Field Level Leadership : Interim Information Paper (English)

Improving public service delivery is an important pillar of many development projects and programs, whether financed by governments or international development agencies. The approach to interventions has evolved into a fairly standard template which usually combines three elements: capital investments, institutional reforms, and capacity-building. However, success depends in large part on how well these interventions are executed by individuals across the ranks of the implementing organizations. This working paper describes an operational approach that works on intrinsic motivation of public sector staff, and that is currently being piloted by the World Bank for supporting organizational culture change in public agencies. Instead of focusing on the senior leadership group, this approach, called Field-Level Leadership (FLL), aims to develop broad-based decentralized leadership that engages the entire institution. It is based on the premise that champions may be in the minority but are not rare, that they exist at all levels of the organizational hierarchy, that they can be systematically identified, and that their potential can be reliably tapped for positive change.