Fostering Transparency and Community Engagement in the City of Bartlett

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our customer interview webinar. Today, we are welcoming Steve Sones, the Chief Administrative Officer for the city of Bartlett. He will be sharing his insights into how their city manages strategy. Interviewing Steve 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 without further delay. Ted, I'll go ahead and pass things on to you.

Thanks, Jenna and Steve, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Bartlett and yourself?

Yeah, sure. So. So Bartlett is a suburb right outside of Memphis, about 60,000 people, technically, I guess the 11th largest here in Tennessee. So I've been with the city for 22 years. Sounds like a long time to say that, but. So in this current position, since January of last year, and prior to that, I was a police officer, most recently working as the assistant chief of police before moving over into this position.

Great. So when you moved into this position, what was strategy like at Bartlett?

Yeah, so previously our mayor, who retired, like I said, last January, he'd been here for 20 years. His CEO had been here for an additional 12. So their plan, that long term plan that they had in place, was expiring. So you have a new administration and ultimately you can't get out of ship without a compass. So the goal was to get in and develop what the strategy would be for Mayor Parsons and his administration going forward.

Okay. And so just to clarify, for everyone else, like a CAO is a chief Administrative officer. It's similar to a city manager, but in a strong mayor situation.

That's exactly right. Yes, sir.

Okay, so. So you had this goal of building that new strategic plan. How long did it take?

The goal was one year, and we were shy about a month. But so of course, there's a lot that goes into play. Right. So one, we needed to find a partner to help us. There's a lot of data collection that needs to happen in regards to the public. So locally, the University of Memphis here was willing to do that. We partnered with them, with which was free, by the way, so that's obviously a nice advantage. And then ultimately you started shopping best practices. So we have an adjacent community here, the city of Germantown, who's been using clearport for quite some time. So we met with them and kind of talked through how they were using it and what they were doing. And although ours may be slightly different, it's pretty. That same model, pretty Much that same model. So we had a lot of excellent directors that were already in place. So ultimately you took what the directors are wanting to see, what the mayor and our board of alderman wanted in their vision and ultimately what those survey results said, and tried to bundle that all together to have one an internal dashboard to process and track what we're doing and then ultimately something that we can show the public not only to justify the end goal, but, but also to justify the budget and, you know, where we're spending those tax dollars.

So you got, you went from zero to a public facing dashboard in a year.

Yep, 13 months. I'm not gonna, I have to be honest. 13 months. But yes, in 13 months we did it.

So it seems really fast. I mean, I know you're a no nonsense person, but you know, what were some of the keys to making it go so fast?

Well, I think first was, I guess, kind of understanding the hiccups you'd faced before. Right. So in late 2019, the city hired a consultant and the aim was to do exactly what we just did. Right. And of course we all know what happened in March of 20. So as we were working through that process, once Covid hit, everything just kind of put on pause. Like, I mean, everything just stopped. And once we got back to normal, we pretty much just used that template that we had before. So ultimately you're, you're kind of sending in some things, all of which is via email. It became rather mundane. So you already knew walking in the door that you're going to face some kickback. Right. Because of what the previously what we had done, everybody was not really necessarily a fan of the process that we had in place, but ultimately it was trying to get everybody on the same page. And some was kicking the screaming. I'm not, I'm not going to lie. But, but the other part was, was also just showing them that you're using it too. Right. And, and you're going to be in there, you're going to be setting out goals. And when we come in and do these quarterly meetings to see where everybody's progressing, I'm going to show you where you're at. You're going to show me where you are. And we've kind of all bundled that together. So I think. So we're not working in silos. I think if there was. The biggest thing that I would say previously is you had everybody doing all these great things, but all in their own little separate entities. And I think what clearpoint and what ultimately the strategic plan helped us do is bring all that together.

Okay, so you have a, I imagine a citywide strategy and then you have 11 departments.

Yes, 11 departments. Yes.

And so do you have all 11 departments have their own strategic plan or what do they call it there is those business plans or how do you think about it at the department?

Yeah, so basically we took an overall agenda. So we have our overall long term plan which is available. I mean you can actually look at it on that external site. And, and then everybody has their own piece in that plan. And within that piece, you know, KPIs, OKRs, whatever acronym you want to use, they have several objectives. Now some of those are things that you'll never see in the long term plan. You know, they're internal goals that they're working on within their department and others are those that are probably more germane to their overall mission. Right. So like the mayor's office. I could use us as an example. Like we have several projects that we're working on right now. Those projects will, will ultimately expire and there'll be new ones that develop. But making sure that the citizens are satisfied with the services they're getting, making sure that Bartley is a great place to live. These are the things that we're going to track long term and we can implement things over time to help improve that experience for people.

Okay, and you talked about quarterly meetings. Are you meeting with every department each quarter or that department's having meetings on their own? Like what is it, what does it, what does it look like or feel like if you're in a department?

Yeah, so I mean we'll do, we call them, you'll do like a weekly check in period. You know what I mean? There's always something going on in which you're conversing with one of the directors. But from a, I guess formally we have, we have quarterly meetings. And so through clearpoint we use that automation feature that is built in. So basically between the 1st and the 15th of every month, we're asking those departments to go in and do just a little upgrade on the process. So just kind of tell us where they are. Personally, it takes me about 45 minutes to an hour. It's not anything that's crazy, it's just updating what I've got going on and then we'll meet every quarter. So we're fixing to do our first quarter meetings now. I actually have my first one tomorrow. We'll start those first quarter meetings and really when they come in, we'll show them how we're progressing. We'll discuss how they're progressing and then just, what are the pitfalls? You know what I mean? What's going well, what's not going well, what we can do to help you get to there. And is there anything else that we need to be tracking that we're not? I think that's the other thing is, you know, well, we're working on this, we're working on that. Well, that sounds important. Why is that not in Clearpoint? You know, unless, and if it isn't, let's get it in there. It might not be directly related to the overall mission, but ultimately it's going to advance that department.

Yeah. Good to hear your first quarter meetings are coming up. Our internal first quarter meeting is actually this Thursday, so.

Okay. Well, there you go.

Yeah, we're on the same, we're on the same timeline, so. So I know you said it wasn't all smooth sailing and that, you know, you got to get 11 departments in one year kind of moving on a process. Any tips or tricks to pulling people along that are maybe a little more resistant?

Well, I mean, it's change. It's. And I think anytime you've tried, you know, drastic change within a group, like, there's going to be kickback. And, you know, I, I, I say nobody likes change. I love change. But that doesn't mean that, you know, I'm probably an anomaly when it comes to that. So getting everybody behind and understanding what we're doing was tough in the beginning. I think ultimately you're able to show them what the overall mission is. And, and you made it a little light too, right? I mean, so it's not, I say light, but we had a, I don't know what you call it, like a little social event with all of our directors a couple weeks ago. So we're all going to meet at a pickleball place. We're going to play pickleball together. We had like a little leadership person get up there and talk, and the fire chief made a remark about, you know, it sounds like something that should go in Clearpoint. He's making fun of me because that's what I always say. Right? So you're getting, you're, you're creating culture. I guess, ultimately, not to be cheesy, but that's really what you're trying to do. You're trying to create a culture that wasn't really there before. Sometimes it takes again, a little kicking and streaming and pulling, and then the other time, it's just understanding that it is a process. It's going to take time and some are going to be more resistant or have more difficult, more difficulties with it than others. But as long as we're pulling in the right direction and you can get them behind that, and I think that's where we are now, it's much smoother.

Right? No, it sounds great. Sounds like you're, you're at least putting strategy at the, the front of everyone's mind as they kind of work through their, their daily jobs. Do you want to. Well, can we see some of it? Can we see like, like how the magic happens at Bartlett?

Yeah. So the first one I'll show you is. Can you see my screen?

We can.

All right, so this is what is the mayor's dashboard. So when we come to one of those quarterly meetings that I was talking about, like, this is kind of what we'll see. So you see the snapshots just like anybody has already. And then ultimately there's a department overview. Now you'll notice like the long term plan is finished. Right. The external dashboard went live March 1st, but I'll tell them that. And then when we go through next month and I'll archive it, you know what I mean? We'll have something else that will end up popping up. Streetlight conversion projects. We did so got some EOC grant funding, but everything is in here to kind of show them where we are. And then we use this kind of after action. So. And everybody probably does this differently. This is just how we do it. But the after action is more, okay, where, where were our struggle? Where were our trouble spots? So what do we have? So street conversion project is behind, you know, why is it behind and what can we do to help it out? Though we're doing currently an employee survey. So we finished the survey of the public. Now we want to see where the, where our employees are, what we could do to kind of enhance their environment. So we're working through that right now. Now, I actually did delete this one beforehand. We do a. Just so I didn't show every economic development thing we have coming to the city, but we use this project update meeting as a way for us to track every month. We'll have planning and codes and engineering come in. It will really just talk about what's on the horizon. So, you know, X is coming to town. Where are we at on that status, whatever. And then we use that as kind of like a meeting meeting notes, if you will. And we go back and kind of check those out and then just really everything is here already. So you got all those things that are already here, your analysis recommendations. Again, like I said before, we would archive this after the first quarter meetings. I kind of notate that. Just giving them an update of where we are. And then the other two that you didn't see up top are those two. I kind of mentioned them before, but satisfaction with City services and satisfaction with Barlow as a place to live. So I'll click over to this. So now this is our external dashboard and these are kind of our focus areas that are all down here. So every department has something. So finance, obviously, and Economic Vitality has a ton of stuff that's under this category. But for the mayor's office and the ones I just showed you, community engagement is typically where we are. So the public can simply click on this, they can scroll down to either or, and it kind of just gives you a progress update of where we are. So currently, satisfaction with city services is 87%. Our aim is 90. So we'll, we'll survey the public again in the fall of this year and try to update those annually. So, you know, some things is like, how are we going to improve this? Right. Might be a question. Well, just simply updating our website, you know what I mean? Getting things a little more user friendly. We're implementing, based on some of the survey results we got, we got rid of one software, we're implementing another software to make business licenses and all those onboarding processes a lot better. So if you're a developer and you're coming in, it's very easy for you to go do this. You want to pay your water bill, like you've got an automated way to do this. It's a little bit cleaner than it was before. So just simply removing some redundancies, we'll see how effective we are. Obviously, at the end of the year.

You'Re only 3% off on your satisfaction.

Yeah, it's not where we need to be, though. We gotta, we gotta get there. And then Bartlett, with a, as you know, is basically a good place to live. So 94% of respondents, you know, voted. Bartlett is excellent or a good place to live. But the things that we noticed in areas that we want to improve out of there is like, what they really lacked was things to do. So we got affordable homes, we got a good school system, we got a safe community, but what we need is things for people to do. So we've got Food Truck Fridays and summer fitness series and a summer concert series that will all be starting in May, kind of staggered throughout the summer and leading into October. So the goal, while we're worried, economic development unfortunately doesn't happen overnight. I wish it did. I wish you could just call X company and they just open up a business and it'd be that easy. It just takes time. So in the interim, you know, what could we do as a city to kind of give our community more things to do? And this is one way we're trying to do that.

Excellent. And I saw it. Is that where like, results from working with the University of Memphis?

Yeah. All these are based on those results? Yeah, yeah, sorry, Ted, I mean, to cut you off. Yeah, all these are based on results. So this is basically what the survey results yielded. And, you know, this is obviously something we need to track. Right. We want to make sure that people are happy with Bartlett as a place to live and ultimately want to live here. So whatever we can do to advance that narrative, we want to do now.

We see a lot of organizations, you know, say, oh, well, I'm going to get like a clear point, you know, for my city up and running in the first year. In the second year, I'm going to focus on my departments and maybe the beginning of year three, so 24, 25 months in, I'm going to focus on a public facing dashboard. You got all this in and in, in one year. So, you know, is that from your, you know, police background and your ability just to GSD and I, I really.

I really don't know, to be honest with you. I had nothing to compare it to. So, you know, I mean, you come from the police side of like, we set a goal. What would be realistic? We thought one year was realistic and we did everything we could to get it done. So there was no metric. You know what I mean? Had you, you know, had you said before, well, it's typically a three year process. Well, maybe we would have been so fast, but actually, you know, we would have, we still would have been fast because this is one of those things that I don't believe you can lead anywhere, you can get anywhere unless you know where you're actually going. And everybody's got to be on board to do that. So, you know, putting off or delaying or whatever, you know, yes, it was a lot of work. Yes, it's fluid. You know, it's not going to be this pretty little perfect picture is going to fit in a box and be simple. But if you can leverage the relationships with what you have, which is what we did with the University of Memphis, and then ultimately use clearpoint. And I'm not saying this is a sales pitch. But like Marissa who was there with us in onboarding, she was pushing us, you know, we gave her the goal and she was pushing us to meet our benchmarks. And then once we got that internal dashboard set, the next piece was taking those survey results and basically forwarding them all into that long term plan. And that's where DeAndre comes in. So they're setting dates and goals for you, just like you're setting for your team. And ultimately I think that's what brought it together. It was like, look, this is our goal, like this is where we're going to be. And it still irks me that we were one month off, I'm not going to lie. But you know, we got it done. But, but again, I think they're prompting, you know what I mean, that you know, you got somebody back there also supporting you on the back end too helps. So doing, even doing check ins, like, I know that I've got to talk to Marissa today or DeAndre today and I got to tell them where we are. So I got to make sure that I've done my part to get, get there. And so I'm happy with the way it worked out. But the goal for us is to use it and not just let it sit. And I think that's the one thing that I want to make sure doesn't happen. It's easy to do all this work, you know, and then basically say, okay, good, we did it, we got it. Well, no, this is a living, breathing document. It's always going to change. So we've got to work together.

Yeah. One of the things that I saw in there that I really liked on your, your internal dashboard and it kind of gave me some indication of how you got there so quickly is it was structured, but it was also structured like a report that someone would be familiar with. Like, give me an executive summary, tell me what you're doing next. Like, tell me what the problems are. Like, it was, it was text heavy in the sense that it was something someone would be reporting up to their manager anyway. And then you broke down that executive summary. You know, you didn't show me 40 key objectives. You showed about five key objectives. And then you showed tell me what happened this last period and what are we doing next? So, so the approach, you know, like it's, it's still impressive that you get 11 departments working kind of all together, you know, in six to eight months before you even get that dashboard built. It's. It you took, I think what would be something that's like I could imagine and maybe this isn't the way it works. So correct me where it's different. I could imagine you saying to a department head, you're reporting it anyway. We're just going to provide a little bit more structure to that report and give you a way to see your history and we can all now have a common template or something like that.

That's exactly how you sold it. Like, like again, everybody's working in their own little groups. You know, we all have got a million different things going on, but the more information we could put in here, like ultimately it's the same thing with like I just described the long term plan like I'm there to support you too, right? So what can I do to help you get where you need to get now? Sometimes that's money, you know what I mean? I mean sometimes I say, yeah, I just need cash and I can get this done. Well, that's not always so easy. I wish it was, but, but I mean like what can we do to help facilitate a way for you to complete your objectives and, and keep moving forward? And, and I, I think the whole, you know, KISS method, right, I mean, let's keep it simple. And I think that probably was a little police stuff, you know what I mean? I mean that's what you do. And after action meetings you kind of go over what happened and that template was something I was familiar with. So it's an easy way to communicate that to them. But it was also easier to get buy in because it's not so, you know, I guess cumbersome. It's just a simple little deal. You're basically just giving me an update of where you are, some of which we probably already talked about. But it's a way to refresh my memory if I need to, just to keep everything current and I guess the most, the most current really, probably the best way to put it, just the most current as possible.

No, it's great. Were you able to see opportunities for better alignment across the departments? Like once you get everyone into a common template, so to speak, or common reporting structure, I imagine you're like, oh, wait a minute, maybe we should get these couple of departments together.

Well, that's the whole reason for that project meeting. So I mentioned that that one little piece that I kind of took out of there just so I didn't divulge everything we had in the hopper. Like, you know that planning and engineering and code are working hand in hand on projects including our fire marshal's office, which I left them out, but you bring all of them together. Like, you know, how could we bring all them together to talk? And, and ultimately that's what we're doing now. We're doing it formally in a meeting, right, to go over everything. But, and then we're basically just taking those notes and putting them into clearpoint as a reminder. But there's always takeaway items in there too. So, you know, if you're the director of planning, well, you need to call X and you need to follow up on this. And so all those things are layered in there too. So when we come back to that next meeting, it's like, all right, what happened with this one? You know what I mean? We clearly know that, you know, Ted, as the planning director was supposed to call whoever and get an update on, you know, whatever happened. And so we can use all those things also as a way to just make sure we're staying on task and ultimately make sure that we're moving forward.

And I saw, or at least I heard you say you send out like an automated monthly reminder, but you only meet with them quarterly. So during those, I know you do some regular check ins, but do you kind of check in at the end of the, of the reporting period and say, look, it looks like you didn't get in there. You might want to.

That would be the only thing. Like you got to do it. You, you know, sometimes it's not that. That would be the one thing that I think takes a little time and it doesn't, you know, which departments. And I'm not, you know what I mean? I'm not like, you know, where your laggards are going to be a little bit when it comes to that. But I give it a once over. I'm not trying to, you know, inundate them with a bunch of emails about, you know, make sure you get your updates in or whatever. They're already getting those. But it's not, it wouldn't be, not unheard of for us to have a, a check in, call about something and me ask how they're coming, you know, in clearpoint because I noticed it, you know, wasn't updated yet. So you try not to push them too hard. I mean, that's not the aim here. The aim is to get everybody on the same page and work for, and work together. Usually if there's some, if there's some issues, you'll deal with it in the quarterly. But like I said, I think, I think those are behind us. I mean, like we did have that in the beginning, you know, and it was more so just not understanding, you know, maybe what the aim was, what, what you're needing, or just getting familiar with the software, you know, sometimes that's. The other piece is just, you know, getting in there and just kind of playing around a little bit and seeing what you need to do. Which is another reason why you kept it simple. Because if we, you know, if we layered all this stuff in there, it's just going to make it more complicated. So I don't, I mean, honestly, we don't really have that issue as much now as we did in the beginning. But yes, I do still kind of glance over it every month, just see how everybody's doing. And some people have some big projects. So as opposed to, you know, maybe making a phone call about something we just talked about last week, but I knew they were doing it, I might check in and just kind of see how it's going. Especially if it's the end of a month.

Right. So if the mayor's new, this must seem normal, you know, to him. But you, you have probably some longer term alderman, which, for, for anyone who doesn't have aldermans, like a city council, like, have you gotten reactions from them or reactions from. From others who've been there for a while who are, like, who, who kind of see the, the change? And is it like, what do you hear?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know a lot, I say a lot. But some of your alderman, some of our aldermen are retired. They came from, you know, the corporate world. And so their question is, well, why weren't we doing this already? You know, I don't have an answer for that. This is what we're doing, you know, and, and of course, they played a part in all of this as well. So, you know, we, we leaned on them, we had several workshops, work sessions with them to not only convey the survey results, but ultimately to get their feedback on the direction that we needed to go. Because, I mean, the other part of this strategic plan is to use the data that we've compiled. And what ultimately the city wants is when I come to you and say, hey, look, we need to fix this sewer problem, you know what I mean? And it's going to cost X, but it's going to open up all of this and how that, how important that is to our overall infrastructure. I think you don't. I ain't got to do a whole lot of selling, you know what I mean? The selling's already been done. They've seen where we're going. They know what's on the horizon? This is not new to them, so it's a little cleaner when you're trying to get big things done that you might consider to be a pretty heavy lift because it's already laid out.

No, that's great. So you accomplished a lot in year one. What do you have planned for 2024 with Clearpoint, really, with your strategic planning process overall?

Yeah. So the employee survey, I'd mentioned that before, that's a big deal. So University of Memphis, again, they're doing that as well. I do. Or just got the results back actually, Friday. I've got a meeting with them today at one to go over those results, but that's definitely going to be some additional layers. Right. Based on just the preliminary results, I know there's going to be some things that we'll want to kind of improve upon and those will be goals for us to continue to track. The other part is, you know, so the public, and our alderman, because we had a few new aldermen as well, wanted to make sure that the public had access to everything and so did the mayor. So we made a point to get this website up for the public to come view. But ultimately we haven't had a lot of traction to it and we pushed it. I mean, we're constantly pushing on social. You're trying to drop it in. So I want to also push people there to see what's going on in the city as well. So paving is one big concern. A lot of people bring that up all the time. So we're working on a GIS map that ultimately we could link through, through clearpoint to where you could see if you live on this street. You know, yes, we'll be paving, you know, on X or you know, that you're slated to be paid later this year, whatever. So we can kind of maybe update some of those things to help. And then there's a new feature I've been talking to DeAndre about and we haven't implemented yet. We're going to go about go over it in these quarterlies, but basically just using AI. There is an AI system that's currently available in clearpoint. I've only played with it once, I'd be honest. So, I mean, I want to get in there and kind of show them how that would work, but it looked like it basically just takes you're currently doing and kind of puts it into a format for you, which might streamline some of the stuff that they're trying to do monthly. So that might help a little bit. Just to get the. That little last bit of buy in that we're looking for.

No, that's great. The clearpoint's got some great ability to embed gis on the inside, and then when you publish it, it would also stay published. So that should be pretty straightforward. And as you said, the AI stuff, what we see it really helpful with is some people are just really good at reading spreadsheets and kind of looking at dense data, and then other people love just to read the prose part of it, and the AI can help translate that and also find some insights in there for you. So one last question. If you were just getting started with this, if you could rewind the clock, I'll say 13 months rather than 12 months. You know, what kind of advice would you give somebody who's, who's just getting started, just with, well, you can do. You can answer both just with strategic planning and then also with. With clearpoint.

I think with strategic planning is to be open. I think sometimes you go into those processes with a very narrow view of what you think should be accomplished. So we took a little different approach. We wanted to be open. Like, not only did so, you know, the mayor and we had. We have six aldermen, but three of them had just been elected. So you had a fresh set of voices that were coming in saying, this is what the community's asking for. We also had a dozen directors, you know what I mean, across the city that had been here for umpteen years, and they knew what they needed to get done internally as well. So we brought both of those together and then ultimately used the University of Memphis to vet it. Right. So you go in there and you tell us what we think is the most important, as opposed to just going, nope, this is what we know the community wants. This is what we're going to do. I think your strategic plan needs to be built around all of that to make sure it encompasses everything that's necessary. And then as far as clearpoint goes, I think the goal is just to be persistent, be persistent, be fluid, and ultimately leave from the front. Like, I don't. I think nobody likes to be asked to go do something and then, you know, that person is not doing it. I think the point is to, you know, show them what the system can do. Like, I mean, sometimes I think when we had quarterlies and we were getting started, I was acting as like, I work for clearpoint and I'm Marissa, and I'm showing somebody how to do something because they were still trying to figure it out. So, but the fact that I was able to do that I think helped. You know, it wasn't, I wasn't, it wasn't just lip service. I wasn't telling you, you know, this is what I want you to do. I'd been in there and done it, I've been playing with it. I knew how to do it. So I think that helped to show them that everybody was on the same page. And I think ultimately it has brought us together and not, you know, Clearpoint, the long term plan, et cetera. You know, you don't hear many government entities doing training, you know, team building exercises, and I don't think we would have been able to do that in previous years. And it's. No, it's nothing negative. You know what I mean? It's just, you know, you were able to. Ultimately, what you're trying to do is build a team and that team can't work if, if the right hand doesn't know what the left hand's doing. So Clearpoint helped bring all that together and, and so did that long term plan. So it's, it's worth the effort, but it is going to be effort now.

That's great, that's great, great advice. And Steve, I really appreciate you taking the time with me today. I look forward to seeing the Bartlett Clearpoint pickleball team.

Yeah, yeah. Much to say. Yeah, it won't be much to say for sure.

Thank you again for your time today.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Ted. Y' all take care.