#ELGL20: It’s a Wrap

#ELGL20: Local Gov Oktoberfest is the Engaging Local Government Leader (ELGL) network’s annual conference. This year, the conference was offered virtually throughout the whole month of October. We are proud to partner with ELGL to help educate and discuss best practices in strategy, innovation, and budget!

With a mission to engage the brightest minds in local government, ELGL conferences cover a wide variety of local government topics. ClearPoint Strategy sponsored the Strategy & Innovation Summit as well as the Budget & Strategy Discussion Roundtable during #ELGL20.

The pivot to virtual was extremely successful. ELGL members were able to chat with each other through various happy hours, and had a wonderful time sharing best practices during the sessions! The virtual summit also had a great line-up of speakers and an amazing agenda. If you missed it, we’ve got a small summary recap for you below.

Strategy and Innovation Summit

This deep dive into innovation and strategy concepts included four two-hour sessions about data, strategy, budget, and innovation sprinkled throughout the month of October.

The Why: Strategic Planning

It’s not an exaggeration to say that 2020 was the year many didn’t see coming. Planning for innovation and success proved to be only another hurdle for organizations as they dealt with the uncertainty in the environment. In this highly participatory session, Matt Finch from Mechanical Dolphin helped listeners develop skills in strategic foresight and decision-making suitable for 2020 and beyond. Matt is a facilitator on the scenario planning program at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School and currently a consultant on the IMAJINE project for the future of regional equality in the European Union.

The How: Innovation

Attempting to identify the root of the problem you’re trying to solve is a difficult task on it’s own for many municipalities. Add the complexity of trying to manage and lead through a time of crisis and change, and complex local government problems now feel more complicated this year. In this session, Salimah Samji and Matt Andrews from the Harvard Kennedy School helped develop skills in Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation as an approach to addressing complex local government challenges.

The Who: Budget & Structure

How do you create a budget and a structure to drive innovation? How does the alignment of budget and strategy make innovation a possibility? How do you hire the right people to drive your strategy and innovation? How might we make innovation and learning essential services within local government? What’s the ROI on innovation, and how do we measure it? What are the mindsets and skills necessary to drive innovation?

Judi Brown from CivicMakers answered many of these questions (and more!). Additionally, she helped develop skills in finding the right people to make innovation a reality in your organization and building a culture and budget that truly supports innovation.

During this session, ClearPoint revealed the results of our Linking Budget to Strategy in Local Government survey. If you missed the insightful information we learned, no worries – we’ve provided a video of this session for your convenience!

The When: Failing

One thing that’s always guaranteed: in any new venture, there will always be an element of failure. Trying something new often includes failing before you achieve greater success. Knowing this, how do we train and allow for people to try new things to achieve greater success? How do we learn from failure to work and grow in an iterative way? In this session, Josh Sorin and Andi Mirviss helped attendees develop skills in creating a culture that acknowledges failure and how to grow and learn from it, as well as storytelling about strategic plan management and progress. Attendees learned how to tell the story of their strategic plan, acknowledge when failure happens, get comfortable with failure, and then learn and grow from that.

Budget & Strategy Discussion Roundtable

The budget reflects the priorities of the organization and is important to ensure your strategic plan is built into the budget process and reflected in funding decisions. It’s not always as easy as it sounds but there is value in working towards linking your strategic plan and budget. The City of Raleigh lead this above average roundtable discussion around this important topic. There was talk about strategy, budget, program inventories, pets, and funding strategic priorities in a time of significant funding challenges. We’ve also provided a recording of this deep discussion for you below!

#ELGL20 was filled with great, in-depth conversations with local governments of all sizes. It was a reminder of how essential community is in the work we do.

At ClearPoint, we love our local government community, and we work hard to foster peer-to-peer connections whether that be in partnership with organizations like ELGL, during our regional and virtual events, or directly through our reporting software. We'd love to talk with you more about our ClearPoint community, or answer any strategy and budget questions you have. Set up a time to talk with our team today!