How to train and teach for 21st century public leadership

post: beth noveck

intro: Public institutions are often inefficient, inflexible and dysfunctional.

There is a widespread sense, reflected in declining rates of trust in government, that the public sector is failing to deliver solutions to public problems that measurably improve people’s lives. With deepening inequality and growing challenges from climate change to the future of work, there is a desperate need to be able to solve problems more effectively but also more legitimately.

The challenge is less our loss of trust in government than the claim that government does not deserve our trust.

There is a growing realisation that for the public sector to perform better, public servants need to work differently. There is a widening skills gap between the public and the private sector’s use of creative problem solving methods, enabled by new technologies.