Strong library, strong community

Long before they started working with Envisio, leadership at the DPL started on their strategy execution and performance management journey in the same place as many others: with a visioning process that was designed to identify the mission, values, and metrics which would guide them as they worked to provide better services to their community.

“The strategic planning and the visioning process started in 2016,” says Kirsten. “When we started, we leveraged the Harwood Turning Outward method of community engagement, part of which was conducting about 60 community conversations across the Denver area. The goal was to try to understand the aspirations of the community, and to ask ‘what type of community do you want to live in?’ From there, it became a conversation about how the library can help facilitate that.”

As they looked to source external feedback on what mattered most to their community, the DPL was also working internally to ensure that their guiding principles and subsequently, the strategic roadmap that detailed them, were reflective of those ideals.

“Parallel to that, the library was also undergoing a revision of its vision, mission, and values,” says Kirsten. “I don’t think that’s a prerequisite to successful strategic planning, but I think organizations should review their vision, mission, and values on a periodic basis.”

The DPL did extensive (and we mean extensive) work engaging their staff in both the formation and the execution of their strategic plan. “About half our staff, 350 employees or so, had an active role in helping develop our current vision, mission, and values,” says Kirsten. “Isn’t that great?”

Early on in the process, the DPL team decided that it was important for there to be forces inside the organization dedicated to guiding and maintaining their strategic efforts.

“Some organizations use consultants,” says Kirsten. “This isn’t bad, but then you don’t necessarily build that skillset from within, and so there’s this tremendous opportunity to do it internally.”

Building this internal capacity for strategy execution and performance evaluation was part of the reason Kirsten was hired at the DPL. Her and her team’s successes have led to a significant expansion in the department’s capacity and subsequently, their mandate inside the organization.

“I was brought on to say okay, we have our vision, mission, and values, but let’s talk about how we operationalize and live these values,” she says. “That work started in 2019, and the department’s staff have grown since then.”

We now have a full team of management and data analysts who can help with that programmatic evaluation around impacts and outcomes. We have quadrupled over the last couple of years, and I’ve been really fortunate to be able to make that happen.”

Employee engagement is paramount to success at DPL

For Kirsten and her team, involving everyone at the DPL in their strategic mission is essential for success. Their efforts in doing so are beyond commendable–both during the planning phase and in the execution of their strategic roadmap.

“I’m really proud that when all was said and done with our strategic roadmap, we have successfully engaged 75% of our organization in this work. I’m super happy with that,” says Kirsten. Communication and gamification were constant throughlines for this process that helped pave the way for the DPL’s successes.

“A big focus that I’ve had over the last three years is not only being communicative with our staff, but being effective in that communication,” says Kirsten. “The implementation of our strategic roadmap was super gamified. We created a road atlas for our staff, a personalized booklet with your name and position… it was kind of cutesy, but our staff got really into it. We made videos and animated all kinds of stuff, and we made it so people could earn points by learning more about how their job supports our strategic roadmap.”

Using gamification to spur employee engagement in strategic planning is an exciting and innovative way to help staff learn how their work affects the overall quality of service offered by the DPL. Kirsten and her team are immensely proud of their efforts in this arena.

“We had branch locations competing for the point lead. We had toolkits for our managers to be using with their teams on how to build confidence with strategy, and how to talk about those intersections between an employee’s work and the strategic roadmap,” says Kirsten. “And it was a ton of work, but it really made a huge difference in engaging our employees in our strategic efforts so they could learn more about their personal impact on the community. We even had some prizes, some pins and some personalized, and branded DPL gear. Let me tell you, that stuff was coveted among our staff.”

Celebrating successes big and small is a key tenet of successful strategic execution, especially so during the COVID-19 pandemic when library employees and many other public servants were under immense pressure to steer their communities through tough times.

“Beyond the gear, we also held celebrations at winning branch locations, and it was all a pretty big deal,” says Kirsten.” There were concerns that the road atlas might crash and burn and people might not play, but our staff loved it. And this was all happening during the pandemic. There was very little fun in the world, work was hard, and none of our front-line library staff were working from home… they were out there working with the community. To be able to help them see how much their work matters and matters to the organization as a whole, was really important. I think it became more important than a lot of people thought it might.”

“It’s easier to try new things when people feel comfortable with the foundation. We’re a fairly risk-averse organization, like most governments. But what this road atlas and this employee engagement strategy showed is that we can try new things and we can invest in new ideas related to the strategic roadmap. The fact that we did this visioning process with folks from across the system means that some of the ideas that we came up with were pretty unique. Why not try something new? If it doesn’t work, well… we budget on an annual basis. We’ll figure it out.”

Fostering a culture of transparency and accountability

Envisio hasn’t just made reporting and tracking of the strategic plan simpler–it has also helped Kirsten and her team provide a pathway for the accountability and transparency that staff and the community want to see from their library.

“I saw how we could leverage the tool both internally for management and externally for communication and transparency, and those were two of my top priorities. People aren’t going to do things that are hard because their jobs are already hard, and you know what? That’s really fair. But Envisio makes the updates entry easy.”

Kirsten and her team know there’s still work to do when it comes to managing, measuring, and maintaining their strategic roadmap.

“Our strategic plan is active and being managed in Envisio,” she says. “What we are currently working on is standardizing what 10% means, for example, on the completion bar, so trying to make it easier to understand where the library is in its plan.”

“Our library commission is jazzed about this. They are so excited and they’ve been super fun and supportive to work with. They are also really excited to have access to Envisio. I gave them access to a demo of the site and they really enjoyed being able to poke around and ask questions. We see it as being a tool that is available to both the public and the staff who want to dig into some of our more integrated programs, learn, and answer questions. For example, what does it look like to operationalize equity? Well, let’s all join the other millions of people trying to figure that out. As an organization, you’ve got to start somewhere, and so we piloted a culturally responsive wellness model and we measured it and tracked it and reported on it through Envisio. We’re currently evaluating the results, but it’s exciting.”