Service delivery improvement, organisational turnaround, capability uplift, decision-making effectiveness, and leadership behaviours – these are a snapshot of some of the areas I have had the privilege of working on across the UK public sector at my time at Leapwise. A common thread through these experiences has been transformation & change, a famously easy thing to get right in the public sector (not!). These experiences, especially my most recent partnership with Norfolk & Suffolk, have allowed me to see firsthand what works, and what doesn’t when it comes to transformation. As I transition from Leapwise to my next chapter, I want to share 5 key lessons I’ve learned about making transformation efforts successful.
5 lessons on Public Sector Transformation:
- Clarity on purpose is a non-negotiable
- Make space before you make plans
- Technology alone won’t fix broken processes
- Engage at the front line, but do so with care
- Transformation teams can incubate cultural change
Clarity on purpose is a non-negotiable
It’s probably not a surprise that the first lesson directly ties to our number one critical success factor for major change in our VICTORY framework; Vision. A vision should be clear, motivating, ambitious, and tied to organisational strategy. For public sector organisations, this means including a tight link to improving outcomes for communities.
However, prioritising what specifically to focus on is challenging, and can feel like it comes at the cost of other outcomes. It can be easy to fall into the trap of a broad vision statement that tries to be all things to all people, covering all outcomes. This misses the mark on clarity and fails to guide decision-making or energise people. Real clarity comes from making deliberate choices: What are we actually trying to change? For whom? And to what end?
Equally important is who defines the purpose. Transformation leaders shouldn’t develop it in isolation. Bringing senior leaders into a decision-making process around outcome trade-offs, ensures they are clear on the purpose right from the beginning (making it easier to manage scope for transformation leads in the long run!).
📌 Tip: work with senior leaders and staff to shape a purpose that’s sharp, specific, and directly tied to public outcomes. If it can apply to every project, it probably doesn’t mean much.
Make space before you make plans
Too often, we will get to the start of change work with an organisation only to realise they are already overwhelmed with in flight change programmes/projects and have no capacity to handle more. While there is always great ambition to ‘fit it in’ on top of this change, because people will ‘make it work’ this creates an impossible environment for change delivery, and progress will likely stall.
Preparatory work to review and rationalise the existing change portfolio, ensures there is capacity to deliver the change, and can reduce the overall change burden on the organisation. This stock take exercise should look to stop, pause, or descope change that isn’t considered ‘priority’, and can provide an opportunity to improve overall programme / project hygiene around benefits, delivery confidence, and resource allocation.
📌 Tip: take stock of the wider change portfolio to ensure there is programme & organisational capacity to deliver on a new transformation initiative.
Technology alone won’t fix broken processes
Advances in AI & automation are happening quickly, and it’s clear they have many transformative benefits, especially around creating much needed capacity for frontline delivery. While the government has signalled that there are billions of efficiencies that can be realised through AI & automation, there is a risk that these solutions become viewed as a ‘silver bullet’ to all capacity challenges.
The NAO 2024 AI report highlighted that ‘achieving large-scale benefits is likely to require not just adoption of new technology but significant changes in business processes and corresponding workforce changes’. Investing in and building organisational process improvement capabilities seems like a necessary step if organisations are reliant on achieving these large benefits amidst a continued challenging financial backdrop. Business process improvements can also create capacity in the short term with no or limited technology intervention while AI and automation solutions may still be in the pipeline.
📌 Tip: start with process improvement, then layer in technology to maximise benefits.
Engage at the Front Line, but do so with care
Transformation can’t just be led from the top — it has to be informed by the people closest to the work. Frontline teams often have the clearest view of what’s working, what’s broken, and what change will mean in practice, meaning they have an essential part to play in developing sustainable solutions.
This may seem straightforward and an obvious step, but doing it meaningfully takes more than scheduling a few workshops. Frontline teams are often busy, change-weary, and may have seen consultation processes come and go without much impact. Careful planning allows you to be clear up front: what input are you seeking, how will it be used, and who ultimately makes the decisions? Transparency builds trust — and it ensures people aren’t left wondering whether their voices mattered.
An extra, often overlooked step, is documenting and later communicating this process – demonstrating how different voices shaped the work build further trust in the transformation and gives the transformation legitimacy.
📌 Tip: Plan engagement with the same discipline you’d apply to project delivery. Be clear on scope, expectations, and follow-through.
Transformation teams can incubate cultural change
Big culture shifts rarely happen all at once – they require sustained setting of expectations that must filter down to how people work, day to day. A new transformation team has the unique opportunity to establish working norms different to existing teams and quietly lead the way on a cultural change.
Whether it’s cross-functional collaboration, agile working, continuous improvement, openness to feedback, user-centered design, and/or shared ownership— The behaviours, mindsets, and ways of working modelled by a programme team can act as a live demonstration of the culture the organisation is trying to grow. As other teams see and interact with these new norms, they may experience different standards, improved outcomes, and be directly challenged on ‘it could never work here’. It builds belief that broader cultural change is not only possible but already happening and can create a powerful ripple effect.
📌 Tip: Be intentional about how your programme team works together and shows up for the business. Don’t just focus on delivery—focus on modelling the values and behaviours that others can grow into.
Final thoughts
I’m fairly certain that my future will involve many more public outcome-oriented transformations, and I am looking forward to a) putting these lessons into practice and b) learning more along the way. A massive thank you to my colleagues and clients who have shaped my perspective – I look forward to staying connected and continuing to share & learn with each other.
👉 What are your key lessons from public sector transformation?
