Strong leadership is more important than reform when it comes to making an organization function well, says former deputy secretary-general of the UN Louise Frechette.
"Frankly, in my experience almost any organization can be made to work, provided there is strong leadership at the top and a commitment to teamwork throughout the organization," she said.
Frechette, the keynote speaker at the national conference of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada held in Fredericton on Monday, warned that the benefits of reform are often overrated.
"More than 30 years in experience of administering reorganizations has cured me of the illusion that moving boxes on an org chart solves all problems," said Frechette, drawing chuckles from the hundreds of administrators and academics in the audience from across Canada and the world.
The theme of the three-day conference is Turnarounds: Transformations in Government and Society.
Frechette was deputy secretary-general of the United Nations from 1998-2006.
Prior to that, she spent 30 years in Canada's civil service, including a term as Canada's ambassador to the UN from 1992-94.
She's a distinguished fellow at The Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ont., and a member of the board of directors of the Trudeau Foundation and the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre.
"I spent nearly 30 years in the public service in Canada and I cannot remember a time in which some part of the federal government was not being restructured, reorganized, re-engineered or realigned," said Frechette.
"And it was much the same in the eight years I spent at the UN."
There are many legitimate reasons for reform, such as adjusting to a new situation such as security after 9/11, or to cope with major budget cuts or correct major weaknesses such as the UN's inability to deliver humanitarian relief or to respond to a crisis situation or a scandal such as the Liberal sponsorship scandal, said Frechette.
"It is always a difficult experience for the people involved," she said. "As a rule, there are few happy reform processes."
It often casts a shadow on an entire institution when the problem was caused by a few individuals, said Frechette
Such reforms usually result in more rules and more controls that can improve accountability, she said.
But if the net result is to smother initiative and flexibility, is the organization really further ahead? she questioned.
Frechette also said reform is a managerial responsibility.
She said no outside consultant can understand an organization as well as the people who work within that organization.
Two decades ago the United Nations was primarily an organization designed to hold conferences, said Frechette.
But in the past 20 years the UN's role has changed substantially in terms of peacekeeping, delivering disaster relief and fighting human rights abuse, she said.
But those reforms have come slowly because of many reasons, including: an absence of clear accountability and authority; the way the UN is funded; the multinational nature of the UN with its cultural differences; and a lack of political will by its members, said Frechette.
Despite that, 75 per cent of the reforms at the UN have been driven by the secretary-general, she said.
During the question and answer session, St. Thomas University political science Prof. Tom Bateman asked Frechette about the role non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, play in the world and whether they represent the global community better than the United Nations.
Frechette said the charter of the United Nations makes it clear that the organization isn't a world government and that all powers still reside with the member states.
The idea was that world leaders would see the benefit of pooling their resources, she said.
Non-governmental organizations have an important role to play in the world and the UN recognizes their expertise, she said.
But Frechette cautioned against viewing NGOs as a substitute for the UN because they aren't always accountable and don't claim to be.
Frechette said NGOs are often single-issue organizations. For example, anti-nuclear power NGOs don't care where the electricity comes from as long as it isn't from nuclear reactors, she said.
Unlike NGOs, governing is about reconciling multiple objectives which sometimes conflict, said Frechette.