Similar stories about stressful succession exist in the public sector, where cultural change has seemed difficult and slow though not impossible.

This arena is obviously more complex because of the additional pressure of the capital ‘P' political process. Succession planning for chief executives or heads of departments who are appointed by governments, supposedly apolitically, might seem pointless when those governments may lose power or the ministers change, often resulting in the fresh appointment of chief executives and other senior bureaucrats. As the author of the quote above goes on to note, Kennedy believes he retains the support of powerful friends who ‘really matter'.

It is not surprising then that cultural change in the public sector has been slow. I suspect that the passing of the cultural baton may not have been a high priority in the selection and appointment of senior executives. For example, in the first 77 years of the Department of Defence, stability seems to have been the name of the game. During that period there were only seven secretaries, once called ‘Permanent Heads of Department'-and they seem to have been living up to their names! Not so any more. In the last seven years there have been four secretaries, and two of those have been removed for performance reasons. From one extreme to the other-neither conducive to bringing about cultural change.

However, there is evidence that the culture is changing on the ‘uniformed' side of defence. The present Chief of the Defence Force, General Peter Cosgrove, appears focused on the cultural aspects of the defence forces in his present role, as he was in his former role as Chief of Army. Similarly, one of the more recent Chiefs of Navy made cultural change a central platform of his leadership.

The frustrating aspect for the chiefs of the armed forces is that their appointments are set for only a relatively short term. Unless they are re-appointed (again subject to the politics of the situation), any cultural reforms that they have achieved will be short-lived-unless the cultural change baton is deliberately handed over to a leader with a similar cultural change agenda. Failing that, and as is the case for all CEOs in both the public and corporate sectors, newly appointed chiefs have to act quickly to embed a new culture that will withstand any future changes at the top.