Getting the best perspective on how government works – and how to improve it, with Iain Rennie

Iain Rennie spent 30 years in the New Zealand Public Service culminating in eight years in the top job – that of state services commissioner.

In this episode, Iain tells podcast host Siobhan Benita about talent management reform, his realisations about leadership, his work as a consultant to governments around the world, and why public servants should be mindful of the increasingly diverse perspectives of citizens.  

Realising that great leaders in the New Zealand Public Service often reached their potential “despite the system” rather than because of it, Iain’s focus in his latter years in the top job was on devising and implementing a more systematic way of identifying and nurturing talent and “empowering people with a sense of possibility”.

He credits this and subsequent work with women now accounting for more than 50% of senior executive roles – but there is “unfinished business” he says, particularly around ethnic representation.

Now working with civil and public services around the world to improve their effectiveness, he describes what looking at governments from the outside in, as well as the inside out, has meant for his perspectives.

And he also looks back on the lessons from COVID – particularly that governments “failed pretty spectacularly” when it came to wellness – and his belief that the frames put around government response to major shocks are too narrow.

Also sharing his thoughts on waning public trust and the rise of mis- and disinformation, and the promise of technology to change public services for good, this is an episode packed with the kind of wisdom that comes only through decades of hard work, experience and reflection.