Mayor & City Council

SPECIAL WORKSESSION MINUTES Five-Year Objectives and Key Results Planning College Park City Council Tuesday, September 29, 2020 6:00 P.M. – 10:00 P.M. Due to the COVID-19 space requirements, this meeting was held at The Hotel at the University of Maryland, 7777 Baltimore Avenue, College Park, MD. PRESENT: Mayor Wojahn; Councilmembers Kabir, Kennedy, Day, Dennis, Rigg, Mackie and Mitchell. ABSENT: Councilmember Brennan. ALSO PRESENT: Jeff Parks and Jessica Brown, Performance Breakthroughs, Inc. (PBI); Scott Somers, City Manager; Bill Gardiner, Assistant City Manager; Ryna Quinones, Communications and Events Manager. Mayor Wojahn opened the Special Worksession at 6:00 p.m., turned it over to Jeff Parks and Jessica Brown from PBI. They reviewed the agenda for the session: learn about a strategic planning methodology called Objectives and Key Results; identify and draft high-level, five-year Objectives for the City’s strategic plan; and draft Key Results for the five-year Objectives. This session would focus on understanding the methodology and brainstorming, and the next session would finalize the Objectives and Key Results. Jeff and Jessica discussed short-comings of some approaches to planning in which the day-to-day work is not clearly aligned with the long-term objectives and the priorities are not clear. Often, staff are not engaged in the objectives and do not know the organization’s priorities. If Objectives and Key Results are clear, the organization at all levels can be aligned with the plan priorities. Studies have shown that focusing on key results can improve productivity by about 20 percent. Jessica provided an overview of various approaches to performance measurements since the 1950s, starting with Key Performance Indicators and ending with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) as described in Measure What Matters by John Doerr. In the OKR methodology, Objectives describe what we want and why, and Key Results identify how we know we are successful. Councilmembers participated in a discussion of sample Objectives and best practices for writing objectives. Then they met in small groups to discuss the objectives they had drafted for the session. Through a process of review and consolidation, Council was able to draft nine Objectives for consideration. After a short break, Jessica led the group through a discussion on Key Results. Key Results are outcomes, not outputs, that measure success. They should include target numbers and be clearly trackable over time. Jessica had Council draft Key Results for a sample objective and reviewed the outcome. The Objectives Council had drafted were put on flipcharts, and Councilmembers formed new pairs to draft Key Results for the Objectives on the flipcharts. These were quickly reviewed by the group, and then Jeff and Jessica explained the next steps. PBI will take the information from the charts and put into a document to share with Council. Council will review the results and prepare changes to discuss during the October 3, 2020 meeting. The session ended at 9:55 p.m. ________________________________________ Bill Gardiner Date Assistant City Manager Approved