How do you get a city organisation of 600 people to genuinely talk about strategy – without heavy workshop days and external facilitators? Jori Reijula, Mayor of Jämsä, and Pinja Ikkala, Information Management Specialist, explain how gamified conversations reached nearly 90 percent of personnel and, for the first time, produced a data-based foundation for the strategy's key actions.
The City of Jämsä employs around 600 people. When Mayor Jori Reijula started in his role, he recognised a familiar problem: a strategy existed, but the personnel had not been successfully engaged in it.
"Presenting a PowerPoint in the mayor's briefing is not enough. People need to really get inside what we want to achieve with the strategy", Jori says.
Six hundred people, one strategy
The traditional approach would have been to organise full-day strategy workshops. Pinja Ikkala quickly calculated that this was not realistic.
"With 600 employees, organising workshops would have been very heavy. And would everyone have been able to attend, and how much benefit would we have gained in the end?"
Jori hoped that the strategy training would be motivating for the personnel rather than a mandatory extra burden on top of their work. Through a competitive tendering process, Jämsä chose Topaasia.
"Topaasia kind of saved us. Everyone has been able to take part from their own perspective and with fairly little effort", Pinja says.
Sector-specific cards in a few minutes
The project started from the spearheads of the strategy. Together with Topaasia, the team considered how to bring the core message of the strategy to the different sectors, and the dialogue cards were tailored to suit each sector. Some divisions with very specific needs got their own card decks. Sector and division directors were involved in creating the content.
Producing the content turned out to be surprisingly easy. Topaasia's AI built the draft cards based on the strategy.
"With AI, you can create the cards in a few minutes. After that, the time mostly goes into polishing an already advanced draft to the finish", Jori describes.
Pinja agrees: "Starting from scratch would have been laborious, but with AI you get a foundation and an idea. It captures very well the perspective from which the strategy should be discussed."
In the end, the biggest job was not the cards but managing expectations: some sector directors were initially unsure what the game would ultimately be used for, and the bar was set higher than necessary. Once the idea of the game became clear, the cards were finished quickly.
Supervisors first, then the whole organisation
The implementation proceeded in three phases:
- Supervisors played first among themselves. This made the tool familiar, and supervisors got to discuss the strategy as their own group.
- Supervisors were trained to facilitate. The Topaasia method carries the conversation, so facilitation requires no specialist expertise.
- Teams played on their own. Every supervisor held the conversations with their own team without outside help.
Pinja was prepared to remind supervisors about playing during the spring. No reminders were needed.
"Once the supervisors had played themselves, the games got rolling and every unit played. There was no grumbling about whether we really had to do this and when we'd find the time – and spring is a busy time absolutely everywhere."
The result: nearly 90 percent of personnel took part in the strategy conversations.
"I don't recall any criticism. When almost 90 percent of personnel play the game, that in itself is a really good result", Jori says.
The city council played too
The strategy conversations were not limited to personnel. Jori also had the city council play Topaasia at a council seminar.
"They liked it a lot. A few groups kept talking well beyond the scheduled time simply because they were interested in Jämsä's key strategic questions."
The lightness of the tool showed in practice: one councillor arrived without a phone or laptop despite the instructions. The problem was solved in an instant when he paired up with another councillor, and both were actively involved in the conversation.
Data as a basis for strategy for the first time
Beyond the conversations, Topaasia gave Jämsä something the city had never had before: material on the strategy based on the views of its personnel.
"Jämsä previously had no data-based evidence of what the strategy is founded on", Jori says.
The city is now building a "must win battle" model from the strategy's key actions, in which concrete actions are presented regularly to residents and political decision-makers. Its most important foundation is the conversations from the strategy games.
"We get a direct view from the staff on which direction the strategy should take the city. That is a significant step in city leadership: we can see which way the city is heading."
Pinja has compiled summaries from the material generated in the games for the city's use. AI helped structure the large mass of material under the different parts of the strategy, but Pinja also checked the interpretations and went through the material herself.
"It was surprising how much information is captured through the notes. It's not just about the conversations; we can examine which topics sparked discussion and what was said about them, and take them forward for further processing."
The highlights have also been communicated to the personnel. This way everyone can see that their own conversation has made a difference.
The moment the benefit became concrete came in the strategy steering group, where the most senior elected officials and the city's management team sit. When the group saw the first draft of what could be drawn from the material, according to Pinja everyone got excited: "We can actually hear what the personnel have been discussing."
Advice for other organisations
Pinja's message to those considering a similar project is reassuring: not everyone has to be enthusiastic right away.
"Here too, everyone was interested, but not necessarily immediately convinced that this was the way to start. Once we got going and saw how handy it is, everyone got excited."
Jori's summary is shorter: "The rollout was incredibly easy. At no point did it feel like this was burdensome or heavy – it slotted nicely into our organisation."
The City of Jämsä in brief
- Around 600 employees
- Strategy conversations in every sector and in the city council
- Nearly 90% of personnel took part
- Sector-specific card decks created with the help of AI
- Material compiled from the conversations as a basis for the strategy's key actions
Want to see how Topaasia could support your strategy work? Book a demo – we'll walk through together how to get strategy conversations going in your organisation.
See also: Topaasia for strategy work
More on strategy implementation in municipalities and cities:
- Implementation of the strategy in the City of Turku
- Bringing strategy into the everyday work of personnel in the Municipality of Laukaa
- HSL brought its new strategy into the daily work of 400 employees
- Strategy straight to the heart - how the Helsinki Parish Union engaged its entire personnel in strategy work