Public sector professionals learn to redesign organizations for innovation

On January 18, Christian Bason hosted a 90-minute virtual training on “Redesigning Organizations: Moving Towards Collaborative Decision-Making.” The workshop centered on how he led the Danish Design Center through an organizational restructuring, and the importance of prioritizing the human perspective as the guiding management principle.

Christian Bason is the former CEO of the Danish Design Center (DDC), a government-backed non-profit foundation. Previously, he was Director of MindLab, the Danish government’s innovation lab, and Business Manager with Ramboll Management Consulting, a global advisory group. He is the author of nine books on leadership, innovation and design, including "Expand: Stretching the Future by Design" and "Leading Public Sector Innovation: Co-creating for a Better Society" and (in Danish) "The Organization Was Set Free and the Leadership had to be Rediscovered" (2023). He has published in amongst other Harvard Business Review and Stanford Social Innovation Review and has taught executives at Oxford Saïd Business School, Henley MBA, the European School of Administration and Copenhagen Business School.

Bason began the session by discussing with participants the kind of environment they desire from their organizations. Workshop attendees, which consisted of almost 200 public professionals from across the country, mentioned improved feedback processes, shared ownership of goals, and cross-department collaboration, among other goals. 

He then connected this to the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development. These goals are useful in articulating how we can work on transformation in society. Bason noted that goal 17, Partnerships for the Goals, is underappreciated in the public sector, especially when it comes to making changes and achieving our goals.

“We’re not exposed in the same way to a disruption and to new startups and new interests and competitiveness and the risk of bankruptcy as you are in the private sector,” he said. “We need to be more intentional about the way we work because we can get along for quite a long time without being challenged on the way we work.”

Bason questioned why our institutional imagination is so limited, and challenged attendees to think outside the box when it comes to restructuring future organizations. 

“Enabling collective transition is today’s most urgent societal challenge,” he said. “The reason we want to explore and be more imaginative around how we could organize and do things together is to unleash our human potential to collaborate.

The ideal organization reflects the challenge of our time, Bason said, and needs to be agile, innovative, and sustainable. In today’s world, there are several barriers for innovation that prevent change from being made and unleashing the full creative potential of people. This includes:

• Lack of collaboration across units and professions

• Hard to reach real insights about citizens and users

• An excessive focus on technology

• A lack of resources, time, and the right skills

Bason explained that the DDC was inspired by larger organizations such as Buurtzog (NL) and Netflix (US) in their approach to reworking their institution. They based their changes on the assumption of believing people were inherently good.

“We have these great people in this organization and we said ‘How can we redesign this organization if we truly believe that people are good?’” he said. “So we said we want the following: a liberated organization where colleagues have the space and backing to realize our strategy together, a healthy organization where people thrive and grow, and an efficient and innovative organization, where there is the most possible space to work on what creates value and makes sense.”

The team created a set of assumptions that would decide their organizational structure. This included believing that people thrive by trust and recognition, grow when they have influence, want to make a difference, will take responsibility, and can lead and can follow. This led to the unique organizational approach implemented by the DDC. This included:

• Everyone choosing their personal leader

• Everyone can offer their leadership

• Everyone freely choosing their professional area of work

• No fixed departments or teams, but rather task/project-based teams

• Procedures, systems and policies formulated prior to the need arising

• Tasks not defined by position, but by roles

• Decisions made not in hierarchy (power), but in process (consultation)

To get started on implementing these changes into one’s organization, Bason said that one must take the question “What organization do I dream of?” and reframe it to “What is one thing we could change that would start us moving in that direction?” 

Bason concluded by introducing three approaches to leading organizational redesign: challenge assumptions, navigate uncertainty and ambiguity, and rehearse the future. He reassured attendees that their input makes a difference and can drive impactful change.

“Don’t doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. In fact, that’s the only thing that ever has,” Bason said, referencing anthropologist Magaret Mead.

After the presentation, attendees were able to ask questions to Christian in a 30-minute Q&A session. Of the attendees who submitted workshop feedback, 94% said they would recommend the training to a friend or colleague. Watch the recording of the workshop, and sign up for our upcoming workshops for more relevant and free online trainings.

Be sure to follow InnovateUS on LinkedIn and subscribe to our mailing list for future updates!