Many clichés circulate about public administration, almost all of them unflattering. I want to flip one over. When it comes to vision — the "great purpose" that orients an organization or a project — government starts with an advantage the private sector can only envy. A huge one, and almost always unused.
The trouble with purpose marketing
Private companies love grand declarations: improving the world, solving deep human needs, having a positive impact on society. The trouble is that, however well crafted, these visions often sound hollow. Everyone knows that a company's real goal is profit: without earnings, the company ceases to exist. Any statement about its "great purposes" is therefore, in the public's mind, implicitly subordinate to the possibility of making money.
Examples abound. The soft drink company that wants to "bring people together" — while everyone knows its goal is selling as many drinks as possible. The oil company that declares it is building "a sustainable future" — if it really wanted to, it could stop extracting oil; its business model rests precisely on that. The bank that wants to "give opportunities to everyone" — until it becomes a non-profit, its main goal remains maximizing returns. The telco that writes "connection that unites people" to promote a data plan. Companies can have sincere intentions, and some genuinely do good; but they must inevitably balance mission with profitability, and that makes them less believable whenever they claim purely social goals. The wave of so-called purpose marketing has produced many virtuous examples and just as many rather grotesque ones.
Government can tell the truth
For public administration, this problem simply does not exist. Government doesn't need to generate profit: its purpose is delivering services, guaranteeing rights, making society fairer. When a public administration writes a vision, it can tell the truth. It doesn't answer to shareholders, it doesn't have to engineer a balance between "values" and "business", it doesn't even need to worry about appearing authentic: it can actually be authentic.
A pharmaceutical company saying "we work to guarantee quality care for everyone" will be met with scepticism, because it still has to sell drugs in a way that sustains its business. A public administration saying the same thing is credible, full stop:
"We guarantee access to healthcare as a universal right" — 100% credible, because that is exactly its job.
The difference is enormous. And government should exploit it.
The "why" that reignites teams
There's a second level, one I've watched happen in working groups. In government, people are often unaccustomed to reasoning in terms of value: the dominant organizational model remains directive — the manager assigns tasks, staff execute them — and the question "what is this actually for?" tends to get lost. The cause is rarely a lack of motivation: the system simply never asks for that question. Add the frequent changes at the top, which rewrite priorities every season and feed a subtle fatalism: better to stick to the task and keep your head down.
And yet a change of perspective is enough to switch something on. When you invite a public-sector team to think in terms of "why we do this" instead of "what we must do", deep motivations almost always surface, rooted in a strong ethical dimension. Because working in public administration means serving a real purpose: making rights effective, improving people's lives, building trust in the civic pact. In the private sector, social value is often constructed after the fact, as a coat of marketing paint; in the public sector it is intrinsic to the work itself. When people reclaim that sense of purpose, formulating a strong vision becomes natural:
"Offer digital public services without barriers, for everyone, always."
"Guarantee that every citizen has easy, clear access to their rights."
"Build an administration that works for the citizen, and never the other way round."
These are declarations of value, believable because they are rooted in the very mission of public service. When a team manages to look at its own work from this perspective, the language changes, the energy shifts, and the vision stops being a theoretical exercise: it becomes the concrete translation of a collective purpose.
A powerful lever for consensus
An authentic vision, clear and tied to a real need, doesn't have to persuade anyone: it "resonates" automatically with whoever hears it. If a public administration manages to write one like that, it becomes easier to engage employees, win citizens' consent, and secure political support. In government we can say openly what we want to improve, with no commercial agenda to disguise it. It's a unique privilege. Use it.
How do you build, in practice, a vision that can carry this weight? I wrote about it in A Vision Is a Compass: the Five Characteristics, within the broader frame of the three tools of the innovation journey told in Compass, Team, Fuel.