The Theory vs Reality of a Mission-led Government (Community Event)

In today’s episode you can listen back to highlights from our mission-led government event, hosted by Sophie Tidman and Carolyn Norgate. Who offered up our thoughts on the theory vs reality of a mission-led government, with some frameworks, techniques and methodology for how to begin implementing this new approach into the living system of the civil service and beyond.

We were joined by lots of lovely members of our community for some rich discussions and sense-making around what we are noticing about the new government’s mission-led approach, what’s new, what’s different and the potential challenges are to working in this way. We’re hearing that there is real energy and appetite for change, but people don’t know how or where to start. How do we harness that energy instead of dousing it with the ‘cold bucket of water’ that can be the pressures of delivering on the day job too.

You will hear Sophie and Carolyn referring to some slides, if you would like a copy of the slides used at the event please just drop us a line and we’d be happy to send you a copy. 

If you work in the civil service, just to let you know we have some open and closed offerings on the government campus should you wish to delve deeper into this with us. 

If you would like to talk more on mission-led with us, or anything else, please don't hesitate to get in touch, we're always happy to have an informal chat. 

Thanks so much for listening! Keep in touch:

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Transcript

Mon, Dec 16, 2024 2:00PM • 27:23

Claire Newell

In today’s episode you can listen back to highlights from our mission-led government event, hosted by Sophie Tidman and Carolyn Norgate. Who offered up our thoughts on the theory vs reality of a mission-led government, with some frameworks, techniques and methodology for how to begin implementing this new approach into the living system of the civil service and beyond.

We were joined by lots of lovely members of our community for some rich discussions and sense-making around what we are noticing about the new government’s mission-led approach, what’s new, what’s different and the potential challenges are to working in this way. We’re hearing that there is real energy and appetite for change, but people don’t know how or where to start. How do we harness that energy instead of dousing it with the ‘cold bucket of water’ that can be the pressures of delivering on the day job too.

You will hear Sophie and Carolyn referring to some slides, if you would like a copy of the slides used at the event please just drop us a line and we’d be happy to send you a copy. 

If you work in the civil service, just to let you know we have some open and closed offerings on the government campus should you wish to delve deeper into this with us. 

If you would like to talk more on mission-led with us, or anything else, please don't hesitate to get in touch, we're always happy to have an informal chat. 

Sophie Tidman  00:00

The mission led approach to government, I find very ambitious, because it talks about very bold goals, very concrete, long term goals that are cross sectoral, that are not just about the civil service and not just about the public sector, but they're about galvanizing, inspiring support across society, across the private sector and also civil society. So it's a very participatory, potentially quite radical approach that I think is very provoking for a public sector that is quite task oriented  at the moment, people finding a lot of change, fatigue, quite heavy going, and has got into patterns of being quite short term, with the hangover of Brexit and COVID. So I think it's a really useful provocation at this point in time and constantly evolving, still quite nascent, where this is going to go and how it's going to evolve in government and different parts of government as well. So just talking through mission led, the theory and what we see behind it, the reality. So this is sometimes a diagram that's used to explain mission led, and I think it's quite a nice, clean way to sell mission led to government, to politicians, and what we were noticing in our community and talking to associates and some clients, is the mission then, as as I think was already been said, it is quite energizing. The idea of having this mission is very actually oriented. It's it's got a lot of care in it. So this is a very neat diagram. And what's energizing is having this idea of the great challenge, the grand challenges on top that really bring together different sectors, so across sectors, not just NHS, but, you know, around net zero for example, or opportunity for all. And it's quite neat, isn't it? It sort of reminds me of the sort of organograms and kind of ideas of change is quite a linear thing that a sort of reductive approach of these things add up to these things add up to the big thing. What actually is talked about by Mariana Mazzucato and other people who are really deep into mission led approach should have been for years, is actually that it is, it does imply a networked, messy reality of change. And this, this is something we often show to clients. So this might be the theory the organogram, or the mission led, kind of boxes. But actually, behind that, this is, this is the messiness of change, a very emergent, very networked.

Carolyn Norgate  02:37

Just to hop in here to say, kudos, Julian, your picture, your diagram, four years, eight years later, is still still relevant. So yeah, for Julian's with us from Delta seven in the room today.

Julian Burton  02:50

Yes, thank you. 

Sophie Tidman  02:52

It's good. It's credited there. Um, and what we often talk to people about in our courses, we use this and we often talk about systems as being alive. So organizations being alive, it's a different paradigm of what an organization is and what change is. So instead of being that machine of government, where we kind of think about machine of governments moving the levers of change, and it's quite top down, sort of command and control, actually thinking about your organization, perhaps as a living system. And then that mess isn't just mess that you just have to, like deal with to get to the job. It is the job, and it's the liveness of the system, and it's where your resources for change are. Sometimes we talk about, so, rather than being seeing an organization as a piece of machinery or a project such as, you know, sending a rocket to the moon, which is complicated, but not complex, right? So you it's been done before. It's very difficult, but it's done before. We know how to do it. We know what materials to use. We've got some rules in place that we follow. We'll get there. That's complicated, but it's not complex compared to a complex challenge such as raising a child. So that's very different. So thinking about complexity in your everyday existence as a human being in something like raising a child, for example, you know, when my daughter isn't going to school in the mornings, I have to figure out what's going on, and that situation isn't isn't the same every week. So sometimes, you know, I have to kind of cross reference with my husband. I have to talk to her teachers. I have to figure out what's going in the friendship group. If she's not going to school this week, there might be a really different reason this week to kind of what it is next week or the week after that. And if her sister's not going to school, actually, it might be a totally different reason. And they might actually be egging each other on and kind of influencing each other. So it's constantly in flux. There's a lot of non linear relationships, and the kind of it has emergent properties. So so nothing that's that's essential to any of its parts, but actually results in the interaction between the parts. So this system is about the connections. It's not about the things the individuals. It's about the connections between the things.  So this brings us on a little bit to what we pay attention to. So in our organizations, it's often very easy and a default to pay attention to structures, procedures, policy, and this is from Maya and Rogers living systems, by the way, so seeing organizations as living systems. So for example, even with mission led, what is the focus on? It's kind of actually, how we how are we structuring, how we finance, how we do the spending review to make sure and like putting incentives in place for mission led government to happen. How are we focusing on policies such as procurement policy, to get things to get to get it mission led so that procedures, structured policies. The thing is, those are all very important things, but what they tend to miss is how the system underneath that, what's the essence how an organization really understands itself? And Myron Rogers talks about identity, relationships and information. So if you think about identity, it's to the heart of how an organization really defines and understands itself. It's rooted in history, past experience, but also the sense of how it sees its future. And this is, I think, really important with mission led, because you're talking about civil service, government, public sector, not just about administrating, administrating or managing or knowing the answer. It's much more intangible and profound sometimes than that, actually, when you're talking about mission lengths, that convening, that making space for collaboration, not having the right view, welcoming in a plurality of views, and also something that I think came through in some of our discussions about a real sense of care towards mission and inspiring, and being quite creative and bold in how it takes risks as well. So now it's quite a shift in identity. Myron Rogers talks about in living systems how an organization is very resilient. Any living system is very resilient because it will whatever changes in the outside world it will make, it will it will adjust to maintain its identity. So if you're just focusing on the structures and processes without looking at that fundamental identity that it's coming from, that identity will just keep reasserting itself. It's so resilient, then relationships is obviously how we connect, the connections with an organization, how it talks to itself, the stories we tell, tell each other about the organization and how it how it works. And anytime you have change, real change need to be having really strong relationships across the organization, up and down the hierarchy, to languaging change and making sense in the same way. And it's appealing to kind of that it's making sense in the context of identity as well. And then finally, information. So organizations are continually processing information. We have more information every day, more than we used to have. It's just obviously people talk about a lot, it's exponentially increasing. So an organization is always implicitly making choices or explicitly about how to prioritize some organization and ignore others, who to share information with and who who not to and how an organization can learn better and make decisions better depends on how that organization flows that, sorry, that information flows through the organization. So these three things often things that kind of aren't talked about and aren't paid attention to, and therefore get missed when we start making changes or failing to make changes.

Carolyn Norgate  08:55

I think let's, let's move into that, doing some thinking about it. Shall we? Sophie, can you ping to the next slide, and I can just talk, talk through so this, these questions here, really just speak to what Sophie's just been highlighting around that by kind of adding a bit more texture to the sorts of questions that might come under the relationships, one in terms of the quality of the relationships the networks at play or around identity, thinking about, You know, who is this system in service of place, into issues around purpose and the multiple identities within a particular system, or in the information bucket, where's information being shared, how, who has access? You can sort of see, get the sense of the sort of power coming into play with there as well be good to get a sense of what came up, either in the conversation or or even just where your attention was taken to in terms of that model of identity, information and relationships. Thank you. Yeah, which was making me think about that as Myron Rodgers just talks about kind of, really, know, being able to move towards creating meaning, enabling trust, enabling action. But there's something that I was really thoughtful about there in terms of that kind of first person, what creates meaning for me? If I can't see the bigger picture, I can't connect to it. What creates meaning it? You know, it's bond or obvious in some ways, but what creates meaning for me and satisfaction is maybe getting through the case work. So, you know, how organization, organizationally, do we create that broader sense of purpose for people so they can see, as exactly, as you were saying, that that case work is contributing to a bigger purpose, and there's a collective meaning that we can make together here in terms of server. You know what? We know what our overall identity is in that space. And that's, yeah, sorry, Claire, for you cancome in. 

Sophie Tidman  10:53

Sorry Carolyn, talking over you. I just wanted to point out we've obviously been talking about this all in quite an intellectual way, and that's how mission led is talked about that and complexity is often highly intellectualized, but there is a lot of thought, and it makes a lot of sense to me that this is about nervous systems, that when we are when we are feeling resourced, relaxed in our rest and digestive nervous system state, which is the sort of parasympathetic nervous state, for those of you who've who have geeked out on this, we feel connected to each other. We naturally feel we naturally work systemically, because that's we're human beings, and we've always been in human complex systems, and we've always had to connect with each other for our own survival and creativity comes when you're feeling connected into your system and part of something bigger. So this task oriented urgency, culture, way of working that many of us have kind of just been moving into, and which has exponentially got faster post COVID I think, people are in a fight, fight and flight state, and that makes it very difficult to connect, and it feels very unsafe for people. So I think some some of this is purely about helping people feel safe and resourced, and actually stopping in and stopping sometimes feels really unsafe. So I just wanted to point out there's a sort of deeper aspect to this

Carolyn Norgate  12:29

Yeah, which takes me back to what Alison was saying at top of this bit of the conversation about relationships, and the kind of relational fabric of organizations and the safety within them, but balancing that with the fact that there's a huge amounts of uncertainty. So I was thinking about Barry Mason's work about being in safe uncertainty. So we're often in unsafe uncertainty. So how can we make uncertainty safe enough? And colleagues at Ashridge, I think some time ago, did some thinking about that in relation to complexity, given that uncertainty aspect of it. So see if I can dig that out and maybe just add something to the slide set before we send it out. But there's a, I think that's the that's the sort of sweet spot that we're thinking about in terms of our work in organizations or work with clients. You know, how are we helping them be safe enough to work, move towards rather than the fight or flight response. You know, work with, move towards. Our colleague, James often uses the phrase, move towards difficult while it's easy. I'm not sure there's many people in our client system at the moment would say things are easy. But there are certain, certain parts of the system where there is, there is energy, Gillian talked about earlier, there is opportunity in different ways, and there are openings in different ways that the mission led is giving, and the, you know, different flavor of government is creating a different tone and leadership is creating so I think that there might be something in that sort of, you know, what's the, what's the space where we can make, make moves, which is making me think, I'm just going to share slide briefly before I come back to you. Sophie, it's, it's, this is from Sharon Varney's work around working with complexity. And it's essentially three circles which are noticing, interpreting and responding. And what Sharon and many people in the kind of complexity theory, stuff that Sophie was talking about earlier, talk about is how we hold ourselves in positions of inquiry, rather than advocate advocacy where we're you know, leaders are often trained to be very good at advocating particular positions. And you know, again, civil service comes to mind again in terms of, you know, advising a policy position, you know, providing a brief very quickly on something. So standing inquiry isn't necessarily the go to place. And leaders generally are often looked to, looked to, to have answers, so to advocate for the answers, or to make, make the judgment and what the answer needs to be here. So holding an inquiry at points is is going to be difficult, and slowing down to do that is difficult for people. But Sharon gives a model, again, quite similar to some of the ones you may have seen, which is about, sort of saying, how do we suspend judgment briefly enough to notice. So she uses the phrase catching reality in flight, so just those sort of pauses and to notice what we're noticing, and just training, training ourselves or helping the people we work with start to get more adept at the process of noticing. And our colleague Tony Nicholls in his book, Managing change in organizations', talks a lot about noticing as well. So that might be something to look at. This whole chapter on noticing in there and then, in order to having noticed, in order to then interpret. So thinking through a lot of the stuff that's in that Myron Rogers model around connections, information, the patterns and the multiple perspectives in order that we can respond, and as Glenda Oyang would say, make a wise move. So we can't respond with all the information that's, that's, that's, that's possibly available, because we can't process all of that. But from the point we're at, how can we respond and make a wise move. And, you know, and have agency in that moment, which, again, is sort of moves us away from the fight or flight, but into the kind of okay, I can make a move here. I can move towards. So, on the one hand, a very simple model, but on the other hand, I think quite counter in counter cultural for the kind of organizations, you know, in any kind of classic organizational paradigm, but I think particularly with the pressure that's on public sector system at the moment. And what we know is, I'm what said earlier on about that energy around mission led, versus the reality of that kind of coming in, yeah, and actually, what we've got to do is, and I was talking to a director in civil service last week who gave me a very similar read, which is the mission led the feel around mission that is great, but the reality doesn't feel like we're in that. It just feels like it's, deliver, deliver, deliver. You know, in short term wins right now. So, you know, you know, how do we, how do we help, kind of walk the line between both delivery and that broader purpose and identity. 

Sophie Tidman  17:26

So like paradox about systems is that it's about the bigger picture, but we can only understand how we fit into the bigger picture, and how can we how we can help the system work better if we're with we're aware of how our impact and what we're bringing to the system. So systemic change is often right. The system feels weighed against you, right? So it's figuring out where that wise action is, where the leverage point is that you have, where you what's the difference that's going to make the difference for you, and perhaps the people, the coalition you have around you, is really important, because we can just spend so much energy pushing change in lots of different places where's more ripe for it.  So before we close, it would be lovely to hear if anybody there are any, no need to share too much whatever you feel happy with, but there are any some, any dawning insights, or any just noticings about that process. I loved all the metaphors around the golden thread and the bucket of water and the Roman army. Those are very powerful people to help, to see, you know, to really connect with the lived experience and that polarise, we see that with clients a lot this kind of energy, cold bucket of water. Can we make it more? Yes, and not denying the reality, working with it, embracing it, and being really choiceful about where we put our energy in it.

Carolyn Norgate  18:49

I thought that was really interesting. Though, the theory in the reality of mission led is, how do you hold and keep enough attention on the bigger picture, mission led and start to help the people in your organization think and talk that way. Words create worlds. So you're even talking mission led, or is actually most of what you're talking about is short term, operational and tactical delivery because of the pressure that's on the system and the you know, there's a lot of talk about things being broken and therefore need to fix, and that's what takes people down quite a linear way of thinking about, you know, if it's, if it's a broken and it's a problem we can fix, as opposed to, this is a really complex, complicated and complex issue, and it's not necessarily, we can't treat it like a solvable problem. We kind of tend to pretend to ourselves that are really very organized, and, you know, we have a structure, and we have an operating model, and, you know, we have a set of deliverables, and that's what we all know, what we need to do. And the world keeps moving, and all sorts of things keep happening to everyone and to organizations. And mission led is, I guess, sort of trying to do something slightly different, is kind of give some organizing principles and create some, I was thinking about, that freedom within a framework, or a liberating structure, create a liberating structure for people to to act within from their different parts, because so much of the so much of the missions aren't going to be from one for one bit of the civil service or the public sector or the civil society to solve or to work with, it requires different, you know, lots of different parts to come together and to be be kind of under that framework. Yes, you know, to be working towards homelessness, for example, you know, that's not one department's, you know, goal. 

Sophie Tidman  20:41

Yes, we talked about sort of rash. You can have a rational approach to you can rationalize the mission led government, make it a very logical process. And I think when people are there's a lot of talk at the moment, since the well, and since Labor announced the five, their five missions, about what really is a mission? Does that really qualify as a mission? Is it really cross sectoral? Is it really concrete enough and those are valid? And also maybe you're not going to get the right missions, the right the articulated ones, and yet, we still need to be working in a cross sectoral way. We can't wait for government to get to for somebody to give us the right mission rightly articulated with the right financial framework and all the right structures in place, and get the incentives set up, and then we can do mission led government. We kind of just need to engage with the mess as it is. And of course, finding the right structures and incentives and financial policies, procedures, is going to be outcome of lots of conversations, so let's be practicing having those engaging with that messiness. And then the Maya and Rogers, I think, offers, yeah, some a bit more structure within that. And and gives us our gives us a prompt to start directing our conversations, our energy, our language, towards getting underneath the systems, recognizing it as a system, not as a machine. How much task process bureaucracy has built up out of a need to be busy? There is always a rational for doing it, but being mission led, being systemic, it takes courage to the to do the letting go that involves. It means stepping back from knowing the answer. Means government making space for collaboration to happen, and that letting go is quite scary, feels unsafe for people, so as well as the kind of the academic, the intellectual case, there's something that's very much about the qualities it takes as a person, as a team, the courage it takes to step back and to let go of things and to assert boundaries. I mean, I'm talking in organizations where there's regularly meeting upon meeting upon meeting which everybody says they don't like, which everybody says they're not productive meetings. But we just need to do it like that, because we need to invite that person. And, you know, we need to sign that off. And it's governance, and it's, it's about risk and and we need to go deeper into kind of what that says about who we're being as government, who are we serving with those meetings, really to ask yourself really questions and make difficult choices, which means saying, this is we're going to trust these people to make this decision, and if it's wrong, then we will learn from it, without blame. So yeah, I think, I think it's very challenging in that way, not in the, let's say, in the intellectual way. What we're being asked for ministries, from by by a lot of clients, is about intellectual frameworks, because there's that's, that's a support, that's, that's something to kind of provide an answer. But ultimately, it's about those difficult choices and yeah, different ways of being. 

Carolyn Norgate  23:59

Yeah, yeah. Lovely. Oh, that's nice. Nancy, feeling inspired. Yeah, particularly that point that Alison is making above about, you know, put down what might seem impossible and pause to consider what you might find possible. Yeah, yeah, lovely, nice points in the chat there.

Sophie Tidman  24:23

Hmm, we'll probably have to move on, but we're, we're going to pay attention to this chat. That chat seems really rich. So yeah, please can continue putting in if there's anything that strikes you before we close. So one quite useful other way of thinking about this is Margaret Wheatley, these islands of sanities. I think, think maybe it was Rowena was talking about different circles, circles where we can connect. And Action Learning is great for that. And and people have different kind of ideas about creating communities of practice so where you can do that in small and formal ways, formal ways. This is obviously an attempt. And. To keep doing this, these Mayvin events as well, but islands of sanity. So change in the system mission led to change. Not everyone's got a mission that wouldn't make any sense, but the idea of kind of collaborating, or being more creative together, being more generative, sharing collective wisdom, we can do that in pockets. You know, that's how change happens in a system doesn't all happen together. There's little pockets and tipping points. So that might be something to also think about, how you're fostering islands of sanity and developing using that to care for yourself, right? Creating your own island sanity, because you can't, you can't support a system when you're not resourced yourself, just perpetrating the same kind of sort of task focused busyness culture. This is all giving rise for us in the conversations we've been having with you as our community and with clients, and we're associates to a few mission led government offerings that we've just put gathering on the campus. So if you're interested in doing more, if you think other people in your organization would be doing more, would like to do more. Take a look. So yeah, please have conversations with us. We want to learn more. We want to be building our ideas with you and our offerings with you.

Carolyn Norgate  26:11

So yeah, two minutes to go. Thank you all so much for coming. It's in for us, just good to share our thinking and to hear how it's resonating for you and to hear your thinking. These, these sessions are collective thinking events, essentially being together and thinking a bit of an island of certainty, but also just to kind of just share think, kind of basically move through that, that circle I shared earlier, kind of stop notice, do some interpreting together, and then think about what that means for us, individually and collectively in the way we respond. So, yeah, that's what I'm really thoughtful about, is how that that cycle plays out for us in how we're thinking in mission led, if you can share in the chat just kind of, you know, a couple of words by way of check out from today, maybe kind of what you're noticing or what you're appreciating as you leave. That will be lovely. If you want to have a further chat about mission led or anything else, do give us a shout and hopefully see you all in some one of these sessions or another session soon. Have a good rest of the day. Everyone go well and yeah, see you all soon. We hope Take care. Bye. You.