Current workforce reform, known as Remodelling the School Workforce, is part of an enduring policy process where there have been tensions between public and private sector structures and cultures. I show that the New Right and New Labour governments who have built and configured site based performance management over the past quarter of a century have been concerned to construct a workforce sufficient in numbers and trained in implementation to deliver various reform strategies. In particular, I examine the interplay between managerialism and leadership, as the means by which policy entrepreneurs have enabled a workforce delivery composition and disposition.