Strategy Implementation: How to Achieve Organizational Buy-in

It looks like we are at the top of the hour, so I just want to say good afternoon. We want to welcome you to today's strategy implementation, how to achieve organizational buy in virtual event. So that's a lot to say in one sentence, but we are thrilled that you're here. I'm Laura Chandler with clearpoint. We make the leading strategy and performance management reporting software for local government. We are here today with two of our clearpoint community members, Natalie Evans, Management Analyst with city of Edmond, Oklahoma, and Chris Kelly, Health Information Manager with Johnson County, Kansas. Thank you so much for joining us. We're super excited about it. Also joining me today is my colleague, Laura Dillon, who will serve as technical support. So before we begin, Laura, would you mind taking a moment to go over a few housekeeping items for us?

Definitely. So we'll save a recording of today's discussion so you can revisit what you learn and even share it with your network later. Your microphones and conference phones are automatically muted as participants and your videos are also turned off. And we encourage you to participate by putting your questions or sharing any information in the chat box.

Awesome. Thanks, Laura. So today each speaker is going to provide a 15 to 20 minute presentation on their organization's journey to achieving organizational buy in. And you will get to hear about their successes and challenges. And these are two very different approaches and so we're very excited about this. We will launch into questions and Q and A with the audience at the end, but we do want to encourage you that as the speakers are doing their presentations, feel free to put your questions in the chat and we'll try to even address questions throughout our time together today. So is everybody ready to get started? Yes. Yay. Okay, let's begin with a quick poll of the audience. So I'm going to ask the audience to consider the following statement. All levels of my organization are bought into the strategic vision and understand how they fit into it. You can answer strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree. So I'm going to give you a few minutes to, well, a few seconds to answer this question. Ah, so it's really. We've got some great answers. It's all over the map. So we've got a great mix of folks here today. Just give it a few more seconds and let's go ahead and share the results. So we have about 20% of the audience who says they strongly agree. That's fantastic. 40% somewhat agree, 20% somewhat disagree, and then 20% strongly disagree. So we have a real mix here today. So it's good to see those results. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to the experts. I'll just kick it over to Natalie. Natalie, you want to kick us off?

Yes, thank you. And I hesitate to be called an expert about this because probably one of the reasons I was asked to share is I'm constantly asking clearpoint for advice about how do we develop engagement, how do we develop buy in? And that's because we've been really intentional about trying to build that up in our organization. I am delighted to be here today and share some of our practices that we found effective. I'm also really excited to learn from Chris as well. I know he's a wealth of information. So just a little bit about me and the city of Edmond. I'm a management analyst here, so probably like many of you, developing our strategic plan is one of my many responsibilities. I'm sure we all wear many hats. I'm within the city manager's office and Edmond is a suburb of around 95,000 residents. We have around 800 people on our staff. So that's a little bit of context about our organization and who we are. Okay, so organizational buy in, that's kind of a big topic. So I thought today it might be good if we kind of set a baseline for what we talk about. Whenever we're talking about engagement and buy in, ultimately it's all about trying to help our employees and our organization see the value. They have to see the value in this initiative or else no one's going to want to work on it. No one's going to care. So it kind of comes down to the second bullet point, what's in it for me? And that's where we really try to frame strategic planning as a tool for departments. It's a communication tool. It's a project management tool. It's a great way to learn about all the great projects that are happening within the city. We're showing what can be achieved whenever we have alignment. We're showing what can be achieved whenever we have coordinated communication. And ultimately we're trying to gather support and participation of our staff gathering. That participation leads to the big goal of employee engagement. How do we get employees engaged beyond just their day to day tasks, but in the overall vision and mission of our organization? So a little bit about our strategic plan. Formerly we had a system where we had these large quarterly progress reports and a little bit of an indication of what was included in these reports. I formally worked for our city clerk's office and included in some of our reporting were numbers of open records, requests that had been received, the number of permits that had been processed. They were really things that were outside of our mission or any goal. It was just reporting on things that were kind of outside of our control. There was no continuous improvement mechanism. There wasn't really anything that was contributing to the success of the department. It was just reporting for the sake of reporting. So because of this, it was identified as a stop doing within the organization. Fortunately, we have really great leadership here, really receptive to direction of our management staff. But we didn't just want to do away with any form of process improvement mechanism. So we did what is really common in government. We formed a committee that would provide direction. So for those of you that work in government, this might be pretty relatable to you. We established a group of representatives from multiple departments, mixture of managers, frontline employees, to help us build out what our strategic planning process would be. And this really was the first step in building that buy in, because we really relied on all levels of the organization to help us determine what this strategy would look like. So this internal process for strategic planning, it was really dependent on our departments. We wanted this to be something that each department had ownership over, rather than management telling them what to do. So through a collaborative process, we developed seven organizational priorities and 11 key initiatives. This is what set our unified purpose, set our alignment for the organization. Within these organizational priorities and strategic initiatives, each of our 22 departments sets their own goals. So we want them to tell us what they want to work on, what they want to improve. Through this process. We also identified, identified that we needed to track these goals in a really streamlined manner. So this is where clearpoint comes in. This was our introduction to clearpoint. It allows us to track things in a consistent way and provide all departments access to a unified portal. So the goal is alignment and purpose. So that is developed through these organizational priorities and strategic initiatives. Again, this is the goal. Previously, this is what it really looked like. Here's the overall purpose for the organization. This big green arrow. Each department's kind of working on their own goals, their own strategies, without any unified purpose. Whenever we're focusing on the alignment of those strategic initiatives, we try to really set this direction that we're all working towards those same priorities. So, so this is a visual that we like to show to two departments. It kind of just provides a nice visual. We're all moving in the same direction. So again, alignment is the goal. The reality oftentimes is this, and this is a visual that we like to share with our departments whenever we talk to them about strategic planning. Because a lot of days, whenever you're taking calls from residents and you're trying to put out fires, sometimes literally it can look like this. Running around with your hair on fire. Strategic planning is really an opportunity to step aside from the day to day craziness and really focus on what is the overall thing we're trying to achieve. So that hair on fire this past year has looked like a record breaking ice storm in our community whenever our trees had not lost their foliage. So nearly a million cubic yards of tree debris was collected. It looks like power outages, it looks like road closures. And in this past year, it looked like a safety campaign as a result of COVID 19. So all of these things are unanticipated things that we have to deal with on a day to day basis. So how do we step aside from this and really focus on that strategy? So for us, it goes back to our mission statement. Our city mission statement is trustworthy service through continuous improvement. And that's really what strategic planning is. It's all about continuous improvement. So this is a term that we constantly talk about. When we talk about setting goals, when we talk about strategic initiatives, it all comes back to continuous improvement. So whenever we communicate the importance of strategic planning, we focused on aligned vision and purpose. We focus on the fact that it's a tool to establish accountability, develop timelines and achieve success. Some of the key principles of project management. We look at it as an opportunity for collaboration, communication tool, and ultimately process for improvement, which all comes back to our mission statement. So for us, the three core strategies for engagement all come back to communication, clarification and celebration. So communication, it has to be a regular part of the conversation. It can't be a plan that we developed five years ago that sits on a shelf. And we never address with our staff some of our communication strategies that we've implemented, which we've been very intentional about. Every quarter, whenever departments submit their reports, we have an in person or previously in person now with COVID a virtual meeting where we check in with all departments. This is an opportunity to communicate about progress on goals, updates to our process and celebrate those successes. We also upload all quarterly reports onto our employee page. This makes it accessible to every single employee in our organization. This also gets emailed out by our city manager to all staff. In that email, he highlights accomplishments in departments, celebrates our departments on their successes. Coming back up to this one, I also send a monthly email to all of our point People in departments. These are our frontline connectors, the ones that are collecting data, reporting in clearpoint. We also developed a video that highlights successes from our strategic plan and also recaps the intention behind strategic planning. It's a really great introductory video that talks about the purpose behind strategic planning. Really easy to understand. It all talks about tackling those challenges and finding improvements. We also have work to clarify and provide clear expectations. And with those clear expectations, we communicate those on a regular basis. And this last one's really key. Whenever we talk about turnover within departments as early as possible, whenever a new department head or a new point person in a department has been added on staff, I set up a meeting to meet with them early on where we talk about the purpose behind strategic planning and our expectations. So we have the chat feature that's available. So if any of you have any communication strategies you'd really like to champion things that have been successful to you, I'd encourage you to include that in the chat. And maybe, Laura, we can share that in a little bit so that communication leads to engagement. Like I said, it can't be a document that sits on a shelf and gets forgotten. Some of our engagement strategies have included just trying to bring more people to the table. This isn't something that sits just within management department. This is something where we're trying to empower our frontline employees to have a voice as well. So whenever we're going around to departments on an annual basis and setting goals, we try to incorporate as many strategies to involve our frontline employees to. If we're having a meeting with the department, we don't want to just meet with the department head. We want to meet with the whole staff, if possible. And then we really encourage departments to align departmental goals to individual performance goals. So as an example, whenever I was in the city Clerk's office, we identified a need to update our records retention policy. That was something that was also identified on my individual performance goals. So for me, that gave me ownership over something that contributed to the department as well. And last but not least, it really comes back to celebrating successes. Next up, I want to talk about clarification. We have to make this an accessible process. So we try to use terminology that is already known to the organization. This establishes a baseline. So we talk about continuous improvement. We talk about tackling challenges that exist in the department. We talk about backburner projects rather than getting caught up in terminology like key performance indicators or measurements or initiatives. Yes, those are terms that are critical to developing our plan. But whenever we're talking to frontline staff or managers, we try to boil it down to not overcomplicating, using known terminology. One thing that was identified to us is that staff wanted more clear expectations of what was expected from them whenever it comes to strategic planning. So whenever we outlined these expectations, we tied them to our core values. So one of our core values is accountability. So we tried to tie it to terms that they're already familiar with, expectations they know already exist. So next I'm going to talk about celebration. And this really should be the easiest part, but it's a really good reminder that whenever we encourage people about successes that they've had, it just really emphasizes the importance of what it is that we do. So at every check in meeting that we have on a quarterly basis, we have a whole portion dedicated to recognizing departments on their improvements. So we'll reach out to about three to five departments, ask them to share about something they're proud of from their strategic plan. We've also found this is a really great way to communicate what's going on in the city. We get a lot of positive feedback after these check ins where a department will say, I had no idea that Stormwater Engineering developed this app. That's so cool.

Cool.

So it's also a good communication tool. We also encourage our departments regularly to recognize those successes and then always tie that back to their departmental goals and strategic plan. So I wanted to show some examples of celebrating successes. Over here on the left, we have a little short video from our marketing department. They were celebrating their fiscal year successes that they had on their goals and they sent this video to us with their final report. Then over here on the right, our utilities department had a goal to do 200 energy audits. You can see it says 238 energy audits. They had accomplished their goal and had a little donut party to celebrate developing engagement. It can be challenging. It's a tough question, but ultimately, seeing that progress, celebrating those successes, it really reminds us why we do this work. We have to be really intentional about it though. And for us, we've found that the best way to do that is through consistent communication, clarification and in celebrating successes. Laura I don't know if we're able to share these slides afterwards, but I included a few helpful links that I found really valuable. Some links about developing strategic plan and then also communicating. And I'll throw my communication information up here. If you'd like to reach out, contact me, send me an email. I'd love to share you some of the resources and tools that we've developed for departments. But like I said, I'm just really excited to be sharing with you today and hopefully answer some of your questions.

Thank you so much, Natalie. Oh my goodness. I have so many questions of my own so I'll try to save those till the end of the presentations. But I love your discussion around how you began with this diverse committee and really invested the time and your departments actually having ownership. I think that's such an amazing strategy and I particularly love that you tied expectations to core values and then the terminology, really creating that common language and your mission statement, trustworthy service through continuous improvement. That is fantastic. I love it. So I'm sure there are going to be others that have questions. I know I do. So, but before we get into questions, why don't we turn it over to Chris? Chris has a very different approach on how organizational buy in sort of spread through there through Johnson County. So I'm excited for Chris's presentation as well.

Thank you Lauren. Let me share my screen here.

Let me know if you have any trouble. You got it?

We're good.

Okay, good.

Thank you Laura and everybody else out there in Zoom land. Chris Kelly, Johnson County Health Information Manager Johnson county is a kind of about 600,000 just outside the outskirts of the Kansas City metro area. I'm the health information manager work on our guide, our performance management strategy and lean six Sigma process improvement processes and things of that type. And I'm like Natalie in terms, I'm not sure about the term expert, but when I was asked by Laura to contribute to this presentation today, I told her ours is really not so much a story of a great countywide strategy. It was just more of an organic growth and evolution of our performance management and strategy system really originating as a strictly interdepartmental initiative to eventually some county wide adoption. It started several years back when the mental health really had a complete overhaul. New administration was put in place and that new administration began with the development of a strategic plan. And you know, many needs were identified. And that was about this time that I came on board. And the problem is there were, there were no, there was no performance management in place, no metrics, no way to gauge really where we were or you know, be able to monitor the improvement of those types of things. So there was a great desire to be, you know, less reactive and more data driven. And so we wanted to try and implement a system for strategic plan and performance management needs but didn't know we're on our radar was that it might become Something countywide. So while we went down that path, all share a little bit about how we started what we did. Ours will look a little bit more tactical maybe than what Natalie's did. But it's interesting. You'll see some similarities that I chuckled at as she went through. So when we started it, really this is kind of what we had. Johnson county is the administrators believes in a very autonomous management methodology. And so during that period of change in mental health, you know, we were developing a strategic plan, but there was no overarching county strategic plan to kind of guide ours as it was developed. Similarly, there was no centralized person or office for strategy and performance management within the county. And as I said, we had nothing really within mental health as well, other than that strategic plan that we just developed. So we were determined to put in a plan and a system in place that would integrate this really into our culture at all levels. As Natalie mentioned, not something that would be put on the shelf, but something that would become part of our culture and just the way we conduct business day in, day out. So as I reflected on this presentation, and yeah, I like kind of some visuals as well to kind of help illustrate some things. And so, you know, where we were wanting to go, what we wanted to be, I thought, what's that visual? And this will look somewhat similar to something Natalie put together. And, you know, we wanted everybody to be in this formation, Everybody with an understanding of where we're going, what we're trying to accomplish, and doing it in the same. In the same manner. You know, I think some of the advantages of that, everybody going that same, you know, the V for the geese, you know, conserves their energy. They just have to observe the model that they're following, and they know they'll get there. It reduces wind resistance. You know, I think for us, this means that, you know, we don't have to necessarily blaze a new trail. We can look at what others are doing, how they're doing it, and we can learn from that, and we can implement that, and we can make sure that we're all going in the same direction. And having a system and a model helps reduce resistance to these types of things. Having something that people can follow really does put them a little more at ease as well. For the birds, this actually is a method of their communication. They actually communicate in that V front to back. And I think having a model and a strategy and a plan and a system for this helps us in our communication, and it lets us know where we're at in that journey and see Our progress as we move in it. Unfortunately, you know, when we started in this process, that's not exactly what we were. We looked something more like this with everybody kind of going in their own direction. And it was really hard to tell where people were at in that journey. So using a common, understood approach, hopefully we felt would get us to something a little more along the lines of that first slide. And so we began our journey with basics. And it really was much, I think probably like Natalie's group did about education. And we really began an educational campaign with our strategic plan to help staff understand the plan, its purpose and how it really applies to everyone. It's not just something that sits on a shelf. It's something we need to live by every day. And everybody, and everybody does contribute to it, whether you know it or not. So we talked about the initiatives, the actions and all those things and how that related to everybody. We talked about the performance measures that would help us manage that progress and those types of things. And so this educational campaign really involved us sitting down with every team in our divisions and talking to them about their work and how it related. And that took a lot of time and that was additional work on top of their daily work. And that was probably the biggest stressor to them. But our director communicated this was a priority and something that we really had to walk through and it would yield benefits at the end. So we had many expressing a need for Tylenol at the end of some of those workshops. But overall, I think when we were done, they did get it much better than they did going into it. So our adopted methodology for this process really kind of follows the Kaplan Norton strategy execution loop. If you're kind of looking for something to grasp onto, and I'll share some about that it's model with the Kaplan Balance scorecard. You know, it messes so nicely with clearpoint strategy and the way they're structured. The Kaplan Norton model has a six stage closed loop that links the strategic plan with operational execution. That's where that's at. For the strategic plan to not become, you know, dust on a shelf, it's going to be tied to that operational execution. And so in this particular step that we were going to be walking through, we really focused on the interior four, the align, the organization, the plan, the operations, the monitor and learn and the test and adapt. Because those were really the meat of what we had to solve. Number one, develop a strategy that already been completed so that one was good. And the number six, the test and adapt that really would follow on A little later and we're doing that now. But that was part of our lean Six Sigma process improvement and how we incorporated that to accomplish the sixth piece. Another significant part of our educational process and measure identification which was critical for us, revolved around the use of a results based accountability guide developed by Mark Friedman of the RESULTS Leadership Group. Mark outlines this method as part of his book Trying Hard Is Not Good Enough. A lot of what I'll share in the upcoming slides is fairly elementary, but it's information in this that was really critical for our staff that were very unfamiliar with a lot of this that we were talking about. Natalie talked about terminology and we adopted more than standard terminology, as you'll see, but it was about terminology, vocabulary and helping them understand how this fits into their work. So the majority of our 350 staff in our department are clinical in nature, social workers and prescribers, and the type typically not technical and certainly not familiar with these systems and methodologies. It was interesting for me to note coming in this environment that while they rely on data for many of their assessments and screens to diagnose and treat clients, they really weren't certain that the work they did could be measured. And so this was nothing new or unique to social work. You find it. A lot of disciplines believe that the work they do is unique and somehow can't really be measured. And our job was to help them understand that it could be and how it would tie into their day to day work as well as a strategic plan. So results based accountability was designed to improve the lives of children, families, communities, and their performance within the programs that were serving them. So it certainly fit well for our environment. But what we learned over time as we branched this out was it worked equally well for everything across the county, from our airports to facilities to human resources. And there's a visualization that kind of helps describe this results based accountability and the measures as you walk through them. The rows in the four quads separate the measures about effort in the upper half from the those about effect in the bottom half. And the columns separate those that are quantity, input, type, measure those types of things from the quality. And obviously the quality and the effects are the ones that you're really wanting to focus your energies on. Oftentimes people, they gravitate toward those quantity of efforts because those are easier to measure, but they don't really tell you if you're achieving the ultimate goals that you want to. So we started with that graphic and we walked them through. So part of our educational effort was taking this out sitting down with them and walking them through it because this helped them relate it to their day to day work. And when you want that engagement, this is how you do it. You let them see how those overall efforts that they do tie into the big picture of the organization. So we would talk about that upper left quadrant and it's, you know, number of customers served, number of lane miles paid. We also used, you know, for those of you KU Jayhawk fans out there, we talked basketball, you know, number of shots taken in the upper left. In the right, we talk about quality. It'd be of course, the percentage of shots made or you know, the staff ratios and percentage of clients served, that type of thing. You go down into that all important lower half, then you start talking about did we really affect change? Did we change a client's life? Did we ultimately improve road surfaces? Did we ultimately increase and improve the wait times at our airport and those types of things. So really drilling down and helping them figure out where and how the work that they did aligned up in those areas was big. And so after we walked each of our teams and apartment through this process and developed their measures, you know, then we went to researching the data sources and what we found is we had a lot of rich data, but it really wasn't being utilized, hadn't, wasn't being captured and, or excuse me, extracted and analyzed for any of these purposes. So we walked them through that and began to figure out how we would extract that information, use it. So then we got into the piece that Natalie discussed as well, which was terminology. So when we look at the Kaplan Norton strategy map, we've got the vision very common to all of us, very elementary for all of you, especially those working in strategy offices and that type of thing. Vision, mission, you know, key performance areas. We did not try and necessarily tailor it, our messaging, at least to the way you did, Natalie, but we certainly, as we talked with individuals, we could really help them relate it. But we still stuck with the basic terminology, key performance areas, key performance indicators, those types of things. So that as departments talked, they were using a common vernacular across their various disciplines. So once we got past the terminology, then this also helped them understand how the, you know, the KPIs and non KPIs that were reflective of their work filtered up throughout the organization into these key performance areas, these strategy goals and that type of thing. We did that additionally with visualizations. This is our model for the strategy map and it incorporates that vision, that mission, the balanced scorecard for perspectives, customer, financial, operational, and employee. And then you know, the goals directly from our strategic plan that make up the key performance areas on this. So every employee can see the top level. We also have lots more measures, but the top level measures that are associated that we report up to the highest levels of the organization that help support these particular performance areas. And then we built a dashboard that gives greater information, short term trending information and targets for each of these key performance indicators. They're reflected in this dashboard. And then there is of course the detail for each one that can always be drilled into we. So we spent a great deal of time really focusing on this aspect of it because this is what had to really drive it and help us know that we could monitor our progress and know that we were really hitting our goals. And it was the communication not only to management, but it was also the communication back to the employee because we made this information available on our SharePoint site so staff could go out and look at it and see how we were doing. And we also really continue the ongoing education because this part of the educational component is part of our onboarding process. For every new employee when they come in, they are walked through this. And so from their first day here as part of the onboarding, they understand how important this is and how it relates to them in the organization. So concurrently with our educational campaign and all this development, we were looking for what system are we going to use to help us build this and report and share all this information. And after evaluation of a number of systems, we obviously selected clearpoint Strategy, which is years later what leads me to being here with you today. But the good news, we were able to take much of the work that we had captured in these workshops with these teams, teams in spreadsheets and with clearpoint we were able to take that and they were able to very quickly build us out the measures and these dashboards within clearpoint. So we had a very quick ramp up time with that system to really give some quick results back to the teams. We naturally assisted teams, continued assist them with implementation and ongoing maintenance where it was needed. And we've used the data loader as much as possible to make it very non intensive upkeep and maintenance. So that was really what we went through within our department. And after about 12 months working through this, we rolled this out to our advisory board and our board of county commissioners with giving them that strategy map and that dashboard monthly. We of course had some in those audiences that wanted more information and some that wanted less information. They felt the strategy map was all they ever needed to see, and they were fine with that. But we continued for, like I say, about a year with just that basic information to a broader community outside of the department. But after about 18 months, we had enough information. We were able to produce an annual report. And it includes those same elements, the strategy map, the dashboard also includes the detail on every measure, both the key performance indicators and the non key performance indicators. So we include that. So it's a rather lengthy document, but we just do that once a year. And it has, you know, it was well received. Once again, some people thought I would never look at all that, and others, you know, just couldn't get enough of it and they were digging into it. And so it led to a case where following that publication, we were in the budget season and we were entering into a time of that competition for those limited resources that are always available at budget time. But with the information that we had, we were really able to tell an effective story. And we were able to receive significantly more budget resources than most of the other departments did. And that perked some other departments up. And they came to us and said, can you tell us about what you're doing and how can we do this? And so we were working really specifically with probably three or four departments and helping them kind of follow that same path. And so we took that same model and walked them through that and they, they began doing some of the same things. And so that was kind of the beginning of our grassroots, organic growth of this throughout our organization. And that led that, along with our monthly reports, kind of led one commissioner to ask, you know, why are other, why are not all the departments doing this? So it started some conversation within the county manager's office. And her interest in that and desire to, you know, have better information led to the next growth, which was really about six months later. After publishing our firsthand report, our county manager asked our team at mental health to work with the budget office to develop a plan to roll this out to all of our 30 plus departments around the county. So with no centralized strategic planning office or role, teamless budget provided kind of that centralized oversight. And we were able to link the initial development of strategy map and the performance measures with the budget timeline. So we had some, some motivation there, if you will. And it also avoided mental health going out on our own to try and convince departments that might be skeptical that this was really a good thing to do. And so, you know, we could imagine the reception we might get when we arrived to tell other departments, hi, I'm from mental health. And you know, I'm here to help you with your strategy and performance management. And they thought, well, we may need some mental health help, but not in that manner. But so having the support of the budget office to conduct the outreach and the scheduling and all of the departments was very helpful. So we developed a rollout plan and presented to the county manager with a time estimate of 24 months to complete all departments. And we had, we put them into tiers. We obviously were focusing. We focused first on those that we'd already begun engagement relationship with as early adopters. And then some of those departments that did have strategic plans in place already had some performance management that they were doing on their own and so had good knowledge and it was really just a matter of helping them adapt to this model. So those were our quick wins, the ones that we could go out and really generate some momentum and some positive feedback with those. And then we worked our way down to, you know, to those that maybe did not have quite as much information, quite as much experience in this area. And we were able to, you know, make some, make some progress. But like I said, we really followed the exact same model. We, you can imagine then we, as this was in 2019, we were about six months into it, things were going good, good momentum and 2020 and Covid hits and it kind of ran us off the rails for a bit, to be quite honest. Our 24 month timeline definitely looked in jeopardy because departments like Health and Environment that were at the top of our list suddenly felt clear to the bottom because they were just swamped with the COVID response. So we moved a few other departments up. We really didn't accomplish much for several months, but midway through 2020 we kind of did get it picked back up and got some movement again and started things going forward. And so today you can see that was actually our most recent. We've got those in green are, you know, well on their way and doing good. They've got the, they've been through all of the workshops, they've got their measures identified and they've already been producing information in that regard. The yellow are still more in a midway process than those at the bottom. We're not quite there yet. Most of those don't even report to the county manager. So it's a little different process to engage them, but we know we'll get there. And so today, you know, maybe not one nice streamlined V, but, you know, we are all kind of following the same model and so we're going to, we're at different places along the journey. But we believe that, you know, with the model in place and the engagement that we've seen so far, that we will reach that. And you know, learned a lot of lessons along the way. I think the most important that, you know, you can do this from the bottom up. It doesn't necessarily have to be something that comes from on high. And certainly, you know, once we received that message from the county manager, you know, that helped a lot in terms of getting others involved. But for our own purposes within our department, we were able to take this and run with it. It's not ideal if you don't have a strategic plan, but it's not a showstopper either. Every department has some kind of goals and that's what we found as we walked through the rba, the results based accountability and we talked about what's their work, what are they trying to accomplish, what are they wanting to do? You know, we unearth those goals that maybe they didn't even have formally down anywhere, but a lot of them had something in some manner just may not have been necessarily a strategic plan and you know, build them an easy framework. You know, the Kaplan models just worked well for us. They, they were easily understood, they were well established models. And it does talk about, you know, operationalizing this, which was so important to really make it important to every frontline worker having a part of their operational environment. And that's the appeal for everyone, I think, you know, just that they can see their, their contribution to it and how they fit into it. You know, we tried to find their pain points, what were those and how could we use the system to help them relieve those pain points. And then I talked about the early champions already, you know, get those early adopters in and get some good success stories. And with the pandemic, you know, Sloan steady wins the race. We certainly had some hiccups there midway through, but we didn't give up, we didn't throw in the towel. We kind of waited, we shuffled some things around and we held the course and we were able to continue progress through that time. So that's it. Laura, with that, you know, I just thank everybody again for your time today and certainly happy to ask any questions and my contact info there at the bottom as well, should anybody need.

Well, Chris, we actually have some questions that are popping up very specific to your presentation. Thank you so much. I could see the common threads between Natalie's and your presentations. In particular your, your terminology and that common language I visuals really that alignment piece. So. But it is two different stories. Right. You know, so. Which is great and gives us an opportunity to sort of share both. But let me just share with you. I did love the results based accountability information in particular and the fact that you said, you know, did we really affect change? Right. You know, and so we do have a question in here on one of the slides where it said, is anyone better off? The question is, how do you collect data on is anyone better off? Can you speak to that a little bit?

Sure. So certainly in our environment, we do have assessments for our clients that enable us to determine. So for instance, there's a high instance of unemployment among those diagnosed with mental illnesses. And so we monitor employment ratios. We do that also on an individual basis. And an overall, in the childhood arena, you know, it's more about grades and school attendance, those types of things. There are assessments about daily living capabilities. Some of them just struggle with, you know, some of the basic functions that we all take for granted. And so we have those types of measures when we're talking about something like the airport, you know, what's the Runway, wait time, those types of things, are they better off? Are they able to get their flights in and out quicker as a result of perhaps changes that were made? So there is. We can always find those outcomes. We're all here to achieve some outcomes. So simply think about your business and what is it that you do and what are you trying to achieve for your clients and customers?

Does that resonate with you? Natalie, the whole idea of did we really affect change?

It definitely does. And maybe something I should have kind of used as a preface for my presentation is we're really, really working hard at building in more measurements to show that change because right now we really use it as a project management tool as well. So we're kind of a hybrid between those more distinct measurements. So that's something that, as we look forward to the future, more tangible ways to say that we've developed progress, rather than just saying, yes, we accomplished this program or yes, we implemented this capital project, trying to find more clear measures. So I can relate maybe more towards the person asking the question of how are we showing those successes?

Right.

Perfect. Definitely relate.

Chris, we have another question for you. Are the documents and reports for your Department of Mental Health publicly available?

Yes, we post the annual report to our. To our website. 2020 is not actually there yet, but we do post those out there. Yes.

Okay, great.

2020 is completed, but until the Board of County Commissioners signs off on it, we haven't posted that yet.

We also sent out A survey for those of you who registered in advance. And we actually did get a number of questions. And so I know as I'm listening to Natalie and Chris's presentations, I know that you all touched on several of these things. So I did want to ask, how do you. And I'll just put this up to either Chris or Natalie. How do you manage a situation where an individual or staff, they're skeptical of the process or change in general? I mean, change is sometimes very difficult and folks get sort of steeped in how they've always done things. How do you manage that in really getting organizational buy in to just flow through your organization?

I'd be happy to jump in on that one. I think for us, we really try to show how it's a tool for departments too. I know early on some departments were concerned about putting a goal that was too ambitious because they felt like if they weren't able to accomplish it in that fiscal year, that they would almost be penalized for setting a goal that was too big or not getting it done. So we try to emphasize this is a tool for you. So we want this to be something that's valuable to you as you set these goals, as you try to achieve our initiatives. So we really put a lot of emphasis on the communication piece of it. This is a way that you can communicate what your department is doing, how you're improving, how you're contributing to these initiatives. So we were just very transparent about what our intent was and then tried to frame it as to how it would be a tool, tool for the department. And maybe a good example of that was we were visiting with about 15 members of our water resources staff. And I could tell there was this moment where we were talking about one of their goals and we were like, we had no clue you were working on this. And we had one of our assistant city managers in there and he was like, this is awesome. I wish I would have known about this. And they had been working on it for years. So I could tell it clicked. They were like, well, this is a really good way. Like, we don't want to pat ourselves on the back, but this is also a good way for us to communicate. Communicate successes in our department. So I think it showed it can be a tool in a lot of ways. Communication, project management, a balanced scorecard and alignment. There's just so many benefits to having a strategic plan. So we just try to tailor it to how it works for that department. But there will be naysayers and sometimes it is hard to move past Change can be difficult, but try to tailor it to that person, that department.

Chris, any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, I would agree exactly what Natalie said. We frame it as. It's a storytelling tool. Everybody's got a story to tell. You're either wanting to share your celebrations as Natalie talked about her, or your challenges. And this is the storytelling tool to communicate both of those. So, you know, you can share your celebrations. We were able to, you know, reduce unemployment among our client population by 4%. You know, that is fantastic. You know, maybe the challenge, we have a wait time for client intakes that's, you know, 90 minutes when they hit the office. We want to drive that down. That's the story we have to tell and convey if we expect to get the resources or look at potentially modifying our processes to enable us to drive that number down. But if you don't know what those numbers are and you can't communicate what they are through the storytelling, then you'll never. You'll never either celebrate your successes or be able to overcome your challenges.

Great point. I think we've got another question in the Q and A. Let's see here. I've been asked to complete a balanced scorecard from my managers, but there's a history of doing this and keeping it on the shelf. Okay. Usually the plan is a bit grandiose and not rooted in tangible action or accountability. How do I build in buy in and strategic thinking from upper management? That's a tough one.

That is a tough one. And I'll maybe touch on this because accountability is a big thing that we've been hitting in this fiscal year. Whenever we look at it as a project management tool as well. Yes, we have these strategic initiatives, but what are the tangible steps that can be taken to achieve that? So our process really comes about where upper management direction from council and that sets our strategic initiatives and organizational priorities. The key piece for us is that departments set their goals and that takes input from the manager of the department, the frontline staff, middle supervisors. We try to get feedback from everyone in that department because they know their work better than anyone. Whenever they've identified those goals, we really encourage them to, to assign a team lead to that goal and any specific objectives that they have. And then we encourage them to set timelines. So if there's something that they're wanting to tackle in that fiscal year, what are those key milestones that have to be accomplished? And then the big piece is who's going to be the team lead, who's driving that project? So that's one way that we've kind of taken these more abstract initiatives, tailored them into goals and then set that accountability. So I hope that applicable maybe to your example, but I think part of it is management sets the direction but then really gives ownership to departments to take it and drive it.

Chris, do you have any other thoughts on that as well?

Our model would be similar in that regard. Really it is up to the departments and you know, we challenged them to always. It does need to be a balanced look at it and so don't pick everything that's going to look rosy and don't be afraid of things that may look like, you know, it reflects badly on you. You know, have. You just have to explain why it looks badly. That's part of the story. And so, you know, don't be afraid of putting anything up there. You just need to have the information behind it to be able to explain why it's good, why it's bad, why it's a challenge and you know, just take the fear out of it really. Because I think a lot of folks do think this type of transparency is scary, but it doesn't have to be great.

Well, I have a few questions of mine. So what has been the value of all of this to you all beyond the strategic plan, beyond sort of spreading this across your organizations? What has been the value.

I think, you know, especially in our department, at least that, you know, our folks are very passionate about what they do on an individual basis. But now seeing how it relates to a larger vision and purpose as well, I think that kind of helps just close the loop for them. And certainly so when other things come down that, you know, they're asked to do, you know, sometimes it's not always about this particular client, it is about a bigger purpose and picture. And so when we make changes, I think it helps them see and understand that.

Oh, that's fantastic.

I think just the nature of working in local government, we work with a lot of servant leaders in our organization and people from all walks of life, backgrounds, talent. And whenever we have these key priorities that we're all working on together, all 800 of us, it's a good reminder too of what we're trying to accomplish. At the root of it, we're improving quality of life, we're achieving high performing government, we're ensuring physical fiscal responsibility. All of that really I think fits into those servant leader ideals. And I think it serves as a good reminder that's a big thing. And then really I keep honing in on that communication 800 employees, 20 plus departments. It's a lot going on, so it's just a great way to stay up to date with what other departments are doing. I'm in the city manager's office, so I'm pretty plugged in. I like to think most of the time. But every quarter whenever I'm reading through reports from departments, I'm like, this is an awesome initiative, or I had no clue they were doing this. So I think it's a good communication tool as well. Those have been big benefits.

Well, if no one in the audience has any more questions, I'll pose our final question for the event today. And each of you will start off with. Chris, what is one piece of practical advice you would give to someone just starting out on or traveling down a similar path? Similar path as you.

I would say, you know, you start simple. Don't try and slay all this, you know, this giant at once. And so for us, as I said, we started with really those two components, you know, that strategy map, you know, the balance scorecard, look to it and just, you know, we told every department, find 20 top measures that reflect what you're trying to achieve, 20 measures that tell your story the best. We know there's more. But do not try and make this the all consuming project from the start. So start small, make it something achievable, get a win, and then you continue to grow it and flesh it out.

Great. Natalie, what about you?

I think for me it's talking to people, talking to your point, people in departments, talking to managers, just calling in, not once a quarter, but every now and then just check in, see how it's going, get their feedback too, because people will be really honest whenever you're just transparent. This is all about improvement. We want to improve this process for you too. We want it to be a tool for you. And I've had some really honest and some hard conversations with people as we develop this process and improve this process. So don't be afraid to just pick up the phone, talk to people, get input, build those relationships. Because once you start building that trust, that's really where the engagement and the buy in comes in, right?

Well, we actually had a question sneak in in the last minute and I think we can have time to answer it quickly. Any insight about balanced scorecards within a nonprofit center at a university? Chris, any thoughts about that?

I mean, it really can apply to any discipline, so it's certainly a doable thing. We, you know, obviously we're not a for profit agency and so I think once again, as you, as you take that model and you, you walk through the steps, you know, you can, you can find all the elements of the work that you do that fit into that, into those, those categories within the balanced scorecard. You know, we all have a customer. We, we all have, you know, employees that are doing things for us and we have processes and so, and we certainly have finances. Even if we're non profit, there's still finances there. So we can find all the elements that relate to that.

Well, thank you, Natalie and Chris for joining us today. It was really fantastic. Appreciate all the time that you put in to your presentations and to all the attendees for spending the day with us as well. A recording of today's event will be sent to you at a later date. We also have an additional resource. It's how to make Strategy Everyone's Job. It's an ebook. We'll send that out to you along with a survey after today's event. We would love to get your feedback. So when you do get that email, please let us know your thoughts and provide some feedback so we can improve going forward. So thank you again. We look forward to hosting future events. And until then, please stay safe and healthy. So goodbye everyone. Thank you.

Thank you.