More governments around the world are embracing missions as a governing framework to address big societal challenges.
The European Union’s Horizon Europe aims to improve cancer outcomes for 3 million people by 2030; Germany’s Energiewende will give the country a climate-neutral energy system by 2045; the UK government is pursuing several missions, including those related to economic growth and increasing opportunity.
These missions represent a huge test for governments’ ability to achieve transformational outcomes. So what does it take to achieve them? This article focuses on the implications for capability building in government.
Lessons from the first ever mission
The US government’s decade-long effort to put a man on the moon is often cited as the first ever mission — the original ‘moonshot’. What lessons does it hold for mission-driven governments in 2024?
A key passage from a 1965 NASA budget report is a good starting point: “Shortages of trained people and lack of understanding… are the most serious impediments to rapid and satisfactory progress,” it reads. Their response was to double the training budget to $250 million (in today’s money).
The insight is that governments can’t achieve anything unless they have people that are equipped to do the work. Individuals build capabilities, develop new mindsets and master new ways of working. Therefore, any effort to cultivate mission-driven governance must consider the learning needs of public servants.
Understanding those needs starts with understanding missions. Or, more specifically, understanding what makes missions different from other modes of governance. There are a few tenets to focus on:
The moonshot: Kennedy wanted to go to the moon because it was the furthest frontier of technological ingenuity, the biggest challenge around. By design, missions confront difficult and complex problems that require bold, transformational change.
Innovation-focused: The reality of taking on the biggest challenges is you need to experiment, find what works and scale it up. The more complex the challenge, the more experimentation and learning is needed.
Cross-sector collaboration: Governments must lead missions but not through command and control. Policymakers set a bold direction of travel and then spark action across sectors to support the mission. Getting a man on the moon, for example, required so much ingenuity in so many fields that the spillover benefits are still being discovered to this day.
In a world of complexity and change, dynamic capabilities are critical
While missions have been around for a long-time, they have evolved. Today, governments are tackling big societal challenges — like climate change, health and inequality — rather than the purely technical and engineering feats of the 20th century.
The result is greater complexity. Government departments and agencies need to:
collaborate across more sectors;
experiment more;
align a wider range of policies to the same goal;
and take a wider view of the economic, environmental and social impact of specific actions to achieve the mission.
Governments don’t usually work in this way. To pursue missions, a business-as-usual approach won’t work. They demand a wholly different mode of action; one that is more entrepreneurial, experimental and collaborative. What would that look like? Researchers, like Professor Mariana Muzzucato and Rainer Kattel, from the UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (UCL-IIPP), use the concept of ‘dynamic capabilities’ to describe the types of institutional muscles governments need to build to make missions work.
Dynamic capabilities are a specific set of competences that allow an organisation to adapt to a changing strategic environment. The concept is rooted in 1990s business literature, but in an increasingly volatile and complex policy context — with wars, climate change, pandemics and technological transformation piling up and tangling into each — it’s being used to assess governments’ ability to keep up.
Five dynamic capabilities for government
There are core dynamic capabilities that organisations need: the ability to sense, seize and transform.
Researchers at UCL-IIPP have developed this into a more comprehensive, high-level framework for the public sector. It includes five key capabilities: sense-making, connecting, seizing, shaping and learning.
To support L&D practitioners in government, Apolitical has identified some specific areas of knowledge, skills and mindsets that public servants can develop to enhance dynamic capabilities within departments.
Resources to get you started
Apolitical has a wide range of resources to support your team or wider department develop the knowledge and skills to support mission-driven government.
Our self-paced free courses are always open to all public servants to enrol. They include:
If you're in charge of your team's learning and development in the UK, Apolitical is an approved supplier on the UK's Government Campus, where we can provide a wider range of learning experiences, ranging from live events to bespoke programme design. We can also support teams globally.
For more information, contact Keri Landau, Head of Government Partnerships. Keri.Landau@apolitical.co.
References
Gurumurthy, Ravi, Joe Owen, Alexandra Burns, and Emma Norris. “Mission-Driven Government: What Does a ‘Mission-Driven’ Approach to Government Mean and How Can It Be Delivered?” London: NESTA, 2024. [Read the full report].
IIPP Public Sector Capabilities Index team. “Developing the Public Sector Capabilities Index: Phase I Synthesis Report.” London: UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, 2024. [Read the full report]
Kattel, Rainer, and Mariana Mazzucato. “Mission-Oriented Innovation Policy and Dynamic Capabilities in the Public Sector.” *Industrial and Corporate Change* 27, no. 5 (September 3, 2018): 787–801. [Read the article].
Mazzucato, Mariana, and George Gibb. “Missions: A Beginner's Guide.” UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose: Policy Brief Series, no. 09 (2018).
Smith, Laurie. “Catalysing Innovation for Missions Outside Government.” Discovery at Nesta, September 10, 2024. [Read the article],
Spanó, Eduardo, Rafael Monnerat, Carlos Américo Pacheco, and Maria Beatriz Machado Bonacelli. “Legal–Institutional Design and Dynamic Capabilities for Mission-Oriented Innovation Agencies: A New Framework.” *Science and Public Policy* 51, no. 2 (October 24, 2023): 192–206. [Read the article].
Teece, David J., Gary Pisano, and Amy Shuen. “Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management.” *Strategic Management Journal* 18, no. 7 (August 1997): 509–33. [Read the article]
UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. “Public Sector Capacity Matters, but What Is It?” *UCL IIPP Blog*, June 17, 2024. [Read the article].