Overview
A transformational project based on changing the way the municipality staff of Helsinki (Finland) tackles projects aimed to improve life for their citizens.
Role
Strategic Designer
Date
Jan 2018
Client
Municipality of Helsinki
Project
Organisational Design / Strategy, Business Design
Deliverables
Strategy
Design Brief
During my master’s studies, the Municipality of Helsinki approached us with the challenge of reinventing the way they currently tackled social innovation projects.
Known as the capital of design in the world, Helsinki has come a long way in using design for social issues (healthcare, urban spaces, public transport…). However, the municipality finds it difficult to assess how individual projects are contributing to the broader aspirations of the city.
Challenge
The issue didn’t reside in their approach towards innovation projects, they clearly provided effective solutions of great quality. Instead, the organizational structure needed to evolve somehow to be able to give space to both: projects with specific broader goals and more free projects that could add value to the city.
Current process loop of Helsinki's Municipality staff when carrying out a project
Research & Analysis
After research through stakeholder holder interviews with the municipality staff, we identified that they deeply enjoyed having autonomy on projects they personally found promising. The problem with this intended autonomy was that the higher management of the Municipality would not quite understand how those type of projects related to the broader goals of the city. This way, initiatives would appear to be a waste of time due to the top-down vision of management, being incoherent from initial broader important objectives.
Organisational structure of Helsinki's Municipality and goals according to each department
Outcome
To challenge this situation, we made the proposal of restructuring the approach regarding innovation which was based only on social market economy model principles. We envisioned a switch from the top-down approach to a bottom-up, where the municipality staff could pursue project projects they wanted to work on but would then also be asked to align it to one of the departmental objectives. A purpose team would ensure the project met the broader objectives of the municipality before commissioning it to be fulfilled.
The proposed plan would be as following:
1. Creating a centralized team (purpose team)
2. Defining the main objectives based on the broader city strategy
3. Defining goals by the different Municipality's committees
4. Detailing specific KPI’s expressed by the different committees
Finally, by including this new systemic change into their approach, higher management within the municipality would have greater oversight on the role of projects and still encourage the municipality staff to find and carry out projects they hold as important.
Proposed organizational structure of Helsinki's Municipality
and new departmental goals that will enrich the broader objectives
