Introducing Fakafekauaga (Servantship) – By George Makapatama

Traditional leadership archetypes consisting of management, entrepreneurship and leadership have been the staple diet in supporting businesses, NGOs and government agencies.

Whilst these archetypes have served us well, with leaps in technology and changing mindsets our villages are more global now and approaches to leadership must grow to reflect our diversity. I have had the privilege of working in the public sector for over twenty years, and in that time, I have seen first-hand how western forms of organisation, leadership and service delivery do not always fit with or respond well to our growing diversity, especially the needs of Māori and Pasifika people. 

Unfortunately, there are many reasons for this that a short article cannot address. However, if I were to strip it all back to its core, I believe we would see two opposing paradigms jousting for a position:

Individualism vs Collectivism = I vs We.

Management, leadership, and entrepreneurship are individual disciplines that reinforce individualism, hero worshipping and a heavy reliance on creating order and processes tracing back to the father of Administrative Management, Henri Fayol who brought us - planning, organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling. The development of leadership and management theories like the classical management theory, traits theory, behavioural theory and behavioural leadership/management theory has ensured that management and leadership continued to be our dominant paradigms.

New Public Management

The Labour-led Government further perpetuated this approach when it ushered in the New Public Management (NPM) approach in 1984, consisting of two ideas, economic-based theories and managerial systems (Witcombe,  2008). In essence, the incoming government's response to the public sector's complexities, overall size, and perceived inefficiency (Boston, 1996) and lack of accountability was to make public service more 'business-like' by implementing management ideas from the business and private sector into the public services (Haynes, 2003 & Pollitt, 1993).

This resulted in extrinsic incentivisation, rewarding public sector managers or external providers delivering services for the government through performance‐based pay and merit‐based promotions to enhance the performance of public agencies. I believe contrary to the intrinsic motivation, which is the cornerstone of being a public servant, differentiating why many of us chose to work in the public service and not in the private corporate setting.

Doing more with less and making efficient use of public money meant fostering competition.   Services were outsourced to external actors, either private or public, with funding contingent on their performance. 

In a sector where forming relationships, collaborating and working together to serve people and communities best, this competitive funding model goes against that spirit of service. It has only helped to kill off collaboration between community service providers, and promotes isolation as part of self-preservation and protecting one's intellectual property for the subsequent funding round.

NPM's direct response to managing complexity was disaggregating or decentralising the public sector into smaller agencies because it would improve results, stronger mission focus, accountability, and performance management. 

The new public management reforms of the 1980s and 90s introduced 'managerialism' to the public service. From an organisational perspective, the managerial reforms were a resounding success in delivering outputs with high levels of efficiency and continued to have enduring appeal (Hughes & Smart, 2012).

But has it worked for those supposed to be served by the system, and particularly for Māori and Pasifika?    

As a Niuean and Pasifika public servant for over 20 years, the adoption of NPM in the late 80s and early 90s has not worked for Māori or Pasifika, be it those working within it or those receiving services from outside it. That includes the subsequent reforms of Better Public Services from 2012-1017; Social Investment from 2016-2017; and the Wellbeing Approach from 2018 to now.

You may ask, why might that be? 

Peter Senge in his 1990 book The Fifth Discipline, provides a partial answer to the systems problem we continue to face in the public sector. "From an early age, we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world. This apparently makes complex tasks and subjects more manageable, but we pay a hidden, enormous price. We can no longer see the consequences of our actions: we lose our intrinsic sense of connection to a larger whole." 

The dominant western paradigms that include economic-based theories and managerial/organisational systems have also continued to mask the overarching generational systems problem favouring individualism and managerial processes over collectivism and people.

We, therefore, need to reconsider the types of leadership archetypes (current and unknown) required to respond best to our diversity and the needs of the Māori and Pasifika people. I am thinking about people who are collaborative, inclusive and relational. People who have an intrinsic sense of connection to the whole system and are attuned to Tagata (people - past, present and future), Maaga (village), Fonua (land & our planet), Moana (sea) and Tagaloa (God & spirituality). Those who can harness the reciprocal power of the collective Iwi, Hapu and village, and can navigate the complexities of systems thinking and change without needing to break them down into individual parts.  

For these elements to be considered, we require a paradigm shift away from the individualistic capitalist-driven archetypes to an integrated collectivism approach centred on people and the planet.

Welcome to the world of the Collective

We are born into a village, body, mind and soul. We are responsible for one another. Many Matua (parents) and Tupuna (grandparents) raise and feed us with ancestral wisdom, practices, and values. We have many children we care for, protect, and love. We are guardians, carers, and protectors of our magafaoa (families), maaga (village), fonua (land), and moana (sea). These are tapu (sacred) relationships that extend to Tagaloa (God). 

We are nurtured as part of an environment where onono (observation) and fanogonogo (listening) are the two primary learning tools. From toddlers to adulthood, we have grown up watching and listening to our elders as they shape our understanding of the world and our cultural identity through modelling expected behaviours and then reinforcing them through cultural rituals.

We grow up knowing our place within the collective village where ‘I’ is a foreign notion reserved only for show-offs and arrogant people who may consider themselves above the collective.

Everything starts and ends with We. We think and act as one. We live together, we fellowship, we work the plantation together. We mourn and celebrate together. We reflect on our past together to shape our future aspirations.

Shared wisdom has been tested through centuries of learning, observing, attuning to one another, the environment, the spirit world, and recalibrating knowledge and practices.

I am a product of many.

Fakafekauaga - Servantship

My PHD research proposes a Niuean village concept of Fakafekauaga (Servantship) as an archetype that will complement western forms of leadership, entrepreneurship, and management. I have developed a conceptual framework of Fakafekauaga (Servantship) and identified five elements; Matutakiaga (Connectedness/Relational/Systems); Mahuiga (Values-based/teachings and gifts from tupuna/lived experience/wisdom); Fakalofa (Love/Compassion/Empathy); Fakamokoi (Reciprocity) and Matohiaga (Ancestry – past, present, and future) that bring the philosophy to life.

The follow-up article will flesh out these five elements and how they would look applied in the workplace.

Reference:

Boston, J. (1996). Public Management: The New Zealand Model, (Auckland: Oxford University Press).

Hughes, P., & Smart, J. (2012). You say you want a revolution: The next stage of public sector reform in New Zealand. Policy Quarterly, 8(1).

Peter, S. (1990). The fifth discipline. The Art & Practice of Learning Organization. Doupleday Currence, New York.

Pollitt, C. (1993). Managerialism and Public Services, (2nd. ed.), (Oxford: Blackwell).

Whitcombe, J. (2008). Contributions and challenges of ‘new public management’: New Zealand since 1984. Policy Quarterly, 4(3).