I happen to read two articles within an hour this morning and was struck by their similar observations. In Bob O’Neill’s “Public Services and the Limits of Specialization,” Bob raises a question he believes local governments would do well to address:

“As the world has grown more complex, government leaders have responded by constructing their organizations to leverage specialization. .  .  for example, [they] have separate departments for police, fire, recreation, engineering, public works, social services, and the like. But is this the best way to produce the best service-delivery outcomes?”

In PM magazine’s August cover story, Mike Huggins and Cheryl Hilvert make a similar observation about the impact of many changing conditions—namely, that “organizational cultures [are] becoming increasingly hierarchical, narrow in scope, and expert defined.”

Mike and Cheryl go on to note that the most effective strategies for dealing with complex issues (involving sometimes conflicting perspectives of multiple stakeholders) tend to be “open-ended and focused on producing ongoing collaboration . . . with all stakeholders.”

But guess what: many managers don’t actually know how to begin such engagement. In their article, Mike and Cheryl go on to provide helpful advice about successful engagement and what it looks like in local government.

Their discussion leads me to ask, in a world where fairly compartmentalized specialization and narrowness of scope may not produce better government and citizen satisfaction, what leadership attributes are called for?

The first thing that came to mind for me was optimism—needing to believe and communicate a sense of the possibilities. Other attributes I thought of are respect for the opinion of others, self-confidence, and facilitation skills. What skills do you think managers should be developing to step into the future?

My day started with a sense of synergy when I read the two articles mentioned above. Synergy can do wonders for propelling ideas. If you’re feeling any here, please share.