*********************************************
Following is the speech by the Secretary for the Civil Service, Mr Joseph W P Wong, at the Launching Ceremony of the Symposium on Leadership Development for the Civil Service today (September 4):
Chief Executive, Distinguished Guest Speakers, Dear Colleagues,
We are very honoured to have the Chief Executive (CE) with us today to officiate the opening ceremony of this symposium.
Last week, the Management Forum which many of you attended has provided us with a better understanding of Hong Kong as Asia's world city, where we are today, and what challenges lie ahead. Just now, the Chief Executive has given us his vision and advice on leadership and change in the context of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government and our civil service. Indeed, the civil service plays a key role in the development and implementation of Government policies. As change leaders, we need new thinking and new ways of doing things. We need to continuously stretch ourselves to new ideas and as the CE said, to think outside the box. It is therefore timely for us to launch two development initiatives for our directorate officers at this symposium: The Directorate Leadership Guide and the Leaders' Corner.
The Directorate Leadership Guide
--------------------------------
The Leadership Guide which has been distributed to all our colleagues officers last week is a personalized training and development guide. It introduces a Personal Development Strategy to assist you to plan, implement and review your development to meet your performance needs. The Guide lists a number of core competencies such as leading and managing change, bringing the best out of people, managing resources effectively and efficiently, setting targets and achieving results, thinking creatively and strategically and finally communicating effectively at different levels. The Guide recommends various development activities together with learning resources which would enhance these competencies. All the training resources listed in the Guide can be borrowed from the Civil Service Training and Development Institute (CSTDI) free of charge. You will also find a list of local and overseas training programmes which you can apply for attendance and these are also sponsored by the Government, and I assure you that there will be no cut back as far as I am concerned.
Leaders' Corner
---------------
To supplement the Leadership Guide, we have also developed a special website "Leaders' Corner". Apart from the web version of the Directorate Leadership Guide, the Leaders' Corner offers a host of useful information and learning resources, for example:
- e-learning programmes developed by experts from Harvard;
- book summaries of latest management publications such as a summary of Jack Welch's 'Straight from the Gut', which is also one of my favourite books; and
- discussion forum for directorate staff to share ideas, discuss work-related issues and challenges as well as to build networks.
But the most interesting part of the Leaders' Corner should be the Straight Talk where we expect all our Principal Officials, Permanent Secretaries and Heads of Department to contribute and share with us their views on a variety of subjects such as their most admired leader, their favourite books, and their work tips and so on. I have kicked off the exercise by making a first contribution. I will make sure through sending you e-mail all the time that all of you follow suit because I believe it is great fun to share our views on leadership, learning and work.
We will keep updating the Leaders' Corner from time to time and keep you posted. I strongly encourage you to map out your own learning plan and make good use of the Leadership Guide and the Leaders' Corners to help you achieve your development goal and feel free to approach CSTDI to provide you with any further advice.
Apart from the Leadership Guide and the Leaders' Corner, we are also organizing a Learning Exposition at the Hong Kong Central Library from 27-29 this month to launch another initiative which is a Cyber Learning Centre Plus, a strengthened Cyber Learning Centre, providing more learning packages, job aids and reference materials with linkage to other useful learning web-sites. About 30 government departments and academic institutions will showcase their e-learning platforms and learning resources at this 3-day exhibition. I hope you will find the time to go to the Central Library as your next learning journey.
For the second part of this symposium, we have invited the Chief Secretary for Administration Mr Donald Tsang, and other guest speakers Mr John Chan, Mr Allen Lee, Professor Lau Siu-kai and Mr Ng Ming-lam to share with us different perspectives on how we can do a better job and what it takes to lead our staff and serve the people of Hong Kong. I am most grateful to them and also our Principal Officials who are taking time out of their busy schedule today to join us this morning and to participate later on in the panel discussion.
Finally, I would like to thank colleagues, particularly in the Civil Service Bureau and CSTDI, who have worked so hard to organize today's symposium. I hope at the end of the day all of you will have enjoyed our two new training initiatives and our panel discussion, and find them both helpful and enjoyable. Thank you very much.
End/Wednesday, September 4, 2002
NNNN
