Agile and Adaptive Leadership in the Public Sector : IBM Center for The Business of Government , June 3 , 2026
Agile and Adaptive Leadership in the Public Sector : IBM Center for The Business of Government , June 3 , 2026
From the report: “Leadership in public sector organizations faces many unique challenges relative to other sectors. There are limited financial and personal rewards to increase public service motivation or incentivize civil servants. Organizing usually occurs along line-based command-and-control functions, with relatively little freedom to experiment with new work practices—unless officially sanctioned by agency leadership.
At the same time, the current multi-crisis context in which many public agencies operate demands new ways of working. Multi-faceted societal problems cannot simply be solved by leveraging a single expertise. Instead, they require the involvement of diverse competencies that typically span across multiple agencies. They require teams with cross-functional competencies that can work together in projects, some of which will dissolve after solving the problem. Examples of these cross-domain problems include climate resiliency approaches, mobility issues, digital transformation of complex processes, enterprise data management tasks, and many more.
To address this increasing complexity, governments have started to develop flexible project based strategies and processes that allow for time-bound cross-functional collaboration out side the existing hierarchical structures. For many public servants, this parallel project-based approach challenges leadership and organizational norms, rewarding time and effort for regular work as well as the extraordinary work done in the parallel projects.”
Authors - Mergel, InesSubjects
Authors
Publishers
Format
Related Resources
