It’s fascinating to reflect back on my experience of working in public service for over 30 years from my new perspective as Chief Executive of Ceannas Ltd.

One of the fundamental orthodoxies of public service – and particularly education -was/is that improvement cannot come about unless ‘support and challenge’ are ever-present.

This throws those in leadership roles into this dichotomy of practice – whereby they attempt to knit together these two opposing behaviours.

It always amazed me throughout my career in education just how many people swallowed this notion that external challenge is a fundamental requirement of the improvement process. Yet when I spoke to people who had moved into management positions and asked them if they had required external challenge to do their best they invariably answered that it hadn’t been necessary for ‘them’ – but it is for ‘others’.

So when I look now at my own business and ask myself “how am I surviving without those external drivers of the improvement process?” it prompts an fascinating insight. For if truth be told I’ve never been more quality conscious, customer focused and improvement driven than I am at this point in time – and there’s no-one looking over my shoulder in a scrutiny or challenge function. Those elements come from within.

So in an idle thought I wonder – could you build a public service system where external ‘challenge’ was absent? Could you create a system which depended upon people’s own motivation and drive? Could you give people ownership of their responsibilities and the improvement process?

I remember when I was first appointed as a principal teacher of physical education – the best job I ever had – bar my present role. This was of course last century but I still recall quite consciously thinking of myself as being ‘self-employed’ and totally responsible for delivering my function within the school. Now, I know that from afar this appears to be an isolationist stance – but we succeeded as a team not as consequence of any external challenge but because we were liberated to explore horizons which were far in advance of anything which could have been set by an external person who carried the role of ‘support and challenge’.