Mission-led Government Skills Training

New skills training now available for mission-led Civil Service leaders

New leadership development activities are now available to help Civil Service leaders get to grips with what mission-led government means for them and their ways of working.

Since coming into power, the new Government has restated its commitment to its five major missions; growing the economy, making Britain a green energy superpower, building a fit-for-the-future NHS, making the streets safe and creating opportunities for all.

These are complex, long-term issues that the Government hopes to address by establishing a series of specific, measurable and time-bound objectives, against which progress will be tracked over the course of this Parliament.

As per this handy explainer from the Institute for Government, mission-led government is not a new concept but it does represent a departure from the traditional way of framing a government agenda.

Mission-led government aims to unlock innovation and creativity and to break down organisational silos in pursuit of a single, shared long-term objective. It also intends to make it easier for citizens to hold government to account, by clearly showing progress against each mission’s publicly stated milestones.

Skills and behaviours

While there is no blueprint for what mission-led government should look like, there are certain leadership mindsets, skills and behaviours it emphasises the importance of, such as collaboration, communication, stakeholder engagement, accountability and experimentation.

All of these and more are explored in the three Mission-led Government courses (‘Understanding it’; ‘Practising it’; and ‘Leading it’) that are now available on the Government Curriculum. These are delivered by Mayvin, part of the KPMG-led learning consortium that supports Government Skills and specialists in tackling organisational complexity.

The courses’ design and content reflects the growing number of requests from government departments that Mayvin noted during 2024 for bite-sized leadership programmes that focused on developing systemic mindsets and building communities of practice. Unsurprisingly, a wish to better understand what mission-led government looks like in practice featured heavily among those requests after the summer’s General Election.

These three courses were therefore designed for civil servants who need to help their team, function or department to become more mission-led. The aim is to help participants find ways to empower and energise their colleagues; build broader and more diverse coalitions; collaborate across government and beyond; and design new ways of working that encourage experimentation.

Participants will typically be leaders from Grade 7 to Director level who are involved with change and transformation; organisation design and development; or strategy and communications.

The courses

Featuring a half-day virtual workshop, the ‘Understanding it’ course explores the principles of mission-led government and the mindset and skills required to be able to apply those principles. It provides insights to help participants make sense of this more purpose-driven model of working in government.

The ‘Practising it’ course features two half-day virtual workshops, scheduled about a month apart from one another. This delves into the mission-led approach more deeply, introducing tools and frameworks that participants can test out by applying them to their own real-life challenges.

Comprising two half-day workshops and three Action Learning Sets (ALS) spread across four months, the ‘Leading it’ course allows for several cycles of reflection, helping participants to reflect on, and respond to, their real-life challenges relating to mission-led government.

With the ALSs bringing peers together in a safe, supportive and challenging space, this is an opportunity for participants to make fundamental changes to their leadership style while also building powerful and valuable cross-government networks. This final course is available fully online, although face-to-face workshops are also an option.

All three courses are available as closed bookings (with 10-30 spaces available in the first two and 10-14 in the third); ideal for departments looking to train whole cohorts of leaders at the same time. For more information or to make a booking click here.