Top Public sector management could do better

I am always disappointed though not surprised by the very different approaches taken by Private sector company  Chief Executives and public sector ones when being interviewed about their organisations.

The company CEO s go on to explain how well their business is doing. They  explain their passion to serve their customers better, to keep prices down and to innovate. They can manage whatever circumstances  throws at them. If they are being interviewed because something has gone wrong, they apologise and tell us how it is now being put right and will not happen again. They  do not blame their shareholders for not supplying them  enough money or giving  them the wrong instructions.They do not say the Bank manager was to blame for being too mean.

In contrast public sector CEOs often come on to tell us their service cannot manage, to say the increases in the  cash they are sent are insufficient, to say they are unable to recruit the  people they been asked to employ. They are rarely asked why they cannot run the service better or even what they are doing to try to improve it.

We need to encourage a can do approach amongst high paid public sector CEOs who need  to grab the quality and cost problems which bedevil too many public services.