The rise and fail of top-down control

Image created by Freepik 23-8-2025

Why government should kick its addiction to failed top-down controls

Despite the ubiquity and longevity of top down control by government through performance measurement and management (PMM) regimes  - they rarely work. They are foiled by the reality of the complex settings of most of the priority outcomes articulated by successive governments. And they are doomed because they are underpinned by a profoundly flawed view of what motivates public servants to perform, learn and improve. A meta-analysis of 49 studies into public sector performance management frameworks found that centralised PMM has at best a small average effect on public sector performance (Gerrish, 2016).

We now have over 20 years of strong arguments and evidence for a better approach by Government to its role as a system overseer. Yet for all the devolutionary rhetoric of the current government their approach to funding, devolution, governance and accountability and delivery looks an awful lot like top down PMM circa 2004. Governments and especially the civil service that advises them are stubbornly resistant to letting go of centralised control of funding streams, revenue raising, performance management and policy direction (Ferry et al., 2023).

This reflects a deeply entrenched ‘doing to’ mindset within civil service which colludes with the politically seductive notion that Ministers are in control of their domains and make effective policies that direct change in the system and ensure compliance. History suggests otherwise.

A brilliant essay by Adam Lent at the Kings Fund (2025) argues that the global meta crisis is bringing a permanent change to the reality of public service  - ‘one characterised by high demand but low resource’.  He argues that this change demands a major shift in thinking about the role and way of working of central government:

moving rapidly and radically from a system that largely does things to individuals, families and communities towards a system that does things with those individuals, families and communities. A system shaped by ‘withism’ rather than ‘toism’ (Lent, 2025).

In our current world of top down government PMM regimes a massive change in mindset is required. Rather than continuing to prioritise performance controls and grudging compliance that at best has a small and temporary impact on performance, government should instead learn to become a system steward. This mode of government would see PMM reframed to support systemwide learning, improvement and innovation – which in turn will build dynamic capabilities in the system.

Compelling arguments for such a change in the role of government and its performance regimes have been accumulating since the early noughties (Stoker, 2006)(Osborne, 2006) (Christensen & Lægreid, 2007)(Osborne, 2018) (Ansell & Torfing, 2021)(Sørensen et al., 2021) - and most notably by the prescient work by the strategy unit on public service reform (Kelly, Gavin et al., 2002). But these arguments have fallen on the deaf ears of senior officials whose identity and illusion of control as supreme policy adviser is most threatened by such a change. The barriers to change run deep. To overcome them would involve bold leadership from determined ministers and some reformist permanent secretaries backed by the Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary. So far such leadership has not been forthcoming.

The dysfunctional dominance of top down PMM

These top down PMM regimes have been characterised as external accountability (EA) regimes (Jakobsen et al., 2018). Their design is grounded in agency theory and a view of organisations as monolithic, hierarchical systems requiring tight alignment and centralised decision making (Bourne et al., 2018). They assume the presence of a powerful principal who can enforce compliance through external incentives. Such PMM frameworks are at best somewhat suitable for use within institutions. This reflects the genesis of PMM as intra-organisational control and management systems in traditional large private sector organisations like du Pont and General Motors (Bourne et al., 2018).

The reality of the context for the top priorities of governments (from the 2007 outcome focused PSAs to the current government’s missions) is quite different from this old fashioned institutional model. Outcome focused priorities span a complex system which varies from place to place. There are multiple actors with their own goals and differing accountabilities making it difficult to enforce compliance or attribute to outcomes to particular institutions and inputs (French & Mollinger-Sahba, 2021). EA PMM cannot handle the emergent, non-linear and negotiated nature of outcomes in place based multi-institutional collaboration.

When applied in these settings EA PMM results in a wide range of distortions and unintended consequences:

• When performance data is used primarily for accountability and sanctions it actively suppresses innovation and learning because organisations and practitioners become risk averse, reluctant to experiment and defensive about failure (Moynihan et al., 2020).

• Because linear accountability systems lead to fragmentation, duplication and blame shifting they fatally undermining local efforts to collaborate, share responsibility and coordinate action (French & Mollinger-Sahba, 2021).

• Gaming is seen to be a widespread issue as managers and professionals manipulate data or selectively focus on easily achievable targets to appear successful without improving actual outcomes (French et al., 2021). There are endless tales of such gaming in education and most notably hospitals in the health sector (Greener, 2019).

• Measurable indicators become ends in themselves rather than proxies for meaningful outcomes – sidelining the complex and long term goals that matter more (Bevan & Hood, 2006).

• Related distortions include ratchet effects (incentives to underperform in anticipation of future targets) and threshold effects (the lack of motivation to exceed minimum standards (Hood, 2012)

• The extrinsic nature of targets, accountability and incentives (sanctions and rewards) tends to crowd out the more powerful intrinsic motivation and professional engagement of public service staff as well as inducing resistance to the central framework (Greener, 2019)(Gerrish, 2016)(Jakobsen et al., 2018).

• Imposed targets and priorities erode local flexibility and legitimacy (Greener, 2019).

  
  

When top-down PMM can seem to work

In the early years of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit (PMDU) from 2002 to 2006 there were undoubted performance successes as permanent secretaries and ministers accepted their accountability for delivering the Prime Minister’s top priorities.

Whilst that period is often characterised as the embodiment of top down ‘terror and targets’ (Bevan & Hood, 2006) at its best the PMDU model offered collaborative support and peer challenge much more than ‘terror’. The extent of engagement and co-creation in the development of successive PSA measures and the collaborative problem-solving support of PMDU reveals a hybrid PMM system with an intriguing mix of top-down accountability and shared learning regimes. This crucial nuance is lost in most of the competing saint or sinner stories accounts of PMDU.

A factor in those early successes was the nature of the performance measures themselves. They were more narrowly drawn priorities, focused more on outputs, with clear lines of accountability. But when the Government’s suite of priorities evolved into 2007’s outcome based PSAs the PMDU model struggled with the resulting diffusion of accountabilities and the complexity of the delivery setting (Panchamia & Thomas, 2014).

Some sector focused PMM frameworks, like the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) in local government and the Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF) in general practice in health  - both in the late 90’s and early 2000s  - were also seen to improve local performance, although both plateaued after an initial phase of success. Their relative success has been attributed to finding a good balance between extrinsic and intrinsic motivators (Greener, 2019). This balance was achieved through extensive engagement with professionals in both settings: the measures used drew on decades of development work in both sectors ensuring the key measures were seen as relevant and evidence based by practitioners. And both frameworks allowed considerable discretion in how local institutions and practitioners went about improving their performance on the measures (Greener, 2019).

In the case of CPA the Audit Commission had co-developed suites of performance indicators with the influential Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accounting (CIPFA) in the late 1980’s and early 90’s. They used those indicators to produce tailored benchmarking reports that were heavily used by many councils to compare their performance with peer authorities. This benchmarking was backed by influential national research studies looking at different practices in high and low performing councils. As a local government leader in that era, I used to fall eagerly upon these research studies: using their diagnostic tools and benchmarking to question and challenge performance in my council. The reports were highly credible, actionable and adaptable.

The approach in both these regimes engaged with the intrinsic motivation of public servants and their desire for learning and self-improvement. This insight reinforces the findings in Gerrish’s meta-study: he found that PMM regimes had an impact 2 to 3 times greater than the mean when performance management best practices, such as benchmarking for learning, were present (Gerrish, 2016).

How managers apply the PMM framework matters (Gerrish, 2016)(Hood, 2012) and can substantially ameliorate the dysfunctional effects of external control and compliance regimes that present as top down. This finding resonates strongly with some fascinating political science research into the impact of PMDU’s work on the Reduce Unfounded Asylum Applications PSA of 2002. That research found that what originated as implementation model of external imposed accountability evolved into local embedding of new policy making and delivery routines and methods that managers had initially learned and applied them through their collaboration with PMDU. They liked them, and adapted them to address their local priorities and challenges (Boswell & Rodrigues, 2016). Decades later you can see this embedding and adaptation of PMDU inspired practices (routines) in many of the social policy departments.

The Asylum case is a powerful illustration of the possibility of a hybrid PMM model that can balance the legitimate desire of government to encourage specific priorities (and their anxiety about the political implications of ‘letting go’) with evidence for what motivates learning, improvement and innovation by public servants. The case shows it is not just local managers who can offset the downsides and dysfunction of top down PMM: the central unit at the heart of ‘top down’ regime can develop a collaborative operating model that does the same.

Why we need a new hybrid PMM model – and what it looks like

The starting point for a new approach to government PMM must be clarity about what the purpose of the PMM system is when it comes to government priorities that exist in complex systems (which is most of them).

Instead of prioritising compliance that has at best a limited, temporary impact on performance, government should aim to act as a system steward to foster systemwide improvement, innovation and capability building that addresses their priorities.

The implications for political and managerial leaders of acting as a system steward are profound:

success depends on the building of successful relationships through networks and partnerships… ‘efficiency is not achieved by handing over the job to bureaucrats or managers… the key is learning exchange and mutual search for solutions.’… ‘no one is in charge but leaders at various levels play a role. It is not a linear relationship between a principal and agent.’ (Stoker, 2006).

Ministers in particular but also senior officials favour EA PMM regimes because they imply more control and power over public service production and because of the strong rhetorical credit and blame appeal of the performance management doctrine (Hood & Piotrowska, 2023). But that illusion of control too often comes at the cost of actual improvement in policy outcomes that ministers actually seek (Jakobsen et al., 2018). This makes no sense. It is baffling that despite seemingly collaborative rhetoric of ministers like Wes Streeting it is top down PMM that remains the instinctive practice in most departments (although Angela Rayner’s MHCLG department seems most inclined to move on).

For all the mounting evidence of the failure of top-down EA PMM regimes, until relatively recently criticisms had not converged on a viable alternative. Compelling research published in 2018 sketched out the main components of a hybrid alternative that falls between the a full fat EA PMM and the ‘just let go and trust the professionals’ alternatives (Jakobsen et al., 2018). This ‘Internal Learning’ (IL) hybrid “combines political-bureaucratic performance goals with extensive professional involvement in the development and interpretation of goals.”

This approach would require: steering from a distance; and, shaping frameworks, policies, capabilities and incentives without micro managing processes (Ferlie, 2021). Government would work to create the conditions that allow local actors to co-create effectively – an important part of this work involves developing digital and physical platforms that foster deliberation, participation and innovation (Ansell & Torfing, 2021). These platforms enable what they describe as generative governance to foster learning through interaction not command.

Digital platforms allow distributed public and private actors with interest in a certain problem to come together to discuss possible solutions online, retrieve relevant knowledge and information, exchange their own ideas and experiences, design virtual solutions and plan activities enabling their implementation. Platforms may also be physical infrastructures, such as community centres, public libraries or cultural hubs that bring together different actors who form discussion groups, workshops and partnerships around common problems, challenges or ideas for future development.”(Ansell & Torfing, 2021)

In this ‘system of systems’ perspective learning is valued over control, local autonomy is supported and there is a strong emphasis on dialogue and adaptability. Rather than cascade performance measures downwards this approach enables context sensitive indicators and shared learning processes (Bourne et al., 2018).

This role has been described as meta-governance by Livingston (2025)

Meta-governors perform three critical roles: convening actors to align on shared objectives, facilitating collaborative integrity by maintaining trust and managing power asymmetries, and catalysing action to overcome impasses and drive progress… These roles are particularly vital in addressing the inherent complexities of governance networks, where power imbalances, fragmentation, and competing interests can obstruct collaboration (Ansell and Gash 2008). Such challenges demand a strategic approach to steer collaboration effectively (Livingstone, 2025).

Government effectiveness in this new stewardship role will largely be determined by how well the hybrid regime connects with the intrinsic motivation of public servants and other actors – and how skilfully that is balanced with the legitimate desire of government to steer and ensure appropriate external accountability for stewards of public services and resources. The driving principle for the design and practice of the hybrid is one of iterative learning and improvement – which builds the dynamic capabilities of the systems. These dynamic capabilities will drive improvement, innovation and sustainability in the complex systems which address priority outcomes (Kattel, 2022).

Key principles of this hybrid regime new include (Jakobsen et al., 2018):

• Shared goal setting among institutions and stakeholders.

• Learning-oriented performance information, not performance-based punishment.

• Support for local autonomy and intrinsic motivation.

• Dialogic use of data across organizational boundaries.

• Flexible, iterative approaches like pilots and rapid prototyping .

Performance measures play a crucial role in enabling productive cross system collaboration and also enable a different approach to accountability. The clever reframing of measures as ‘performance attractors’ by French and Mollinger-Sahba (2021) captures the mindset change required on PMM in government. As the CPA and QOF cases cited above imply such performance attractors need to be the product of engagement and collaboration with professionals, practitioners and other local actors – and in turn will build goals and values that generate voluntary alignment and adaptive learning across systems. They enable local ownership and the possibility of local coordination (French et al., 2021).

In testing their performance attractors proposition in three case studies (including the Scotland’s National Performance Outcomes Framework) French & Mollinger-Sahbas’ (2021) research highlighted five effective practices:

• Co-developing indicators with all relevant stakeholders to ensure shared understanding and legitimacy.

• Using measures to facilitate dialogue, not to rank or punish.

• Focusing on interdependence, recognizing that different actors contribute distinctively to shared goals.

• Designing measures that evolve, allowing adaptation as local needs and system dynamics change.

• Embedding performance discussions into cross-organizational forums and governance structures.

Such an approach requires a radically different view of accountability as well as governance. Legitimacy, autonomy and local discretion are key for making PMM systems effective in this world. When accountability is embedded in professional norms and community values it is most likely to drive improvement (Greener, 2019). The hybrid nature of the IL approach to PMM recognises the importance of accountability:

“This [hybrid IL approach] does not mean that external accountability is abandoned but [recognises] that aspects of external accountability can threaten professional learning and should therefore be tempered to allow professionals to engage in a goal-based dialogue with political principals.”

“Goal-oriented learning and innovation will become more likely when organizational actors perceive that they work in a setting where acknowledging errors and problems will lead to a dialogue about problem solving rather than punishment.” (Jakobsen et al., 2018).

A formidable number of challenges have been identified applying this approach when there are a mix of local actors involved in developing and working to address complex outcomes:

• “The use of performance attractors will inevitably coexist with standard performance targets at multiple levels faced by the key actors – which could crowd out the incentives they provide (French & Mollinger-Sahba, 2021).

• Without some level of common understanding and proper facilitation, shared accountability may fail. Language barriers, siloed data systems, and conflicting organisational logics all make performance dialogue difficult. These challenges demand shared information infrastructures, facilitative leadership, and inclusive governance structures (Rajala et al., 2018).

• “Tensions tend to flare up and cannot be eliminated by retreating to the hierarchical imposition of order, since that would crush the open and creative search for innovative yet feasible solutions” (Ansell & Torfing, 2021).

• It is not easy to create topics that sufficiently interest all the member organisations because they have organisations very different tasks and accountabilities (Rajala et al., 2020).

• People defend their territory by blocking new information systems or tasks suggested to them by someone else in the collaboration (Rajala et al., 2020).

• “There are situations where a more traditional approach to PMM is appropriate in simple and even complicated environments – for instance the standardisation of certain clinical procedures for patient safety” (French et al., 2021)

Beyond these issues intrinsic to place based multi-actor collaboration, there are significant

barriers that are deeply embedded in the nature of government and the civil service.

The fundamental barriers to government letting go of top down PMM

Three familiar and fundamental barriers stand out. Over the last 40 years they have hampered every serious effort at cross government reform, cross system collaboration, delegation and devolution.

1. Power, control and identity

How politicians and senior civil servants see their roles and identity, and the centrality of power and the illusion of control to both is perhaps the most serious barrier adopting a different approach to PPM.

Traditional hierarchies and senior public managers resist co-creation and local autonomy because it requires them to share decision-making authority, threatening their identity as principal agents driving delivery through the system – even if the reality is they routinely fail to do so. Local as well as national politicians may see the shift to a hybrid PPM model as a challenge to their electoral mandate and authority (Ferlie, 2021).

For those policy domains where devolution, co-creation and collaborative policy making are most relevant (health, education, local government, housing, benefits administration, employment etc) senior officials would no longer be able to sustain the delusion that they are the principal policy adviser. Public administrators tend see themselves as policy makers, implementers and regulators who direct and monitor public bureaucracies: They tackle their job in line with their acquired professional norms and standards they have learned through their career (Sørensen et al., 2021). The hybrid PPM paradigm would instead require system stewardship capabilities that their careers rarely equip them with and are seen as alien to their bureaucratic identity.

As John Denham, Ministerial lead for the Total Place reform of 2009 observed:

I think as much as anything Whitehall killed [total place] because this was a threat to the way that Whitehall operated. You could only make this work if you gave people at local level permission to spend the money differently. Denham 31-1-2024 in htps://www.newlocal.org.uk/articles/total-place-2-0-video-john-denham/

You know, I’ve been there, it’s very tempting, you get into your department, you think there are levers you can pull, you can change everything from Cornwall to Coventry to Cumbria, you can’t, it doesn’t work like that, and so I think we need ministers coming in who actually know that in order to deliver the ambitions they have, they’re going to need to send to Whitehall the signals that a culture change in Whitehall is essential. Denham 31-1-2024 in https://www.newlocal.org.uk/articles/total-place-2-0-video-john-denham/

He also reflects that it is officials who will find this a tougher challenge to their roles than ministers, a finding echoed in the Institute for Government’s prescient report on system stewardship.

“it’s having the leadership and the confidence to lead forward a system you don’t control – and that feels very uncomfortable for politicians, and feels even more uncomfortable for civil servants” Senior Official 2010 in (Hallsworth, 2011)

2. Too much economics - a flawed view of what motivates public servants

The Treasury is the powerful keeper of the eternal flame of agency theory and rational choice which together deliver a dismal and increasingly discredited view of what drives behaviour in organisations and systems. They fuel the belief that the best way to motivate public sector staff and other actors to mobilise around government priorities is through external incentives and sanctions. This view underpins the continuation of highly centralised policy making, the reluctance to devolve anything much, and the long life of top down EA PMM regimes.

This thinking has become embedded in civil service and ministerial minds despite 20 years or research showing it to be largely ineffective. It conveniently reinforces the professional and political identity of both by provide false reassurance that officials can enable ministers to drive delivery and control outcomes across complex and fragmented systems.

3. Resources and accountability

The hard wiring of resources and accountability of Whitehall is huge barrier to more meaningful secession of the dearly held central delusion of effective control and policy making.

The repeated story from reforms demanding joined up working across government is the inadequacy of the default solutions aiming to correct for the pull of federalism for example: coordinating committees, part time ‘overseers’, one off packets of modest funding.

Some central u­­nits created to drive cross cutting outcomes of projects have succeeded in narrower missions with clear political backing – but their success largely reflects the reality that they are operating in the margins of departmental business.

During the long stretch of the Social Exclusion Unit’s existence, and brief life of the Total Place, the main programmes and resources of departments were little changed for all the quality and ambition of those two reforms. At most officials were flexing policy and main programmes at the periphery, relying on short term one-off funding packages.

A central finding of the Total Place pilots was that Whitehall departments would have to devolve significant decision-making power and resources relating to ‘their’ services to the local level for this radical approach to work (Hambleton & Howard, 2013) This was something they were not poised to do as at the end of the programme in 2010.

The system of ministerial accountability for spending is cited by many as a key factor in this blockage. The long serving principal private secretary to Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell, Ciaran Martin, who lived through the most sustained push to create a sense of collective leadership of the civil service offers a blunt warning:

I’m consistently astonished by the endless attempts to reform British Government in the absence of any consideration of why the departmental structure is so embedded & why so called ‘silos’ exist… For ministers, statutory powers are vested in the concept of a secretary of state, ie the ministerial head of a department. not a mission board. Not a cabinet committee. Not a working group… They overwhelmingly drive the day-to-day incentives of ministers and senior officials… And they always will unless they are fundamentally changed… any serious change would be a huge and difficult job involving very difficult trade-offs. …trying to reform without even discussing them is playing at shops… [ref Martin, Bluesky 8-2024]

Can Government make the change to acting ­­­­­­as a system steward?

If the new leadership of government and the civil service has the courage to take on the implications of government acting as a system leader (or steward) they will unavoidably be setting course for bold (and contested) reforms. The three deep seated barriers that hampered and unravelled past reforms will rear their ugly heads again.

To make the change will require strong political conviction and tenacity. Ministers will need to confront both the federal nature of government and the enduring ‘central policy makers know best’ mindset which leads to policy development in the mode of system controller rather than system steward. The Treasury would doubtless make a last stand to defend their orthodoxy.

So there would need to be a cadre of senior and visionary ministers who get the need to change who choose to act together with the backing of the Prime Minister. Judged by their actions in office Rayner, Miliband, McFadden and Gould definitely get it – the jury is out on Streeting whose actions don’t yet seem to fit his rhetoric.

Those bringing the political drive need to ensure they have sufficient strategic thinking capability to challenge the sceptical wing of officials and rebuff the default arguments which will inevitably emerge around resources and priorities for missions: for example why more resources cannot be devolved, or ring fences removed or main programme funding re-purposed and re-prioritised.

No 10 policy unit stills seems to be a void when it comes to thinking about public service reform.

Consequently a strategic brain is needed in the cabinet office to support no 10 and the civil service board on their vision for reform. The old strategy unit and more thoughtful aspects of past number 10 policy units as created, commissioned and championed over decades by Jeremy Heywood are sorely missed. A new operating model for government is apparently under development and may or may not surface during the summer alongside a narrative for civil service reform.

Those developing the vision for civil service and public service reform should tie the purpose of reform project to delivering on the top priorities of the government which big beast cabinet ministers are strongly behind, rather articulate some general and universal reform ideology (see the failed fusion doctrine of Mark Sedwill). And the new Cabinet Secretary must lead shoulder to shoulder with the Prime Minister, the reformist Secretaries of State and with the two Cabinet Office Ministers Gould and McFadden.

You can’t expect or wait for politicians to act as stewards of the civil service – that is the job of the most senior officials. Collective civil service leadership has dwindled badly since its zenith under Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell. For those officials who have made their career by succeeding in the old world it is a big ask for them to see the value and importance of selectively breaking it  - as is required by a system leadership view of government and the civil service. There are of course senior officials who were energised and active in earlier efforts – but many have left the civil service over the last 10 years.

The lack of priority given by the new government and previous Cabinet Secretary to building some heavyweight strategic leadership capacity is reflected by the 11 months it has taken to appoint a (universally well regarded) new Director General for Civil Service Reform and Efficiency  - Janet Hughes – who started in June 2025. Alongside her there is a core of excellent officials in the cabinet office who have the right mindset, experience and cross civil service credibility – Cat Little the Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office and Chief Operating Office for the Civil Service and Clara Swinson second Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office and Head of the Central Mission Delivery Unit.

The active leadership of the new Cabinet Secretary and a cadre of his most reformist permanent secretaries and director generals is critical. There are some positive reports about the energy he is bringing to the role and his efforts to rebuild trust and collaboration amongst senior officials – which are offset by less positive mutterings from some close to no10. There have been some strong recent appointments to perm sec roles of those who definitely get this, for example Emran Mian and Paul Kissack. But the Cabinet Secretary will need to go from 0 to 60 very quickly to build the corporate leadership and shared vision of a future civil service that the bold enactment of government as an enlightened system steward demands.

But even as an eternal civil service champion and optimist, I can’t honestly say that I believe that the prospects for a speedy change in mindset needed coming from with the civil service are promising.

Would it be possible to drive change from the grassroots?

Adam Lents compelling essay (2025) makes the case for a shift from ‘tosism’ to ‘withism’ in the public sector and takes a realistic view of the embeddedness of the barriers I described above. He correctly rates the chances of central government adopting a thoroughgoing ‘withist’ perspective as vanishingly small.

Toism is such a foundational part of the culture of Westminster and Whitehall that it is barely noticed by those embedded in it, let alone questioned. This is not a mindset that will be shifted, no matter how much evidence and reasoned argument is presented for a radical change. What has been seen in the past will continue to be seen in the future: withist ideals and practices appearing occasionally in statements, guidance and strategies but ultimately losing out to a much wider and consistently pursued preference for doing things to rather than with people. (Lent, 2025)

His solution is to instead look to build the change from the grassroots up. This approach starts with the belief that local public service, voluntary and community bodies have the agency and often the ability to choose to collaborate and innovate productively. All the better if they are well supported to do so by government and statutory public bodies.

This requires local actors to break out of their learned dependency, their easy default to blaming government, and sometimes their sense of passive victimhood which harbours futile dreams of new waves of funding. Instead, in the spirit of the total place reform of 2009 Lent declares:

This is a change we can all start delivering by drawing together and using our collective voice and energy to demand withism and start putting it into practice in the here and now.

The change will primarily have to come from an alliance drawing together the many public servants who are frustrated by a system they know is failing, and those who engage closely with, or draw regularly on, public services and experience that failure daily. In effect, the creation of a grassroots movement for withist change (Lent, 2025).

There are plenty of good examples of this happening already. Lent reports a wider network building as a ‘DoWith’ movement that was launched by 30 national organisations with a call for action in January 2025, followed by a very well attended online workshop with 800 participants attracted by the call for action.

It would be wrong to see the challenge of making change as just a grassroots or alternatively a central government Job.

It would be truly perverse for local players to wait for government to do withism to them!

There are some positive efforts within government with the energetic backing of ministers, most notably the public services reform team under Georgia Gould, Janet Hughes and Nick Kimber in the Cabinet Office. Their test and learn approach is the embodiment of the role of government in withism  - acting as a system steward.

The more there are pockets of believers in government with the active backing of enlighted ministers and reformist senior officials who show how this approach can accelerate progress towards the government’s top priorities, the more likely change is to become systematic within government.

Peter Thomas 23-08-2025

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