Introduction
Thank you for your warm welcome. It is a great pleasure to be here with you this evening in the National Museum to present the 2006 PA Consulting Group Management Awards in association with the Sunday Times. I think this is my tenth year presenting these awards. I hope it is not my last - I will certainly be doing all I can to ensure that I am back again next year, if I am invited! I am delighted to be associated with the event, which I think has justifiably become a milestone in the "management calendar".
Management is not an easy task. The jury is still out as to what makes a good manager - whether management is "art or science". In my experience, I think many aspects of management can probably be learned. Other aspects build on the innate talents of individuals.
Overall though, I believe that teams offer the best opportunities to develop people and they are the best way to manage complex tasks.
We see time and again that when businesses are turned around or projects are delivered on target, inevitably it is because of the complementary talents of a good team. I commend the PA / Sunday Times Awards for placing the emphasis on teamwork in their assessment of management excellence.
Stability through partnership
On a national scale too, we can see the benefits of cooperative approaches to working. Since we last met at these awards, another national agreement has been negotiated with the Social Partners. It took a while but in the end, the commitment of business representatives, the trade unions and the other social partners won through.
We should be under no illusion. This was a very significant achievement. In my view, it would be a mistake to take consensus and the partnership approach for granted. There can be many temptations to go it alone. But we must look at what works in practice and resist the urge to change for the sake of change.
As managers, you know the value of reducing risk and uncertainty. Centralised pay bargaining works because it provides stability. Social Partnership works because it gives predictability and participation.
The new Agreement gives us a framework within which we can work together to ensure sustained social progress and economic growth. It provides certainty to the business community; a process by which workers can obtain decent pay increases; and assurance that the needs of the more vulnerable and marginalised groups are being addressed.
Of course, there are no guarantees - either with regard to Social Partnership or the future of the economy. The continued advance of globalisation has opened up new markets for our goods and services but it has also increased the competition from countries such as India, Brazil, China and Singapore. If we are to protect and enhance our living standards; if we are to sustain our momentum as an economy and a society, then we will have to earn it through higher productivity. That is the real guarantee of higher incomes and low unemployment and the best assurance we can give the vulnerable in our communities that we can address their needs through better income support and service delivery.
Quality Public Services
Improving the quality of our Public Services continues to be a priority of the Government. Again, a substantial part of the new Agreement deals with the Public Service. We have maintained the linkage between pay increases and progress on modernisation of services. This includes demonstrating commitment in areas such as:
- More open recruitment at middle and senior grades;
- Flexibility of work practices through better team-working, integration of services and less energy being spent sorting out ‘turf’ issues; and
- Stronger competition in our recruitment and promotion procedures to ensure that we can attract, motivate and harness the best of our public service talent.
I genuinely believe that a lot of progress has already been made under the Modernisation Programme that has been underway for over ten years now.
But there is more to be done in terms of flexibility, modernisation and productivity. I believe, for example, that we have only scratched the surface of electronically enabled delivery of public services. We could use IT much more to enhance customer choice, to deliver health and education information and services more effectively over greater distances and to reduce bureaucracy and red tape by collecting information a minimum number of times.
We know what kind of public service we want – one that is performance driven, flexible, open and accountable. The complexities of the Public Service are well documented. The expectations of individuals, enterprises and communities alike are, quite correctly, very high when it comes to the Public Service. A key challenge for the Irish Public Service now is to continue to justify public confidence in its ability to deliver.
To give further impetus to this agenda, I recently announced some additional initiatives that will complement and give context to the changes we are making.
They include a major system-wide review of the Public Service by the OECD which will look at the connectivity between the various parts of the wider Public Service and the areas where performance can be improved. The most challenging issues for the Public Service rarely involve just a Local Authority, or just one school or a single hospital. They usually require the input of all of these branches of the Public Service and more. "Joined up Government" has become something of a cliché, but it probably still best describes the approach that we need if we are to get to the heart of the issues of real concern to ordinary people.
A further initiative that I am anxious to make progress on is in the area of leadership development. I hope to develop a scheme that will ensure that public service leaders of tomorrow are fully developed through a broad range of developmental experiences and training. Ideally this would include stints in the private sector and movement across the different parts of the Public Service. I meet talented and committed public servants every day but many of them have never worked outside the Department they started in or the branch of the Public Service in which they have been promoted. We need rounded individuals, with a variety of work and life experiences, who can see problems from a variety of perspectives. This will build on, and complement the increasing numbers of senior level officials that are going to come to the Public Service through an opening up of senior grades to open recruitment.
This leadership initiative is just one area in which there is scope for mutual learning between the public and private sectors. There are other ways in which this can happen. For example, my Department is organising a seminar in early December for officials which will look at different trends and metrics in the management of quality and good customer service. This will include a review of Six Sigma and Lean methodologies that are perhaps familiar to many of you as managers.
While these approaches might be traditionally applied in manufacturing areas, I believe there is scope for similar process improvements to be made in service areas, including the Public Service. I would like to see more of this kind of interaction between the Public and Private Sector and I would invite anyone here with views as to how the quality of this dialogue can be enhanced to bring forward proposals in this regard.
Conclusion
I am looking forward to congratulating this year's award winners so I will not delay much longer. As I said, I am a fan of this awards ceremony because it acknowledges teamwork. I am also a fan because the Awards are made on an all-island basis. Increasingly, and in so many ways - particularly in the business world - it makes real sense to think in terms of the whole island.
I thank the judging panel for their work. I congratulate PA Consulting Group and the Sunday Times for once again giving public recognition to the management teams that are driving Irish business. I look forward to meeting this year's Award recipients.
Thank you.
ENDS