Sustainability department at Amsterdam municipality
Challenge
The City of Amsterdam has ambitious sustainability goals for the coming decades, including making the city completely emission-free by 2030, making it natural gas-free by 2040, and achieving climate adaptation, climate neutrality and circularity by 2050. This solid ambition led to many initiatives and programmes, as a result of which the Sustainability Department had grown considerably in recent years. However, this made it increasingly difficult to monitor coherence within the department and to ensure that sustainability was given a permanent place, both within City Hall and in the city. A need arose for a clear mission, vision, and structure for the Sustainability Team to ensure that the important transitions in the areas of renewable energy, circular economy and a green, healthy city received the necessary attention.
Approach
- Sustainability Strategy
- Future Visions
- Concept Development
- Organisation & governance
To strengthen the Sustainability Department, we started developing a mission and vision for the new roles the team would play. This process was inspired by the '7 roles for sustainable success', taking into account the complex ecosystem of the municipality and the city. We defined six core roles, such as Strategist, Director, Policy Maker, Motivator, Developer and Linker, which formed the basis for the organisational design.
We then designed a new organisational structure that took into account the city's crucial sustainability transitions. This included not only defining core tasks, team layouts and job transition matrices, but also fostering collaboration between different teams and departments. To encourage this cooperation, we created a bingo card with "nudges" - small exercises and questions that promoted conscious thinking about good forms of cooperation. An example of such a nudge was assessing team projects on the degree of shared objectives with other teams.
Because of the corona pandemic, most of our work was done digitally, through video conferencing and digital whiteboards (Mural). Through design sessions, interviews, and carousel meetings with 20-30 participants per session, we were able to quickly enrich and validate the team's mission and vision.
Result
The project led to the development of the exciting Sustainable Amsterdam 2030 initiative, which promotes sustainability both within City Hall and in the city. Thanks to the inclusive and participatory process, broad support emerged for the Sustainability Team's mission and vision. The new organisational structure strengthens the capacity to effectively deliver the transitions on sustainable energy, circular economy and a green, healthy city.
The innovative approach and focus on collaboration not only created enthusiasm within the department, but also laid a foundation for long-term sustainable impact. The City of Amsterdam is now well positioned to achieve its ambitious sustainability goals and create a better future for its residents.