Does working on the core task even make sense and have an impact?
This is probably what many managers and employees ask themselves when they are presented with the term "core task". But if you ask the question in Hørsholm Municipality, the answer will be "yes, it makes both sense and has an effect". Hørsholm Municipality continuously collects their concrete experiences and results, and a short selection of these are:
- We've cleaned up redundant tasks and structured the resolution of "dead" tasks so there's more time for our residents.
- Slowly, the employees became aware that what they do for the citizens is not just a service, but a help to self-help, that the citizens become smarter and more empowered so that they can succeed in society and have a good life, with all that entails.
- It has meant a lot to the individual employee to have worked with the importance of the citizen also being co-responsible for their own life - that "we do with" and not "do for".
- More openness in the individual teams about roles and task distribution with a focus on the core task.
- There are no longer as many parent complaints/inquiries.
- There aren't so many stories anymore about how busy we are and how stressed we are.
Working with the core task is meaningful and effective
So yes, working on the core task makes sense and has an impact, as the above output on removing 'dead tasks' to reduce parental complaints and empower citizens to take responsibility for their own lives clearly shows.
And before we get into how Hørsholm Municipality has specifically worked with core tasks, below we take a very brief look at why so many focus on their core tasks.
In recent years, the public sector has seen an increase in the complexity of tasks. At the same time, these tasks must be solved under increasing resource pressure. This has led to increased attention being paid to the core task, because it helps to focus on how we, for and with the citizens, can solve the challenges facing the welfare society, including what we want the welfare society to be in the future. By focusing on the core task in public welfare production, we get a concept that can be used to create a common purpose and meaning among different professional groups, and to understand, define and develop the task solution for and with citizens.
Benefits of clarifying the core task
In this light, Hørsholm Municipality has chosen to focus on the core tasks that are contained in the municipality. This includes focusing on what the municipality was created for and what citizens should experience in their various interfaces with the municipality (what can be described as the impact mindset). This impact mindset, which also provides an increased focus on interdisciplinary collaboration, must be incorporated at all levels as a guideline for local goals and tasks. This also includes an understanding that we are all part of something bigger. For example, in the local professional communities in the municipality, we are also part of the larger community (the entire municipality, the region, Denmark), and that we succeed together by virtue of each other. Focusing on the core task thus also helps to create a basis for determining who solves the specific tasks and how the work is carried out and organized.
The figure below outlines some of the benefits that can occur when working on the core task:
Figure: Benefits of clarifying the core task
It was essential for Hørsholm Municipality to initiate the process with the citizen at the center. In addition, great attention has been paid to the shift in focus from the task view to the effect of the work. Two areas that are closely linked. 'The citizen at the centre' is about looking at the (core) task solution "from the outside in", so that the starting point is the citizen's life situation and that the internal organization is adapted to this. This may sound obvious, but it hasn't always been the case in the Danish public sector. The shift in focus from the task view to the effect of the work is about the organization taking the 'long view' rather than solely measuring activities or initiatives and looking at the connections in terms of what citizens get out of it in terms of increased quality of life.
New roles in the relationship with citizens
Hørsholm Municipality, like all other municipalities, has seen the requirements for welfare production change, and the roles of citizens and employees have been layered over time. Previously, the core task was primarily about managing the classic role of authority by delivering what citizens were entitled to and ensuring that citizens did what they were obliged to do. Later in the 80s, citizens needed to get 'value for money', which led to a new mindset where the citizen went from being a client/patient to a 'customer' that the public sector had to deliver services to. The latest addition to the development ladder is about co-creating and co-producing with citizens, partly to create new and better services, partly to expand the resource approach at a time when we as a society need to rethink resource involvement if the welfare society is to be maintained.
Figure: The evolution of the core task over time
Although the figure shows a progressive movement that illustrates how the core task has developed over time, it is by no means an evolutionary process where one development step replaces another. The point is that municipalities today have to be able to accommodate all three approaches at the same time, and must therefore design the organization to be able to handle all three types of tasks depending on the task context.
This means, among other things, that you have to take a hard look at your organization and be flexible in relation to the traditional power hierarchies that must be supported by cross-collaboration, where managers and employees from different administrations or citizens from civil society co-create a specific effort or solution based on the approach that "we don't own the task, but the task owns us". This means that it can just as well be the health nurse as the social worker or a volunteer citizen who has contact with a vulnerable child in a family, because the relationship is strongest here.
In this process, we must be aware of the risk that the classic professional organization can help support silo thinking and thus create an increased risk of focusing on local efforts and mono-disciplinary goals rather than coherent effects. The consequence is that work across disciplines/administrations/centres is not stimulated and that it is not the task that helps to put the right team together, but rather the narrow organizational framework that is used as a starting point, which risks creating a poorer effect for the citizen.
Organizationally, this means that you need to create an agile organization that is able to move between several different organizational forms, ranging from the classic Weberian organizational structure, which is good for traditional public authority tasks, to the matrix organization, which is used for standard tasks, and on to the latest addition to the organizational tribe: the network organization, which is relevant when it comes to complex and innovative approaches with a need for co-creation with citizens and the market.
The practical work with the core task in Hørsholm Municipality
The starting point for Hørsholm Municipality's work on understanding the core task was the model below, which shows the common thread from the formulation of the municipality's overall core task at a strategic level, on to the local level and to the work tasks in the individual institution/unit.
Figure: Correlation between core and work tasks in Hørsholm Municipality
David Schjelde, Chief Consultant from Hørsholm Municipality and coordinator of the core task work, talks about the process:
'We started by creating a common frame of reference around the core task concept, to conceptualize in order to understand. Our focus was particularly on making the citizen's experiences the focal point, which we did by putting the impact mindset and thereby the interdisciplinary approach at the center, all from an "outside in" perspective. For us, the core task is what we must succeed with together, the effects we must create for and with citizens across disciplines. We work with "both/and" approaches, as the world is far too complex for either/or. For example, we must be an authority, efficient and co-creative at the same time and be able to navigate this on a daily basis, depending on the specific context. Therefore, we also wanted to work with the core task on multiple levels and from multiple angles and then coordinate on an ongoing basis.
The both/and mindset was expressed, among other things, by the fact that we both started with the individual institutions and units working on the core task, including defining it, and that we simultaneously worked on defining an overall core task. In other words, we wanted the local communities to enrich the larger community and the larger community to enrich the local communities. In this way, we created local core tasks and an overall core task that mutually defined each other. One of the things that I believe has been crucial for us to have come as far as we have is that we maintain this stubborn focus on the work. That we don't just see the core task as one of several elements that we switch focus between. The core mission is the cornerstone of everything we do and it permeates our various structural frameworks. For example, you can't start projects without considering what effect the project's benefits will have on the execution of the core task, the purpose of our internal measurements (e.g. management evaluations, well-being surveys, etc.) is to help us become better at solving the core task together, just as our performance review concept has the core task as its focal point, etc. etc. In order to constantly put things into perspective and set the stage for new opportunities, we also regularly invite experts in different focus areas to give presentations to our entire management team, always with the core task at the center.
We try to create meaning and coherence with the various initiatives and input. This includes creating a clear thread from work tasks to local core tasks, to cross-cutting core tasks and to our overall core task. We believe that working with meaningful tasks also means being able to see yourself as part of something bigger. We believe that the answer to "why" we perform our tasks can be found in our core tasks, and that the answer to "how" we succeed with our core tasks can be found in the tasks we perform.
In addition to the local core tasks and the overall core task, we have, for a number of reasons, also defined a set of cross-cutting core tasks that are inherently citizen-centric. These are used both to tie the different levels together, but also to give us some pointers for our interdisciplinary collaboration. our interdisciplinary collaboration. Not that interdisciplinary collaboration only happens at this level, it happens everywhere, but we can use our interdisciplinary core tasks when we find that local core tasks may "clash". Because no matter how we define core tasks at levels below the overall core task, you will find yourself in situations where these core tasks can "collide" when you need to collaborate across them. We are very aware that the defined core tasks must not become new "silos" that make collaboration across these tasks difficult.
Agility and quick adaptation
We are also very aware of acting agile and adapting quickly and continuously to the impact we want to achieve,' says David Schjelde and continues: 'We believe that individual managers, leaders and employees are the best executors and that local work and the work of top management should inspire each other.
The management sets the common course by formulating directional initiatives and frameworks, while it is up to the individual centers/units to translate these into action-oriented initiatives. Since our core task focus is on citizens' experiences, we did not start by formulating a common overall core task, but instead allowed this to crystallize through the work with the local core tasks. Subsequently, the overall core task has inherently set a new framework for the work on the core task, but always in an interplay so that the common thread is maintained both vertically and horizontally.
Such an approach requires a high degree of coordination, and we work consciously with this. Both in what you might call the chain of command in the classic management hierarchy, where there is coordination and alignment of expectations 1-1 and in the management teams, as well as across the organizational structure. One of the ways we do this is through our management days, where we bring together all of the municipality's managers and prepare them for their work, as well as provide opportunities for reflection across disciplines.
Most recently, we have shared knowledge about the work and the results and learning points this has yielded so far, so that it was possible to create shared learning and coordination across the board. An important element has also been to create a commitment in the individual centers and in the individual institutions/units, so that all employees were aware of and, not least, took ownership of the core task.
That's why we've made it a priority to help and support managers and employees in their work to translate these fine words into concrete actions. We work very consciously to ensure that employees are co-creators of the core task definitions and, in particular, that they are involved in developing the changes we need to make once we have become clearer about our core tasks. Including, for example, prioritizing in a busy workday. And precisely because our core task is defined as the effect the citizens should experience, this makes a lot of sense for the employees, as this is typically why they have chosen to work in a municipality within the profession in question.
The benefits of the work on formulating the core task
Several institutions in Hørsholm Municipality point out that the goal of the actual process of working with the core task formulation is to establish a common identity and direction, as well as to create a framework that can strengthen the basis for working as "the professional employee/manager". Feedback from the institutions/units is also that the core task is a very useful perspective on the task solution. The value of the concept is first and foremost to make this perspective active in everyday life through ongoing dialog and joint reflection. Articulating the core task in a single sentence that everyone can agree on is not the end goal, but a means to start the dialog about the meaning of the joint effort. It's about creating a common thread between the work tasks and the core tasks and vice versa, so that the work tasks make sense in relation to the core tasks - i.e. what should the individual employee contribute with in order for the organization to create the desired effect. Several institutions also mentioned that the goal was to become more aware of their task prioritization: what they should do more of/less of and what they should stop doing in the future.
The integration of the core task in daily life
So far so good, one might be tempted to say. The next step - and this is one of the difficult ones - is to integrate the core task with employees and management on a daily basis so that it has an effect on the citizen. To avoid dissatisfaction and conflicts, where municipal employees can also be squeezed, there is a need to align expectations of 'why' priorities are prioritized the way they are, so that all parties know what can be expected in relation to the role the municipality takes on versus the role that citizens themselves must take on.
In continuation of this, David Schelde says: 'Specifically, we in Hørsholm Municipality must, for example. 'We need to align expectations with citizens, relatives, elderly councils and other stakeholders regarding the transition from home to nursing home. This ensures that everyone knows what to expect from each other and thus makes the transition as good as possible. Our starting point is that together we find a common understanding of what it is we want to improve, so that we can more easily co-create solutions'.
Different aspects of the core task
One institution in the daycare sector, for example, has chosen to involve the parents' board and the broad circle of parents in the work on the core task. Among other things, parents have been asked about their perspectives on various aspects of the core task in order to better align expectations. The next step is to unfold the understanding of the core task together with the parents by "double-clicking" on the words (elaborating on the words) to create shared meaning and thus a basis for further improving and optimizing the work.
In one institution in the child-adult area, they have chosen to let the double-clicks define some value words that they unfold and work according to. One way of doing this is for employees to take turns at joint monthly staff meetings to give a presentation on the value words as input for a joint dialog and understanding of the words. Before these presentations, in several cases, citizens have been interviewed about what the words mean to them, so that this perspective is also taken into account. According to the manager, this approach provides ownership, energy, commitment and a shared understanding of the core task and, not least, a common direction.
The core task in daily prioritization
The municipality's dental care also uses the core task in daily prioritization. Here, they have revised the procedure for everyday stresses, such as staff illness. They now know who does what and which tasks can wait. A simple rule has been developed: P - P - P (Patients - Staff - Paper) and everyone knows what this means. Every effort is made to ensure that all patients can be treated as agreed and this is done by moving staff around and de-prioritizing other tasks (paper) if needed. After working with the core task as the focal point, there is a greater understanding among staff today of procedures and priorities that put patients at the center of their work.
The above are examples of the steps that are being taken in a longer roll-out of the core task understanding in the municipality so that all parties experience the desired effects of working with the core tasks. Work that helps to focus on and unite the entire organization around what is important in the current and future work, which, cut to the bone, is about creating the greatest possible effect for and with citizens based on the given resources. So yes, it makes perfect sense to work on the core task, because this work provides better experiences for citizens, and that's what a municipality was created for.
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