| Summary: |
The federal government has a leadership crisis. The problem does
not originate from its career executives or those that aspire to
be. Without exception or doubt, career executives are unequivocally
committed to their country and to the ideals of its public ser -
vice, as well as to the missions of the agencies they serve. Nor does
the problem come strictly from agencies, which, to varying degrees,
have invested in developing their own leaders, readying them for
the difficult agency challenges they face.
No, the leadership crisis derives from an institutional failure. As
an institution, the federal government has no systematic, “wholeof-
government†approach for developing its career executives. The
original vision of the Senior Executive Service cast career executives
as a government-wide, enterprise leadership corps with the understanding
and ability to tackle wicked challenges that span multiple
government agencies. However, in the years since the 1979 inception
of the Senior Executive Service, executive development has remained
decidedly agency-centric, and it remains so even in the face
of a growing flood of complex and unstructured enterprise- wide—
that is, interagency— challenges. Without a cadre of enterprise leaders,
tackling the growing number of wicked government problems is likely to be hit or miss at best. This growing crisis in enterprise
leadership and what to do about it is the focus of this book.
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