The Municipality of Laukaa is a fine municipality located in Central Finland with a population of 19,000. The Laukaa municipal organisation employs around 1,200 people in group administration, basic security services, education and culture services, technical services, and social and health services.The Municipality of Laukaa wanted to implement its strategy so that every member of the personnel could adopt elements of the strategy into their own work. The story of Laukaa's strategy work with Topaasia is told by Municipal Manager Linda Leinonen, Communications Manager Heli Peltola and Basic Education Planner Eva Hilkamo.
The challenge: engaging strategy implementation
The Laukaa organisation has many teams and work roles, and with the health and social services reform a large number of new employees joined the municipality, whom Laukaa wanted to engage in the municipality's strategy. Municipal Manager Linda Leinonen describes what Laukaa wanted to achieve with the strategy implementation:
"We wanted to create a strategy that does not end up lying on the employees' break room table, but would genuinely be something people can identify with, whether they work in the municipality as a supervisor, a sports facilities caretaker, a cleaner or a teacher. We wanted everyone to be able to adopt things from the strategy into their own work and to experience 'aha' moments", Linda says.
According to Basic Education Planner Eva Hilkamo, the core challenge in strategy implementation lies in engagement. "If a talking head somewhere talks about the strategy, it will not become your own and it will not go into practice", Eva says, to which Municipal Manager Linda Leinonen continues with how Laukaa ended up choosing Topaasia for its strategy implementation:
"First we thought we would go through the teams one by one and engage them with some sticky-note method, but we concluded that our time resources would not stretch to that. Then we considered producing video material and assigning tasks, but that also felt like a poor idea. Then we happened to try Topaasia and got the feeling that this would be the thing", Linda says.
How to generate conversation starting from the strategy?
According to Linda Leinonen, strategy implementation and personnel engagement involve two particular sources of frustration. Firstly, the traditional solution, a talking head in a hall and post-it note exercises, does not work, and secondly, how can all the teams find the time to work through the strategy in a way that touches their own work specifically?
"What was delightful about Topaasia was that everyone makes choices. Everyone chooses cards and gets to react and discuss. The game does not force anyone to be speaking all the time, but it does make everyone participate and express their opinion. Engagement events where people do not participate are frustrating. Here you have to participate, but in a nice and light way", Linda describes.
According to Eva, in engagement events the frustration from the participant's perspective often comes from the feeling of not being heard.
"In Topaasia the participant certainly gets the feeling of being heard. They have the opportunity to state their own opinion and they know that their point will be heard, recorded and taken forward", Eva says.
We are a development-minded, eager, youthful and enthusiastic work community, and it would be nice to do things in a new way that inspires people. That is why we chose Topaasia.
-Linda Leinonen
What makes Topaasia different from other ways of engaging personnel?
According to Heli, Eva and Linda, the advantages of Topaasia in engagement are in particular
the clear frames and structure of the conversation, ease of use and flexibility, the lightness brought by gamification, and the effortlessness of documentation and statistics.
- Clear frames and structure for the conversation
"Compared to other approaches, Topaasia provides clear frames for handling matters. There are clear, pre-considered themes, time limits and equality among participants. Everyone gets to, and in a positive way has to, participate", Communications Manager Heli Peltola says.
According to Linda, the clear structure of a Topaasia session is a good thing, because thanks to it the game leaders know how the conversation will progress, allowing them to schedule the session without it sprawling.
"Thanks to the discussion time, participants realise that time is limited and no one starts rambling. Everyone has the opportunity to take part. You do not always have to speak, though; the quieter ones can participate just by playing a card. And even if time runs out, the game leader can flexibly add time, so people's thoughts are not cut off midway", Heli notes.
- Ease of use & flexibility
Linda says that Topaasia's ease of use and intuitiveness set it apart from other ways of engaging personnel: "Topaasia was really easy to use, even though not everyone is necessarily accustomed to using different applications and smart devices."
"Topaasia offered several ways of conducting the conversation. For some participants, writing their own ideas at the end of the game was difficult, so they dictated to the game leader, who wrote down what they said. This let us move forward faster. I liked that the system is not too rigid, but that there are different ways of reaching the end result", Eva says.
- Gamification brings lightness to difficult matters
"The deck deals the cards at random, and that creates randomness, but it is guided randomness. Whatever cards come up, they relate to the topic. It brings lightness to handling the subject. The conversation is not steered by a person high up in the hierarchy; instead, the game deals the cards. That gives breathing room even to the handling of difficult subjects", Heli sums up.
Linda describes how it is precisely the guided randomness created by the cards that brings the team members' diverse strategy-based thoughts into the conversation, compared to the implementation being done, for example, by one member of the management team or through other implementation methods.
- Documentation and statistics
"No one needs to take photos or make notes. All the information is saved, and from the statistics you can see which cards and topics come up and recur. Information accumulating electronically directly from the conversations is a good thing. Otherwise we would, in the old-fashioned way, be collecting sticky notes together and wondering what to do with them", Linda says.
Enthusiasm already in the first trials
In Laukaa, getting to know Topaasia began with a demo game. According to Heli, it was significant to experience for oneself what handling strategy through a game concretely means. In Laukaa they tried it in earnest right away; the first trial game was played with municipal councillors, and people got excited about it.
"You could quickly see that people got excited about talking. They were immediately enthusiastic and commented that this is a good tool. The first time was a success", Eva describes the first experience with Topaasia.
"We tested it a second time with the management team and the conversation took off immediately, and we felt this could work in a large organisation at several different employee levels. We have different sectors and job descriptions: planning, operational and management work. The approach still works for everyone", Heli says.
We got so excited already during the demo game that we played it in earnest. We genuinely stayed to reflect on things, which shows that the approach really works.
-Linda Leinonen
What does the future look like with Topaasia?
In Laukaa the coming autumn looks busy in terms of game sessions.
"Our calendar is full of game sessions. The theme of the autumn is playing through the strategy with our own strategy game. I believe Topaasia could also work well for getting the work community to discuss difficult topics. I have indeed been looking at games in the ready-made deck selection for personnel matters that I feel like testing", Linda says.
With Topaasia everyone has it easier. Those implementing the strategy have it easier, as the game provides a ready-made model for the conversation, but the personnel also have it easier, as it works on a mobile phone, is clear, and playing requires no separate facilitation tools or being on site
-Linda Leinonen
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Thank you Municipality of Laukaa, Linda, Eva and Heli!
Municipality of Laukaa
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