In June, 24 delegates from the fourth cohort of the International Capability Building Programme (ICBP) visited the Swedish Tax Agency (STA), located just outside Stockholm, Sweden.
The goal of the “Sweden Week” was for participating country-teams - Zambia, Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya - to continue to gather knowledge and insights on Voluntary Compliance strategies and theories, drawing inspiration from Sweden’s approach and journey in recent decades.
How does organisational behaviour support trust? How can trust be influenced through digitalisation? These were some of the topics which STA and delegates reflected on. One day was also dedicated to peer exchanges and benchmarking between the country-teams.
The “Sweden Week” focused on showcasing aspects of the operations of STA that are more impactful when experienced first-hand. But there is one component of the visit that stood out and that is: The importance of building a strong organisational culture to foster an organisation’s success. The delegates took interest in the extent to which STA’s culture was embedded in the work of all its departments. They observed a genuine commitment to building trust from all STA staff members, irrespective of their roles within the organisation. Part of building this trust required the “dismantling” of formal established hierarchical barriers within STA. Participants for instance, were surprised that the Director General works in an open-plan office like other staff members.
We know that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, and that there are no shortcuts to change an organisation except to put in the work and constantly engage in meaningful conversations from within about how we can better serve our citizens.
To quote our colleagues Anders Stridh and Lennart Wittberg :
“A culture can always be changed, but it must be done with understanding and respect for its history and past traditions[1]”.
Applying the Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) approach, the ICBP aims to support officials from tax agencies and ministries of finance on the continent, to strengthen capabilities for increased domestic resource mobilization while adopting a Voluntary Compliance perspective.
[1] “From feared tax collector to popular service agency” Anders Stridh and Lennart Wittberg