Seeing the Big Picture at EO level
What Seeing the Big Picture looks like at EO (Executive Officer): organising work beyond your own desk, coordinating with others and showing sound judgement, demonstrated through seeing the wider context and how your work connects to organisational goals.
Assessors look for: evidence that you understand context, priorities and how your work fits the bigger agenda at a complexity that matches EO.
Example statement
SIn a local authority benefits team, overtime backlog clearance was reducing the queue but creating a spike in incorrect awards that later needed costly rework by the quality team and distorted the directorate's monthly accuracy KPI.
TMy team leader asked me to redesign the overtime approach so we cleared cases without damaging accuracy targets that senior leaders reported publicly.
AI pulled three months of quality fail reasons and mapped them against overtime case types. Complex earnings cases drove most fails. I proposed splitting overtime into a fast track for simple claims and a supervised stream for earnings cases, and I wrote a one-page briefing for the quality lead linking the change to the directorate accuracy KPI rather than to local vanity clearance numbers. I piloted the split for two evenings, coached two colleagues on the earnings checklist, and fed daily fail counts back to the team leader. I also flagged that our clearance target needed a temporary quality weighting so staff were not incentivised to rush the hard cases. I checked progress against the measures we had agreed and adjusted the plan when leading indicators moved. I kept a short decision log so others could see why we chose this path and what we had ruled out.
ROver the four-week pilot, overtime fails on earnings cases fell from 18% to 6% while overall clearance stayed within 5% of the previous rate. The quality lead adopted the split model for the next quarterly campaign.
Use this as a model, not a script. This is an original example written for this site. Adapt the structure to your own experience. Copying it word for word risks plagiarism and will not reflect your evidence.
Why this matches EO
- Connects team overtime tactics to directorate accuracy KPIs.
- Uses data to change the approach rather than working harder at the same method.
- Quantifies quality and delivery trade-offs honestly.
Writing tips for this grade
- Keep STAR; raise the complexity of your Action for EO.
- Avoid confusing this behaviour with other elements. Leadership or Delivering at Pace: this is about context and alignment, not directing people or just finishing tasks.
- Check the advert for the exact word or character limit (often 250 words).