The Municipality of Odense undertook the largest organizational network diagnostic within the public sector in Europe. In the Autumn of 2012, this municipality invited 1,500 employees to share their view on collaboration. This organizational network diagnostic resulted in a long list of organizational development processes that strengthened the municipality’s ability to collaboration. One of the critical process was around the municipality’s efforts to effectively and efficiently work on Vollsmose – one of its neighborhoods.

The Organizational Network Diagnostic helped them for the first time to identify who and how many people worked on the different challenges in the different neighborhoods. It resulted in an overview which completely changed the approach to the work inside the municipality: from a project to an operations approach.

The data behind this network visualization told an unexpected story. It showed that 24% of the respondents saw Vollsmose – a particular neighborhood in Odense – as an important part of their work. The density of this group of people was low. As a result, the coordination of activities for Vollsmose was done in in a fragmented manner, because there only was limited social cohesion.

The organizational network diagnostic identified the right employees to strengthen collaboration around one of the most important neighborhoods: Vollsmose. With only 10 people from the different departments, social cohesion was improved and the municipality got more effective.

An intelligent restructuring method to become more effective with fewer but more targeted resources