2025 Year in Review
Why Government Needs Value Discipline Now
Happy Tuesday, Transformation Friends. Another week, another opportunity to go Beyond the Status Quo.
As 2025 draws to a close, I’ve been reflecting on what we’ve explored together this year. I wrote 15 posts in total. I tended to write in spurts, banging out four or five posts in a sprint whenever I got inspired by a particular topic.
Looking back, you can see that four overarching themes stand out:
Value and outcomes (the anchor)
Stewardship and spending (the pressure test)
Delivery realism (the place we usually get hurt)
Leadership and culture (the part with no template fixes)
Through all of that, I noticed a quiet but persistent thread: the danger of mistaking activity for value. It is a mistake we continue to pay for in money, time, and, most painfully, in trust.
This isn’t about effort or lack of it.
Our public sector is powered by capable and caring people giving their best every day. But as we’ve discussed time and again this year, “hard work” does not guarantee “public value.” Turning effort into impact requires a rigorous discipline around outcomes, evidence, and governance.
As we wrap up the year, let’s take a moment to look back on these recurring themes and glean a few lessons to carry with us into 2026.
Grab your morning coffee (perhaps with a little Baileys in it for that extra festive punch), and let’s get started.
The 2025 theme in one line
Transitioning from delivery theatre to a value discipline.
That means getting sharper about what we are trying to change for citizens, being honest about risk, and using governance that protects outcomes rather than protecting comfort. You can see that arc clearly across this year’s posts on public value and outcome management, on business cases as living decision tools, and on delivery approaches that resist the “rush to start” pressure.
The posts, grouped by what they were really about
Here’s a macro look at this year’s posts, grouped by the core problem each one set out to tackle.
1) Value and outcomes (the anchor)
Maximizing Public Value: Value is not abstract. It is how we justify trade-offs and stewardship, and how we track whether investments improve lives.
The Power of Outcome Management: A mindset shift from deliverables to impact, with discipline around logic models and course correction.
Beyond the Checkbox: Rethinking Business Cases: Treat the business case as a living decision record, not a one-time gate artifact.
The Broken Cog: These posts all pointed to the same issue: we approve work because it is “doable” or “urgent,” then we lose sight of what success means. Outcome discipline is about avoiding building a strong machine that produces the wrong results.
2) Stewardship and spending (the pressure test)
Transforming Public Spending: Reframing spending conversations around value, not just reductions or compliance.
How the Social Value Model is Reshaping Public Procurement: Procurement choices can explicitly weight social outcomes, instead of treating them as side benefits.
Strategic IT Budget Optimization: Budget decisions should protect outcomes and reduce structural waste, instead of salami-slicing.
What the UK’s Office for Value for Money Can Teach Us: “Value for money” can be institutionalized as a capability, not a slogan.
The Reality Check: This cluster is where public administration gets real. When money is tight, the system defaults to blunt tools. The year’s argument was that blunt tools are avoidable if you have a clear value frame and a credible method for choosing what to stop, what to scale, and what to fix.
3) Delivery realism (the place we usually get hurt)
Think Slow, Act Fast: Planning is not procrastination. It is risk reduction, scope control, and decision readiness.
Start with Why: Right-to-left thinking keeps delivery anchored in outcomes and evidence, then works backward to scope and milestones.
Why Your Project Isn’t Unique: Uniqueness stories are comforting, and they are expensive. Use the outside view and reference classes.
When IT Projects Go Wild: IT has a special risk profile. Once it goes bad, it can go catastrophically bad.
The Hard Truth: This is the part of the year I keep coming back to. We still treat large IT initiatives like they are “normal projects, but with more Jira tickets.” The research summary on IT “wild risk” makes the point sharply: once IT projects cross a certain overrun threshold, the average overrun becomes extreme. If you are a senior leader, this should change how you approve, budget, stage, and govern.
4) Leadership and culture (the part with no template fixes)
What Plato’s Cave Teaches Us About Leadership: The hardest part of change is not the plan. It is helping people see past the familiar shadows.
Every Role Matters: Building a Value Culture: Value culture is built through everyday line-of-sight and shared responsibility, not speeches.
A Common Sense Revolution: Simplicity is a choice, and it often takes courage to protect it against the system’s natural drift.
Rediscovering the Purpose in Public Service: Purpose is a management tool. It helps teams stay oriented when constraints and noise pile up.
The Lesson: This cluster is the counterweight to the technical posts. You can have excellent governance on paper and still fail because leaders cannot challenge assumptions, cannot tell uncomfortable truths early, or cannot build trust across roles.
Five lessons I am carrying into 2026
1) Treat outcomes like first-class work products
If we cannot describe the intended change in plain language, we are not ready to fund the work. Outcome management is not a checkbox exercise. It is the discipline that keeps delivery anchored to real-world impact, ensuring that every action taken moves us closer to the outcomes we promised.
A simple test: Can someone outside government understand the outcome statement without a detailed explanation? IIf not, the initiative isn’t ready for approval. It needs clearer language and sharper intent before it can move forward.
2) Make the business case a living tool, or stop pretending
A business case that is never updated is not a decision-making tool. It is a historical artifact. The year’s point on business cases was simple yet uncomfortable: if you do not revisit assumptions and measure against expectations after delivery, you cannot learn.
If you want fewer repeat failures, start with fewer “one-and-done” approvals.
3) When money gets tight, value clarity becomes the whole game
If leaders cannot articulate what value they are protecting, they will protect what is loudest, newest, or most politically visible. The posts on public value and value-for-money capability were a push to make stewardship more concrete.
That is where tools like social value models and structured value discussions in procurement can help. And we should not reserve this kind of value thinking only for times of austerity or fiscal pressure. AND: it should be part of the everyday culture of how we plan, decide, and deliver.
4) Stop celebrating fast starts; celebrate controlled starts
The “think slow, act fast” theme keeps showing up because government is addicted to motion. We equate urgency with competence, even when urgency is driving bad sequencing.
The healthier pattern is: slow down early to reduce uncertainty, then move quickly once you have credible scope, governance, and kill criteria.
5) Assume your project is not unique, unless you can prove it is
The uniqueness story is seductive because it protects optimism. It also blocks learning from comparable work. Pair that with what we learned about IT “wild risk,” and the implication is blunt: major IT initiatives should be staged, modularized, and governed as if extreme outcomes are plausible.
When governance structures can’t absorb or act on bad news early, that information doesn’t disappear; it compounds. By the time it surfaces, the damage is greater, the options are fewer, and the cost is far higher.
Wrap up
If you take only three things from this year’s writing, make them these:
Value work is governance work. We must apply the same discipline to outcomes and trade-offs that we currently apply to delivery schedules.
Paperwork doesn’t manage risk; decisions do. When business cases become static paperwork instead of active decision records, failure becomes predictable.
Respect the “Fat Tail.” Large IT initiatives are not standard projects. They demand a defensive risk mindset because the outliers can—and will—dominate your results.
As we head into the new year, let’s reflect on three questions:
What decision on your desk would look different if you had to justify it in terms a citizen could understand?
Where are you mistaking “speed” for progress, when it might actually be a way to avoid uncertainty?
What familiar “shadow” in your organization is being accepted as truth simply because it’s comfortable?
Rest up, reflect, and enjoy the break. We ride at dawn (in January).
Until next time, stay curious and I’ll see you Beyond the Status Quo.