HEO Seeing the Big Picture Behaviour Statements

HEO application guidance

Build a focused Seeing the Big Picture statement around the exact criteria, your personal judgement and a result that proves the effect of your actions.

What is Seeing the Big Picture?

Seeing the Big Picture is about understanding why the work matters beyond your immediate task.

At HEO level, a strong example should show that you can connect a defined service, project or workstream to organisational priorities, user needs, dependencies and emerging issues. The scale should be a defined service, project, team or workstream where your own judgement is visible, while recognising the authority of senior leaders and specialist colleagues.

The assessor should be able to trace the official criteria through your actions. Mentioning the behaviour or repeating the wording does not prove it.

What are the HEO Seeing the Big Picture criteria?

Official HEO/SEO Success Profiles criteria

Your evidence should make every criterion visible through something you personally understood, decided, communicated, changed or achieved.

Criterion 1
“understand the strategic drivers for your area of work”
Name the strategy, policy direction, demand trend or wider objective and show how it changed a delivery choice.
Criterion 2
“align activities to contribute to wider organisational priorities”
Explain what you prioritised, changed or stopped so the work contributed to the wider organisational outcome.
Criterion 3
“remain alert to emerging issues and trends which might impact your work area”
Show how you monitored emerging evidence and acted before the issue became a delivery failure.
Criterion 4
“seek out and share experiences to develop knowledge of the team’s business area”
Describe where you gathered relevant experience and how you transferred that learning to others.
Criterion 5
“understand how the strategies and activities of the team create value and meet the diverse needs of all stakeholders”
Connect team activity to public value, service outcomes and the needs of different stakeholders.

How to structure a 250-word statement

Use Situation, Task, Action and Result as an editing structure. Do not write the labels into the application unless the vacancy asks for them. Keep the setup short and make the action section carry the Seeing the Big Picture evidence.

Situation

Set the context quickly. Name the service, project, risk or change and why it mattered.

Task

Make your responsibility and decision authority clear. Avoid hiding behind the team.

Action

Use most of the word count here. Show how you connect a defined service, project or workstream to organisational priorities, user needs, dependencies and emerging issues.

Result

Prove the outcome with credible measures, service impact, reduced risk, learning or sustained change.

Members can unlock the complete HEO Seeing the Big Picture scoring method below, followed by three full statements close to 250 words, detailed explanations of why they work and a final criterion check.

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