From Reactive to Proactive: Why Steering Beats Firefighting in Public Administration

Public authorities have been operating under sustained strain for years, even though they are changing more than ever before. The reason rarely lies in a lack of willingness. It lies in how priorities get set.

Plenty of movement, little relief

Few areas of the public sector have been as active in recent years as administration itself. Digitalisation projects, organisational reviews, process management, programmes to cut red tape, recruitment initiatives, new steering instruments, additional reporting obligations. The list of initiatives keeps growing. Yet in many authorities the impression remains that the underlying strain has barely changed. Teams work under heavy pressure on relief measures without gaining any noticeable capacity to act.

This coexistence of reform activity and persistent strain is no coincidence. It points to a structural tension. Administrations change a great deal, yet rarely achieve change at depth. The decisive question is therefore not why administrations do too little, but why so many activities so rarely lead to lasting relief.

Reaction instead of priority

A central part of the answer lies in how priorities emerge in daily work. In many authorities, task prioritisation happens implicitly, situationally and reactively. Whoever raises a request most loudly, or whose deadline presses hardest, gets the attention. Strategic steering falls behind short-term problem solving as a result. Senior managers spend their time putting out fires instead of setting the direction their area should develop in.

This dynamic is understandable. Anyone confronted daily with new demands rarely has the space to pause and ask which tasks actually make the biggest contribution to relief. That question, though, is the starting point for a different understanding of leadership in public administration, as described in the second chapter of my book Effiziente Verwaltung. The longer reactive work becomes the norm, the harder it becomes to break out of it later, because teams and processes get used to the constant pressure.

From reactive to proactive

The shift in perspective starts with a simple insight. Whoever only reacts leaves their own agenda to others. Whoever steers actively decides for themselves which issues take priority and which are deliberately set aside. That sounds basic, yet it changes a great deal in practice. A senior manager who states priorities explicitly and communicates that decision openly creates orientation for the whole team. Staff then know what to rely on when several demands hit them at once.

In this context, steering means deciding more deliberately what gets worked on, rather than leaving the order of tasks to chance or to whoever shouts loudest. That requires prioritisation criteria to be set in advance, rather than improvised ad hoc in day-to-day business. For senior managers, it also means standing openly behind decisions, even when individual requests have to take a back seat as a result.

Three starting points for everyday practice

Senior managers looking to make this shift have found three starting points effective. First, a fixed prioritisation round, for example weekly, where new demands are weighed deliberately against existing tasks rather than automatically added to the top of the pile. Second, clear, written-down criteria for assessing tasks, such as legal obligation, impact on citizens, or effort relative to benefit. Third, the willingness to actively decline or postpone tasks and to explain that decision, rather than letting it quietly disappear in day-to-day business.

None of these steps requires additional staff or additional budget. What they require, above all, is the willingness to treat steering as a leadership task in its own right and to actually set aside time for it in the calendar. Where that time is firmly scheduled, practice quickly shows that the felt sense of permanent overload changes noticeably, even if the volume of tasks initially stays the same. That is exactly the difference between an administration that is driven and one that steers its own course.