Skellefteå Municipality is in the midst of a social transformation few Swedish municipalities have experienced. Thanks to the municipal leaders’ participation in RISE’s Academy for Lifelong Learning (AfLL), they have changed their way of thinking, take on challenges and learn together.
“It’s like a crisis, but just the opposite. More municipalities will experience it, but we’re the first.”
This is how municipal manager Kristina Sundin Jonsson describes the tasks she faces together with her colleagues in Skellefteå. With the establishment of the Northvolt battery factory and all that entails, the municipality is expected to grow by twenty-five to thirty percent – within this decade.
“In one way, we were prepared. In 2015, we adopted a development strategy with a growth objective. We needed to turn the negative trend Skellefteå had seen for several years as a result of people leaving the municipality combined with demographic challenges. The work on the growth strategy was focused on gathering and highlighting our strengths. There’s a strong entrepreneurial culture in Skellefteå, and we have access to green energy. This work gave us newfound confidence, and we began to look outwards to tell a new story about ourselves. We wanted to show the rest of the world what we had to offer, rather than the other way around. Following the establishment of the Northvolt battery factory, the turnaround was explosively fast. We call it an extraordinary social transformation because the changes affect just about everything. We need to do our part, but there are also things we can’t control and things we need to learn.”
Changed mindset
This was one of the many reasons why Jonsson and her management team were involved in the Academy for Lifelong Learning, a kind of insurance policy for expertise spearheaded by RISE in collaboration with partners from the business world.
“I can see how our participation in the pilot course at the Academy for Lifelong Learning changed our way of working and, above all else, the mindset employed by our leaders. We no longer think in terms of managing operations. Instead, the focus is on constantly learning new things, gathering completely different perspectives, looking outwards. You need different skill sets and perspectives to resolve complex problems. If someone in the organisation comes across information that can benefit others, we share it with one another immediately. We learn and decide how to act together. If you’re going to do something nobody else has done before, you need such an approach.”
It’s not certain that you’ll find the solutions to a challenge in your own industry
Inspiration from the business world
Among other things, Jonsson talks about the importance of private sector involvement in the Academy for Lifelong Learning.
“It’s not certain that you’ll find the solutions to a challenge in your own industry. In many ways, the future will be cross-industry. The private sector has a natural propensity for change and a willingness to constantly understand and change their organisation to meet customer demand. This made it extremely interesting, for example, to hear from a company like Google, which is part of the programme.”
“Naturally, the meetings with other municipalities are also very rewarding. How do they work, what innovation obstacles have they identified in their organisations, how do they manage their contact with residents? There are so many great experiences and opportunities to learn from each other.”
Professionalism and networking
According to Jonsson, RISE has been a guarantor for professionalism within the programme, and they have been able to benefit from the institute’s extensive contact network. Thanks to this network, the academy has enabled meetings that would not otherwise have happened. She explains how both the challenge and the academy have given her the insight that no one is an island. Instead, you have to work together to solve problems that are so complex that no single level or stakeholder can solve them alone.
“That idea is the cornerstone of the Academy for Lifelong Learning – no one can do everything, and together we can achieve more. For us, this is critical when, for example, creating attractive living environments at a faster rate than anyone has done before, tailoring educational programmes for a company that needs a great many workers in a short space of time or winning investments in infrastructure. We’re on a journey where we won’t be able to do everything right the first time. Instead, we’ll have to rely on trial and error. But that’s also part of the learning process,” Jonsson ends.
