ClearPoint Community: Toronto Regional Meeting

The ClearPoint Team traveled to Toronto, ON, to hold the ClearPoint Community Regional Meeting on September 19^th, which was graciously hosted by CPA Canada.  We were joined by close to twenty representatives from CPA Canada, the City of Brampton, the City of Cambridge, the City of London, the City of St. Albert, the City of Toronto, the City of Vaughan, and Canadian Blood Services.

We kicked off the meeting with a review of the agenda and facilitated introductions by inviting each participant to share a “fun fact” about themselves.  In the room (and without naming any names), we had numerous animal lovers (one whose dog was 17 years old), an identical twin, a grandparent of three, a ham radio license holder, a ballroom dancer, a native of South Africa, a fisherman, and a sports fanatic.  We also had one who had never been to Disney World and another who still had a baby tooth!  This was a diverse group, but all held a common bond – their passion for strategy and performance management!

The group then moved on to the heart of the meeting – best practice sharing.  One-by-one, our ClearPoint Community members shared what they are doing around strategy and performance management and how ClearPoint is used for strategy execution and reporting at their organization.  This led to opportunities for discussion and lots of interaction among attendees. We found nuggets of wisdom throughout the day from organizations who were in various stages of their strategy execution journey.  There were several key takeaways:

Keep it simple and make it relevant

When embarking on a strategy and performance management journey, establishing a common language that is relevant to everyone, not just leadership, is a great first step to simplifying your efforts.  Many within an organization are unfamiliar with strategic planning – the purpose and reason behind it and how their daily tasks tie into the big picture.  People engage with what they feel part of and value what they help to build.  Setting aside time to educate and provide guidance along the way can set an organization up for long-term success.

Change is inevitable, so be agile

Whether there is a change in leadership, direction, or both, having the organizational framework to respond is key.  Here are just a few examples:

• Through the City of Brampton’s accountability framework, each community priority has an assigned team from the commission level to support it.
• The City of London’s Strategic Thinker’s Table includes representatives across all service areas; its Strategic Backbone Team serves to guide the strategic development process.
• The City of Vaughan’s Strategic Priority Oversight Team (“SPOT”), is a cross collaborative team which:

               • Ensures a cross-corporate lens on Strategic Priority deliverables
               • Promotes corporate-wide accountability
               • Listens to the voices of those who deliver
               • Encourages teamwork, cross departmental problem solving and information sharing
               • Enhances staff engagement

Communicate Often

Continually improving the communication process among team members is a good thing and taking a multi-faceted approach is endorsed.  Examples of how this is accomplished depend on the audience and may range from annual corporate executive retreats, semi-annual report outs, quarterly department level meetings, and strategies around ongoing team engagement. CPA Canada’s Leader Fact Sheet and Lunch & Learns, and the City of Cambridge’s Business Plan Dashboard--which is available on their website for employees, council and residents--are two great examples of how to enhance an internal communication strategy.

Remember, it’s a journey, but set the bar high

Throughout the day, we heard statements like “we will never be done with what we need to do,” and “we are always looking for different and better ways.” For all, the bar to ensure that their residents, customers, and stakeholders are better off is high.

Following the best practice sharing, the ClearPoint Team walked the group through several innovative ways ClearPoint clients are using the software to save their most valuable resource – time – through features such as automation capabilities, automatic project evaluations, and template scripting.  The ClearPoint Team also reviewed some of the new, amazing features in the latest release including enhancements to the Measure Library, Peer-to-Peer Sharing, and live benchmarking, which enables live data sharing among communities across the ClearPoint network.

New features, which will be rolled out in the upcoming release, were also shared. This included a wide array of integration options such as DataLoader 2.0, Webhooks, Embed Codes, and Sync. Other future enhancements include element management features and strategy visualization upgrades.

Our day concluded, to the excitement of our Canadian community, with the ClearPoint Team unveiling the details and location of the 2020 Strategy and Performance Management Summit, which will be held in Washington, D.C., on June 9-11, 2020.  We can’t wait to see you there!