Spiral Dynamics as a development model for municipalities

Spiral Dynamics as a development model for municipalities

Citizen participation, government participation, chain collaboration… Municipalities operate in a dynamic environment and are faced with complex issues, including in their way of organizing and collaborating with changing players and citizens. Spiral Dynamics and CHE Synnervate provide clarifying insights and perspectives for action.

Meeting and guiding customers in taking the next natural step is Synnervate's goal. SDi is an increasingly used compass for this. With insight into motivations and values, it gives direction to the development of appropriate leadership and all kinds of collaboration. What do we do in municipal land?

Synnervate has been the preferred supplier for SDi within the Municipality of The Hague for many years. To our SDi courses (www.synnervate.nl/opleidingsaanbod) employees from municipalities are increasingly participating. We work together structurally with a medium-sized municipality in Overijssel regarding the organization-wide training and application of SDi.

In a merged municipality in South Holland, the deployment of SDi leads to an extensive leadership
development process of one and a half years to visible results. Our approach in SDi terminology: developing more 'Orange' and 'Green'. The Orange/Green characteristics that the program aimed to add to leadership were: autonomy, ownership and entrepreneurship, explicit result orientation, integral collaboration, attention to quality of (collaborative) processes and communication. In order to achieve results, our approach also required to include the qualities of Purple/Red/Blue. We are talking about real bonding and inspiration, boundaries, execution power, clear frameworks and discipline.

When designing the trajectory, in addition to Orange/Green as the intended development, we also kept the preconditions of Purple/Blue/Red in mind. We worked on leadership and results in the here-and-now and created opportunities to really take the next step. We ourselves were always aware of the different roles in this process (coach, trainer, facilitator, consultant) and always opted, in the light of the colours, for appropriate guidance (for example, more or less self-management). Synnervators value being ahead of the next step themselves.

The harvest from this trajectory has resulted in a more realistic focus on results and goals, the roles are clearer and there is a noticeably improved atmosphere and collaboration. Department managers and management team were active throughout the entire process and team leaders were involved through liaison sessions. We coached the management team on team collaboration and on steering towards a network organization: with an emphasis on results IN relationship, clear commissioning with room for commissioning, and on how to inspire cross-departmental collaboration as leaders.

Want to know more about SDi? Look at the website for articles, videos and more backgrounds.

Curious about Synnervate? View on www.synnervate.nl