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- Industry:
- Culture
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- Client:
- Kirkens Bymisjon
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- Period:
- 2019
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- Category:
- Brand Strategy
- Brand Positioning
- Brand Experience
- Insight & Research
- Service Design
Kirkens Bymisjon is a large organization with 1800 employees spread throughout 12 foundations around Norway. These foundations are legally independent of each other and perform their work specifically adapted to their local environments and its needs. Creating a shared strategy that would guide each foundation would strengthen the organisation’s work towards 2025. The management’s wish was to provide a common and relevant direction for all foundations while strengthening collaboration and unity across the entire organization.
For over a year SDG has led an exploratory process that has involved broadly and had two important goals: One was to create the possibility for more than a thousand employees to be able to give their input in a constructive way, ensuring that the right insights and expertise would lay the foundation for Kirken Bymisjon’s new strategy. The second was to inspire and enable employees across foundations, departments and disciplines to work together, become better acquainted and understand each other’s potential.
Throughout the process, design was used to create arenas for discussion, to identify opportunities and to communicate results. Kirkens Bymisjon’s staff received training in process management and, as a result, led processes at their local foundations. Input from hundreds of employees was gathered and analyzed effectively through specially designed tools and methods. As the organization learnt more and their needs naturally changed over time, process were adapted to fit. To the great satisfaction of the organisation’s board members and employees, many of whom had been involved, a new shared strategy was born.
The effects of the process have been many. Through a broad and involving strategy process, Kirkens Bymisjon has:
- Received an extended common vocabulary with an understanding of the direction, objectives and content of the strategy
- Trained their own process managers with facilitation techniques
- Got methods that help them provide good strategic discussions
- Created new relationships across the local foundations, academic communities and departments
- Got a dedicated and easily accessible website that openly explains the strategy and process behind implementation tools for the entire organization
Uniting a non-profit through powerful, shared goals
Known as a welcoming and nationwide nonprofit organisation, Kirkens Bymisjon’s work encompasses a range of areas within social work. Their work, crucial for society, requires well grounded, common objectives and planned priorities to run throughout their organization. To ensure this, Kirkens Bymisjon initiated a strategic design process in collaboration with SDG, resulting in an open and inclusive process for over 1000 employees.
- Brand Strategy
- Brand Positioning
- Brand Experience
- Insight & Research
- Service Design
Challenge
Kirkens Bymisjon is a large organization with 1800 employees spread throughout 12 foundations around Norway. These foundations are legally independent of each other and perform their work specifically adapted to their local environments and its needs. Creating a shared strategy that would guide each foundation would strengthen the organisation’s work towards 2025. The management’s wish was to provide a common and relevant direction for all foundations while strengthening collaboration and unity across the entire organization.
2020—2025
An explorative process with deep involvement from the client.
The process
01 Board seminar
The board of directors and the C level executives from all the 12 foundations decided to start work to create the first shared strategy in Kirkens Bymisjon’s recent history.
02 National conference
130 leaders from all the 12 foundations gathered for 2 days of inspiration, discussions and assignments across disciplines, foundations and departments. This work set the directions for the next steps of the process.
03 Facilitator workshop
18 employees for around Norway met and were trained in workshop-facilitating, they were also given tools to be able to lead the strategy processes locally.
04 Local processes
The 18 in house facilitators traveled far and wide to conduct workshops with hundreds of employees across the organization. This work ensured that the knowledge and ambitions from the employees themselves were the foundation of the new strategy.
05 Theme workshop
The sum of thousands of statements from hundreds of employees resulted in 3 overarching themes that were further explored in their own theme workshops across the organization.
06 Annual employees conference
180 employees from all 12 foundations gathered for 2 days of hard work. Draft strategy was presented and understood. Exercises were carried out that created worthwhile and heated discussions and enabled 180 people to contribute constructively. In addition to strengthening the strategy, many new relationships were also formed between employees across disciplines, departments and foundations.
07 Board meeting
The Board of Directors adopted the new strategy for Kirkens Bymisjon 2020-2025.
Throughout the process, design was used to create good arenas for discussion, to identify opportunities and to communicate results.
The result was a joint strategy and board members and employees have expressed great satisfaction at the result and the process on the way there.
Effects
Received an extended common vocabulary with an understanding of the direction, objectives and content of the strategy
Trained own process managers with facilitation techniques
Got methods that help them have a good strategic discussion
Created new relationships across foundations, academic communities and departments
Got a dedicated and easily accessible website that openly explains the strategy and process behind implementation tools for the entire organization
We have had a very close collaboration with Scandinavian Design Group. Developing a new strategy can be demanding and is often a long process, and SDG assisted through an explorative process that has involved and been very broadly in our organisation. The tools SDG has designed have ensured that discussions have been constructive along the way and that the result is the sum of all necessary input. This has given Kirkens Bymisjon a common and powerful direction for years to come.
Adelheid Firing Hvambsal
Secretary General, Kirkens Bymisjon