Cross-sector collaboration in the era of mission-led government | Insights

The inconceivable has become commonplace – pandemic, war in Europe, political and cultural polarisation, climate change threatening Armageddon and more.

That’s why so many conferences start with statements about living in a VUCA world – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.

Many issues that have been intractable for decades seem to have become more intractable. This is particularly true for some of the complex social, economic and environmental challenges where multiple actors across all sectors have a part to play - housing, NHS, social care, inequalities, access to the law, migration, and climate.

Science and technology combined with human ingenuity may save some of the day – but it won't be enough if we don’t get other things right.

"Make do and mend" or missions?

However you look at it, “make-do and mend” will not work, and our institutions are stretched to the limit. No single organisation or sector can solve this scale of problem alone.

We will need a new approach that harnesses all the talents nationally, regionally, and locally across all three sectors, working in equal partnership and with enduring institutional arrangements that can adapt to the turbulence they operate in.

Labour has set five missions: kickstarting economic growth, developing Britain as a clean energy superpower, taking back the streets, breaking down barriers to opportunity, and building an NHS fit for the future.

Mariana Mazzucato has defined “missions as concrete goals that, if achieved, will help to tackle ‘grand challenges’ – important, systemic and society-wide problems that do not have obvious solutions”.

Irrespective of whether Labour’s missions are well chosen or meet the definition above, they all require cross-sector collaboration if we are to enable national renewal, which so many of us are excited about. And so do many other challenges.

But let’s face it: our track record on this scale of cross-sector collaboration that bridges locally, nationally and sometimes, internationally is mixed.

We had the success of the COVID-19 vaccination programme, which showed what is possible with decisive national leadership, good use of data, great communications, collaboration across government, private sector and civil society and a belief in local capacities. Locally, Camden has paved the way on cross-sector mission approaches across diversity, access to food, youth opportunity and neighbourhoods. Globally, I have been supporting former PM Theresa May, who is leading a global commission aiming to eliminate modern slavery and trafficking by working in integrated ways across governments, business supply chains and civil society organisations working in emergencies.

On the other hand, in the case of levelling up, a grand mission was developed. Still, cross-cutting institutional arrangements were never implemented sustainably to enable the institution to succeed. The Big Society never even got started.

At a local level, Hilary Cottam, in her book “Radical Help”, described the mixed success of the local cross-organisational experiments which she ran to reform health, social care, and access to employment. Her reflections included:

“The role of relationships in sustaining change seems absurdly obvious, yet relationships are never designed into our solutions.”

What needs to change

Mission-led government needs to be enduring to bring about long-term national renewal. Yes, it will require clear priorities, prime ministerial leadership, mission boards, etc. Still, it needs more than an elaborate central government programme management exercise with layers of programme boards. We need to be able to connect not only horizontally across departments but also vertically from national to local and back again. It also needs sustainability and resilience to survive changes in leadership and context.

Elinor Ostrom has written about the importance of “institutional diversity” and “polycentricity” in achieving shared goals sustainably in complex environments. She emphasises context-specific rules, adaptive processes, and approaches rooted in the people affected and who have some ability to make the rules. Points of governance are complementary, cross-organisational and multi-tiered – they are adaptable, not set in stone.

So, it’s not just programmatic; it's cultural—and that requires a change of leadership orientation across all three sectors. After all, who gets the credit if you spend time on collective action for a mission? Does anyone even notice? What’s the incentive? Success has many parents; failure is an orphan.

It has to become culturally unacceptable not to authentically engage in collaboration. It has to feel OK to challenge people who are not collaborating towards shared goals but working in a space where they are interdependent.

Working in this way requires us to leave our personal or organisational baggage at the door to create the possibility of alignment behind missions and shared goals. There are many barriers to this, not least pressures on time and budgets and sometimes lack of personal chemistry. It requires curiosity about adjacencies, action orientation, presumption of good intentions, appetite and courage to negotiate system design change - and the ability to disagree with curiosity and respect. A longer-term perspective is key.

We are talking about creating a whole new leadership development framework – with capabilities and success measures that include how well you are working with other organisations and how well you are delivering on your own organisation's goals. We will need performance management frameworks that reward this working – you need to get the credit for it, whichever sector you are in.

We need to invest in leadership development and build a movement of people who expect to operate in this way with board-level political support so they expect their leaders to spend time on this kind of work.

Breaking free

So, how do we break free to change our practices?

We all have more agency than we think—and indeed, the more senior we are, the more responsibility we have to think and act systemically and create the conditions for our teams to do the same.

Yes, there will be mission and programme boards. Still, we also need to learn to lead horizontally in our systems, whether local, national, or international, from “ego-systems” to “ecosystems,” in Otto Scharmer's words.

We need to commit time in our diary to enable this way of thinking/working—the more senior we are, the more significant the proportion of our time should be spent in this way.

This is a profound change – but I believe there is no alternative if we are serious about national renewal.

Finally, remember Harry Truman's words: "It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

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