DB- tapping into your experience- if this isn’t too wide a question, when you look at that private vs public side, why are our (CF or public services) middle and senior managers out of touch?
If I was making predictions I would have expected it to be the other way around. Since private senior managers can jump industries and companies they don’t necessarily “get” the ground floor, so WHY are they better at managing it?
Hopefully that makes sense
That might not be as fair of a comparison though; a lot of policies causing grief on the benefits/pay side are imposed on the CAF by TBS. Procurement grief also relies on PSPC, TBS, and others....
We're a bit like a really big sister company that gets flow down direction from an overall conglomerate.
My experience on that is pretty 3rd hand info, but from what I understand the successful ones operate more hands off at the conglomerate level, where we have routine and direct interference from other departments on relatively day to day stuff, as well as in the longer term/strategic elements.
Our general context is pretty unique, so mapping private sector practices based on their context is a challenge and doesn't always work. Because we aren't kicking out widgets with profit driving things, a lot of the private sector things don't really translate.
It's fair to say though that TBS, PSPC etc don't know how we do things and generally don't care.
Would be interesting to see our numbers, even on good days I frequently find myself thinking the only reason I'm still here is to look out for sailors in a very specific area that I work in and can positively influence. The institution's disconnect with reality is part of the issue, but not sure if that's down to any specific senior managers, or just the generally dispersed nature of the responsibilities and siloes, so it's just difficult with the lack of people for anyone to really get a handle on the overall picture, as we're all just treading water to fight whatever the fire of the day is.
Working from home has actually been a big help to improving my morale/MH though; being able to temporarily down tools and come back an hour later when I get frustrated with the bureaucracy has helped a lot, so that would also be another interesting breakout. If I was working for 8 continuous hours (with a 2+ hour commute) I probably would have broken down by now. Sometimes being able to spread that workday over 12 hours really makes it bearable, but wouldn't have that option if it was standard work from the office.
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