Political system in Italy has known over the years frequent government turnovers, making the government average institutional life very short. Horovitz, Hoff and Milanovic (2009) define political instability as “a basic source of variation in institutions and practices (… whose) frequency and character depend on voter preferences, political institutions, and salient events and issues” (p. 107). Political instability depending on frequent government turnovers entails a leadership change and an ideology change. This study aims to contribute to the literature on public sector management, by focusing on the administrative leadership in the Italian context. In our study, we draw from the literature on change uncertainty with the aim of investigating how government instability generates perceived environmental uncertainty affecting the behaviour and the competencies of individuals who work more in touch with the high spheres of public policy, i.e. public top managers. Despite the increasing attention for public leadership in complex environment, research neglected the effects of policy and organizational changes on public management behaviors. This paper aims to investigate the key role of public management in exercising leadership and in planning strategic activities. Our paper presents a discussion on how change in the public administration environment could create a perceived uncertainty among top–managers whose assignment will end with the collapse of the government. This uncertainty affects their competencies (i.e. the motivation to lead), in terms of efforts they exert to perform their high level administrative leadership duties, and on planning activity, in terms of the goals’ difficulty related to their projects or executive programs.