The Power of Not Knowing: Radical Trust in Mission-Led Organisations

From Control to Connection: Reframing Mission-Led 

Make public service purposeful again. Kickstart economic growth, make Britain a clean energy superpower, take back our streets, break down barriers to opportunity, build an NHS fit for the future. Over the last year, “mission-led government” surfaced as a kind of north star: a promise that, despite the exhaustion and complexity most public servants are grappling with, purpose still matters.

But something subtle has happened. The idea of being mission-led has drifted into the language of control—clear outcomes, bold goals, top-down clarity. It’s a compelling story: someone, somewhere, knows where we’re going. Yet the deeper truth may be harder to hold—that the real work begins not with certainty, but with the willingness to lead in its absence. That our authority might come not from having the answer, but from choosing to care.

This is one of two reflections on a question that’s quietly unsettling public systems: what if control—so long assumed to be the responsible thing—has become the obstacle, not the answer? In what follows, we explore the hold that control exerts on government and organisational life, and why radical trust—the act of prioritising psychological safety over certainty—may be not just an ideal, but the only serious strategy left for real collaboration and creativity.

In the companion blog 'Mission-led from the Heart in the Uncomfortable Now', we explore why being “mission-led” isn’t a process to follow but a relational and emotional journey. One that has less to do with executing a plan, and more to do with remembering why you showed up together in the first place.

When We Say ‘Mission’, Do We Mean It?

Done well, missions can galvanise. Done poorly, they become performance art.

We’ve seen the best of it—Camden Council, for example, inviting citizens, civil society and staff to shape the work together. But that’s not the story we most often hear.

More often, we hear about missions designed in distant rooms, passed down like commandments. The words on the slides are inspirational; the culture underneath is cautious, hierarchical, allergic to ambiguity. As one civil servant put it: “We all believe in the mission. We just don’t feel like it belongs to us.” 

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: noble ideals don’t transform systems—people do. And systems don’t change because of elegant strategies; they change when the people inside them are trusted enough to take real risks. If a mission doesn’t belong to those tasked with carrying it forward, then what we have is not a mission. We have a slogan.

Why Control is So Seductive—And So Limiting

Under pressure, people default to control. It’s understandable. The stakes are high. Public scrutiny is relentless. The machinery of government is rewarded for not getting it wrong, rather than for doing what’s right.

It’s not that people don’t care. They care deeply. That’s the problem. Caring, without support, without space to take risks, turns into paralysis. Or burnout. Or resignation, of the silent kind.

Paradoxically, what’s missing in many mission-led efforts isn’t strategy or clarity—it’s safety. The kind that says: Yes, this is hard. Yes, we might get it wrong. And yes, we’re in it together.  

Trust is the Only Strategy That Works

Many of our clients in the Civil Service are grappling with the pressure of 'announceables’ - the churn of new ideas, policies and silver bullets that suggest the relentless urgency of needing to have answers.  One senior client reflected: “We’re acting as if we’re in crisis, even when we’re not.”

Yet, reflecting on that, we wondered: perhaps in many ways, the government is in crisis. And perhaps naming that truth, and acknowledging that we don’t know what to do about it, is where genuine purpose begins.

The most collaborative, responsive, courageous work we see doesn't happen when everything is calm and controlled. It happens during crises like Covid. Why? Because in those moments, trust isn't just a virtue. It is a necessity.

Nobody had all the answers, so people had to rely on one another. The mission mattered not because it was strategic, but because it was urgent, felt, shared.  Leaders are fully committed to purpose but also acknowledge they don’t have all the answers.  This ‘container’ enables people to pull-together, to self-organise and take meaningful action.  The question is: can we find such liberating purpose in these times?

This is what Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s digital minister, calls radical trust: not earned, but given. Not as a reward for performance, but as the starting condition for collaboration and creativity.

It means leading with the assumption that people want to do meaningful work. That imperfection is part of the process, not evidence of failure. That learning, not control, is the heart of progress.

It’s not soft. It’s not naïve. It may be the most grown-up thing we can do.

Our Offer: Helping You Reclaim Purpose

At Mayvin, we don’t do “transformation” as an abstract noun.  We work with the reality of people navigating systems under strain. We help teams:

• Make sense of complexity in ways that honour ambiguity.
• Rebuild trust and morale in the places that feel most stuck.
• Have the hard conversations that lead somewhere new.
• Turn lofty “missions” into shared, meaningful action.

Our work is grounded in Organisation Development, systemic thinking, and dialogic practice—methods, yes, but more importantly, mindsets. Because if we want public service to be different, we have to start by relating differently. To each other. To power. To purpose.