Effective, appropriate, and relevant leadership together with management, we would argue, is one of the things that plays a large role in ensuring Auckland Council works well.
The former Auckland Council CEO, Stephen Town, was someone steeped in broad public sector leadership and experience.
More importantly, prior to taking up the role at Auckland he had been the CEO in two other local authorities. Hence, he was well-versed in the machinations of managing and succeeding in local government.
Unfortunately the same level of experienced public sector exposure cannot be said for his successor who comes with a successful career gained within private sector financial services.
In appointing an industry outsider to the CEO role, collectively Auckland Council – and principally the mayor, Phil Goff, are sending a powerful message to employees within both local government and to the wider public service in general: You are not good enough to lead New Zealand's largest public service organisation.
Given the way in which the public service has stepped up to the challenges provided by Covid-19, Auckland Council is making a very loud and unmistakable statement.
We find it almost unbelievable that there was no one within the existing public sector, who was not capable of fulfilling the role of CEO at Auckland Council.
Without naming names, we are aware of both serving and former senior local government figures, both within New Zealand and now overseas, who are more than well equipped to lead the council.
There is a worrying ideological undercurrent with this new CEO appointment.
Simply put it is an outdated notion that the act of managing is a generic activity.
Hence, if you can manage in organisation "A" and be deemed to have succeeded, then you can transfer your managerial "bag of tricks" to organisation "B" where you will also enjoy success.
In this context we are back to the 1980s – and the misguided belief that someone who was a successful supermarket manager, would by default be a successful manager of a public hospital or a local authority. The evidence would suggest otherwise!
This is both a simplistic and somewhat dubious claim, one often advocated by adherents of the equally dated and derided neoliberal approach to life and business. Despite popular belief, the activities of Auckland Council, or for that matter any local authority or public service, are not the same as a private sector business.
In the private sector a CEO is often charged with maximising short-term profit and keeping a small number of significant, economically rational shareholders happy.
The ideological approach seemingly embraced by Auckland Council also raises serious questions regarding how the council sees the nature and purpose of a local authority.
Managing in the public sector is not the same as management in the private sector, regardless of complexity. Local government has statutory obligations which override free-market principles. It also has a long-term planning obligation – requiring a different mindset from that associated with the neoliberal model.
The new CEO will need to jump through hoops dictated by a "board" of 21 – the mayor and the 20 councillors, who have their own constituencies to pacify. In addition, he has 1.5 million citizens in Auckland to satisfy, let alone the five million of us in Team New Zealand. This task gets somewhat complicated by the fact that the "board" are all politicians, who are at best fickle at the best of times.
Even the most generous of us would struggle to use the words "rational" and "politician" in the same sentence.
What they, "the board", want today, may be the opposite of what they argued for yesterday simply because of a new opinion poll.
Leading and succeeding as a local government CEO is a complex task which you simply cannot comprehend from day one – no matter how gold plated your private sector CV may be.
- Dr Andy Asquith and Dr Andrew Cardow are local government specialists with Massey University's School of Management.
