Whichever political party wins the next election, the next administration to take charge in the UK will have to operate in a highly constrained environment. There will be little spare money to spend, a long list of problems to fix, and many threats on the horizon. Political space will be at a premium.

We believe in the old adage about making the most of a crisis. We think the constraints facing the next government provide an unmissable opportunity to change how government works for the better.

Any mission-focused government should be well equipped to define, from day one, what outcomes it wants to bring about.

But radically changing what the government does is only part of the challenge. We also need to change how government does things. The usual methods, we argue in this paper, are too prone to failure and delay.

There’s a different approach to public service organisation, one based on multidisciplinary teams, starting with citizen needs, and scaling iteratively by testing assumptions. We’ve been arguing in favour of it for years now, and the more it gets used, the more we see success and timely delivery.

We think taking a new approach makes it possible to shift government from an organisation of programmes and projects, to one of missions and services. It offers even constrained administrations an opportunity to improve their chances of delivering outcomes, reducing risk, saving money, and rebuilding public trust.

Multiple attempts to reform how the machinery of government works over recent decades have failed to deliver radically improved outcomes at scale. Tweaks to departmental structures, new processes, or the creation of central units, have yielded some advances. But their effects on the overall character and direction of public service have been fleeting. They have rearranged the machine, rather than truly transforming how it operates.

The rare exceptions to this - and they exist in central government, local government and the NHS - prove the point. Thanks to unusual circumstances that created political cover, they were able to practise the methods we describe in this report - and they delivered. And yet these exceptions have remained just that - exceptional. When the leadership moves on, or the circumstances change, the magic disappears.

We believe this because we have led, watched, or worked with these exceptions in action, either as public servants or as advisors. In this paper, we will draw on the lessons learned from those experiences, illustrate what these new ways of working look and feel like, and set out some of the structural changes required to make them the norm.

We call these changes the Radical How.

The struggles and shortcomings of delivering in government are well rehearsed. Many of the root causes that make it tough have been restated
several times over several decades. But what to do?

We believe the government can and should change how it delivers, by:

• organising around multidisciplinary teams
• embracing incremental, feedback-driven iteration
• focusing more on outcomes.

The Radical How is a change of mindset as much as a change in organisation. It promotes methods and processes that have been shown to work, multiple times, at scale. They are the default ways of working for many of the world’s most successful companies.

However, the occasions where they have been deployed are rare in government. These occasions have come about thanks to exceptional leaders, exceptional circumstances, or both.

We think they’d make a big difference if they became the norm, rather than the exception.

We also think that without them, mission oriented government will not become a reality. New policy ideas will remain just that, rather than translating into profound improvements to society.

Central to this approach is the widespread adoption of internet-era ways of working. This paper explains both those and our thinking in more detail, with reference to real examples.

1. Make outcomes matter most

Ministers should care more about outcomes to further their own careers

2. Let outcomes define accountability

Hold senior people accountable for delivering promises, not paperwork

3. Demand politicians set direction through missions

Empower civil servants to determine how to make them happen

4. Add more teams to get more done

Because multidisciplinary teams are the best unit of delivery, not individual generalists

5. Open up

Let teams work openly, sharing their successes, failures and knowledge

6. Fund teams, not programmes

Invest public money incrementally, with bureaucracy that’s proportionate to risk

7. Reinvent procurement

Buy or rent services that support teams, not simply to outsource outcomes

8. Train civil servants for the internet era

Find, develop and keep the best, most skilled people; reward them appropriately

9. Invest in digital infrastructure

Open data, common platforms, clear design; the basic foundations for everything

10. Lead with courage

Accepting and committing to reform is the hardest, but essential first step

Very few of these 10 changes are untested. They do not mean throwing everything away and starting again. But they do represent a direct challenge to entrenched structures, behaviours and beliefs in Whitehall and Westminster. That won’t be popular with those who have long benefitted from them.

This is radical in the sense that it asks powerful people to acknowledge that the status quo needs reform, and to take responsibility for that. It’s radical in the sense of actively growing talent that exists in government and giving it space to thrive. And it’s necessary: we need a Radical How to underpin the mission-focused government of the near future.