Event

DDC Talks x CO-PI Innovationscafé: How to Expand Your Management Space

24 November 2023
9:00 – 10:00

Date	November 24, 2023
Time	9:00 – 10:00
Event type	Talk
Price	Free
Location	Online

This event will be in Danish

The political conversation is dominated by an urge to free the public sector from procedural constraints which is seen as an answer to many of the challenges facing our welfare society. But how do you lead the change towards a more free organization? Meet two experts in the field at this event.

What you get

At this online event, we frame what kind of challenge you face as a manager when you want to set your employees free. We point out which elements are necessary to consider when you want to empower your employees and make leadership a shared skill.

We provide a space for you and the other participants to discuss how you create a framework for these organizational changes. In all, the session sharpens your skills to expand your management space.

We form the session based on CO-PI’s knowledge of free municipalities, welfare agreements and innovation with DDC’s knowledge of leadership in transformation processes.

Some of the questions we seek answers to:

What defines a free or self-leading organization?
Which elements do you need to consider when you want to change the organization in a more self-leading direction?
What challenges and opportunities do you face when expanding your management space?

24 November 2023
9:00 – 10:00

Who you meet

Sune Knudsen, COO, DDC – Danish Design Center

Works with how we design more sustainable and dynamic organizations by setting employees free from the old management hierarchies.

Lene Krogh Jeppesen, Chief Consultant, CO-PI

Lene is enthusiastic about the unique Danish framework for practical attempts to create new solutions, which free municipality schemes, welfare agreements, and exemptions make possible.

Format

This event is a merge of a DDC Talks and an Innovationscafé event. Regardless, it is a short and informal format, where you get both inspirational presentations on a topic and the opportunity to network and discuss the topic in small groups.

Sune Knudsen and Lene Krogh Jeppesen will introduce “the what” and “the how” of setting the public sector free.

In smaller groups, there are then learning and reflection dialogues about how the new organizational structures can be implemented in one’s own organization.

In conclusion, Sune and Lene give feedback on and insights from the learning and reflection dialogues.

Who is this for

Leaders, managers, and employees who are interested in new forms of organizational structures, especially the freed and self-leading organizations.

Background

We have long had a unique structural framework for experiments in Denmark: The free municipality experiments. In 2020, it became Welfare Agreements when Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen launched “a wild idea” in her opening speech to the Parliament: to set seven municipalities free from a chosen welfare area, meaning the municipalities can experiment and test new solutions to certain welfare services.

The methods have international interest, and most recently, Norway has initiated a pilot scheme with strong inspiration from the Danish setup. It is unique that we develop and test policy practically and locally and that we can create spaces where, with ‘exemption from’ legislation and clauses, we try out new solutions to see if and how they add value.

And that we have a framework to legally scale and provide the same framework to all the country’s municipalities so that more can create the same value.

But emancipation has many more or less explicit agendas: De-bureaucratization, local professionalism, and innovation. Emancipation becomes an occasion to revisit ‘the usual’ with a magnifying glass to find new solutions. More than an occasion and a framework is required – it must be filled by living people, managers, and employees interacting with citizens.