Seeing the Big Picture at HEO level
What Seeing the Big Picture looks like at HEO (Higher Executive Officer): independent judgement, leading small pieces of work and connecting your work to team goals, 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 HEO.
Example statement
SAs HEO project officer on a digital forms programme, my workstream was on time, but user research showed citizens abandoning a related GOV.UK journey that sat outside our formal scope and threatened the department's published access objective.
TI needed to decide whether to protect our milestone or raise the wider journey risk so the programme still met the departmental outcome, not only our workstream plan.
AI summarised abandonment data in a one-page note for the product owner, showing where our form sat in the end-to-end journey and the impact on the service standard. I convened a short huddle with content design and the contact-centre lead, who confirmed call volumes matched the drop-off point. I recommended a two-sprint scope tweak: keep our core fields, but add three clarifying questions owned jointly with content design. I briefed my Grade 7 on the trade-off against our original milestone and proposed a revised checkpoint rather than a silent slip. When a neighbouring team worried about their deadline, I shared our evidence pack so they could reuse the same argument with their senior responsible owner. I checked progress against the measures we had agreed and adjusted the plan when leading indicators moved.
RThe SRO approved the scope tweak. Abandonment at that step fell by 22% in the next release, and our programme still hit the ministerial commitment date. The approach was written into the programme's change checklist.
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 HEO
- Looks beyond workstream scope to the citizen journey and departmental standard.
- Uses cross-team evidence and escalates trade-offs transparently.
- Delivers a quantified service improvement without hiding schedule risk.
Writing tips for this grade
- Keep STAR; raise the complexity of your Action for HEO.
- 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).