ClearPoint Strategy Rocky Mountains Municipal Webinar

Hello everybody. My name is Ted Jackson. I'm a co founder and managing partner here at Clearpoint Strategy. And I'm happy today to bring to you this webinar focusing on managing performance and transparency in municipalities. Today we're going to feature the city of Arvada and the city of Fort Collins, Colorado. So it's our Rocky Mountain agenda. This is going to be a half hour webinar and we're going to focus about 20 minutes. One presentation where Kelly and Lawrence from their respective cities have agreed to do a joint presentation at the same time. Then we will have time for Q and A. If you have any questions along the way, please submit them to supportlearpointstrategy.com so without further ado, let me introduce our two cities and our two speakers. The city of Arvada, 113,000 and growing. You can see their stats here they are just outside of the Denver area. Kelly Hartman is a performance budget manager. Kelly, are you there?

I am here.

Excellent. And the city of Fort Collins, Colorado, population of 167,000 about an hour north of Denver. You can see their stats. They seem to be leading in the breweries column. Lawrence, you available?

I sure am.

Excellent. Well, without further ado, I'm going to let you guys just present away and I will try to keep up with the slides and then I will join back in at the end. Thank you both. Thank you both for agreeing to present today.

So the first thing that we wanted to talk about is the actual commitment to managing performance and from the Arvada side, our commitment comes from the top and just to kind of talk about what that involves. Our city manager is dedicated to performance management and actually brought performance management to the city when he became our city manager. And just personally he dedicates 130 hours per year to to what we call our staff meetings and we'll talk a little bit more about what that means during the presentation. At the city council level we have an annual retreat every year and that's actually an all day event that happens on a Saturday where we go over the city council strategic plan and updates. And then our leadership team across 13 different departments has a check in with strategic results and performance measures on a monthly and quarterly basis. And so with our model leadership really does have our back and they are here to support us.

Well, thank you Kelly. In Fort Collins we have a very similar approach. It is tops down also and it's really about cascading expectations. So our city council is very engaged in performance metrics and they will often Ask the question, you know, what is the result? What is the outcome that we are expecting if we pass the various things that go in front of them? And so they are really driving this organizational conversation about our results. And so we have incorporated what we call a biannual results review, whereby we take counsel through a number of metrics, some of which are performing well and some of which we need to do a better job and get back on track so that we have a balanced approach to the metrics that we're reporting on. And then those metrics are they exist within what we call outcome areas. So we basically, our outcomes are groupings of programs and services like transportation and economic health and safe community. And so within each of those seven outcomes, those are the results that we review that cascades right to our city manager and his executive team. And there's two monthly meetings that are occurring, which I'll talk more later in this webinar. One is we call it a qsart. It's a quarterly service area review. And in our organization, a service area is simply a naming convention for a director who has a number of departments that reports to them. And then the other monthly review that we have is what we call our strategy maps. And what that is basically is how are we doing and achieving our strategic plan. And then, of course, from our executive team, it cascades even further to our department heads, and they are active participates participants in both of those types of monthly reviews that I just mentioned.

Lawrence, if you want to take the first part of the slide.

Yes. So there is all kinds of resistance to these types of initiatives. And I'm going to bet that a lot of the words on the screen are familiar to most of the people listening right now. And this first one we have seen in numerous programs that we've rolled out, whether it's with our strategic plan or with metrics, and that there's a sense that we can wait and this is just going to go away. And it really takes that leadership from the top that we just spoke about, both in Arvada and Fort Collins, to make these types of initiatives have staying power. Other comments you might have is I've been doing this and it's been working. So why do we need to do why do we need to track stuff now? And there's for people who work in the field and they are focused on doing the actual work. For a number of those folks, the addition of metrics and having to keep track of those things gets in the way of just doing their job. The things that they're excited about and contributing to our communities. And it comes down to just not having enough time. And so there's important strategies that Kelly will go over to help address those.

So it's pretty interesting when we're putting this presentation together, we have kind of some Fort Collins slides and some Arvada slides. And when we came to this, it was like, well, we both have the same issues. And like Lawrence said, I'm sure we all do across all of our municipalities. And I put this picture in because the gentleman in the blue coat, his name is Jim, and he works in the irrigation system at one of our golf courses. And my very first day on the job, where I'm just trying to figure out, like, you know, where the bathroom is and all those important things when you're first new, my phone rang and it was Jim, and I answered. And he said, I don't understand any of this focus stuff and performance management and what we're supposed to do. And we have this system and I don't know how to put our data in. And so I said, well, who are you and where are you? And he told me, and I said, well, I'll be right out. And so that gets into the mitigation strategies and really hitting the ground and building those trusting relationships is really, really important when you're talking about performance management systems, actually getting out into the field. And for me, that means going out and being in a snowplow if I need to, or going out to the streets crew, whatever it means to create that relationship and having empathy. These guys don't have a lot of time, and they do want to just get their job done. So how can you get them excited about performance management and making that a part of their life? Learn about their business, learn about what they do. I know more about irrigation systems at golf courses than I ever thought I could ever know in my life. And that is part of being a good listener as well. Be on their team. They need to see you as being a team member and not someone who sits in finance or sits in the city manager's office, but someone who can go out and be on their team. And the most important thing is to have fun. And I would have to say that Jim is one of my most favorite people that I work with, with the city. And that relationship could have been a disaster from the start. And so really look at the resistance and put your mitigation strategies into place. So as far as kickstarting performance management, what we did was very intentional and deliberate work facilitating our strategic business plans. We took the time and we actually did have a consultant that came in to work with each department to really sit down and look at how to develop a strategic business plan. And our big focus was on customer needs. And every time someone would come to the table and say, well, this is a service I provide, we really went back and said, well, what are the customers expectations and what do the customers need? Taking the focus away from what people do and focusing on what the customers need. We look at, or spend a lot of time looking at issues on the horizon. If we don't address this, what will happen? And then also really aligning those performance measures. One of the lessons learned is we had way too many performance measures when we started. People were measuring everything under the sun. And so it really comes down to being strategic and looking to see what makes sense, what you need to measure, and then getting rid of the rest of the. And then we also tie all budget requests to our performance. And I think that's something that Lawrence will be talking about as well. That's really important. If you're going to request something in the budget cycle, you have to show through performance management why you need that request. And lastly, if you don't have strong leadership support from the top, that's something you really kind of need to stop and take notice of and see what you can do to get people on board at that leadership role to make sure that this is successful for you.

Very good. So in Fort Collins, we use an approach that I like to refer to as crawl, walk and run. And so we are very willing to put things forward that are not perfect, knowing that we're going to see how it works, we're going to evaluate it, and then we're going to, through continuous improvement, make it better. And really that's what you're going to see here as far as our performance management program. So we started with a dashboard back in 2013 and we would have dialogue around the 39 metrics and the performance of those. But what we found is that when we were having these conversations at the department head level of the organization, department heads didn't necessarily care about the metrics that weren't in their area or that impacted them on a day to day basis basis. And so we kept the dashboard, but we said how we utilize that information and discuss performance has got to be different. And so we then started to, as Kelly said, they do in Arvada, we put measures into each of our budgets and those are required. But it did create an overwhelming number of metrics that there was really no efficient way to have an ongoing dialogue. And so of this set of, say, 500 metrics, we went to the organization and said, what are the three to five most important measures that you have within your department? So the departments could resonate to that. They knew of their laundry list of metrics that they had for their budget request, and they knew they had to manage to those. They could tell us, though, what were the really key, important ones from their perspective. And so we started incorporating those into one of those monthly executive level reports that we call a qsar, the quarterly service area report and a review. And what we found is that the discussion about the metric was good, so we were moving in the right direction. We had the right audience now. But the metric itself didn't have the context of why it was important, just that the department had said, these are our three to five most important metrics. What we've landed on, finally in 2017 is what we call strategy maps. And these have really clicked with the organization for the first time, where we're seeing light bulbs go off around performance management. And that's really exciting. So I'm going to dive into those a little more. So just quickly, this is our leadership system. It's comprised. Those 15 boxes around that leadership system are our primary key processes. And one of those you'll see with the red box is performance measurement and performance review, and those specifically being the qsars and the strategy maps. But before we get into the details of the qsar, it's important to. Next slide, please. On our Community Dashboard that we went live with in 2013, this dashboard is a visual representation of our performance around those seven outcome areas that I spoke about initially. And why this is important is that these metrics are the ones that are involved in the quarterly service area reviews. So the next slide has a little more information about those. And so these are meetings with the director of that service area and their department head, with our city manager, deputy City Manager, and our Chief Financial officer. And we often refer to those three positions as our CEO, COO and cfo, because this type of performance management is really common in the private sector, less so I would say, from talking with colleagues within the public sector, although it's growing and that is really exciting. Within these qsars, these are managerial executive level reviews with some standing topics of safety, the performance of your financials, those community dashboard metrics that I showed you, as well as operational issues. And initially, people hoped that this was one of those things that would go away, but it has now stuck for three Years and it's really turned around to now is looked at. This is an opportunity for dedicated time with the city manager and two other top executives in the organization. And when we. So it's a really positive forum. And when we generate the metrics from our community dashboard for those they populate directly on a report right out of Clearpoint. Next slide, please. And now I'm going to shift into strategic planning quickly. So we have a strategic plan which is inputs or an issue space strategic plan where we're getting inputs from citizens from our council and as well as our department heads, that city plan. We take all those inputs and then every two years we produce a strategic plan that is a five year view and that's really the driver of our budgeting process. Next slide, please. So we take that strategic plan and those inputs, we go to council and we formally adopt our strategic plan. Right now we're getting ready and starting for our 2018 strategic plan. And what that will be is once this is adopted by council, that really kicks off that budgeting process because everything that is funded in the budget has to relate back to the strategic plan. So then we say, well, how are we doing on achieving our strategic plan? And that's where we came up with this concept of the strategy maps. So at the highest level, we've got our seven outcome areas. We have strategic objectives within the plan for each of those seven outcomes. And then we have initiatives that are funded in the budget that also support each of those strategic objectives. And so next slide, please. The strategy map concept is that we can say, how are we doing in achieving our strategic objectives from two lenses. First, the metrics that we have tied to those strategic objectives. And then also from all of the initiatives that were funded through our budget, which we call BFO or Budgeting for Outcomes. Next slide, please. And so here is an example of it. So at the very top you'll see that arrow with a green box says 5.2, enhance our police services capabilities, et cetera. So that's our strategic objective. Its performance is based on the performance of the two underlying metrics. That top section. So we have two metrics that are linked on how we're doing there. And then for everything that was funded in the budget, those also have a red, yellow, green performance indicator. So we're keeping track of of how we're doing on achieving each of these strategic objectives from both that metrics lens and what was funded in the budget lens.

Yeah, Arvada is very similar in that respect where we kind of poached some of Fort Collins budget cycle and how they tie metrics to their budget and also tracking the budget request over time to make sure that they are actually getting a return on investment. So thank you for that, Lawrence. We poached it from you. On our side, we also have a city council strategic plan. It's a six year plan. Again as I said, we revisit that every year and then it is also adopted by resolution. So once that plan is in place, it's not something we can change. Our city council strategic plan is broken down into four areas of priority which you can see on the screen. And then under each, each one of those areas of priority there are city council strategic results and there are 24 in total. And then we have our department business plans and that's where our performance measures live. And those actually cascade up into the city council strategic results and into the city council strategic plan. So we call that our golden thread. And with that we can go to the next slide. This is our dashboard that we share with the public. And this is something that clearpoint created for us. And you can see the four areas that we talked about in the previous slide along with the fifth which is measuring up. And that's a section where we can actually highlight different departments performance measures. And if we go to the next slide you'll see an example of that where streets are a big concern for us and we had a ballot measure that did not pass. And so this is something we really want to highlight. And so at the bottom on the right hand side, you'll see the tiles that talk about street condition and budget expended. And then you'll see one that says repair cost by type. And if you would click in that tile then you would see the detailed information on the left hand side which shows you the different aspects of concrete mill and overlay for streets. Again, something I never knew I so much about. The cool thing about this is, and Ted, if you'll go back one second, I know we're running out of time, but this is really important. We decided we wanted to do this in October of 2016 and we said we have got to get this launched. And so with Clearpoint we were launched by January 12 of 17. So that just shows you the dedication. We refresh it on a monthly basis. The information comes straight from Clearpoint and it is a lot of work, I have to say, to herd the cats to get the information and assistance. Okay. And then briefly I'll just talk about our staff meetings. Again this is something that we do with each department On a monthly basis. We talk a lot about meeting targets or what we need to do to move the needle. We do talk on high levels about budget, but really what we look at is process improvement. And what is your plan to make things better? And how is your workforce plan tied into the decisions you make with performance? It is collaborative and it's not just a bunch of department heads sitting together for us. We include all staff and staff do make presentations and we actually get out of city hall on a lot of locations around the city. And this just shows a couple pictures of our police department doing their presentation and just a quick example of a different type of measure. You know, you're used to seeing 911 calls, those type of things, but this really gets down into looking at how effective our canines are and whether or not there is a return on investment of having K9s on our police force. Next slide. This is just something that's really cool to me is when we got this tool, we thought, well, we're going to track performance. But there are a couple of really neat things that came out of it. And one is the project management tool in clearpoint. And if you haven't used that, I really highly recommend, recommend that you take a look at it. We have a lot of projects, you can see here that we're using this tool specifically for project management. Then on the other side of the slide, our city attorney's office. Again, city attorneys appointed by city council. They don't have to play in this world with us with performance management if they don't want to, but they not only choose to be a partner with us in performance management, they actually wrote an article about performance management in one of the legal journals. So it's just something cool to see of how performance management takes a hold within an organization.

Very good. Well, thank you both for that presentation. We're going to open it up for questions in just a minute. I just wanted to talk for just a brief second about clearpoint itself, which both of you are using, because we do help municipalities improve their strategic performance. And we do that really in three different ways. And I think the two of you spoke about two of those ways quite nicely. The one on the left here, managing your strategic plan, and then in the center, creating community dashboards for your citizens. So, you know, both of you are really tracking information, you know, for strategic planning using clearpoint and then sharing that with your citizens just through a click of the button. The other thing that clearpoint does, for those of you that don't know, is it helps you network with others to share best practices. And with that, we have a measures library that we introduced actually at the beginning of this year with many different municipalities with more than 300 measures in the measures library. So a city or county or even state level agency can decide that measures that they're tracking, they want to share. They can put them in the library. You can filter by keyword, you can full text search it or filter it by contributor if you benchmark against municipalities of certain sizes. So it's just a really nice way to see data that's always up to date. And for those of you that are aware of icma, after they closed their Insights program, they did take all of their data from their Insights program and earlier this month emailed out or put out a release that they did have a lot of that data in Excel format. So we took that data and also put it into the measures library. So if you're using clearpoint, you can look through and see the most recent information that ICMA has also produced. So I thought you might find that helpful. And so now let's move to some questions. I've been monitoring the, the question line here. It looks like. So this one actually came in, it's a nice one for both you, Kelly and Lawrence is it looks like you use different terms, you know, around strategy management, like whether it's QSRs or strategy maps or ninjas or things like that. Do you find that it's hard to educate your organization on that or, or do you expose your citizens to those terms? Like what's the kind of the process of communicating in your organization and getting people knowledgeable about performance management? You can take that in either order.

I'll take a stab at that. So we definitely have more of a language internally that we share. And that's where you would see terms like performance measures and ninjas. And you know, we don't use, we try not to use a lot of different terms, but when we do use terms like that, we try to have them well defined and we talk about them all the time. So you'll see them peppered throughout staff meetings. You'll see them in Friday memos that come from the city manager. You'll see department heads talking about them at meetings. And so we really try to infuse those terms within the organization. When we provide information externally to the customer, we try to really kind of just pare that down into the specifics and what our customer would like to see and read and use just very basic terminology.

Yeah. Similarly, in Fort Collins, there's always the buzzword bingo. And every organization has lots of acronyms like our qs. When we're communicating with the public, we try to avoid those acronyms and use more commonplace names. So, for instance, in our budgeting process, we call a budget request an offer. Of course, an offer doesn't mean anything to anybody else outside of the city, and so we would just refer to it as a budget request. But communication within the city for departments is, I would say, similar to Arvada, where we're using the same messaging repeatedly in lots of different forums. So whether those are emails that are being distributed, whether they're YouTube videos from our city manager, if they are a forum, citywide forum that we have called Issues and Answers, we'll use that same terminology consistently and also be explaining what it is so that when different processes like our strategy maps span the test of time, then over that period of time, then people have learned about that terminology and how it all fits into our leadership system within the city.

Excellent. I have one more quick one. I know that performance management is very popular with city managers, but here on the last page, we have two mayors on the page. Just curious as to how your elected officials kind of react to what you all are doing in performance management.

I'll take that one first. Our city council, especially our mayor, very interested in performance management. Like I said, they're always asking for what's the outcome? What is the result that we're going to get for this? I think that one of the important things with having an engaged counsel is that they are drivers and they're wanting that information. But on the flip side, when you have hundreds of metrics, talking and taking your counsel through that level of detail can be very mind numbing. And so we have a challenge of being able to elevate our result reporting to council and then also at the same time to citizens at that higher level. That makes sense, but yet it's enough detail to be meaningful. And so that's a real challenge that we have in being able to communicate effectively the detail of our metrics without being overwhelming with just too much data that then tunes people out.

We're similar. We have a lot of support from city council and our mayor, and they were actually the drivers behind getting the dashboard in place. And they use that dashboard when they go out and talk with the public. It's a tool for them as city council members and the mayor, to really engage with citizens when they have questions to say, this is what we are doing and this is what the city is working on. So it's a great tool for them to use. And we're fortunate that we do get to meet with them, like I said, every year, and really sit down and have good, meaningful conversations about strategic planning and when we're on track and when we're not. And they really are supportive of performance management.

Excellent. Lawrence Kelly, thank you very much for sharing what you all are doing in the cities of Arvada and Fort Collins. I think there was a lot to take away here, and we really appreciate it. For those of you using clearpoint, you can find them in the measures library and many of their measures. Anyone else that has additional questions, I'll be happy to forward them along. And with that, I'm closing the webinar.

Great. Thank you.