State of the art of co-creation: What does leadership of co-creation require and what is co-creative management?

Here we provide an insight into essential discussions about co-creation. We look at opportunities and point out challenges of co-creation, and you get three concrete points and examples to understand how the work on co-creation is currently unfolding. The article was written by Anne Kathrine Kirk Bebe, organizational consultant at UKON and Anne-Mette Scheibel, partner at Resonans.

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The co-creation agenda has really taken hold in the Danish municipalities. Never have we talked and written so much about co-creation as we do now. Thus, as consultants and researchers, we move around the public institutions, we are often greeted by co-creation ambitions filled to the brim with ideals and aspirations for more welfare for less. Other times we find that the agenda is met with scepticism and a statement that “co-creation is just old wine in new bottles” and concern that this is probably a classic austerity exercise. In the midst of the positive voices and the skeptical tongues, we meet curious but often confused employees and managers from the welfare world who are concerned with learning more about what co-creation can contribute in practice.
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In the article we give an insight into the discussions about co-creation that take place in municipalities and regions. We will explore opportunities and highlight challenges and contribute three concrete points and examples in relation to understanding how the work on co-creation is currently unfolding.

Co-creation with care

For co-creation not to be old wine in new bottles, it requires a radical break with the way we think about organization and management. Co-creation requires both new competences, perhaps a different governance paradigm, clarification of roles at the political and strategic level, and perhaps most importantly: critical reflection on the complementary contribution co-creation as a form of participation places on our representative democracy.
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Because co-creation is not something we just do, and co-creation development cannot just be “put in” somewhere in the organization, but must be developed with a holistic perspective — across professional and departmental boundaries. At the same time, one has to ask about the underlying intention? What is the purpose of co-creation and in what contexts does co-creation, as a working method and mindset, make sense? It is important not to simply copy the co-creation ambition from the logic “so ein Ding müssen wir auch haben” or to put the method into play when goals and solutions have been defined in advance. A criterion for putting co-creation into play is basically that an organization is curious to understand challenges, goals and objectives from the beginning with external and transversal collaborators and together create new sustainable solutions across existing divisions of work and classic responsibilities.
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For example, in Holbæk Municipality, they work to clarify which tasks are suitable for co-creation — and which core tasks, of course, call for cooperation, but not necessarily co-creation in its “pure” form. In Holbæk Municipality, municipal politicians are concerned with supporting the co-creation of the many small communities that exist in the municipality in order to, in this way, contribute to ensuring life, housing, happy citizens and sustainable municipal welfare services such as day care, schools and care for the elderly. However, this is a common task for local associations, citizens, business, municipal institutions, etc. A joint co-creation task that also requires a change of role and perspective among associations, citizens and companies in relation to strengthening a holistic view of the common task — thus letting go of classic self-interests and established 'goods'.

Co-creation management and co-creative management

If co-creation represents a rethinking of the division of labour in both the public, private and voluntary sectors, including through new forms of partnership, it is close to asking what kind of leadership supports co-creation in organisations? In general, for the management role in the public sector, we see that as a leader, one should not only lead co-creation, but also co-create leadership. You have to go far more across your organization than in the past. We also need to go further in relation to other external organisations and partners, such as local and regional business and associations. It also means that the development of co-creation is exercised by several persons, parties and structures. That's what we mean by co-creative leadership.
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But public leaders are neither schooled nor accustomed to engaging outwardly, and just working across the organization is often a challenge. When Danish leaders are trained to devise goals, processes and classical implementation in a hierarchical context with clear command and determination rights, we see that their mindset is challenged to the extreme. We therefore propose that, if new cooperation and co-creation are to be taken seriously, sufficient time must be given at the beginning of the process for the parties to find each other and create a real basis for cooperation to emerge. We call it a meaning-making form of leadership because, for all the world, we must not take for granted that other actors automatically want to work with the agenda that is being invited to do so.
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For example, in Nordfyns Municipality, they work with cross-border management, where they actively train the management role across the classic silos and professional fields. They work both upwards towards the political objectives that the city council has formulated across the board from the municipality's co-created vision. And outwardly in co-creating relations with citizens and external partners. They have designated five mini-experiments to practice on, which are now in the prioritization and scaling phase. One of the things that has gone really well is that in a primary school, in close interaction with the children, they have worked across teachers and health professionals on more movement with high heart rate in everyday life. Another example is that new communities have sprung up across generations between young and older. New types of communities that are now being run on by the young and the elderly on their own.

When co-creation clasher with our democracy

One of the reasons why co-creation has gotten so much tailwind at home, we suppose, is because in many ways co-creation speaks directly to our equality mentality, flat organizational structures and strong civil society traditions. There is no doubt that co-creation requires different skills of cooperation than those in which most people are trained today. In our vision, for example, an ideal or notion of a new distribution of power and roles between citizens, civil society, politicians and the public is embedded in the ambitions of co-creation. One must dare to share with others and let go of the power of classical understanding and distribution.
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But precisely in this is embedded a democratic dilemma. Often we see politicians having a hard time finding their way into roles where they don't primarily represent their political views. The consequence is that the arena of co-creation and the representative democratic arena are not merged and politicians are thus disconnected from the processes of co-creation. This means that welfare developments may find themselves bypassing politicians, an unhelpful nuisance that remains to be cracked.
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However, many municipalities and regions are focusing on this challenge by supporting more direct meetings and co-creation processes between politicians, citizens, business and associations. For example, Region Sjælland has tested new direct meetings and dialogue formats with patient associations, among others — and the chairwoman Sophie Hæstorp Andersen from the Capital Region of Denmark and Mayor Benedikte Kiær of Helsingør Municipality have also co-hosted a co-creation process around the new Health Centre in Helsingør. Many municipalities are concerned with developing the new interactive role of politicians, where politicians are not just a 'listener' or presenting an 'established' point of view, but are interacting and actively involving themselves in both the investigative and developing co-creation process.
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With the desire to refine the co-creation agenda and create meaningful processes, the consulting house UKON, in cooperation with KADK, Dansk Psykologisk Forlag, Resonans, Ledernes Kompetencecenter and others, among others, has taken the initiative to discuss, debate and — if possible — answer some of the most frequent questions at the KNOWLEDGE FESTIVAL WORK & TALK on 28 November in Copenhagen. It is the biggest event of the year on leadership and co-creation in the public sector and springs from a new book with the same title. The book is edited by Morten Kusk Fogsgaard and Manon de Jongh, who are both senior consultants and partners in UKON.