Grace Wyld, Head of Policy and Research for The Future Governance Forum, discusses the government’s commitment to a mission-driven approach to national renewal and asks what missions mean for how government is delivered.
Missions are more than a communications tool to signal intent. They are a method to try to direct markets in line with social and environmental goals, transform public services for the long term, and ultimately solve complex challenges (something we aren’t short of in the UK) in deeper partnerships both across government, and outside of government.
Humility isn’t a word often associated with politics, but – as Professor Charles F. Sabel at Demos Helsinki argues – a mode of humble government is required to solve seemingly intractable societal challenges. Mission-driven government requires moving from a top down, command-and-control style of government to a much more networked approach. In other words, away from New Public Management, which has dominated public service approaches in recent decades, to working in deeper partnership with the whole of society, including businesses and civil society organisations.
SMK’s recent report and collection of essays, Forces for Good, paints a rich picture of the contribution civil society makes to efforts for social and environmental change, and why the government should be open to working in deeper partnership. Our recent publication, Mission Critical 03: Mission-Driven Partnerships with Civil Society, produced in partnership with NPC and Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales, aims to contribute practical ideas to achieve that mode of partnership.
Mission-driven government means setting out a really clear purpose, crucially, in the knowledge that it will not achieve those missions on its own. Embracing more diverse approaches to achieving social change is something SMK is expert in. I came across SMK’s social change grid when I was in my first policy job in the charity sector and, as I read about the four quadrants (covering institutional power, the public sphere, service provision and community), my understanding of how I could contribute to positive change on the issues I cared about started to expand. What it said to me then was that no one makes this stuff happen on their own, and they definitely don’t do it with one approach.
And so, some humility is also required on the part of civil society organisations wanting to work in greater partnership. As the government makes commitments to a new way of working, civil society organisations must play their part in adjusting too. They must step up to solve problems together with the government, even if they seem beyond their obvious field or sector-based challenges. And that means stepping away from the idea that civil society is there to provide a ‘moral compass.’
Civil society brings invaluable expertise, ideas and insight. Indeed, if missions are understood as evidence-based leadership and policy making from the top-down, combined with a culture of innovation – to test and learn – from the bottom up, then the very best civil society organisations should have a major role to play in achieving them. They are often the first to identify a problem which the government is not yet aware of, and they are central to setting overall direction and defining mission goals. And their trusted relationships with communities, innovative design practices and culture of learning make them crucial to test and learn practices. But civil society organisations don’t have a moral monopoly on doing good.
Missions are long-term, ambitious, and with unknown routes to success. As such, they run against the grain of how governments are expected to behave – connecting a long arc of sustained commitment over time to everyday stories of incremental change. It’s likely they’ll run against the grain of how civil society expects to behave in partnership with government, too.
When I first discovered the social change grid, it said to me: ‘no one gets this stuff over the line on their own’. We need multiple efforts, all pulling on different levers, because together we’re greater than the sum of our parts. This government has chosen a potentially powerful mechanism for driving through long term, sustainable change in a mission’s approach. At the heart of that project is the idea that no single player – government included – can achieve missions on their own.
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‘Leading with purpose and governing in partnership’ is the central argument made in Mission Critical 01: Statecraft for the 21st Century, published last May by FGF in partnership with Professor Mariana Mazzucato and the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) at UCL. FGF have been exploring what governing in partnership could look like in practice, and have since published Mission Critical 02: Governing in partnership with business and trade unions (October 2024) and Mission Critical 03: Mission-Driven Partnerships with Civil Society (January 2025) in partnership with NPC and Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales.