The Radical How

In 2024 we published a paper called The Radical How. Kindly commissioned by the UK innovation agency, NESTA, it makes a case for governments radically changing how they work. 

You can download the full report in PDF format. And if you're interested in our Canadian version, head over here or download the Canadian version. 

Find out more about the authors. 

"We think the constraints facing the next government provide an unmissable opportunity to change how government works.

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 taking a new approach makes it possible to shift government from an organisation of programmes, projects, and paperwork, to one of missions, services, and people.

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 gives the next administration an opportunity to deliver better outcomes, reduce risk, save money, and rebuild 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 effect on the overall character and direction of the public service has been fleeting.

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. When leaders move on or the circumstances change, ways of working revert to the norm.

In this paper, we will draw on lessons learned from the experiences we and others have had as public servants, illustrate what these new ways of working look and feel like, and set out some of the deeper reforms needed to make them a new normal.

We call these changes the Radical How."