Transforming Performance Management: The City of Edmond, OK's Strategic Approach

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. The topic for today's webinar is Transforming Performance Management the City of Edmond Strategic Approach. I'm excited to introduce Jane Robertson, Management Services Manager for the City of Edmond, Oklahoma, and 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 in the Q and A tab without further delay. Ted, I'll go ahead and pass things on to you.

Thanks, Megan. And thank you, Jane, for joining us. Thank you. Please tell us a little bit more.

About in early spring. So January, February, we start doing goal setting for the next fiscal year with our departments. We give them a worksheet that they can use to help with the goal setting that has kind of the basic categories, similar structure to within clearpoint. So it has those same element types that they fill out. And we usually do some sort of kickoff meeting where we bring them together in person and we talk through, you know, what is a goal and what should we be including in our strategic plans. So that happens in like January, February, and then we have their scorecards ready to go in for July 1st when we start our new fiscal year. And I did have that. I can share, share my screen an overview of our framework. Make sure I'm sharing the right thing. Can you all see that?

Yes.

Perfect. So this is our framework. We have organizational priorities. When we start talking before we do goal setting, I sit down with our higher level team so the assistant city managers and our city manager and talk about plans for strategic planning and any changes we need to make or changes they want to see. So we look at those organizational priorities and the structure as a whole. So we have seven organizational priorities and then the goals for our departments that they set all fall underneath one of those. And a goal for us is a specific aim that the department's working on related to one of those priorities that achieves either a city council goal. They have their own strategic plan. It meets a community need that's not identified on that council plan and improves department performance or process that they do, trains, equips employees or engages the community. So that's how we define a goal. And then objectives and milestones are really just further breakdowns of how they're going to achieve the goal. And they can use measures to track that as well. So that's the overall framework that we use. There are really kind of three different types of goals that we see. Whether that's so first would be a council goal. Our council sets a strategic plan for the calendar year. And so if there's a goal that their department is responsible for on there, that goes on their department strategic plan, they might have a goal that's more just department related. So again, improving processes, better equipping their employees, connecting with the community in some sort of way or this year, which I think we'll talk about in a little bit. We also have budget metrics on there as well that we're tracking in clearpoint. So that's the broad framework of how we do strategic planning. And then they do quarterly updates. So we just had our quarter one updates that were due this Monday actually. So those were coming in last week and early this week. And then what we do with those reports. So we compile a overview report that's kind of a few page summary with highlights from each department that gets sent to our system city manager and our city manager. And then we also have ways that we communicate out or communicating out to the organization now. So we are compiling a kind of a presentation that also highlights key updates from each department that will get sent out to an all user email. So organization wide.

Yeah. Excellent. Okay, so I have a few questions about this. Have you been using the priorities, goals, objectives and KPIs for a while? Like does it. Do you feel like the organization is getting a refresher training in the spring or is it something that's. It's kind of constantly in flux?

No, we've used pretty similar to how it is now for I think we started in 2017 or 2018. The only really big change is we used to have another layer in between goals and priorities that was called strategic initiatives. And they kind of drilled down more into the organizational priorities and were more specific about what we were wanting to see in those. I actually ended up taking those out this year. So before we started FY24 25, and the reason I did that was because at a certain point it started to feel like departments were creating goals that they just then kind of pigeonholed into one of those strategic initiatives or found where it kind of closest fit. And it wasn't really the strategic initiatives weren't really doing anything productive in terms of strategic planning. And it was just kind of another layer that they had to be conscious of. So we made the decision to pull those out before starting the new fiscal year.

That is. That's actually really great and a really nice insight because we see what we call scorecard fatigue or strategy fatigue at times where you're spending more time managing your scorecard than you are talking about your strategy. And so it's kind of subtle, but if you could make the framework simpler, then people can really dive into the contents. So then we also had a question from an online participant. Was, is your plan available for the public? Like, is it something they could find on your website or something like that?

So we don't currently put our internal strategic plans on the website. The council strategic plan is on there. That's a more formalized document that like our marketing team produces. So that is online, but we don't currently have the internal strategic plan public facing. I think there is a desire to move towards that in the future. And so some of the changes we're making, I think are in light of that, but we're not quite there yet, but I think we're moving that direction.

Excellent. And one more question also came from our audience was when you go through that spring process of working with departments to create those plans, like, how many people in the department are doing that work with your team?

Yeah, that's a great question and a good point that I kind of missed when talking about how strategic planning works. So we involve both the department heads and then we have what we call our connectors in each department. So that is usually somebody who's not the director that is actually doing the work in clearpoint providing the updates. Typically what we see like when they go to do their quarterly reports is that connector is then talking to or reaching out to other people in the department to get that data or that information. Some do that in the form of a meeting specific to their strategic plan. Some just do it kind of one by one through email or walking up to somebody and saying, hey, do you have an update on xyz? So the connectors and then the department heads are both involved and then other people are involved in terms of providing information and data for the quarterly updates.

I love the idea of a, of a connector.

Yeah.

As kind of. They could live anywhere, any level in the organization, but they're really good at kind of connecting people and getting information out.

Yeah.

So. So another question that came in that is also on my list of things to, to ask is, is can you show how this, this works inside of clearpoint? So give us an idea of, of what this is like.

Absolutely. Let me switch my, my screen that I'm sharing real quick. Okay. Are you seeing clearpoint now?

Yes.

Perfect. Okay, so here's an example of one of our department's scorecards. So they each have their own scorecard. You can see in the navigation pane on the left but this is what I consider kind of one of my shiny examples for strategic planning within our, within our organization, which is our Visit Edmond, which is our visitors bureau essentially. And so they have your organizational priorities on the left. We don't require, and I should have mentioned this when I was talking about the framework, we don't require that a department has a goal for every organizational priority or that they have a certain number of goals. We really try to let them set that themselves. And I think a lot of the reasoning behind that is we want this to be a useful tool for them. I don't want strategic planning to just be another report that they're having to fill out that management is asking them for. So some of them will have goals, a lot of goals, and they fall under all the organizational priorities. Some of them will just have two or three that fall under those. So Visit Edmond has three goals that follow under those larger organizational priorities, economic development and quality of life. I'll go through one of their goals as an example. So under quality of life, they have a goal for researching, identifying and implementing a vacation home permit and registration process. And then so if you click on that, they added information for this quarter. So they talked about learning to use a new software to understand where our short term rentals are located in Edmond and mailing out information to them and requesting to connect with them. So that's some of the work they did towards this goal this quarter. And then if we go back, some of the objectives under that were to utilize software to locate vacation homes. So similar to the update they provided on the larger goal research, permitting and registration processes in peer cities. So, and this, they are working with a tourism board member in Oklahoma City to understand kind of how they do things as they're trying to pass an ordinance for two night minimum stay. So reaching out to other cities saying, how are you doing this? What are your processes? And then one of their milestones was to establish relationships with these, with the vacation home hosts, so the short term rental owners. So they invited them to a meeting on November 7 to talk about best practices, allow them to network and to learn about local trends in the area. And this goal for Visit Edmonds for me was one of those. It highlighted why we do strategic planning and why it's important. As I was going through updates kind of in this quarter and the last quarter, I didn't realize that they were doing anything like this. And then I saw, you know, these goals and what they were doing to achieve them and I was like, oh, that's really cool. That you're doing a connection meeting with short term rental owners and I had no, no idea those were going on until they provided that info. So that's an example of a goal that's kind of more department specific. And then they also have in here goals for the council strategic plan that they're responsible for, one of which they've already completed and that was to increase our visitor tax. And they had an election. Technically they actually finished this before the start of the fiscal year, but we left it on there because they didn't know when the election was going to happen. That was based on council's decision. So that happened right before the start of the new fiscal year and they were able to pass that lodging task tax increase from 4 to 6%. So and that was based on council's decision. So that happened right before the start of the new fiscal year and they were able to pass that lodging task tax increase from 4 to 6%. So they have their council strategic plan goals and then their budget metrics on here as well. So that's kind of what an example of what a department's scorecard looks like.

No, that's very cool. And when we were at ICMA a few weeks ago, we, our booth and the exhibit hall was right next to another organization that helped with this, the short term rental, like trying to find. And I didn't ever thought about it from a city's perspective as to how important it is to understand what's happening and you know, either from a tax or just from a visitor standpoint. So it's great to see that, see how that, how that looks within a strategic plan. So another question came in, as you were, you're showing things is do these departments coordinate their goals with other departments or how does that kind of interact, does that kind of run through your department or how does that, how does that happen?

Absolutely. And there's certainly elements of collaboration even within clearpoint that you'll see. So when we do those goal setting kind of kickoff meetings in the beginning of the year, one thing we do emphasize is collaboration. And if, you know, we try to make sure conversations happen, be that discussion questions at tables, you know, sort of table conversations talking about what their planning on doing. One year we had them write, even if they didn't have all of their goals formally, you know, finalized, we had them write the goals they think they were going to do on like large pieces of paper around the room. And so then everyone could visually see like hey, that department's working on this. We'll either play A role in it or could we collaborate on it? I know our department had a goal. Our city manager's office had a collaborative goal this past year. So FY23 24 with our city clerk's office regarding our agenda management software and how we handle items for city council meetings. So we worked with them on that. So there certainly are collaborations that happen within strategic planning, and we do encourage that. And it changes every year how we try and emphasize that. Again, sometimes it's just table conversations. Sometimes we do more visual processes when goal setting.

Okay, cool. So. So you've been using. So you'd been at the city, you know, since pre 2020, been using Clearpoint for six years or so. And then in 2022, you get new city manager. You know, many new people in city council. Were you worried the strategic plan would be thrown out, or did it. Did clearpoint and strategic planning processes in general provide stability? Talk to me about kind of that. That transition.

Yeah, so we had, prior to 2022, we had the same city manager for, I think over 30 years or close to 30 years, which is unique. Most city managers don't stay with the city for that long. So there was a lot of stability in that and just knowing expectations and what somebody wants out of strateg strategic planning. We also, during that time frame, when I first came on, we had kind of pretty much the same council members or very similar council members for a period of about eight years. So a lot of stability in council as well, which is also unique. And then 2022, we get a new city manager, and then city council also started to shift as well. And so I don't know that I was concerned. I thought, you know, if anything, they would want some form of strategic planning. I didn't know what that would look like, but it was helpful to already have a system in place to then be able to kind of change and adapt to what they're wanting. And, you know, I don't know that Scott. Scott Rigby is our current city manager, that he was specifically interested in anyone's software, but he was interested in strategic planning, performance management, what we could do to leverage that and increase that in the organization. So it was helpful to already have tools in place that we could then adapt based off of new expectations.

Right. And what kind of new expectations happen? Tell me about some of the changes.

Yeah, so in general, I would just say, like, more reporting and more communication in terms of what we're doing as an organization, both on the department level, but then also in terms of the council Strategic plan. And so one of the things we're changing or we changed for this year is we now have a scorecard built in clearpoint for the council strategic plan. And we're tracking all of their goals on a quarterly basis. We used to do a mid year review, which we'll still do. It's like a workshop setting. So a formal meeting where we, where we review where they're at in their strategic plan. But they wanted more frequent updates than that. And I said, well, hey, we've got a really great tool we can use to track all that. So we built them a separate scorecard and are updating that info as we get reports in from our departments and that will go out to them. We are finishing that up within the next week or so and then that'll get sent out to council and upper management. So that's been a change. And then Scott has also wanted to see more in terms of performance management. And so our budget team, during our budget cycle prepping for FY2425 added in what we call budget metrics. They're really more performance metrics. So they're not necessarily financial data. It could be more of a measurement of what a department's doing. So, you know, we're providing you with a budget, you know, of, you know, X amount of dollars. What are you, what are you accomplishing as a department with that level of funding? So that'll get reviewed going into budget requests for next year. And that's also something that we're tracking through their scorecards on a quarterly basis now. And our finance department will get reports. We'll export the data from clearpoint and send that over to finance that they can review it as well.

That is, that, that's great. And it's kind of, it's, it's interesting to hear how some people call that budget metrics and some people call it performance management. And, and so it's just nice to hear that those things are linked together. And as you had started talking about this, we had gotten a question about how does this tie into the budget. So you, you pre answered it.

Yeah.

So, so thank you. That. With the, with the. I'm going to ask another question that kind of came in online. It was about kind of the new city council. And you know, do, do you find that their priorities change or conflict with the organizational priorities or how do you have continuity kind of between the two sets of priorities or are they they similar just with, with different words? I guess.

Yeah, you know, I think we've been really Blessed in that our council, for the entire time I've been with the city of Edmond has been super supportive of staff in general. And so I haven't experienced a huge amount of conflict in terms of what council sets versus what we're doing internally, if anything. You know, sometimes as with just the, the general operations of a city, you set goals, you know, at the beginning of a year or fiscal year, and then things happen or needs change. And so one of the things that I like about how we do strategic planning is how adaptable it is. And if, you know, a new council came in, they get in Edmond, they would be sworn in in May. So kind of in the midst of a strategic planning cycle, if we needed to change something, we could. But typically that's going to be related to the council strategic plan goals. So they get to set their own goals with that strategic plan. And then we make sure our departments are doing work to accomplish those and we're tracking that through clearpoint and then providing them feedback on that. So I think because they have their own strategic plan that they get to set that helps better synergize the organization and city council and then in terms of, you know, the individual department goals that aren't necessarily related to council, I think as long as we're providing the service and levels of service they expect to residents and they're not, you know, hearing negative feedback about specific things that they're supportive of what we do in general. So hopefully that, that kind of answers your question.

No, that was great. We have a very active chat today, so.

Oh, good, that's a good thing.

We're gonna. Yes, but we're gonna get into kind of closer to a speed round of.

Yeah.

Of some items when, when your new city manager came on. Some items when, when your new city manager came on, you know, you were, you have priorities, goals, kind of measures, objectives. Was there talk about kind of switching the, the framework at all, like looking at like balance scorecard or okrs or management by objectives? Or was it like, hey, this framework looks great and we just need to see the budget metrics? Like.

Yeah, I think it was more of. It's a good start. We just need to add or tweak what, what we're currently doing. There wasn't any conversation of a complete overhaul or changing our approach on a, like, holistic basis. I think it was just those, you know, fine tuning elements of wanting to see more in terms of performance metrics and budget metrics.

Yeah. Excellent. And are you, you know, you were, you have priorities, goals, kind of measures objectives was there to finding city council wants particular information like what do they find most interesting? Like what are they asking for that might was either counterintuitive or you just found pretty interesting.

You know, I think maybe just one of the surprising things to me was the volume. So you know, they're very busy people, they have full time jobs. I feel like as humans we're just kind of constantly inundated with info as is. And so I was surprised at how much, you know, they were willing to read through and interested in. And there's also kind of, aside from strategic planning, there's a weekly email that goes out to them from city manager's office of kind of day to day operations, things that are happening within the city. And that email in and of itself is, is pretty long. I get reader fatigue going through that sometimes. So I think just the, the amount of information I was surprised at how much they were wanting and willing to read through. Not necessarily any specific type of info, but you know, just the volume and. Yeah, volume and variety of info that they were wanting.

Okay, excellent. We have two minutes. So I have two questions, so let's see if we can get through them. Tell me about what you think some of the benefits are of having your strategic plan in clearpoint.

Yeah, I think the flexibility, it's, you know, pretty user friendly. It allowed us to adapt to the changes that were requested of us with the new city manager and kind of ever changing city council. So it creates a great kind of basic framework to then be able to adapt based off of changing needs, which is really important. And it was great to already have a tool that our staff were familiar with using. So you're not trying to train people on a whole new software system or new spreadsheet format. It was pretty much just adding to our current system to meet those needs. And I really don't know how we would have accomplished that without having an existing framework. I will say, you know, any, any issues we've run into the customer support with. Clearpoint's been really great about getting back to us and quickly and helping us work through issues. So I think those two things have been really the most valuable.

Okay, excellent. And what's coming next with your strategic planning process and you know, any enhancements you're making from there?

Yeah, so when we were prepping for this call, you were showing me some really cool new AI features within clearpoint to help with reporting and increasing efficiencies for that. And so definitely go and explore that with the staff that help with reporting we're always about continuous improvement. It's in our motto for the city of Edmond. So, always looking for ways to improve the strategic planning process, be that through the new AI features or the dashboard or workflows. Just seeing how we can improve the experience, both for our users and then in terms of reporting on the back end with the info we're providing out.

Okay, excellent. Well, Jane, we're out of time. I really appreciate you sharing what you've been up to and a really engaged audience. So this was a fun conversation. So thank you very much.

Thank you for having me.

All right, have a great day.

Bye.