Planning for a Sustainable Future with the City of Germantown, TN

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our customer interview webinar. Today we are welcoming Dakisha Fondin, budget analyst for the City of Germantown. She will be sharing insight into how their city manages strategy. Interviewing Dakisha 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. I'll pass things on to you, Ted.

Thank you, Jenna. And thank you, Dakisha, for joining us today. Tell me a little bit about yourself and your role at Germantown.

Yes, thank you, Ted, for having me be involved in this interview. First off, I am a senior budget and performance analyst for the city of Germantown in Tennessee. I've been with the city almost eight years. It'll be eight years in October. And as a budget and performance analyst, one of the things that we do is of course, oversee the city's overall budget in the budget process. But we also oversee the performance management piece for the city as part of the everyday operation within the department as well as the strategic plan.

Okay, excellent. So let's kind of start with the big picture. Right. Like how does Germantown think about its strategy as a whole?

I think to one of the best things to sum that up is when the city thinks about strategy, we think about how can we bridge the gap from where we are presently and where we wanted to go when it comes to the future, we have a strategic plan. And that plan looks out 10 to 15 years, but we also look to revise that plan every five years. We recently updated our strategic 2030 plan to our strategic 202035 plan and it was approved by our board of Mayor Alderman. So now we're in the process of just doing the updating across the board, from the website to the community dashboard, all of the documents, and just aligning all of that into one place. So.

So I'm going to slow us down on that particular thing. So your plan, like the new plan, is called the 2035 plan?

Yes.

In four or five years, you'll start the process and create the 2040 plan. So it's not like we wait until the end of 2035, but it's just always looking out in the future. And so how long was that effort just to get from the 2030 to the 2035 plan? Is that a year long process? A six month. What does that look like?

It's a year long process. So one of the things I found unique about the city of Germantown is one thing that we do is see. So we had a steering committee to meet with our city administrator and our marketing team who actually facilitated the whole process. With the steering committee, it was made up of 30 citizens from all different backgrounds. When it comes to career wise, age wise, you had some people, some people that were in there, they were still in high school, but just being able to hear the voice of everybody to make sure that we're not only building a strategic plan, just focus on one area, but to make sure we meet every mark when it comes to our community.

Oh, that sounds great. And then how does this plan then roll down to departments? Like how many departments are in Germantown?

We have, we have 12 department directors. However, within those departments there are other departments like our public works director. He oversees not only public works, but he oversees animal control as well as the state street aid fund, utility fund. So we do have those directors that have those multiple departments. But one of the things that we do here at the certain city of Germantown to ensure that the strategic plan is moving forward is that each one of our department impacts their strategic plan some way. At the beginning of each fiscal year, each department director must submit a business plan. Within their business plans, they have the key performance indicators as well as the action plans. Within that, they are the owner of those key performance indicators, which basically means that they hold the responsibility of ensuring that we're reaching those goals, we're reaching those milestones, that we're making sure that we're putting forth those action plans to ensure that we reach the goal here, here at the city and ensuring that we execute the city wide strategy.

Okay, I'm going to slow us down one more time and say, all right, so at the city level you have this plan that looks out 10 years and it, if I heard you, it's primarily goals like what you're trying to accomplish and where you're trying to improve.

Yes, yes. So it's basically the strategic plan which we have our key performance area. Trying to remember off the top of my head, you think I would know by heart. But I think we have eight key performance areas that our steering committee brought up in their meeting. And within each of those key performance areas, we have objectives, the overarching goals that we want to make sure that we reach and just name one of them that actually lies within our department in cities, services and finance, making sure that all funds are self sustaining. So we want to make sure that we reach that goal. So a part of our responsibility is how are we setting the budget Each year or how we meeting with the departments that are those enterprise funds that supposed to act more like a business or the special revenue funds, how are we working with them to make sure that they're heading towards that goal of being self sustaining, being able to fund all of their expenses and continue to grow, to make sure that they're able to cover their capital or being able to buy a piece of equipment or just their everyday operating costs.

Right, Great, great. So at the city level there are key performance areas. Then at the departments you have key performance indicators that link up to those areas and you have action plans that also live in the live in the departments that link up to those objectives.

Yes, yes, that's correct Ted. So the action plan, when we get down to the department level, that's when those action plans as well as the key performance indicators really come into play because now they are the owners of ensuring that we are going to reach that overall CD strategy goal. And just to even go a little further when it comes to the key performance indicators actually for some departments because some of them are so unique or some of them can be down to the like the actual employee, individual employee level that some of the key performance indicators are actually attached to the individual, the individual employee evaluation like they actually get evaluated because now not only is the director the owner of the action plan or measure, but now the staff that works under them are actually the owner as well. And ensuring that that measure is going to get met, that goal is going to get met.

That's great. So alignment is really key to the city because it sounds like you can link in a lot of cases directly from the enterprise strategy down to departments, down to teams and even individuals.

Yes, I would say alignment is very critical with us being able to see our strategy in each department and to help move forward the city's the city wide strategy. One thing that I learned going through our state level baldry as an examiner is the importance of aligning your processes as well as your system and being systematic across the board when it comes to all things here at your organization. And with knowing how important alignment is has led us to having scorecards for every department. Not just the strategic part of it but but also the operational side. Is it as well? Because sometimes our operational measures feed into the strategic measures to help move the CDY strategy along. And one other thing is one thing that we also do in there is our monthly financial reporting to align some more things within clearpoint as well for us.

That's great. And so just to maybe even restate what you said you had, it sounds like in your key departments and you have all of your other departments kind of linking and aligning to them the way you described one of your directors having kind of multiple departments in there. They have responsibility over all the strategy stuff that's going up to your strategic plan that looks out, you know, 10 to 15 years. But they also are putting, is it in the same plans they're putting in their operational goals or they have a sub plan or for them, having their strategic and operational information in one place is valuable to keep it together like the, the information that links to strategy.

For us, our operational side is like a sub plan. We have the strategic plan that is totally off to itself, but we also have the operational plans because we do have some departments that don't have to report on the strategy side, the strategic plan side. However, their operational measure, their operational goals touches still because just for example, our city court, our city corps, they don't have an actual measure in the strategic plan. However, we have a lot of satisfaction measures around city services. So their operational, everyday, operational does feed into a lot of those satisfaction when it comes to just living here in Germantown or working with the city of Germantown and making sure that they're meeting that goal right there.

No, that's a great way to think about the kind of linking strategy to operations as well. Right. It's like, well, we try to have strategy just, just describe the few key areas that our citizens are telling us are super important. But just because they didn't mention courts doesn't mean that courts can just go off the rails. They're doing critical items that they have to that drive ultimately citizen satisfaction and, and just efficiency and performance across the organization.

Yes. And just to add onto that, not only that, but one thing that of course all cities find important is public safety. So operational measure that our, both fire and police departments have is their response rate and their response rates goes into the strategy plan. Because now you have satisfaction measures for police as well as fire and ems, but you have the crime rate over in police in regards to now debt. Operational measure is feeding into debt as well. Then you have two measures in regards to the loss of different things in fire. When the house catch on fire, were they there in time to help where the house didn't totally go on fire, the whole thing, but were they there to help with that? As well as cardiac arrest, which is very important and very, very important when it comes to response time, making sure that you're getting there in a timely fashion to ensure the Health of the city or resident or visitors who travel through the city of Germantown.

Right. So we'll talk about clearpoint in a second. But I know that it's pretty straightforward to link kind of multiple departments, like your public safety, your fire, your police kind of all in Clearpoint to see like that, the way you talked about public safety there. But do you also have meetings where all the groups are together, kind of talking about the bigger goal and how they all have an impact to it? Or is it something they just see in the software so they can. They can see their linkages?

We actually. One of the things that our city administrators started to do this fiscal year, well, last fiscal year, because we're in a new fiscal year now, was he wanted all of the directors to be on one call where each director reported out on some of their measures within their. Their strategic. Within the strategic plan or their operation. Because he said that he not only want us to find the importance of just your individual department being in that silo and making sure that your department is doing well, but how your department feeds into other departments also, even for us, like City Services and Finance, our operational measures, when it comes to finance and budgeting, we help impact those other measures for other departments because you need the funding, of course, to be able to do the things that you need to do. But being able to get invoices paid to make sure that the vendors are satisfied with your work and want to come back and do more work for you, as well as even the procurement, to make sure everything flows well from a procurement standpoint, that they're able to get bids out on time and all of that type of nature. So even from that standpoint and meeting in a group, we do do that to make sure that all of the directors see just not only what's happening within their department, but also discussing what's happening in all department in the city as a whole.

Yeah, that's great. So let's dig in a little bit more into kind of that performance management process. Right. So just kind of give me an overview. How, like, how often do y' all meet? What, like, is it at department levels or at the city level, kind of what's your. What does the process look like?

So one of the things that we do here at the city, of course, our residents, our customers are very important to us. We love hearing their opinions. Getting the voice of the customers is one of the important things to us. So when we think about performance management, one of the things that we look at is what our customers are basically Wanting most. We figured that out through community surveys. We have commissions here. So the commission meetings are led by citizens as well as of course, social media is big now. So any type of response or sentiments that we see on social media, and we also look at the, from a department level, they meet with our administration staff on a quarterly basis to go over their key performance indicators as well as their action plans to see in regards to, are there, is there a, any areas where they're lagging in? Is there any areas that they need to improve in? Are there areas where they've met that mark and it's time to adjust either the target or adjust their measure all together and just being able to meet with them on a quarterly basis to kind of tweak their action plans if needed, or come up with recommendations of how they can move forward or better that measure if it is lagging.

So when they, when each department does that quarterly meeting, is that like an internal department meeting or like you were describing earlier, are they bringing in others related to particular topics or is that kind of a separate alignment meeting, so to speak?

That's a separate alignment meeting for that. It's usually just the administration staff. So we have city administrator, a deputy city administrator and an assistant city administrator and they meet with those departments. And sometimes departments, they have assistant directors as well or another staff that they want to bring along. So they either bring them along or they just tackle it by themselves. But those are usually the only ones that are sitting at the table at that time. And then for us, from a budget and performance standpoint, of course we're available to the departments at all times when it comes to needing information or help or assistance with performance management. But I, because I am the person that oversees the ClearPoint software altogether, so I discuss performance measurements with all the departments on a monthly basis when it comes to them just needing assistance in regards to analysis piece or knowing how to report a certain measure or anything like that.

Got you. I know you said this earlier and I kind of ignored it until now, but you said you, you also do your financial reporting kind of, you know, the departments do that and since you just brought it up, it reminded me. So is that reviewed as part of that quarterly meeting related to their strategy or is that, like you said, kind of a monthly meeting around their finances or how do those two things interact?

So the, the monthly financial reporting is more of an internal document for the budget staff. So what we do is we meet on a monthly basis, just going over to see how the funding or how the revenues and Expenses are trending and comparing them over previous years to make sure that we're stand line in regards to not lagging when it comes to revenues or anything of that nature. And if we see that, if we are indicated that the revenues aren't flowing in like they should be, then that prompts us to set up. Now we have to set up a meeting with either that department or even, depending on how it looks, setting up a meeting with the administration staff to be able to address what is happening or being able to understand a little more what's happening. Because I actually do the monthly financial reporting. So if I see something, say for instance, our utility fund, if I see something in the revenues that is off, based off previous year data, then I'll contact the director over that department and discuss with them what I'm seeing and if they know any. Whether it's, oh, we had a water leak or is a drought in the city, or it's rainy in the city, and that's why you don't see as much revenues. But being able to have that piece to add to the analysis part, to be able to explain to the team, to be able to address anything, whether or not we may need a rate increase when it comes to those enterprise funds, or if we see sales tax lagging when it comes to the general fund, how can we address those things?

That sounds great. It actually sounds like a good partnership where you can bring in knowledge from a budget standpoint of what might be affecting an external factor that might be affecting the budget and the department can bring in what may be happening inside the department that might be affecting the budget. And so it sounds like a good partnership.

Yes, it is.

So tell me a little bit about life in Germantown before clearpoint and then we'll get into like the benefits you've seen after using clearpoint.

I would say that Excel was definitely our best friend. We actually got clearpoint a year after, after I started with the City. I started with the city in 2015 and we got Clearpoint in 2016. But prior to that they were. Most of them were using Excel to build their reports or build their, or track their performance management. But we also had those departments like mainly Public Safety, that had those local softwares that they use because of course they have to report their stuff to the state and federal level. But now that we have clearpoint, it has definitely helped us because prior to that, when we were using Excel or the departments were using other softwares, it was missing that alignment piece for us and not having that alignment or that Consistency. It was difficult for us on the performance management part of the performance management team to be able to control kind of how they were reporting out those measures because you were seeing so many different types of reporting. Some people will have it in a Word document, some people report out in Excel, or some people will just print a statement from their software. So now being able to have all of that in one central location has definitely been helpful because prior to that it took a lot more time, I would say, especially from the being able to discuss those different reports. Because from a performance management side of things, having to not only control your department, but now being a budget performance analyst, we also have to know what other departments are doing. So you have to understand their software and how to read their reports that they're actually giving out when it's time for their quarterly meeting.

Yeah, sometimes it's just a lot of effort even just to switch your brain to, okay, now they're laying out stuff differently and their charts are different colors and you know, bar charts versus, you know, area charts or something like that.

Yes, especially when, when an employee retire and somebody else come in. Excuse me, when an employer retiring, somebody else come in and they was like, they'll be like, well, I think I want to report it out this way. So now you have to adjust to a whole nother way of how they're reporting out as well.

Personality based reporting, that's what.

Yes, one of the dangers.

So tell me about, so you implemented clearpoint, you know, seven years ago. Like what are some of the, what are some of the benefits that you've seen across the city?

Just, I think the main thing, like I said in the previous question, is having a centralized location where the entire performance management measurement process is not only just for the strategic measures, but also the operational measures as well. Having everything in that one central location has definitely helped the budget and performance team because now we're able to, like I said, we were having to learn so many different reportings. Now we are able to focus on one software, one way of reporting out. In addition, it has made it more accessible as well because of it being a cloud based software. It's made it more accessible to not only the ones that are having to input the information into clearpoint, but as well as the other employees also. And then it's successful at any time. So we're not having to run back to our actual home me work based computer to print out the document or print out the report or pull up Excel, even if we're working from home on our home computer. We're actually able to pull up clearpoint and being able to do any type of changes or work on that information there as well. It has also created consistency for our quarterly reviews. It has definitely streamlined and made it more effective when the departments are meeting with our administrative staff or meeting with the budget performance team to go over their quarterly report. I think one of the biggies for me and one of the things that I've heard across the board from everybody that actually works in clearpoint at the city is time. It has definitely saved us time when it comes to the reviews of the quarterly reviews of the reports. The report preparation is definitely big. The data collection and analysis, it has just been a compliment for us from a performance management piece to be able to have that portion. And it has greatly improved our analysis part as well. Because the prior to getting clearpoint, the analysis piece wasn't handwritten. It was more spoken during their quarterly review. But now you have that piece in clearpoint where they actually have to go in, they actually have to write an analysis. They have to write a recommendation of how they improve or how would they maintain the results that they have. And another thing is the Citizen Dashboard. The Citizen Dashboard has just been helpful for us to be able to lay out and be transparent with our community of how we're doing with our strategic plan, and also has kept us on our toes to make sure that we're not lacking in the strategic when it comes to the strategic plan, but we're constantly moving forward, moving to make improvements, moving to ensure that we're meeting all of the goals in there. So right now we're going through the process of updating our strategic mean, our community dashboard to our 2035 plan. We do still have the 2030 information in there, but we're definitely in the process now of updating it to our updated 2035 strategic plan.

Oh, you just took the question out from the team chat, which was someone had asked, they found there during this interview, they found your 2030 plan and they were asking about your 2035. So I'm glad to hear that it's coming soon, right?

Yes, we're working closely with clearpoint. We're actually going through a redesign because of course, we've changed the colors and all of that nature and updating it with the new measures that we have for the strategic 35 plan because we have changed some of those measures in there. So we'll be updating all of that information.

Yeah, that is such a great answer for all the different things that it's helped with. And I think there are a lot of things that people don't realize on this time savings that you had touched upon in maybe three to four answers, like in the last five minutes, which is, you know, there's so many people that touch strategy reporting overall. Like you have your 12, like department heads that manage more than 12 departments. They all have people trying to add analysis. You're trying to make sure that's high quality. You, you know, and clear Point. It's just the ease of generating a single report when you have turnover. The idea of people not having to decode how a report was built and just have a common process. We're very close to running out of time. So I want to ask you, we'll do some rapid fire, a few rapid fire questions and for anyone that wants to add any questions in the chat, now's the time. You know, people look up to Germantown because you won a Baldrige award, you want to talk a little bit about how that's related to strategy reporting in some sort of way or what that process was like.

Yes. So the city archme, starting with the city, they had already was going forward in regards to the state level. They were actually working towards the state level Baldrige, which is the Tennessee center for Performance Excellence Award. So that is one of the reasons why we look to clearpoint because one of the things they talk about when it comes to performance management, performance excellence is that alignment as well as the deployment piece. And one, those were two things that clearpoint helped us tackle with us winning the state level is that deployment and alignment piece. And then once we won the state level Baldrich Award, we moved forward to apply for the Baldrige Award and clearpoint again, showing how they were able, how we were able to manage our strategy. And we were recognized by Baldrige for that piece as well. So it was definitely an honor as well as a huge team effort when it comes to both of those awards.

Okay, excellent. I know we're out of time. So anything that you're looking forward to, to implementing in the future with clearpoint or any new features you're looking to take advantage of.

Yes, it's actually one, and this actually hits on the time saving as well is that I've heard a lot about the new AI that will help when it comes to the analysis as well as the recommendation piece. I'm pretty sure the departments will enjoy that piece once we get that up and running. So I'm definitely looking forward to the AI and learning more about that and how that can assist us with our strategy.

Okay, excellent. One more thing because we just got one more came in. Can you just give us a quick fax on the population of Germantown and your budget, your annual budget size?

The population of Germantown I believe is 4,000. 1, 3, 3, 3. It's in the low 40,000 range in our budget is when we include everything when it comes to our operational for all our funds, the capital as well as the pension and all of that. It's around 200 million.

Okay, excellent. I think I got more questions in with you than I have with anybody. So thank you for tolerating my rapid fire questions. This was really great. I really appreciate you sharing everything that Germantown is doing.

No problem. It was definitely an honor to be here and to be able to interview with you today, Ted.

Okay, thank you to Keisha and bye everybody.

Bye.