Aarhus Municipality's
wild problems

Every day, employees in the country's municipalities get up to deliver public services that meet the growing expectations of citizens. Meanwhile, municipal problems are becoming harder and harder to solve centrally from city hall. So what should municipalities do?  

In 2022, the municipal council in Aarhus identified seven wild problems: Youth unhappiness, rising healthcare costs, recruitment challenges, divided neighborhoods, sustainable growth, slow CO2 reductions and weakened democratic engagement.  

Aarhus wanted to succeed in being a good municipality for everyone. In the process of getting there, Aarhus Municipality discovered that it would require the organization and its surroundings to be ready to approach problems in a significantly different way.

The old, creaky structure 

The old structure of the municipality had locked Aarhus into a vicious circle. It was clear that if problem solving continued to be placed squarely in one magistrate or one steering committee, problems would not be tackled properly. Similarly, there was an emerging perception that the problems could only be influenced to a certain point, no matter how hard the municipality's 30,000 employees tried. There was an emerging consensus that the understanding of the problem should be in constant motion. The problem was that the organization didn't reflect this. The seven wild problems were deeply rooted in a fixed structure with political silos and lack of coordination. The problems could not be tackled in the traditional magistrate government, with a tradition of placing responsibility for all tasks clearly under one councilor and director.

The Aarhus Compass 

As a result, there was a broad consensus that something had to be done. In March 2019, the city council decided to step onto an untrodden path. A broad engagement process was launched, resulting in the Aarhus Compass: A new municipal understanding framework with the vision of a more sustainable and inclusive future. Following the Aarhus Compass, the municipality launched the Goal Compass and Collaboration Compass tools, which help to create a higher degree of collaboration and more clarity around goals and the function of the organization "from within".  

The Aarhus Compass became the starting point for the city council's definition of the municipality's seven wild problems in 2022. Magistrate governance was softened. In future, the director group was to take on more joint responsibility. Specifically, 2-3 directors became particularly active in working on each wild problem. At the same time, a project management team was set up for each problem, which increasingly involved colleagues with professional insight into the problem - also across municipal departments.  

The new structure meant that Aarhus could respond faster and more efficiently to challenges. Flexibility and cross-cutting collaboration became the keywords. With the Aarhus Compass, the municipality took the leap into a more innovative future. The compass paved the way for the municipality to open up to a new governance and management structure that is highly relevant in their work with seven different wild problems. The municipality gained a new mindset where they were ready to challenge known logics and structures, and it became easier to see the problems as systemic.  

The policy contractors  

In the above case, Aarhus Municipality is the central player. The employees of Aarhus Municipality have worked hard to transform the way the municipality approaches problems. Aarhus Municipality is organized as a magistrate government, consisting of five different magistrates dealing with five different subject areas. Working across the disciplines is therefore a big part of the task of dealing with the municipality's wild problems. Across the seven different wild problems, Aarhus Municipality collaborates with researchers, associations, companies, interest organizations and other relevant actors.