The Nijkerk local authority has 28 self-managing teams, where each team has its own team plan and renders account on its performance to the municipal clerk. The teams have allocated the roles that used to be fulfilled by the manager to the various team members. The roles of controller, developer, administrator, and networker are compulsory, while teams were free to add further roles. There are a number of ‘playmakers’ who, whenever necessary, establish connections between teams, while there are also ‘team coaches’ that teams can turn to when they get stuck in their mutual collaboration. Neither the playmakers nor the team coaches have any hierarchical authority. The employees come first and decide what kind of support they need.

The Nijkerk municipality does not want to go back to its former practices, and will continue to have self-managing teams over the coming years. Self-management enables an organisation to respond quickly and flexibly to issues raised by its environment. People have experienced that it is possible to design a municipal organisation without managers, despite the complexity and variety of tasks that the teams have to fulfill.

That said, Nijkerk does have some improvements lined up in several areas. The local authority wants to significantly bolster the support the teams get and focus more on customisation. It has turned out that some teams need more support than others. The number of team coaches will, therefore, be increased. More human resources are also needed to maintain an organization-wide overall view of operations. The playmaker role has turned out to be very important, as it ensures cohesion between teams.

The support and involvement of the municipal council and municipal executive played a key role. First of all, it embedded the change among employees who experimented with new working methods. Secondly, they were an important link between the organisation and society. For everyone involved, this constituted a drastic overhaul of how they work. Council members now go to civil servants directly whenever they have questions about policy files and political and administrative matters.

Employees autonomously make decisions, ensuring quick responses to needs from society, as well as maximum efficiency in dealing with these needs. This way of working makes it possible to really put the local society first. And it also produces structural savings, thanks to improved efficiency.

Self-management means that teams take care of certain tasks and take joint responsibility for the end result. The transition to the new set of tasks turned out to be easier for some teams than it was for others. There were teams that struggled to fill the various team roles or where it took longer for employees to settle into their new roles.

Those in the playmaker role sometimes experienced their role as a difficult one. Although playmakers do not have any hierarchical authority over teams, they are still responsible for monitoring and supporting the teams. They looked for a mandate to perform their tasks.

The Nijkerk municipal council was eager to see progress, but the process was slow going in the beginning. It took some time for the results of self-management to come to the surface. Until that time, the municipal council had no option but to trust that everyone across the organisation was doing their job.

Self-management comes about in a self-managing way, emerging from within the organisation. The local authority opted for a development-oriented approach, with employees driving the process. New ideas and working methods were first tried out by employees. Only when a new working method had proven to be effective in practice was it incorporated into the new structure. Employees retained their old legal position in the organisation, allowing them to experiment with different tasks.

Self-management was not a goal in its own right. The overriding aim was to ignite employee commitment. This prompted the organisation to choose to set up self-managing teams.

The transition to self-management was supported by different sides. Managers voluntarily gave up their managerial positions, showing that they were serious about putting employees first. The municipal council and executive also backed the development. As members of the support group, they were kept involved in the change process.

Inspired by the example set in Nijkerk, various local authorities and other public organisations have adopted the same working method over the past few years. Self-management always requires customisation. Every organisation will have to decide for itself how best to shape self-management within their context. What works well for one organisation may be unwise for another. What is always important, though, is to be meticulous and set up a well-organised change process. Self-management needs to emerge from within the teams and employees. Self-management is a gift. You cannot impose it on an organisation or implement it in a top-down way.

The Nijkerk example shows that it is possible to have a municipal organisation without managers, despite the complexity and wide variety of tasks that the teams have to perform. It is not always easy to create a self-managing organisation, but as soon as it is up and running, the benefits are huge. Self-management enables an organisation to respond quickly and flexibly to questions, queries, and demands from its environment, because employees take ownership, have the decision-making authority to match their responsibilities, are not afraid to act, and are able to liaise with colleagues as and when necessary.

Self-management is not the objective, but rather the outcome of targeting employee commitment.

Self-management requires different coordinating principles, such as team coaches and playmakers who support teams and ensure an organisation-wide helicopter view of operations.

A self-managing organisation is not one without leadership and control. Even at a managerless organisation, you need control and an overall organisational view. The municipal organisation must operate within the frameworks agreed with the municipal council. A certain level of coherence between teams is also needed to ensure a smoothly functioning organisation. At the Nijkerk local authority, managers voluntarily stepped aside to make way for self-managing teams. It was not without risk, especially because not all the enabling conditions (support for the teams, decision-making mandates) had been arranged properly yet. In an organisation with self-managing teams, leadership is fulfilled in different ways. At a traditional organisation, management is one person’s remit, while the teams in a self-managing organisation distribute management duties between them. Again, this is flexible, as it can differ from one team to the next how tasks and roles are allocated.