In our previous post, we argued that the Welsh public sector is caught in a performance trap. We’re incredibly good at staying busy, but we struggle to move the needle on the things that actually matter because we focus on outputs (the things we build) rather than outcomes (the change we want to see).

To break this cycle, we need a fundamental shift in how we govern. We need to move from a culture of short-term projects to one of long-term missions.

The mission-led hierarchy

The idea of mission-led government, championed by economist Mariana Mazzucato, provides the missing delivery mechanism for the ambitions we have already set in Wales.

She defines a mission as an ambitious, clear, and time-bound target that requires different sectors to innovate and collaborate. The classic example is the Apollo moonshot: it wasn’t just about building a rocket; it required thousands of separate innovations across textiles, computing, and nutrition to work toward one goal.

By applying this to Wales, we can establish a clear division of labour - a framework that connects political ambition to technical execution.

  • The Mission (set by political leadership): These are the whys. Big, inspirational goals that no single organisation can solve alone. These must be set and protected by politicians.

  • The Outcome (set by executive leadership): These are the so-whats. The specific, measurable changes that prove the mission is being met.

  • The Output (set by delivery teams): These are the hows. The actual tools or services built to drive the outcome.

To see how this works in practice, look at how we might approach two of our biggest national challenges:

Example 1: The Economy

  • Mission: Creating a strong, vibrant Welsh economy.
  • Outcome: Small businesses receive the specific support and loans they need to reach new markets.
  • Output: A development agency that funds 500 loans to high-growth sectors.

Example 2: Health

  • Mission: Increasing healthy life expectancy.
  • Outcome: More people at high risk of cardiovascular disease are identified and supported before they have a heart attack or stroke.
  • Output: A community-based screening programme reaching 50,000 people and a digital health-check tool used by 400 pharmacies.

It’s important to note that this is not a one-to-one list; a single mission will likely require multiple outcomes, and each outcome may be supported by several different outputs.

The problem is that we currently start and end at the bottom of this list. We fund an output - like a new agency or a software tool - and hope it accidentally results in a better world. That isn’t leadership, it’s administration.

Learning from Whitehall

We recognise that missions have become a buzzword in Westminster, but adoption there has been uneven. In Whitehall, missions often stall because they collide with massive, siloed departments - each with their own budgets and political gravity that resist cross-boundary work. Missions fail when they’re treated as branding rather than a shift in power.

Wales has a distinct advantage here. Our size is our strength.

We don’t have the same history of sprawling, disconnected departments; our arms-length bodies are more closely integrated and remain directly accountable to Ministers. Because we are smaller, our lines of communication are shorter and our ecosystem is more contained. We have the perfect scale to prove that missions can move beyond talking shops.

Investing in long-lived teams

Adopting a mission-led approach is the only way to turn the Well-being of Future Generations Act from a statutory obligation into a lived reality. But this requires us to change how we set up and fund our people.

We must stop funding short-lived projects that scatter institutional knowledge the moment the money runs out. Our most talented people spend their time bidding for scarce resources and last minute grant funding rather than doing the work that matters. When the project ’times out’, they scatter to different departments, taking their hard-won understanding of the problem with them - not staying long enough to evaluate the true impact of the work. This is a massive productivity drain for Wales.

Instead, we need long-lived, multi-disciplinary teams that are funded to chase an outcome for years, not months.

A practical Mission Team looks like this:

  • Persistent funding: They are funded to solve a problem (e.g., “Identify cardiovascular risk early”), not to build a specific software product.
  • Permission to pivot: If the team builds a tool and the data shows it isn’t reaching the right people, they are empowered to stop, learn, and try a different approach. They aren’t tied to a fixed-scope contract that forces them to deliver a failure.
  • Knowledge retention: By keeping the team together, the institutional memory stays with the mission. They get better at solving the problem over time.

The time to act

As we look toward the next election cycle, the temptation will be to promise new things - new buildings, new portals, new AI hubs.

But Wales doesn’t need more things. We need a public sector that is empowered to solve problems. We need to stop measuring success by how much we’ve spent or delivered and start measuring it by the actual difference we’ve made to the lives of the people of Wales.

The project model is dead. It’s time to start working on the mission.