Strategies must move something in the world of citizens

What is strategy for you?

Here in Gladsaxe Municipality, there is a tradition that the outgoing city council draws up a draft of a new version of the overall strategy for the municipality — the Gladsaxe strategy — and passes that draft on to the new city council. The new city council then discusses the draft of the new Gladsaxe strategy, adjusts the strategy according to their political desires and dreams, and then adopts the new Gladsaxe strategy, which sets the direction for the next four years in Gladsaxe. Strategy therefore means both direction and some degree of continuity to me. Of course, there will be new themes, but we are building on the same strong foundation. The foundation is the municipality's overall vision and the ambition for social sustainability, climate sustainability and economic sustainability.

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The strong ambition for sustainability in a broad sense, which several city councils have now carried on over many years, means we can work with the long cool haul. Politicians want a city where citizens from different ethnic, social and educational backgrounds come together in communities, and where we support living a good life for the benefit of the individual and for the benefit of society. This has allowed us to work in the same direction for many years, because both we and our politicians know well that it takes a long time to bring about change.

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The strategy in a municipality must have an edge so that politicians can see their messages into it and thus strengthen the broad political ownership. And then the strategy must be able to be realized so that it is not just words. The strategy must contain something that moves something in the world of citizens.

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What is the biggest challenge in your strategy implementation?

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It can be difficult to follow up on impact goals — especially when the ambitions are large and complex. There are many factors that come into play. It is complex and challenging to measure whether it is precisely our efforts that produce the desired effects. At the same time, we also face new challenges that call for new solutions. Increased expectations from citizens, labor shortages and much more. We know that we need to find new ways of working as a municipality. We're trying to incorporate that into the strategy so we have a common direction as an organization. It requires, for example, that we become clearer about dilemmas and challenges. The municipality can't solve everything. This should also be clear in our strategy.

The difficult dilemmas must be spelled out in the strategy. We would like to focus more on the challenges and dilemmas faced by citizens. We want politicians and citizens in dialogue with each other and us on the difficult issues.

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In the future, the role of the municipality will change and new demands will be placed on the citizens and actors around the municipality. The social contract needs to be discussed, and we can speak loudly about those things that we do not always succeed in doing or that take a long time.

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It is also a challenge to bring citizens even closer to us in dialogues on the strategy. We are now considering how we can get citizens more widely represented. Can we find new formats? What forums do we have where we can bring the strategy in? Where should we put the level of ambition? And how do we use the input that comes in? We would very much like to have the outside perspectives more in order to shed more light on the strategic challenges.

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We have a good working relationship with housing departments, associations and companies. In operation, we are good at partnerships. For example Gladsaxe Erhvervsby, the sports associations and cooperation on social balance with a number of our housing associations.

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The conversation about the social contract is exciting to take with the external partners and can contribute with new and more perspectives. As a municipality, we can be better at saying: “We can't fix everything.”. And instead invite dialogue on common solutions, for example, to take greater social responsibility for good summer holiday offers in some of our vulnerable residential areas.

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How do you lead strategy realization?

I push to the organization with feel for where people are.

We have formulated 5 ambitions for our organization:

• We want to be a psychologically safe organization
• We want to be a strong and learning organization
• We will strengthen cross-cutting cooperation
• We will cooperate with citizens, companies and other actors
• We want closer interaction with politicians

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These five ambitions should gear our organization to be able to deliver on current and future strategies. Ambitions say something about what we need to be able to do as an organization. And this is also the promise we make to each other in management and from management to employees. We need to be able to keep each other up to these five ambitions.

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In relation to the work on the new Gladsaxe strategy, we have tried to start the strategic conversation about the content of the new strategy earlier and more broadly. We invite discussions at seminars, where the leaders of the organization are invited to give their input on existing objectives in the strategy and ideas for new ones. These inputs are taken to the politicians and they discuss and relate to it. We do this because we believe that strategy realization starts already in the conversation about the content of a new strategy, and not only when the new strategy needs to be implemented.

Strategy realization is change, and it requires us to have good conversations throughout the organization and with the outside world about the strategy. Good conversations liberate and oblige.

When all perspectives come on the line, then people are more likely to change behavior as well. Everyone should be ready to move a little and lean in towards each other. Specifically, we have been working to increase the competence to enter into talks.

We would also like the front-line employees to be even more involved in the strategy realization. We haven't pushed the strategy out hard. We've let 1,000 flowers bloom. However, we find that many of our employees approach the objectives of the strategy very proactively.

In the realization, follow-up is important. We continue to use numbers and data, but we place increasing emphasis on giving space to the good story as well. We use the good stories to talk about what brings us in the right direction through examples of how difficult challenges have been tackled and solved locally.

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The Gladsaxe strategy from 2022-2026 focuses on:

• A great place to live and be alive
• Children and young people shape the future
• Sustainable business city with strong partnerships and job growth
• Equal opportunities for a good life
• Strengthened climate action
• Health and well-being for all

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See Gladsaxestrategien here