Customer Interview with the City of Virginia Beach

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. For our customer interview webinar, we are joined by Tam Nguyen, Director of the Office of Performance and Accountability for the City of Virginia Beach. Today he will be giving us an inside look at how their city manages strategy. Interviewing Tam will be Ted Jackson, one of clearpoint Strategy's two founders. The audience will be muted for the duration of this webinar, but we encourage you to submit any questions into the Q and A tab. Ted, I'll go ahead and pass things on to you.

Thanks, Jenna. And Tam, thanks for joining us and spending time with us today to share your story. Let's start. Can you give me an overview of the Office of Performance and Accountability at Virginia Beach?

Sure. First of all, thanks for having me. Of course. OPA Office of Performance and Accountability. We're leading the implementation of a comprehensive performance management program by way of Virginia beach stat, VB stat, VB Performance, and VB Strategy. And beyond these three programs, we also serve as essentially the right arm of the city Manager's office, working on on several different projects. We're a very lean office with 18 members here, four of whom are analysts.

Okay, excellent. I'd love to hear. We'll be asking questions, I guess a lot about the BV stat, VV strategy and BV performance before we do that. How long have you been at Virginia beach and how's your position evolved?

I've been with the city for about a little bit over three and a half years now, since October 2019. Started off as an analyst and now currently serving as director of this office. So I run the office, lead the team, manage the department budget, and so on and so forth. Essentially just ensuring that we are achieving our mission of being a trusted resource for driving progress and results for the city.

Excellent. So. So a lot of people have a performance management office, but I've never heard of it kind of having these three components. So let's jump into to the first component, VB stat. Like tell me what it is and how does it work.

Sure. So it's modeled after CompStat and it's a good way of providing focus on performance for areas of organizational priorities. So of course, stats change as organizational priorities change and as goals and objectives are accomplished. So we've had several stats in the pipeline and those have actually graduated because some of. Some of whom have actually graduated because of the substantial progress they've made and the cadence and intentionality of these meetings keeps these priorities top of mind. Some, some stats meet bi weekly, some monthly, and there's been remarkable Feedback in terms of shifting some of the culture with, with data informed management. So where we love it so far.

So is it in the, in the real format of a stat meeting where someone's on the hot seat and you're really pushing them? Like, can you give me an example of a recent meeting you attended?

Sure. So one of the recent meetings is let's say Rescue Stat, which is focused on response times, emergency response times and the city manager for each of the staff. The city manager and senior leaders serve as the panel for each of the staff meetings and key stakeholders, those who are involved relevant to the chosen areas of focus, of course. So in this case for rescue staff, EMS 311911 as well as fire department it also involved. They are the ones who are providing the updates highlighting key progress challenges that they might be encountering. And we make decisions in real time based on the information they provide us.

And so it was like Rescue Stat kind of living solely in VV stat or does it also, I guess interrelate with some of the rest of the performance management office?

There's some inter. There's connective tissues to some of the VB stat with what we'll discuss later with VB performance, which are the departmential initiatives. But there's of course there's interdependencies. But we want to make sure that there's value added for each of these meetings. So each meeting will be different.

Got you. Well, let's jump to BB Strategy overall. Like what does that.

So that refers to our two year strategic plan for the city which is led by city council's vision and leadership, but it's also influenced by community feedback. Essentially the program BB strategy translates the vision and goals into an actionable strategy that guides the organization's work and resource alignment. So currently we have five key focus areas in the strategic plan and on a quarterly basis we'll meet with key stakeholders in each of those key focus areas to talk about highlights and challenges and so on and so forth. And then on a biannual basis we'll actually publish performance reports. So a mid year one and then a year end one to ensure that we are transparent about our goals, focused on our efforts and accountable for the results.

And are you using clearpoint for VB strategy?

We are now we're actually using for VB Strategy and VB performance prior to that, which I'll probably dive into a little bit more detail later. Prior to that we were using Excel spreadsheets, which is good and great, but as you know, there are limitations to, to. To that as well.

Right. And how, like how many components are there in this, in this strategy overall?

So there's five key focus areas, but each key focus area will lend itself to more objectives or tasks. And then underneath the objectives or tasks will be key performance measures that we want to measure to evaluate performance and progress for each of those key focus areas.

So people probably that are familiar with clearpoint would know, okay, we have the objectives and the measures. That's pretty straightforward. Are the focus areas like separate scorecards or are they just like categories inside?

They are separate scorecards. So that's a good question and I can go through it a little bit later or now if you'd like, but we actually created separate scorecards. We thought that would lend itself to the best visual visualization because there's different stakeholders for each key focus areas. So we only give access to each scorecard for the relevant stakeholders. That way they're not seeing anything and everything. Not for lack of transparency, but just in terms of focusing on what they need to be focused on. So, but, but it is public facing in terms of the actual strategic plan out there, so.

Right. No, it sounds great. I would love to love to see it. We always get questions when people want to, want to share. And it's actually what you described is an interesting pain point that a lot of our clients see, which is we try to put everything into clearpoint, which is great because I can have everything in one place, but everything can get overwhelming. So I just wanted to point out to anyone listening, like that idea of, of segmenting out so individuals see just the area where they're focused on is really a great way to allow, you know, someone in one of those focus areas to look inside of clearpoint and see kind of a simple version of it. Whereas where you manage multiple programs in there, you can filter and see everything.

That is actually one feature that I really appreciate about clearpoint is being able to selectively access certain scorecards for certain stakeholders. Again, not for a lack of transparency, but just so that they can focus on what their responsibilities are. So.

Right, that's great. Do you want to share some of the strategy?

Oh, sure. I will share my screen if you can. Just let me know when you can see it.

Not yet.

Not yet. I apologize for the delay.

No, no problem at all.

Is it working?

It is not. Not that I can see. Typically sharing the screen is going to pop up a window to give you multiple options to share. You select one and then you need to. Yes, yes.

Sorry about the delay, folks. I Appreciate your patience. All right, so I've already logged into clearpoint just to. To make a little bit quicker. This is the landing page for the strategic plan. So just bear in mind that what I'm showing you is my view as the administrator. So I can see, of course, all of the scorecards. So there's five key focus areas listed down here, 21st century infrastructure and so on. And then underneath the splash page are the separate scorecards. So if you click on the first key focus area, you'll see 21st century infrastructure here, the intentions behind this key focus area, why this is important to Virginia beach, and then the tasks or objectives, and then the milestones within each task, and then performance measures peppered throughout. But if you click on each of these scorecards here, same format, different information of course, relevant to the key focus areas.

So then are you having meetings on each of the key focus areas?

Yes, we have a quarterly meeting with the city manager so that we can discuss highlights and challenges as well as progress, of course, too. We really want to make sure that we celebrate wins because that's something that local government doesn't do quite enough of, I think. And it's good affirmation for the stakeholders, but also the city manager to know that we're making progress here and there. But then also he can, he can hear about the challenges that we're facing. And those meetings are an opportunity for us to identify any synergies as well any cross pollination of ideas that may come out from these meetings. Because these departments don't always talk to each other just because there are natural silos in the work that they do. So these meetings are an opportunity for one, to hear each other's progress, but two to see if there's another. It's a platform to talk about the synergies that may occur.

So in thriving neighborhoods, you may have public safety, economic development, transportation, like all.

Housing and neighborhood preservation libraries. So each key focus area will have an executive champion that leads multiple about six to eight department directors. So it's a very structured approach to making this actionable.

Great. And I also saw some interesting status indicators. Are you trying to avoid red or is there some other code to it?

No, we do not avoid red. That thought did cross my mind. But we want to make sure that if things need to be highlighted, then they are highlighted as such. There's no reason to mask any challenges out there. The this platform for VB stat VB strategy as well as V performance is to ensure that we capture those challenges. Not just the wins, but so that we can discuss opportunities for improvement, whether it's streamlining processes, creating efficiencies, improving service delivery. We want to make sure that the city manager and senior leadership hear about that. So red is it's kind of that the same nomenclature of like accountability. You hear that negative connotation. But truly it's about hey, how do we fix this? What's the solution? It's not about highlighting, hey, you did this. Now it's really about progress. So we want to strive towards. Progress is the end game.

Okay, excellent. Well, let's jump into BB performance. So how's that different from VB Strategy and vpstat?

So VB Performance Department performance plans are the hallmark of VP performance. So each department has a two year performance plan that outlines their key initiatives and aligned with those initiatives are performance measures that again to evaluate progress and performance. And I can show you what we've captured in clearpoint if you like or time allows.

Okay, that'd be awesome.

Now that I can share my screen, hopefully seamlessly, I will try that again. Let me know when you can see it. All right, so this is the strategic plan diving into the DPP Department of Foreign Finance. This is the splash page for it. So you have all of the departments that are listed here. These are departments that are on the purview of the city manager. So we, we track all of their DPPs. I'll click on one. See libraries as an example. So this is the banner that we've created for libraries. All of the other ones are similar in terms of format and structure. Department director, mission and vision, performance plan highlights. Again it's a two year performance plan. And then we've captured some resource resources here. Expenditures and revenues, budget, personnel summary and then some metrics. And these are all public spacing because they're included in our operating budget, recruitment, retention statistics, performance updates. And these are updated on a monthly basis. But we meet with the city manager on a quarterly basis for these.

That's great. Looks like the top half is a bit like a budget book and then has like all the actions that you're taking, you know.

So again in the same same format which, which clearpoint really lends itself well to in terms of structure and format is is being able to have those boxes that are already templates for objectives and initiatives, milestones and of course the KPIs, the key performance indicators. But as you mentioned, with budget we we leverage the DPPS and even the vbstat and performance. These meetings are an opportunity for the city manager and senior leadership to Hear about some of the challenges of which may be resource constraints. So we have used the information from these plans, these programs to support budget justifications for these key initiatives. So it's really good that we've captured it on here to make things more streamlined because at one point before clearpoint, the budget department and their analysts would track down these same metrics from the departments. Now they have access to clearpoint. So it's kind of a one stop shop for not only our OPA work, but to streamline some of budget's work as well.

Budget department's work. That's great. Do some of these, the DPPs, do they ever link into the strategic plan? Are they, do you keep them kind of separate ways of managing?

We try to keep them separate so that there's of course some, some overlap. But to make sure that we're intentional about each meeting and each, each focus, we want to make sure that there are different items in their own initiatives because these are initiatives that they're, they're tackling within their own mission. Departmental mission. And the VB Strat and VB STAT are more holistic with, with collaboration in other departments and key stakeholders. So it's not mutually exclusive, but there is, there is some synergies among the programs.

No, it's great. And do you get, like I think you said, library might meet monthly. Do all the departments run on the, the same cadence or how does it, how does it work?

It is, that's a good question. It is a quarterly cadence. So we have time earmarked with the city manager to talk about their DPP meetings. But because there are so many departments, as you can see, they're not obviously on the same day.

Right.

They're peppered throughout the entire fiscal year. So we manage in a way where they're essentially batched together in certain quarters or certain weeks of the month so that they're all together and then there's a break so that we can have internal meetings, OPA in the department and then we meet again with the city manager and then a break and then, and then so on.

I mean this looks like smooth and amazing and it's all in there. Like, how did you tell me a little bit about the rollout process? Like did you, did everyone, if I look at it, from Agriculture to Aquarium to Budget to city Manager, office, community, like did they all just come running in and say we'd love to, to report on all this stuff or did you have to throw mandates in or how did you get it all going?

Well, we are fortunate in our space, the OPA office that we have the support, the full backing and support from city leadership in the City manager. So everyone, all the departments are aware of that, of course, and they too want to make progress. So I think there's a lot of buy and invest in interest from departments to make sure that, hey, this is also an opportunity for us to report out to the City Manager on the wins on celebrating those, those highlights that we're making progress on that he may not be aware of or to give more detail on those, as well as communicating those challenges to him and city leadership. So there is a vested interest. But of course, culture doesn't change overnight. So it's been an incremental shift and will continue to evolve. The rollout with this was, was crawl and then walk and then we are continuing to refine this and hopefully we'll be expanding this in the near future. But that's. That, that's kind of been the, the tone and posture of this. The City manager is very data, he's very much data informed and he's has a vested interest in making sure that he's aware of all the key challenges for organization priorities so that we can move the needle for the entire organization and there thereby for the entire community. So we serve each other so that we can better serve the community now.

It's all great. And so you've been using clearpoint about two years.

Actually only a year, I'd say a year. June of last year. About a year.

Okay, so about a year. Yeah, I think that's right. And so how much of VB stat. VB strategy and VB performance is a year old? Or how much was it just going on in a different format and now you have it kind of all integrated into one tool.

So we have VB strategy and VB performance in here. Previously, I think I mentioned that we were using Excel sheets to track all of that, which is, again, good and great. Nothing wrong with spreadsheets, but as you know, it gets cumbersome when you have 24 tabs open.

So.

And different types each one. So we've used clearpoint to modernize this process. One for data collection, but tracking and analyzing as well. Because what, what I love about clearpoint is the fact that the graphs are so malleable. You can just, you insert data and they can just spit out data. So it's, there's an automation feature in there, but you can play around with the graphics and visual aesthetics of it as well. But it is, it is a good tool to collect data because it's streamlined. A lot of that process where we've had to essentially provide folks the Excel sheets, they would have it and then we would consolidate it to have a master spreadsheet which again with multiple tabs gets a little bit cumbersome. With the polish and refinement of website aesthetics, it's just a lot easier to digest. So we've appreciated that. We haven't yet put VB stat on here just because the dynamics of that makes it a little bit more challenging. But what we're aiming to do and what we have already started doing is incorporating more citywide projects into here like tracking arpa. So this is a. So this is not done, by the way, but this is, this is a mock up with real data. See, we're, we're not shy to, to highlight the red here, right. Because it keeps it top of mind, whatever's red, but then celebrating some of the greens here. So this is part of that tracking. We've incorporated some of our VB stat items in here, but not all the stats. So one thing we're tracking is permits and inspections. So we're collecting that data and capturing it here into a scorecard. And some of our other plans, sustainability plan, We've again, similar to the strategic plan, we've created a splash page for their overarching plan, but then segmented that into separate scorecards for each of the what we call elements or focus areas. So again, this is a mock up. We're not, we're not. It's not fully fleshed out, but it's definitely a working process. But we're. That's. Our aim is to refine what we have, but expand it so that we can incorporate more into this and having that holistic view of all the citywide projects and OPA work as well.

That's great. Do you ever. We got a question also from, from the audience. Do you ever run reports that pull in data from multiple plans so that you could summarize information that may not just live in one of the departments?

We haven't yet. That would be actually a good opportunity to do that for a perhaps a comprehensive year end report that we would actually love to do. That cuts across all three of the programs, AV Stat and performance. So that's actually a great suggestion, but we haven't yet done that.

Yeah. And it's something. Just to make sure I also answer a little bit of that question. It's something certainly easily possible in Clearpoint. And another thing that we've seen people do in Clearpoint is to take the projects that they're reporting on in ARPA and then also link them translating it to Virginia beach language, either to the performance area, you know, VB performance, or into VB strategy, saying, you know, this is where we. Because sometimes people spend money in different ways for arpa. So if it's a particular, you know, easily called out project, you can have it reporting in one area and also report up in ARPA as well. So we still have time for a few more questions. So you've talked about your old process was using Excel and trying to create that master process. And then you view this as a more modern view. Any other benefits you've seen from clearpoint, like are you getting different levels of buy in across the organization?

At first it was challenging to get folks invested into this because as with anything unfamiliar, it takes time, it takes practice, it takes mundaneness into it. Like you have to do it, do it often and then it becomes habitual. So hence the crawl, walk and run. Because this, this office being newly established essentially and using now this new platform from Excel, which everyone is familiar with, takes a little bit of adjustment. So that is still an ongoing process. And we've been refining the look and feel of clearpoint so that it seems more approachable because it can be overwhelming for someone who, who doesn't know what they're doing, of course. So we have these training sessions that go along with it. And clearpoint actually started off with a few training sessions with us, which is really helpful. But the, one of the key features that I liked is the briefing books which we've used for advanced meeting materials. So we would send it out the week before any of the meetings. And that's something that we actually didn't do previously. So it's not about streamlining and process, it's a whole. It's an entirely new rhythm that we've found now, which we really love because it gives folks some time to digest it beforehand, like city manager and senior leadership before the meeting. So it's a more productive meeting because some of the meetings were half an hour, others are an hour and a half. So we want to make sure we make good use of the time.

Yeah, so a question came in because we're using clearpoint acronyms.

Oh, sorry.

The briefing book. So it's a read ahead document, it's exported directly from clearpoint. What is your, what is your typical briefing book? Is it everything you're going to discuss in the meeting? Is it a highlight, like how do you. Or is it different for different departments?

So Essentially the briefing book that we've, we've started using is essentially the what you see in viewing screen of clearpoint. So what I showed you as the departmental department director, the banner with the department director and vision, the highlights, the resource metrics, the expenditures and revenue and then the highlights and challenges progress for the last few months, focus for the next three months. That's all printed out ahead of time so we, we don't have to talk about all of the things. But it's a good starting point for review ahead of the meeting. But essentially it's a, it's a carbon copy of, of what you see on the screen.

Perfect. So no surprises. So one more question came in and then I'm going to ask a wrap up question but you know, you've been talking a lot about like we're doing this and we're doing that and it sounds like the, you know, it's the OPA team. So to what extent are like how many other, I guess we'd say individual or other teams kind of active in clearpoint? Like are you all the puppet master doing all the work or are other people actively in there doing a lot of work?

Oh no, we only. So for the briefing books we print out ahead of time and we send it out to senior leadership. But all the departments have a license so we use them as updaters and so they can actually update an information prior to the meetings and then on a monthly basis as well. So they are active in there. Some are more active than others. I will caveat. But they are all active. They each have a license. We wanted to ensure that we, we get that in place and now we actually just upgraded our license to unlimited license. So we're going to hand out more licenses so that there's redundancy in a good way so that there's a backup for, for those updaters.

Oh, awesome. Well, you showed us a lot of things about what you're doing kind of in the future with, with ARPA and permitting and the sustainability plan. So I can see why you'd be using, you know, a lot more, more licenses coming forward. What, what? So I'll ask this as my final question. Since you've been using clearpoint now for a year. Like what advice would you give someone who was, who was just getting started or even in, in Excel at the moment?

I would say Crawl, Rock and run because it's overwhelming in a good way because there's so many features. So what I wish I had done actually prior to, prior to rolling it out was to earmark even more time with. With clearpoint, our. Our account manager, who's incredibly helpful to plan out the template of what we wanted the DPPs to look like for what we wanted the sanity plan to look like. And that has all. What you saw today was an evolution. It was a refinement along the way, literally up until a few months ago. So I wish we had dedicated time ahead of. Ahead of rolling it out. And it's not that we didn't. It's just being more methodical about it. And timing obviously, was just a factor, but I would say to crawl, walk and run first and not to think that what you're starting off with is the end product because there's so many features in clearpoint, so. And I'm. I don't even. I'm not. I'm not even that well versed in it at this point because there's so many still left to learn.

Yeah. Excellent, tam. Really appreciate your time today. Sharing, sharing the screen, the plans, answering all these questions. We're super appreciative, so thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Have a good rest of your day.

You too. Bye.

Bye.