When we put strategy into practice in Statistics Denmark

CHALLENGE

Statistics Denmark is an organisation with deep roots in Danish democracy. They are facing an organizational change that requires adapting to new needs in the outside world in order to maintain its role as the main source of quantitative information about Danish society.

SOLUTION

In 2015, a new and ambitious 2020 vision and strategy was developed. The strategy reflects and unfolds the objectives of strengthening the role of the organization in the community discussion, increasing the professionalism and quality of statistics, and engaging more strongly with users.

In order to realize the new strategy and increase the agility and change competence of the organization, a comprehensive collaboration across and the involvement of all employees was initiated. The executive board and chief executive level played an important role in communicating the strategy and priorities to managers and employees.

Crucial strategic areas of action were identified for each office to be achieved within 100 days in intensive sprints. The idea of these intensive 100-day sprints was to accelerate action and results, as well as to strengthen change competence in and close to practice.

It was important to get started experimenting with new ways of collaborating internally within the office and across offices, as well as with Statistics Denmark's users. It was about thinking big, and starting small!

RESULT

Through the course, the organization achieved concrete results, including reducing debugging, establishing new statistics products, documentation, and increased collaboration across offices.Half of the offices believe they would not have achieved these results without the 100-day sprints, and two-thirds indicate that they were generally successful with their 100-day sprints. This approach has strengthened the organization's change competence and ability to experiment with new collaborative approaches. In the short term, the HR consultants in the municipality have, through the course, practiced running co-creation processes and along the way created concrete results together with the city's citizens and organizations. In the long run, in its new HR co-creation pilots, the municipality has acquired an internal dynamo that can mobilize important actors in the future and put the most relevant team to solve the issues that call for co-creation and new cooperation alliances.