt need. How far existing training policies have succeeded in filling perceived leadership and management development gaps will therefore be another critical question the study will seek answers to.

10. In addition to enquiring about the relevance, adequacy and effectiveness of formal leadership and management development programmes, the study will interrogate the informal tactics and strategies adopted in pursuit of the same objective. Attention will focus particularly on mechanisms for: (a) pre-entry training for incumbents of leadership and management positions; (b) the preparation of existing leaders and managers for new and higher responsibilities; (c) the induction and mentoring of new leaders and managers; (d) exchange of innovative ideas and practices between and among staff at different cadres (including the organization of lectures, in-house seminars and town hall meetings, around themes ranging from the reformulation of ministerial missions and statements and the long-term, strategic implications of Public-Private-Partnership Agreements, through the design of information systems for performance and productivity measurement, diversity management, and ethical violations and the external image of the public service or of corruption-prone agencies); (e) the dissemination of modern management techniques and technology (including payroll management, spreadsheet, tendering and procurement, ICT applications for information storage and retrieval and to enhance service delivery capacities, and implementation of new budgeting and financial control systems); and (f) the application of appropriate training methodologies (including bootcamps; man-o-war, i.e., endurance and character building, drills; and adult-learning presentation techniques). Non-training route to leadership development 11. However, the measures listed above are far from adequate to the challenge of leadership and management development. As noted above, the criteria (as well as the methods) applied in recruiting or retrenching candidates for sensitive leadership and management positions are critical to the development of leadership
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and management capacities. Where an Assistant Superintendent of Police has to bribe his/her way to the higher and substantive post of Superintendent, s/he would be a unique type of person or a real-life angel if, on landing the dream job, s/he turns his/her back on kickbacks from criminal elements. A Customs Inspector who is obliged to render daily returns to the boss knows fully well that the only way to keep the job, or move to a better one, is by meeting his/her illicit collection quotas, not by keeping the country safe from arms smugglers and drug barons. 12. The two regional workshops organized earlier this year under the auspices of the CAMPS indeed underscore the necessity to pay increasing attention to the nontraining elements of leadership and management development. The workshop held in Swakopmund, Walvis Bay, Namibia between 8th and 10th March 2010, for instance, highlighted the risk of excessive reliance on training, more so, when the quality and benefits of training were apt to be compromised by bureaucratic politics and patronage, and by the failure to align training with organization needs. The workshop also felt that in addition to imparting technical, nuts-andbolts skills, leadership development warrants the acquisition of new values, ethics and attributes. 13. Similarly, the workshop organized from 14 to 16 May 2010 in Abuja, Nigeria, for the Central, North and West African sub-regions stressed the importance of both training and non-training perspectives to leadership and management development. While noting that leadership training should focus on strategic management skills and competencies, the workshop recognized the need to inculcate values and attitudes needed to effectively respond to current and future challenges. While formal training institutions are well-placed to perform the former function (inculcation of skills and technical competencies), it is within each organization or agency that leaders values and attitudes are shaped. The Abuja workshop is quite explicit on the importance of non-training approaches to leadership development. Specifically, it recommends that the recruitment of public service leaders and managers be based on merit, and that adequate weight be given to the candidates knowledge, professional qualifications, experience, and evidence of ability to create and carry out visions. How different countries balance the imperatives of inclusiveness (and demographic representation) with the claims of
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merit will be a fascinating subject of research, and of interest to the Management Guide. 14. Needless to add that society itself has a crucial role to play to develop leadership and management capacities. Therefore, in addition to the formal mechanisms earlier mentioned, it is essential that attention be given to the contemporary child-rearing and character building practices. Up to now, developmental psychologists have not shown adequate interest in how parental guidance, the educational system and the larger society combine either to keep turning out followers with constantly low feelings of self-worth, or to train the youth to be responsible, public-spirited and community-serving leaders of the future. Besides examining the nexus between socialization practices and personality development, the Guide will show-case the contributions that schemes (such as national youth service or community action programmes) make to the development of leadership capacity. 15. The infrastructure for continuous learning is another imperative in leadership and management development. This includes, but goes far beyond, the stocking of conventional libraries with relevant books, journals, policy documents and legislative enactments; the acquisition of hard- and soft-ware for online access to data and information; and periodic auditing of staff members knowledge and skill profile through tests conducted in normal examination settings. 16. Even after all the knowledge management props (conventional and virtual libraries, in-house seminars, computer-based learning, etc.) are in place, the capacity to lead and to manage for success may still remain under-developed. The missing link in such cases is usually the environment. While some environments are conducive to strategic visioning and innovation, others are stifling. In the search for good practices, the Guide will document experiences of countries or agencies that profited from the establishment and operation of open rather than closed (basically hierarchical, possibly authoritarian and suffocating) systems. IV. TORs in light of Maputo deliberations

17. While the original TORs are clear and adequate as marching orders, the Consultant has deemed it necessary to rework them slightly to reflect the
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discussions held in Maputo on 6th September as well as his understanding of the assignment. The strategic objective remains the samewhich is to produce a Leadership and Management Development that besides drawing on international good practices, elaborates a set of standards that could serve as a reference point for leadership and management development in the African public service. Based on this strategic objective, the consultant is expected to: (a) start with the clarification of the key concepts (particularly, leadership, management, and leadership/management development) prior to developing a set of indicators/indices to track the linkages between and among the concepts, and to monitor as well as evaluate leadership and management development experiences across the continent; (b) collect and document data on practices, methodologies, tools and instruments applied in different countries to develop the capacity of leadership and managementnotably, the capacity to articulate and implement long-term, citizen-oriented development visions, and, by sheer determination, to enhance Africas international competitiveness; (c) with assistance of the CAMPS Secretariat and the Service Champions, supplement data from secondary sources with primary data from a representative sample of Member States; (d) based on (a) to (c) produce a user-friendly Management Guide on Leadership and Management Development incorporating continental and international good practices; (e) present progress reports to Service Champions and Member States for validation; (f) produce soft and hard copies of the Final Guide. V. Deliverables (Expected outputs) 18. The outputs expected from the study are: (i) (ii) (iii) An inception report (on the interpretation and understanding of the terms of reference); Progress reports (as and when necessary); Sample leadership and management development tools and instruments from across the continent and the globe;

(iv)

A framework or log frame for monitoring and evaluation of country experiences against continental/global good practices (annual baselines and success indicators to be included in, or annexed to, the main report); Implementation risks (also part of the main report); User-friendly quantitative, qualitative, and financial data (either as tables/graphs/charts in the main body of the report or as statistical annexes); and

(v) (vi)

(vii) Final report. VI. Project Methodology

19. Naturally, the study will have to start with the exploration of secondary sources. This will be followed by the design of a simple questionnaire that would hopefully be e-mailed through the CAMPS Secretariat. 20. Visits to selected countries are critical to the success of the data gathering exercise. To ensure that the selected countries are not only representative of the Africa region as a whole but also of the main linguistic categories, the consultant has tentatively included the following in his sample: North Africa Egypt and Morocco (2 countries) West Africa Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ghana (4 countries) Central Africa Cameroon, Rwanda (2) East Africa (and small island states) Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Mauritius (4 countries) Southern Africa South Africa, Swaziland, Botswana, and Namibia (4 countries) 21. However, whether all the selected countries could be covered within the time available is a question that needs to be answered. This further depends on how quickly the CAMPS Secretariat is able to contact the appropriate interlocutors with a view to setting up meetings and requesting contact persons to get the necessary material ready ahead of the consultants arrival. 22. The UNDPs role is equally critical, particularly, as regards making the airline reservations, issuing the tickets and paying the travel advances.
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VII. Work Plan 23. The assignment is expected to be carried out in stages and within the following time frame: 10-25 September Preparation of Inception Report and commencement of desk study 25-30 September Preparation of Draft Outline, and first draft of the conceptual part of the paper 1 October-22 October Field work in selected countries 22 October3 November Preparation of first draft 3 November18 November Peer review, validation and finalization of draft.

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