EVALUATION OF GLOBAL GOALS ANCHORING: LESSONS FOR OTHER MUNICIPALITIES - RHEDEN

The municipality of Rheden has embraced the Global Goals from July 2016 and has anchored them in its organisational structure from 14 May 2018. In addition, it has brought all its policy documents, from coalition agreement to team deals and board and council proposals, in line with the Global Goals. In addition, it opts for a bottom-up approach to all kinds of initiatives and projects. Attention is currently focused on anchoring the Global Goals in the culture, way of working and structure within and outside the town hall.
We agreed in advance to continuously evaluate the transformation of the organisation based on the SDGs. It was a conscious choice to do this via the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle, because we realise that the transformation is an organic process that requires continuous adjustment. These evaluations are based on the approach: Stewarding Sustainability Transformations developed by Dr. P. Kuenkel (Board member of the Club of Rome, SDG portfolio holder). The following activities have been carried out so far:

  • Introduction to "Collective Leadership" as a reflective model for "Stewarding Sustainability Transformations1" during a visit to the Club of Rome on 18-20 June 2018.
  • Training course "Collective leadership" (training as a reflection model for SDG implementation) for the evaluation team in Potsdam (27-28 October 2018); resulting in an evaluation plan.
  • Carrying out activities in the context of the self-evaluation: A film to clarify the purpose and activities of our organisational development; employee research to measure effects; team chats with management to discuss the "story of organisational development; management meetings to experience the network organisation; focus on increasing the contribution to the sustainable development goals.
  • A graduation research (University of Twente) into the transformation of a traditional organisation into a Global Goal-oriented flexible, multidisciplinary working network organisation based on the theory of Kotter (Accelerate!; Kotter, 2012);
  • A graduation research (University of Twente) into the internal (informal) leadership required for a transformation based on the behavioural characteristics of Bales (1953) and Pratoom (2018)
  • A reflection and evaluation meeting on 20-22 February 2019 in Hanover led by Dr. P. Kuenkel based on a report on the results of the evaluation of the organisational development and Global Goals implementation in Rheden.
  • Adoption of an improvement plan, reflection and action plan by the DT and presentation by the portfolio holder in the Board meeting of 2 April 2019.


Our network organisation works on the basis of clusters of the Global Goals: working from the assignment: integral and result-oriented, collaboration with residents, entrepreneurs and education, ownership and customer focus.
The main conclusions of the evaluation process are:

  • Increased ownership by increasing the “container” of those responsible for organisational development. Focus on middle management;
  • Provide one-on-one dialogue with management and employees, provide attention;
  • Ensure there is input/contribution from employees and management in organisational development;
  • Tell the story of organisational development from the perspective of people's privacy and not from the abstract concept of “network organisation”. Provide a beckoning perspective. Tell stories about good examples;
  • Provide a collaborative process of learning with and from each other and sharing experience. This increases engagement and ownership.


In this chapter we come to a synthesis of the experiences of the municipality of Rheden in the period 2016-2019. These lessons are recommendations for other municipalities that have embraced or want to embrace the Global Goals.

  1. Involve the Council in the choice to work with the Global Goals. If the administrative organisation chooses to use the Global Goals to structure its policy and/or organisation accordingly, it is recommended that the Council be involved in the decision-making process. This prevents resistance and discussions afterwards.
  2. The administrative top management propagates the same vision. It requires leadership to take the organisation by the hand and to show decisiveness and unity in vision and direction. Provide an unambiguous story to avoid confusion and doubts among employees.
  3. Focus on the "early adapters". Every change involves front runners and stragglers. Focus on those who have an intrinsic motivation to help make the change. Make "the container" of people who believe in the change as big as possible, inspire them and make them jointly responsible.
  4. Appoint an ambassador for each goal and inspire these ambassadors. Working with colleagues who attribute an intrinsic value to a particular goal (Global Goal) is a very powerful tool to communicate the change. Inspire these ambassadors. To this end, it is important to have joint experiences and to share knowledge and to experience new knowledge together.
  5. Don't treat working with the Global Goals as something completely new. Working with the Global Goals is something you can include in your daily work and thinking. Use the Global Goals as a checklist for your actions. This stimulates integrated working and creativity, and thus promotes broadening in answering a question. This makes the Global Goals part of the DNA of the employees.
  6. Don't just talk about the Global Goals, but especially the parent goals. The Global Goals are about a better world through partnerships, result-oriented work, integrated work, external orientation, but also about leadership. By keeping focus on the parent goals, you increase acceptance in the organisation and its importance.
  7. Use best practices and storytelling. Spread the message through practical and concrete examples and stories about the best practices. These examples represent the human dimension and really make a difference for employees, local entrepreneurs and residents.
  8. Apply the Global Goals in external communication in triple helix partnerships and networks. The unity in language brings people together, people from different organisations often work towards the same goals from a different perspective! That stimulates innovation and creativity. The Global Goals act as a catalyst in this. This stimulates collaboration between government, entrepreneurs, education and social organisations.
  9. Develop a network or database for sharing best practices. "Share and pass on" is the 18th Global Goal in the municipality of Rheden, and for good reason. It is crucial that we share experiences and best practices. This improves project-based collaboration.
  10. Apply the principles of collective leadership. To work on the goals behind the Global Goals, Dr. P. Kuenkel, member of the Board of the Club of Rome, developed an approach based on global experiences. Her "Compass" focuses on the search for unity in motivations. The human dimension leads in this, whereby core values such as empathy, a complete (holistic) approach, ownership, humanity and equal dialogue apply. The compass helps to make successful transformations of organisations based on the Global Goals, based on collective leadership.

https://rheden4globalgoals.nl/