You are the newly appointed deputy minister of a provincial government department. There are 6,000 employees in the department, grouped into a corporate office plus six regions. Each region has a regional director. The corporate office has 400 employees who provide policy development and centralized services.

Each region is an autonomous unit run by a powerful regional director. The power is in terms of certain political and community support. The minister and his cabinet colleagues want these regional empires to reduce in power and be brought under control. There have been problems because the regions have been delivering programs according to the regional director's wishes, rather than as legislated.

When you explain to the regional directors what you want to be done in the way of program standardization, they all agree, but nothing changes. You cannot terminate these regional directors because they have many years of service with performance evaluated as excellent in recent years. The process of documenting poor performance, and by that terminating the regional director, would take years. These regional directors are all well-paid, and unlikely to leave on their own. The story circulating is that they do not need to change because you will soon leave, just like your predecessors.

You have a problem. You have promised the minister and the premier that you will standardize program delivery, but the regional directors who must do it for you will not cooperate. You have one year or be terminated. As an "order-in-council" appointee, the minister can terminate you on short notice. However, you cannot terminate the regional directors in the same way as they are appointees of the public service commission. You are at a loss for a solution. Responsibility accounting does not seem to work.

Required: With the case approach, put forth alternatives, evaluate their likelihood of success, select the most appropriate, and then suggest an implementation plan.