Montrose County, CO sets Priorities, Results with approved Strategic Plan

July 19, 2011 By

Congratulations to our friends in Montrose County, CO, for officially adopting their County Strategic Plan!

This is the culmination of a process that started more than a year ago with seven focus groups across the County sharing their input on the top Priorities for Montrose County for the coming 2-5 years.   They drafted their Priorities and Strategic Results in a process with broad input; we highlighted that process here.

“Having this citizen-influenced strategic plan in place will be an immense help for county leadership, giving them a clear direction to follow when making policy decisions that will determine Montrose County’s future,” said County Manager Jesse Smith.

“This plan defines a clear direction for the County for the next five years and beyond but that doesn’t mean we will put it on the shelf to collect dust. This is a living document that we will review annually to ensure we are on track and adjust as needed.”

In addition to the County Plan, the various departments and offices of the County government have all completed Strategic Business Plans that align to the County Plan and identify Strategic Results those organizations will provide their customers.  Montrose will also present its first performance budget, with dollars directly connected to performance and priorities, for 2012.

Congrats to Montrose as well for a terrific presentation of their Plan for the public.  They created two versions, both of which are available via the web.  You can see them here – the Plan itself is available by clicking here, and the “extended” version of the Plan with additional background is available by clicking here.

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Budget Webinar is Now Online!

July 14, 2011 By

We were pleased recently to present a webinar featuring the good folks at the City of Las Vegas and the remarkable work they have done to preserve their priorities while cutting their budget in the face of their economic catastrophe.  The webinar, “Your City, Your Way:  Managing the Budget Crisis in Las Vegas,” featured City Manager Betsy Fretwell sharing the story of the City’s efforts to use performance information, priorities, and public input to navigate their treacherous economic waters.

We’ve placed both the presentation from the webinar, and a recording of the webinar itself, on our website for folks to share.  You can download the powerpoint presentation by clicking here and can access the audio (in an mp3 file) by clicking here.

We’ve also got a case study that profiles some of the outstanding results Las Vegas is delivering for their customers and that talks about the work we’ve done with them on their Managing For Results effort that they call Performance Plus.  You can download that case study by clicking here.

We’re glad to talk with you about what Las Vegas has done and how we can help you achieve the same results.  Want to talk?  Give us a shout at 512-347-7054.

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Performance Contracting: Getting the “How” Right

July 11, 2011 By

This is the third of three posts from Marv Weidner, our Founder and CEO, on Performance Contracting.  The first post can be accessed by clicking here; the second, by clicking here.

In my first two posts on performance contracting – what we call Partnering For Results – we identified the two key principles for successfully creating contracts to help you ensure your customers experience the results they require:

  • Be very clear on who the customer is, and focus on the results they experience
  • Be sure you build your contract(s) around results for your customers and not something less

In this third and final post, we want to use these two principles to talk about the how – how you can successfully Partner for Results.

Before beginning to Partner for Results, there are several important decisions that need to be made at the enterprise or jurisdiction level.  These are essential to ensuring success.  Two of the primary questions are:

  • What services will be contracted out?
  • What approach will you take to Partnering for Results?

Your organization may elect to have its services delivered almost exclusively through contracts or choose to contract out for selected services.  Each organization has to make this decision based on the services it provides, the results it needs to deliver, the best value for the money and what it knows of its community, culture, and politics.  But the important thing is to be intentional about this choice and thoughtful in your approach..

Once your organization is clear on which services it wishes to contract out, there are several important decisions regarding the approach to be taken .  These include:

  • Is this is contract with a sole source? If so, particular care will need to be taken to structure the contract in a way that preserves the focus on customers and results.  Remember that the customers are those who receive the service and experience the benefit – not the contractor.
  • Is this contract to be put out for competitive bid?  If so, will employees/employee groups be eligible to submit bids to deliver the results? Many jurisdictions have found that employee groups can provide competitive, if not compelling, bids – and that the process of doing so helps the organization get very clear about the true cost of doing business.
  • Will your performance contracts help to create a market place for your service delivery? The establishment of performance contracts can create a broader market, with more players and more competition. We’ve seen this occur with performance contracting for child welfare services.
  • Performance Contracting can be used to fund innovation. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs, with which we’ve worked extensively to create a powerful Partnering for Results system, is intentionally issuing RFPs to fund innovation, leveraging the creativity of the community to drive new solutions to achieve Strategic Results around Income, Education and Health.
  • Is cost a primary driver for your performance contracting? We caution against using performance contracting primarily to drive down cost.  Performance contracting provides an invaluable tool to understand the impact on customers and results – but performance contracting does not always automatically yield cost savings.

When the major policy decisions have been made, keep in mind these keys to operational success in using performance contracting:

  • Establish clear, time-specific reporting requirements.  Make sure expectations are clearly established in the contract for what performance information will be reported, how, and when.  The Office of Hawaiian Affairs has licensed the use of our web-based performance software MFR Live for their contractors to use to report their performance information. This ensures definitions are consistent and makes compilation and review of the results much faster and easier.
  • Establish a consistent process for monitoring performance and evaluating the contract.  Regular monitoring, feedback and follow-up with contractors helps to improve performance by ensuring the focus remains on the results in the contract and ensures accountability  for performance measures in the contract.  A performance contracting process that does not actually look at performance regularly is not going to deliver the same results as one that uses it as an active management tool.  The Alcohol Drug and Mental Health Board of Franklin County, OH, holds regular “ProviderStat” sessions with their contractors to review and manage performance.  The Office of Hawaiian Affairs has two levels of review.  A performance review is a desk review of performance reported against the contract.  A performance evaluation is more extensive and is conducted on-site.
  • Keep time frames in synch with your budget period.  Multi-year contracts for the delivery of services do not provide as effective a platform for managing performance as single year contracts, though it is sometimes necessary for very large projects to extend the contract period beyond the budget period.  Multi-year contracts encourage a sense of entitlement for the vendor.  Shorter time frames – particularly in the beginning of a performance contracting effort – help ensure accountability is at the appropriate levels.
  • Publish the results.  Publishing the performance information of contractors is a powerful way to demonstrate transparency and accountability for you and for your contractors.  It can also be a free and powerful way to foster innovation and to improve performance as your contractors will see who is performing better than they are – and what they can learn from those high performers to improve their own results.  There is nothing like published results to foster a little friendly competition.

Partnering for Results provides an incredibly powerful tool to help you align your contractors to provide the greatest possible results for your customers.  We hope you have found these posts to be helpful as you think about the challenges and opportunities in Partnering for Results.  Let us know how we can help.

 

Check out our recent webinar on Performance Contracting — you can download the presentation by clicking here andlisten to the webinar audio by clicking here.

And don’t miss this column - “Performance Contracting: Turning Talk Into Action” – by our friends Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene for the IBM Center for the Business of Government.  (We helped.)


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Call for Proposals – National Performance Measurement and Reporting Conference

June 21, 2011 By

The Public Performance Measurement and Reporting Network (PPMRN) will hold its Fourth Annual Conference on September 23-24, 2011 at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.  PPMRN is inviting proposals for papers, workshop presentations, and case studies to showcase best practices and effective models of performance measurement.

PPMRN is looking for proposals on the following topics:

  • Bringing Experiential Learning to Teaching Performance Management
  • The Art and Science of Performance Management: Performance Measurement Models and Effective Leadership
  • The Objectivity of Performance Measurement
  • Teaching Performance Measurement Theory and Its Application for Good Government
  • Online Learning: Opportunities and Limitations
  • Performance Measurement Reporting Models: One Size Does Not Fit All
  • Performance Management
  • Tools and Techniques for Performance Measurement
  • Legal Structure of Performance Measurement

This is a great opportunity to showcase the results your organization is delivering.  Check it out!
The deadline for submissions is June 27.  For more information, click here.

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Webinar on 6/21 – Las Vegas and the Budget Crisis

June 20, 2011 By

Join us for this terrific session!

Your City, Your Way: Managing the Budget Crisis in Las Vegas

Tuesday, June 21 - 9:30 a.m. CDT

While many local governments have faced – and are facing – significant challenges because of the economy, few have had to weather a storm as severe as the one that has lashed the City of Las Vegas.  Over the past three years, the City saw the assessed value of property fall by more than 40 percent – and in response, had to cut the general fund budget by 20 percent and eliminate hundreds of positions.

But even faced with these challenges, the City of Las Vegas has managed to protect its priorities and ensure it is providing the results its citizens want and need most.  Join us for this webinar to hear City Manager Betsy Fretwell talk about how the City has successfully navigated through this fiscal crisis using planning and citizen input.  This is a compelling story you will not want to miss!

Register for the webinar by clicking here.

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Government Performance Conference in September – We’ll Be There!

June 20, 2011 By

You may remember a while back that we mentioned we’d be at the Advanced Learning Institute’s workshop “Meeting the New Government Performance and Results Act,” which was scheduled for this month in Washington, D.C.  The near-shutdown of the federal government led to a shift in the schedule for that event – so come join us in September!

The conference is now scheduled for September 12-15 in Washington, D.C.  Our CEO, Marv Weidner, and Senior Consultant, Kate Blunt, will co-present “How to Plan, Manage, Measure and Communicate Your Results: Building a Performance Management System to Achieve Success,” on Thursday, Sept. 15 in an interactive workshop.

We’ve been a partner with the Advanced Learning Institute for many years and they always do a great job with their conferences.  We hope to see you there!

You can get more information about the conference by clicking here.

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How to Get From Good Theory to Best Practice: Weidner to Co-Present Budgeting For Results Discussion at TX City Management Association Annual Conference

June 2, 2011 By

On Friday, June 10th Marv will be co-presenting with Austin Budget Officer Ed Van Eenoo and Randy Moravec, CFO for the town of Addison, at the Texas City Management Association’s annual conference.

The TCMA Annual Conference will be held in Frisco, TX on June 9-12, 2011.

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Performance Contracting: Contracting for Results … or Something Less

May 13, 2011 By

This is the second of three posts from Marv Weidner, our founder and CEO, on Performance Contracting.  The first post can be accessed by clicking here.

Speaking events are a great way to connect with people and to find out what is really going on among government leaders.  We often ask questions at the beginning of seminars and presentations, mostly to find out about the audience and to get a quick assessment of their progress in Managing for Results.

One of my favorite questions is: Are your contracts performance based?

And a follow-up question for those who indicate their contracts are performance based: Do you contract for outputs, or for results?

Over the years more and more hands have begun to raise in response to the first question – more governments are developing performance based contracts.  The answers to the second question, though, are still nearly always “outputs.”  Rarely is the answer that governments are contracting for “results.”  That means at best most government contracts are contracts for outputs, and few if any are contracting for results to achieve a particular customer experience.

You may have read our statement that:

“If you can think it clearly, you can write it clearly;

If you can write it clearly, then you can measure it;

And if you can measure it, you can get it done”©.

An old friend of mine in Iowa used to also say “you get what you inspect, not what you expect.” So, when contracting for services, what do you measure and what do you inspect, results or something less?

If contracts for service only count or measure how many services (outputs) are delivered or how many people are served, then you may never know what impact you are having on your customers.  Remember in the first post on Performance Contracting, we said that customers are the people who receive your services and experience the intended result.

Results are a measure of the experience your customer have as a consequence of receiving your services – % fires contained to the room of origin, % of permits issued within 10 days, % of children in foster care not experiencing abuse, % of road miles plowed (snow) prior to the school bus schedule for those same miles.

If you want results for your customers, outputs alone will not get you there.

If you want results, contracts will need to include clearly stated and measurable results.

If you want results, you will have to monitor and inspect what you measure.

To contract for results, the organization doing the contracting will need to become very clear about three things:

  • Who is the customer?
  • What result are we trying to achieve for this customer?
  • What service or outputs will deliver that result?

Watch for our third and final post in this series, coming soon: How to Contract for Results.

Read the first post in this series by clicking here.

Check out our recent webinar on Performance Contracting — you can download the presentation by clicking here and listen to the webinar audio by clicking here.

And don’t miss this column – “Performance Contracting: Turning Talk Into Action” – by our friends Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene for the IBM Center for the Business of Government.

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Weidner to Sponsor National Association of State Chief Administrators 2011 Institute

May 13, 2011 By

We’re pleased to announce that we’re an official sponsor for the 2011 Institute on Management and Leadership for the National Association of State Chief Administrators (NASCA).

“NASCA is an innovative, forward-moving network with a strong focus on improving performance and result for customers,” said Marv Weidner, founder and CEO. “We’re pleased to partner with NASCA to help state governments ensure they’re delivering the greatest possible impact with their available resources.”

NASCA is the national network for chief administrators of state governments across the nation.  Although the specific scope of duties varies by state, functional areas that are common across many states include purchasing, facilities management, IT, financial management, and human resource management.

The NASCA Institute on Management and Leadership will be held in Richmond, VA, on August 14-16.

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Don’t Forget – Free Employee Performance Management Webinar!

May 11, 2011 By

Just a reminder about our upcoming EPM webinar:

Dim Bulb, or Bright Laser? Aligning and Integrating Employee Performance

Thursday, May 12, 1 p.m. CDT
Want to know the single most important element of an effective Employee Performance Management system?  It’s how you align your employees to achieve your organization’s goals – and how you integrate their performance measures with the organization’s performance expectations.
In this one hour webinar we’ll talk about how high-performing organizations have improved performance and saved millions of dollars by effectively aligning and integrating employee performance.
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