From backpack to bookshelf: Books every emerging leader should read

Book 4: Dan Honig's Mission Driven Bureaucrats

This week I’m going to shake things up in two ways.

First, I’m zoning in specifically on emerging leaders in the public service, a space where leadership operates under the twin pressures of bureaucracy and serving the public interest. Second, instead of writing about why this next book should be mandatory reading for emerging leaders, I want to tell you about the time I used it in a workshop with Canadian Foreign Service managers leading teams across the globe, and how it produced one of the most unexpectedly lively discussions I have had in a training room.

The book was Mission Driven Bureaucrats: Empowering People to Help Governments Do GoodBetter by Dan Honig.

Honig, a professor of public policy with extensive experience studying bureaucracies around the world, makes a compelling argument about how governments can work better by trusting the people inside them more.

His core idea is something he calls empowerment-oriented management.

In many bureaucracies, management tends to lean heavily toward what Honig calls compliance-oriented management, systems of incentives, monitoring, reporting, and controls designed to make sure people do what they are supposed to do. These mechanisms are familiar to anyone working in government. They are also, as Honig carefully shows, often overused.

Empowerment-oriented management takes a different approach. Rather than relying primarily on compliance and control, it prioritizes autonomy, competence, and connection. The idea is simple but powerful. When public servants are trusted to exercise judgment and act on the mission that drew them to public service in the first place, they tend to perform better and contribute more meaningfully to the work of government.

Honig does not simply assert this. He supports the argument with extensive research and stories from public institutions around the world.

At the centre of the idea is something he calls supportive supervision. This does not mean allowing people to do whatever they want. It is still active management. The difference is that the role of the manager shifts from policing behaviour to helping people succeed in their work. The focus becomes removing obstacles, solving problems together, and supporting employees in pursuing the mission of the organization.

Honig points to examples from places like post-apartheid South Africa and post-conflict Liberia where public servants were asked what they thought about improving the systems they worked within. Recognizing their judgment and their sense of purpose helped employees feel valued, which in turn led to stronger performance.

People want to feel that their ideas matter. They want to feel that their manager cares about what they think.

The Workshop

When I was preparing a leadership workshop for managers responsible for global teams, I wanted to explain the difference between compliance-oriented and empowerment-oriented management in a way that people would remember.

In the book, Honig uses lyrics to illustrate the difference. I wanted to do the same, but with a little Canadian flare. After thinking back to my own musical history, I found a song that aptly (if not perfectly) described compliance-oriented management: “If I Had a Million Dollars” by the Barenaked Ladies from their 1992 album Gordon. In a recent conversation with friends about our first tapes, I realized this was one of mine, and it felt perfectly suited for the exercise.

As the lyrics played, participants smiled as the list of promises escalated: a house, a car, perhaps even a fur coat, though as the song quickly clarifies, not a real fur coat because that would be cruel. After the laughter settled, we talked about what kind of relationship the song was describing.

In many ways it mirrors compliance-oriented management. The relationship is built on incentives. If the singer had enough money, they could offer more rewards, and presumably win someone over.

Honig makes a similar point about incentive-heavy management systems. They can work, but they require constant supply. Incentives and monitoring need to be continually reinforced for the system to keep producing the desired behaviour.

Then we listened to Honig's choice of song that he presents as a contrast to the compliance-oriented approach: “If You Want My Love” by Cheap Trick.

The contrast was noticeable almost immediately. The song is not about bargaining or offering rewards. It is about commitment. The central message is simple.

“If you want my love, you got it. When you need my love, you got it.”

When we unpacked the lyrics together, the conversation shifted. Participants began pointing out how the motivation in this relationship felt fundamentally different. It was not transactional. It was grounded in commitment, trust, and connection. As Honig writes (2024: 23) "The protagonist has a strategy: be there. Be supportive. Be open, engaged, responsive."

This is an empowerment-oriented managerial approach.

Unmotivated or Demotivated?

One of the most useful distinctions Honig makes is between employees who are unmotivated and those who are demotivated.

Managers sometimes assume certain employees simply lack motivation. Honig suggests that in many cases the issue is something else entirely.

Over time, rigid compliance systems can gradually erode initiative. Employees learn that judgment is risky, that improvement efforts get bogged down in process, and that trying to change the system may not be worth the effort. Eventually people stop pushing. They follow the rules, complete the tasks in front of them, and keep their heads down.

They are not inherently unmotivated. They have been demotivated.

This also explains why introducing empowerment-oriented leadership does not immediately transform a workplace. If employees have spent years internalizing that their ideas are not valued, it takes time for them to believe that initiative is genuinely welcome.

Honig points to examples where visible changes in management philosophy created striking results. In one well known case, a group of auto workers once described by their own union representative as the worst workforce imaginable later joined a joint GM Toyota plant operating under a different management approach. Under the new system, they became one of the most successful teams in the company.

The workers themselves had not changed. The management environment had.

What This Means for Public Service Leaders

For those of us working in government, Honig’s argument lands close to home.

Bureaucracies are built to ensure accountability, fairness, and consistency. Those functions matter. At the same time, when compliance becomes the dominant management philosophy, it can unintentionally constrain the very people trying to solve problems and improve systems.

Empowerment-oriented management begins from a different assumption. Most public servants entered the field because they want to contribute to something meaningful. When managers recognize that motivation, create space for judgment, and foster connection among colleagues, teams tend to engage more deeply in the work itself.

At its essence, empowerment-oriented management is about recognizing people’s potential, showing confidence in their capacity to contribute, and creating an environment where colleagues support one another in pursuing a shared mission.

Systems matter, and they can absolutely demotivate even the most committed public servants. But how we show up as managers still shapes whether our teams feel trusted to pursue the mission, or slowly learn that initiative is unwelcome.