Podcast: Dogmas for leadership that drives change
Traditional management methods don't work when we need to tame wicked problems. Martin Østergaard, City Director of Aarhus Municipality, has experienced this first-hand. As the top official in the municipality with 29,000 employees, he has made a lot of learning mistakes and experiences when he and his teams have tackled wicked problems.
Now he has put pen to paper and written down his thoughts on how best to create space to set his people free and give them room to fail. Not an easy mission in strictly regulated political waters.
Specifically, he has created a set of dogmas for balancing the paradoxes he must navigate as a public leader tackling wicked problems - and we share them with you here.
Martin Østergaard is invited to INVI - both for our physical masterclass and in the studio - to talk about his new leadership foundation.
Read how Østergaard sets the course in his management principles:
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I have taken on the role as City Director in Aarhus Municipality with a deep desire to contribute to a better society. Citizens and businesses in Aarhus should feel a positive impact. But as the city director of the second largest municipality in Denmark, I also feel a responsibility to ensure that my organization makes knowledge and solutions available and inspires other municipalities in Denmark.
The leadership task I share with colleagues across the country is difficult. The democratic processes and the welfare model we have built over the last many years are no longer in top shape. There are cracks in the trust in politicians, media and public organizations. The gap between citizens' expectations and the welfare we as municipalities are able to deliver is growing. If we continue as before, we will run out of shared values, cohesion, resources and innovation. And it won't just be a problem for my organization. It will be everyone's problem.
What drives me is therefore to do everything I can from my position to renew our welfare society and democracy so that both are sustainable and valuable, also for future generations.
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Ultimately, making the necessary adjustments to our welfare society and democracy, also at the local level, requires political decisions. As a senior civil servant, my primary task is therefore to make politics possible.
I'm very aware of how complex it is. It's really no easy task to rethink something as fundamental as the very purpose of a municipality, or the power structures, relationships and resources we are used to seeing as legitimate in the development of our welfare. [how to renew your life in the third age].
It requires me to keep a wide perspective and insist on vision and insight in the leadership team and throughout my organization. We must be genuinely curious about the mechanisms that are currently changing our environment, organization and tasks, and where a new third way could lie.
I'm also very aware of how easily we as civil servants can both strengthen and destroy a political life. In my job, you have to have humility in the face of that power, while at the same time having the courage to step out into the gray area between politicians and civil servants if you really want to help.
I'm also aware that I need to put myself in play in new ways. I need to find out how I and we as top management can share the table with more people. And I need to practice stretching my own imagination - together with others - so that innovation can come from below, outside and above.
The welfare of the future is only sustainable if we create it together, municipality and society. Quite simply, more resources are needed than what we as a public organization can contribute. That's why managers and employees in Aarhus Municipality must feel that they have the room to maneuver and the courage to find new answers together with others. In this way, making operations possible is different now than it was just a few years ago. From my position, I can help mobilize the knowledge and drive of other actors and rethink the way we design and manage new collaborations. And contribute to our trust in each other.
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Leadership is a hassle. My own leadership role is complex and full of paradoxes, and the risk of being alone is constant. To thrive in it, I consciously seek out partnerships and sparring with different people where mutual trust is high and where we can challenge and expand each other's perspectives.
My ambition is to show courage and clarity, even when I am uncertain. To stick to my core values while always trying to adapt my leadership to what the situation calls for. A balancing act where I am neither tone deaf nor swaying like a reed in the wind.
Because leadership is about developing people, I believe it also requires you to develop yourself as a leader and as a person. I believe that self-awareness and self-control are two of the most important skills for a top manager. For me, it's about becoming increasingly aware of my own biases. For example, when I'm under enough pressure, I fall back into my comfort with classic new public management and linear notions of how we develop the organization and society. And that one of my most important training courses is about getting better at both-and thinking [the seesaw].
But above all, I respect power and the importance of relationships. My power to influence is greater than my power to instruct. That's why I believe that leadership is something we create together. You and me. If Aarhus is to become a good city for everyone, my leadership space needs to be yours - and vice versa.