AV (00:23):
Hello, good morning. Welcome to Averao's live stream. Today I have a very special guest with me, my friend, my long-term client, Paul Oberdorfer. He's the city manager of the city of Piqua, Ohio. Hope I said that right, Paul. And I'm thrilled to have you welcome Paul. Paul (00:42):
Thank you, AV. It's good to be here. AV (00:45):
Yeah, so Paul and I know each other since 2020 14. Yeah, 14 or something like that, maybe even earlier in that from our time in Ohio, my time in Ohio. And we've remained friends and I've been able to provide some value and learn a lot from Paul over the years. And so today we're talking about the perils of mixing what pot, mixing perils. So keeping up with our spooky theme for Halloween and talking about the dark arts of customization. And it's a dirty word for especially people like us that implement software. And I know for city managers and Paul, you've grown up through the ranks and you've seen it all. When I met you, you were Deputy Public Works director at the City of Green. No. Was that, Paul (01:41):
That was in green. AV (01:42):
And then it's been fascinating to see your rise because we need more people like you in city management. So great work. And I want to start with, you've done work with the state also, right? You've worked at ODOT and you've seen systems from all different sides, and you've actually published some work on how best to run organizations like that with your engineering background. So talk to us a little bit about where you started and how you're in the city manager's role now. Paul (02:16):
Sure, sure. So I started back in early nineties as a co-op student. Went to the Ohio Department of Transportation, wound up at District four, and I did a couple of years co-oping with them and hired on permanently in their bridge engineering office. I was doing drafting and bridge maintenance plans at that time on a 2 86 with AutoCAD monochrome monitor. It was really kind of the big thing back then to get off of doing manual drafting. And just over my career there, I did several years in the bridge engineering office and a decade out in construction doing construction management for heavy highway, using the state systems that have been in place since the seventies, using those archaic flat databases to help put things through the pay application process. After I was done out in the field, I went in and did facilities management for district four ODOT for about six years.
(03:21)
More of the same thing, using the same antiquated systems and processes that had been in place for decades, but really optimizing things from operation standpoint, making the best of what we had and really employing it as efficiently as we could at some 200 seven, 2008. And with the economics, the way they basically laid themselves out, I said, well, maybe it's not a bad thing. I go to local government and try something different. So in 2010, I landed the city of Green as deputy public service director, and I spent six years there, well seven years there, and eventually was the director of public service. And during that time, that's when you and I started getting involved in optimization and efficiency and looking at organizational development and all of those things. I just happened upon a report that you had done and I was really interested in how we could apply those things to our organization to get rid of all this paper and really streamline our operations from the front line and collect the data that really had implications for our organization. Quickly after that, I left there and went to the city of Charlottesville for four years. I was public works director 2017, deputy city manager, had a great experience there. And we went through implementation or RFP and vendor selection on implementation of a permitting system. I left there to come back to Ohio for the opportunity to be a city manager in western Ohio, a small town, 20,000 manufacturing, light manufacturing primarily, but with a lot of agriculture around us. It's a really great place to be. AV (05:12):
It is. Paul (05:12):
So I've been here about three years and I had Avera come in and do an IT assessment to get us our legs under our body and figure out where we needed to go. And so we've embarked on that path since. AV (05:26):
Yeah, you are a constant change master I think because you've done so much. Even thinking back to the city of green, we got some stuff done and then you went to Charlottesville and we focused on the process redesign of the permitting system there, one of your departments, and then it bled into work orders and asset management. And I think you are one of the few people I know that really get this at a deep level that no matter what system you have, it's not going to work if you haven't studied processes, if you haven't redesigned them and straightened the pipes. Where did you come to that conclusion and understanding? Was it pretty early in your career? Paul (06:13):
Yeah, I think it really comes out of the fact that government's really good at creating data and archiving data, but not very good at utilizing it. So along my career, it's like you can find it if you dig deep and if you have the right tools, but you can't really make sense of all those dots and connecting the dots. And I guess I've been fortunate that over my career I've figured out where those connection points need to be made. And a lot of it had to go back with the challenges of elected officials and trying to demonstrate something very complex, be it the budget down to how do we demonstrate the value of their resource, be it capital resource, human capital, and how do we connect that to an outcome? And so it seems that government's very good at it, having numbers that demonstrate basically what the number is and a narrative that talks about the number, but they don't connect the two in a way that's meaningful that somebody can absorb very quickly, even at a very high level of dashboard level and dealing with elected officials. They have a lot of other things on their mind and they have about seven minutes to really understand the point you're getting to. So we tried to take all of that high level information and just basically distill it into something that would be, I think, receptive to any elected official of any capacity. AV (07:53):
And so in your latest role as city manager, you've been able to bring all of these experiences and learnings from your previous jobs into the position. So I know we did an IT strategic plan a couple of years ago. Was it last year? Was last year? Paul (08:13):
Yeah, it was last AV (08:14):
Year. And when we were working together at Charlottesville, the pressure was on to replace the existing system that wasn't working. I mean, we studied 150 different processes, mapped them out and came to the conclusion that you're doing things differently in different buildings and it's just inefficient. And the system you had wasn't working for the permitting process, but it had tentacles into public works, into finance, into asset management, and people might think that you need a custom solution one thing that does it all for you, and you have to tell the vendor exactly what you need and they'll build it for you. And at that time, the system, the main ERP the city was using was SAP. And it had been cobbled together based on customizations that no one else understood how to keep up. Paul (09:13):
And I think that's kind of the parable about all this is when you implement something in 2007 without continuous updating, that's why I like software as a service. I would rather pay as I go and have the most effective security and all the updates and then not make those huge capital investments every seven or eight years or whatever it may be. When they let a system go a decade and they're basically using duct tape and bailing wire to keep it together, it becomes problematic because then you have three people in it that are working on the custom code to keep things functioning, AV (09:56):
But Paul (09:56):
Nobody else understands how that operates. And so they're building workarounds, be it within the system in that case, SAP, or using third party software, things that we're maybe subscription services and creating things outside the realm of that ERP to actually solve the problems that they have that the ERP should be doing for them. AV (10:20):
And it's also easy to fall into the trap of there's nothing out there that can do this for us. You become so specialized and your processes are so unique that you can't budge from that. And then you start seeking customization. And to your point, it has such ramifications on the organization now you need to re-look at your staffing and you need to hire developers, you need to hire people on staff, they can handle the infrastructure, but instead could you have some give on your processes so that you can get something off the shelf. And then customization again is a bad word, but configuration isn't right. You need to really define what that means to you and have the vendor configure the system. What's been your past experience? Let's talk about just Charlottesville. As you walk in as the new Public Works director and you have systems on hand, how did you handle those discussions with I guess it at the time? Paul (11:21):
Well, so being new, it is always very resistant and letting you see behind the door. Fortunately for me, coming in as a Public Works director and having facilities underneath my management, we had basically a relationship, albeit maybe contentious at times, facilities had to work with it and it had to work with facilities. So over the first six months, you start to build relationships and chisel away at those rough edges of the folks that don't want you to see what they're doing and how they're doing it. And it takes coffee, breakfast, lunch, donuts, bribery of all kinds of sorts to really get their walls to come down. But we did establish a really good team and it was a networking team that solved problems, but that it had that facilities could aid them in solving the problem. And then conversely, we started draw them back into the issues that we had. And that was the first, for me, the first I guess, way that we found talent network model that was really going to be instrumental in solving our issues because it takes that group of technical experts, managers and people that are responsible for it to be able to solve the problem. And so building that relationship early on and not trying to force a square peg in a round hole and make them upset because it would just shut it down. I think that's where the success came from. AV (12:56):
And I've also, you hit on a good point. You had the group that you weren't afraid to promote people to give them more responsibility and just bring 'em up and take charge of difficult problems. And I know this is going away from the topic, but it's important because it's those things that make or break a large scale modernization, effort, fail. You need the right people in the right places that have the same vision as you do and then understand that technology isn't the end all, it's just the tool. At the end of the day, the crux of this matter is still people and organization. Paul (13:35):
Yeah, absolutely. And it goes back to the people that are there during the implementation. That's a snapshot in time of the process that is a creation of what they needed and what they envisioned at that particular moment. And that could be based on the environment, the tools at hand, vendor relations, there's a lot of things that really go into that that do make it that particular moment at that particular time. And I think continuous improvement is very critical to continue to look at even post-implementation after your year down the road of go live, things are working wonderfully. I still think you need to have that group of people, albeit it could be different players because people come and go that go back and once a year take a look at the business processes to say, Hey, well why are we still doing this and making copies and sending it over to the city manager's office when he just puts it in the track or in recycle, he doesn't like paper.
(14:37)
So there's always those changes in nuances that need to be done. But moreover, I look at it as an opportunity to create efficiency in government that yields better, faster and more services. So if you look at our bottom line and government's really bad about understanding what overhead expenditures are, if you can use the ERP system and continuously improve it, you should be able to drive down your overhead to a point where instead of 12% or I'm just making a number of 15% cost of overhead, if you can bring that down to 10% and reinvest that 5% back into the community for better, faster, newer services, whatever that may be, and demonstrate it to the public in a way that's meaningful, then that takes you to the next level of reputation with the community and sophistication as well. AV (15:30):
Yeah, and again, it's not the building blocks is the vision and how you organize this thing at the people level. So what's been your experience, because having known you for a while, you're very cerebral intellectual, not everyone around you can be that at the same time. So how do you translate all of these vision statements and your clear vision into something that people at the staff level can understand and take on? Paul (16:03):
Well, for me, it started actually in January 21 when I got here, I indoctrinated my leadership team. So I basically spent an hour and a half with a presentation about how my brain operates and how my vision and my philosophy rolls out into my day-to-day operations. And so they were a little taken back because it's a lot to unload on. Somebody is like, Hey, this is how I think. But that was an introduction so that when I had one-on-ones with them biweekly over the next year, that we could start to have intimate conversations about what did they need to get done and how can I help them be successful in places where they had not been and had limitations. And I think that starting with the leadership team and laying out really first of all is understanding that we're public employees and we're public servants and we're here to do something that is a higher calling than just going to work every day
(17:04)
And trying to build that vision and that responsibility of philosophy into their everyday actions to say, okay, well it's fine that you've always done it that way every day, but how can we do it better so that we can demonstrate a proficiency to the public that we haven't yet and then market it and market our success so that they buy into what we do without having reservation. And so working through the leadership team and then down to the frontline and having tailgate talks and very similar conversations, but more suited to the audience to say, Hey, you guys do outstanding work at the ground level, but I need you to record what you do every day so that we have a chart of records that states how much material, how much equipment, much time you spent doing these particular business processes that are in your portfolio.
(17:56)
And it can be operational or programmatic, but either way, let's track your time so that at the end of the year we can say that we spent X amount of resource and people or and financial resources to get that outcome and then create AKPI that demonstrates year over year we're actually doing a better job. And just implementing that philosophy over the last two years and then starting with, I hate to say it, but starting with a paper format, we're starting to get them to understand the value in that because it went from my speech about that to, Hey, what are we doing every day to hey, now your director's responsible for an annual work plan that is going to coordinate and collaborate with other departments so that when we have the budget, their work plans are in addendum to the budget to demonstrate the connection between the resource and the outcome. And so I think they started to understand the value is like when I come to work, my director has a year programs, and then on a weekly basis my supervisor knows who shows up what the weather is and what we'll be doing that day. We record what we do and it's not the big brothers watching me. It's that at the end of the year we can say, my gosh, we mowat how many acres of grass in the parks and it costs us less than our contractor. That to me is success. AV (19:18):
How do you do this in the absence of robust systems that can do this for you? I know at least that when you started, you didn't have this, like you said, paper and pencil, Paul (19:31):
Right? And it's spreadsheets. And using our current system, springbrook, which the modules are not highly customized, I don't think the work order section of it was ever really fully developed. And it's really just at a very basic level, not getting down into the weeds too much,
(19:51)
But creating instead of, alright, you have 20 items in your business process inventory, what are your top four programs? And the first year, let's just focus on what you did for those four programs. And then as we start to get more sophisticated, we can drill down into if you think about turf maintenance versus mowing versus roadside, mowing and those nuances, that's down the road conversations, getting them comfortable with the fact that as a leadership team, we're here to promote the good deeds that they do every day that people have not understood or we have failed to market in a way that has a public buy into the fact that they have outstanding employees. AV (20:35):
So again, doesn't have anything to do with systems, right? It's systems thinking and design thinking that you then overlay the right systems on top and it's not impossible to do without the quote right systems. Paul (20:51):
And you remember back to Charlottesville, we were using Vizio and really just starting to cobble together what makes sense in terms of a business process and how to use Lean six Sigma to optimize those things and remove all the waste in it and create efficiency. And a lot of it that buy-in even early on when I was in Charlottesville, was the fact that people were frustrated that they were doing things that they knew had no value or meaning.
(21:18)
I'll give you an example. At one time the city manager had said, I need to know how many gallons of water we use in street sweeping. And they're like, okay, and hope you don't care how many miles we street sweep for. And so they kept track of how many gallons they were using in street sweeping. And I looked at the report and I said, well, why are they asking for this? Well, two city managers ago, I said, just stop recording it, okay. It's more important that, alright, we'll pick up the water on the backend and the material side, but I want to know how many lane miles of street sweeping we're doing because that's what the public cares about, not how much water we're using. AV (21:53):
Yeah, that's a good point Paul, because you grew up in public works in engineering, and how difficult or easy has it been to make the transition to Deputy CMM and then city manager? I know it includes a big chunk of your responsibility as public works. Paul (22:12):
Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead. AV (22:15):
No, there's so much more. Go ahead. Paul (22:17):
Yeah, just for me it was segueing from operations portfolio into then having public safety in the programming side of the house. So HR, IT, finance, not much different in terms of overall management strategy, but it's a different environment that if I look through your eyes as a consultant, I start looking at profitability for us as efficiency in terms of how they operate. And so then it's billable hours. And so I want to know from our permitting folks, how long do you spend on plan review, how many hours of inspection are you doing over to in fire and EMS? I want to know fire suppression, EMS runs training, break it down into all those things, public education events and things like that. And I want to understand better how you operate on a daily basis from a programmatic level. Then. So what we did when I came to the city of Piqua was I created two teams of leadership and they all kind of operate together. So I have the operations folks that they review each other's budgets and they're helping each other create their annual annual work plans. And on the other side of the house I have the programmatic and public safety because they're more the soft side people, all people oriented type thing where they're helping each other identify how can I lay out my year of work and what does that mean for my area and how does it plug into if you're an internal service, it, hr, finance, how does that support these other departments without me being over capacity? AV (24:00):
Yeah, that's a great point. Got an audience question. Given that the situation can vary from organization to another, what general recommendations or niche recommendations can you offer for tackling data archival in customer ERP systems and what obstacles should companies be aware of? I think the last piece of that question is important as you go to automate and modernize your systems and together we've run into many obstacles along the years, which ones do you think are the most important as far as selecting a system and making sure that you're not leaving good data behind in your old system? And how do you make that transition? What's been your experience? Paul (24:48):
Well, I think a lot of it is looking at the integrity of the data. And so I could go to my network right now and I could go back to 2003 and it's very scary for me because our knowledge management and our file archiving is not the greatest yet. But what happens is, is that really relevant information. AV (25:10):
And Paul (25:10):
So knowing that we're laying out a new ERP currently with a 25 20 25 implementation date, what we're trying to do is streamline our data on the backside to say what is the relevant data set and what is it going to produce for us if we import that data and if we pay for it, I want to be sure that we're getting the most effective use of that.
(25:35)
So we're trying to go through now and discern what is critical information, what is information that could be archived for later use? I can give you another demonstration of things that I've walked into, and you may have seen this. We have the AS 400 down in the basement doss space, amber screen, dirty keyboard. It's from 1990 whatever, and it's still down there because oh, we may have to go down there and look something up. The probability of that over time gets more diminished, but yet we still have record retention requirements that we have to do. So we have to kind of, I think cross there's a crosswalk between our records retention and archiving versus what we're going to be using on a daily basis to be making decisions. And so we're trying to streamline last year, this year and next year into data sets that are going to be instrumental in the ERP implementation and use and spend less time on the archiving and worrying about what we have to have for our records. Retention AV (26:42):
And old data. Archival is important. You don't have to bring 40 years of data into your new system, right? And who knows what's going to happen in the next two years as you implement your new ERP system, the advent of ai, and we've talked about natural language reporting and the ease of which will allow you to get the right data at the right time verbally without having to ask someone to write you a report that takes three months. I'm really excited for that. Paul (27:15):
I know you absolutely. AV (27:19):
Alright, audience questions. This is getting exciting now for the audience, clay Brooks, one of our newest senior consultants regarding square pegs and round holes, what are the advantages reshaping the PEG by organizing the people to suit the new system versus making a custom shaped ERP? How do the risks and costs of reorg compare to the time and money that could instead be spent on customizing software? She's making a case for customization. I don't know. Paul (27:54):
Well, I have to tell you from my vantage point, and so I've been here near three years now. We've gone through quite a few iterations of organizational development and reorganization, and a lot of it is just really taking those buckets of outcomes. So if you look at the program areas as a roll up to what the ERP is really going to be running in the background, understanding what those program areas are and how they need to be managed and what it takes from the human capital side of things to manage that is really important. And so we've spent a lot of time with our HR director, the assistant city manager, and myself basically, and I hate to admit this, but we took magnets on the whiteboard and assigned the departments and the positions and no names and really shuffled things around multiple times to try to figure out what was the most optimal arrangement to manage each of these areas because each organization's going to have either more parks and less parks and rec, more public works. We've got four pick plaza, so we have managed services with that in the golf course. So the makeup's going to be a little bit different. And so if you can align those programs with the right amount of management and the right amount of human capital to deal with it on a daily basis, to me it was starting with that overarching theme of what does the organization need to function and then drill down using the ERP into the process level
(29:27)
To then make the assignments through the map to say these are the touch points that need to be done and they're within that lane of that department. AV (29:35):
So future casting, I mean as we consultants call it visioning, blah blah, it really again nailed it down in terms of how do you want this organization to function? And then the tools will appear or you'll find 'em and something you said, and this is me trying to learn from you, being nimble and ready to change the organization based on the needs or changes externally can also be seen as indecisive leadership. But you and I know that it's required because you don't know how this puzzle fits yet. In your case, it's been three years and I think you're getting closer. In our case, I've been at this for eight years and it's still the same. The parallels are similar. You have to be nimble. How do you strike that balance? Paul (30:28):
Well, a lot of it is also too trying to be respectful to the staff. So in terms of when I came here, we have staff that have been at the city of pick, I'm not kidding you, for 33 years that are in leadership. So while they may be eligible to retire, there's still a value add to the organization, huge institutional knowledge, relationships, the things that go along with success. So waiting for their time to say, yeah, it's time for me to move on. And I guess respecting that and then taking their position and looking at it after they vacate it or when they're getting ready to vacate it, to reimagine what that really looks like I think is important. What I found too is, and I hate to admit this, government likes to push the easy button. So in order to pacify people, you find that people are promoted into a rank that they may not need or that they may not function in based on the fact that they squawk, they're unhappy, they cry, the blues, whatever it is, nash their teeth. And so sometimes weaker management will give into fine, you're now the director of engineering. AV (31:43):
But Paul (31:44):
For our organization, we're so small, it's not a director level, it's a support function. And by the way, I'm outsourcing it to a consultant because I can't afford a PE in today's environment. So it's that kind of a thing that we address in the agility or being nimble as things pop up, we have to really look at the organization and make some really critical decisions. Is it in-house or is it outsourced? And it seems to me that that parallel now with just the way the economy and the employment environment is that these specialties are very hard to fill. Just even a finance director, somebody with ACPA trying to afford somebody in today's market is just really difficult AV (32:30):
And you're not alone. So I completely understand. Kent has a question. Technology can really scare employees because they fear it can expose the weaknesses or skill gaps they may have. How do you help control the perception employees have about ERP products or I guess any enterprise wide technology? Paul (32:52):
Great, I appreciate that question. And that goes back to using paper. And again, I hate to go back in time and I as well use stone and carve the 10 commandments on it, but people are less, I think afraid of paper is a segue into a system and they have a clipboard and they have a piece of paper and you're talking about, here's the four areas of things I do and how many hours a day do I spend on it? And they throw it in their truck and then they go back. And so I think from a frontline perspective, it's easier to start very broad and say, Hey, we're just trying to figure this out. And then as time goes on, so now we're three years down the road, we've gone from those four areas to 20, and now we're adding materials and things like that.
(33:39)
Or in the terms of our permitting department, how many hours are you spending on each of the projects are the enterprise, excuse me, plan review for enterprise funds or general fund things of that nature. And I think the very thoughtful step into it is not to make it so that they sit down and feel like they're being analyzed right away as a time study. And if I was to take my iPad over here and set up survey 1, 2, 3 and Workforce and RRC GIS and hand it to somebody and say, okay, here's all your forms, go fill it out. I think they would probably have a little bit of reservation about that without understanding behind it and demonstrating for a few years ahead of that, at the end of the year we create this report that talks about how many acres of park we mow or how many EMS calls we've had and really demonstrate it in a way that supports the staff so that they feel engaged as being a part of the solution. They feel at the end of the day, they've really done something. I think that's another thing that I found too is when you go organization to organization, we're very ad hoc and responsive or reactive versus plan and executing on a schedule. And so instead of being unscheduled is 80% and schedules 20, we like to flip it around and do 80% scheduled and 20% unscheduled. And that's something new in government again, because the easy button is the easy way out. AV (35:08):
These are hard management challenges because you want people to do those tasks for you, but you're not going to get the best out of them if you don't show them the big picture and give them a problem to solve instead of a task to do. And I think that's a great way to build capacity within the organization too, because you are now showing them the big picture as a city manager, here's what I'm responsible for and how this task rolls up to the main responsibility that the council has. Paul (35:39):
And your team did a great job in the sense that when we do the mapping, again, it's the people at the frontline that do the work every day.
(35:47)
I'm not going to sit up here and profess that I know how to do their job the best. They do it every day. You tell me what it is process wise, it makes your job the easiest for you to do the most accurate and with the best quality control. And then we'll have the supervisor talk to your group about your group of people that do that job, and then how does that interconnect to the management and the reporting of that for the director that has oversight of that, and then how does that plug into the bigger system? And so by using the network team model and having all of those groups involved upfront, it eliminates a lot of the things that you don't see. So we all have blind spots and for me, my blind spots are areas that I don't deal with every day. And certainly the person that sees, oh, you better submit this report, otherwise our gap accounting is not going to be certified. Well, I don't think it's stuff like that. So we want to have all our processes put together in a way that's meaningful from the most mundane process all the way up to the philosophy of how we want to lead the organization. AV (36:59):
So we've talked about processes for what, 10 years now. And I love talking to you about this because you get it. And so the theory behind that is you study processes, you redesigned the map 'em out, and you're going to show it to a software vendor and say, make your thing, do this for us without customizations. And in my experience, the reality has been, yes, the theory still holds, but our software vendors don't necessarily listen or look at all of this upfront work we've done. It's like contractors not looking at architecture diagrams. And that's been frustrating. I know you've been through some of that also on your end. Paul (37:42):
Yes, and I think through the requirements both technical and functional requirements in the RFP, that really kind of becomes the divulging point for the vendors as to whether or not they can truly deliver. And through that assessment, you'll have a complete, or you should have a complete understanding if they're going to be able to do what they say that they can do. And then if they fail to deliver, you have a contract document that can hold their feet to the fire to make sure that they do what they say they can do. But moreover, I think from a cost saving or cost containment perspective, we started talking about this years ago. Instead of taking the widget and then having the vendor decide what your organization does and how they do it and how that interacts with their widget, it's better to determine what we do every day and show them, be upfront with it and say, Hey, here's our 150 pages of, and now you figure out how much programming time that you're going to have in development software development to take our concept of how we run our organization, the ERP, and digitize it into this tool that we need.
(38:50)
And I think all that work on the front end, while a lot of people don't understand that, just number one, the cost containment with the RFP and select vendor selection on the front end, but the go live time and the loss of capacity for your staff to fix things on the backside, not to mention the loss of reputation with the public while you go through it. And I really love the idea that we're doing this out in front. It helps the organization understand how we operate before we try to digitize. That's really business 1 0 1 is if we don't know how we do things, that's the first thing we need to understand. AV (39:28):
It's so important that we've had to use it, this documentation created upfront and when clients are trying to get out of bad contracts with vendors, because it becomes your contract compliance Paul (39:40):
Tool, AV (39:40):
Right? The vendors have agreed to do this for a certain amount, have signed off on it, and there then tends to be no way out. Paul, do you have any other thoughts, questions? Paul (39:54):
No. It's interesting. After 32 years in public service, every day I get up and I'm excited because of all the things that are on the horizon with AI and just technology and the fact that human capital is the most expensive thing on our budget line. And so trying to be agile and nimble and find tools that you can take that same person and they can do way more work and be way more effective than just having four people doing 25% of it. And to me, having folks that feel a sense of fulfillment coming to work and again, being a public servant, we're not making the most money. We're here hopefully for two reasons. One is to serve the public and do something greater than ourself, but number two is to create for us a local government that supports community development and placemaking and really creates a place where people want to move and be engaged in the community. So while we don't have a lot to do with some of those soft skills in the outside of it, creating the framework and the reputation is what draws those people to come here. AV (41:04):
That's a great thought, Paul. I wish more people thought of it like you do. And thank you for all you do for City of Piqua, and I know wherever you go have the same attitude and commitment. And there's Robert, when can we have Paul back for another episode? He's super smart. Okay, Paul (41:22):
Thanks. AV (41:24):
Alright, Paul, this has been great. I look forward to seeing you again soon and we'll do this again some other time. Paul (41:31):
Absolutely. Thank you, AV. AV (41:33):
Thanks. Paul (41:34):
Take care.
Hello, good morning. Welcome to Averao's live stream. Today I have a very special guest with me, my friend, my long-term client, Paul Oberdorfer. He's the city manager of the city of Piqua, Ohio. Hope I said that right, Paul. And I'm thrilled to have you welcome Paul. Paul (00:42):
Thank you, AV. It's good to be here. AV (00:45):
Yeah, so Paul and I know each other since 2020 14. Yeah, 14 or something like that, maybe even earlier in that from our time in Ohio, my time in Ohio. And we've remained friends and I've been able to provide some value and learn a lot from Paul over the years. And so today we're talking about the perils of mixing what pot, mixing perils. So keeping up with our spooky theme for Halloween and talking about the dark arts of customization. And it's a dirty word for especially people like us that implement software. And I know for city managers and Paul, you've grown up through the ranks and you've seen it all. When I met you, you were Deputy Public Works director at the City of Green. No. Was that, Paul (01:41):
That was in green. AV (01:42):
And then it's been fascinating to see your rise because we need more people like you in city management. So great work. And I want to start with, you've done work with the state also, right? You've worked at ODOT and you've seen systems from all different sides, and you've actually published some work on how best to run organizations like that with your engineering background. So talk to us a little bit about where you started and how you're in the city manager's role now. Paul (02:16):
Sure, sure. So I started back in early nineties as a co-op student. Went to the Ohio Department of Transportation, wound up at District four, and I did a couple of years co-oping with them and hired on permanently in their bridge engineering office. I was doing drafting and bridge maintenance plans at that time on a 2 86 with AutoCAD monochrome monitor. It was really kind of the big thing back then to get off of doing manual drafting. And just over my career there, I did several years in the bridge engineering office and a decade out in construction doing construction management for heavy highway, using the state systems that have been in place since the seventies, using those archaic flat databases to help put things through the pay application process. After I was done out in the field, I went in and did facilities management for district four ODOT for about six years.
(03:21)
More of the same thing, using the same antiquated systems and processes that had been in place for decades, but really optimizing things from operation standpoint, making the best of what we had and really employing it as efficiently as we could at some 200 seven, 2008. And with the economics, the way they basically laid themselves out, I said, well, maybe it's not a bad thing. I go to local government and try something different. So in 2010, I landed the city of Green as deputy public service director, and I spent six years there, well seven years there, and eventually was the director of public service. And during that time, that's when you and I started getting involved in optimization and efficiency and looking at organizational development and all of those things. I just happened upon a report that you had done and I was really interested in how we could apply those things to our organization to get rid of all this paper and really streamline our operations from the front line and collect the data that really had implications for our organization. Quickly after that, I left there and went to the city of Charlottesville for four years. I was public works director 2017, deputy city manager, had a great experience there. And we went through implementation or RFP and vendor selection on implementation of a permitting system. I left there to come back to Ohio for the opportunity to be a city manager in western Ohio, a small town, 20,000 manufacturing, light manufacturing primarily, but with a lot of agriculture around us. It's a really great place to be. AV (05:12):
It is. Paul (05:12):
So I've been here about three years and I had Avera come in and do an IT assessment to get us our legs under our body and figure out where we needed to go. And so we've embarked on that path since. AV (05:26):
Yeah, you are a constant change master I think because you've done so much. Even thinking back to the city of green, we got some stuff done and then you went to Charlottesville and we focused on the process redesign of the permitting system there, one of your departments, and then it bled into work orders and asset management. And I think you are one of the few people I know that really get this at a deep level that no matter what system you have, it's not going to work if you haven't studied processes, if you haven't redesigned them and straightened the pipes. Where did you come to that conclusion and understanding? Was it pretty early in your career? Paul (06:13):
Yeah, I think it really comes out of the fact that government's really good at creating data and archiving data, but not very good at utilizing it. So along my career, it's like you can find it if you dig deep and if you have the right tools, but you can't really make sense of all those dots and connecting the dots. And I guess I've been fortunate that over my career I've figured out where those connection points need to be made. And a lot of it had to go back with the challenges of elected officials and trying to demonstrate something very complex, be it the budget down to how do we demonstrate the value of their resource, be it capital resource, human capital, and how do we connect that to an outcome? And so it seems that government's very good at it, having numbers that demonstrate basically what the number is and a narrative that talks about the number, but they don't connect the two in a way that's meaningful that somebody can absorb very quickly, even at a very high level of dashboard level and dealing with elected officials. They have a lot of other things on their mind and they have about seven minutes to really understand the point you're getting to. So we tried to take all of that high level information and just basically distill it into something that would be, I think, receptive to any elected official of any capacity. AV (07:53):
And so in your latest role as city manager, you've been able to bring all of these experiences and learnings from your previous jobs into the position. So I know we did an IT strategic plan a couple of years ago. Was it last year? Was last year? Paul (08:13):
Yeah, it was last AV (08:14):
Year. And when we were working together at Charlottesville, the pressure was on to replace the existing system that wasn't working. I mean, we studied 150 different processes, mapped them out and came to the conclusion that you're doing things differently in different buildings and it's just inefficient. And the system you had wasn't working for the permitting process, but it had tentacles into public works, into finance, into asset management, and people might think that you need a custom solution one thing that does it all for you, and you have to tell the vendor exactly what you need and they'll build it for you. And at that time, the system, the main ERP the city was using was SAP. And it had been cobbled together based on customizations that no one else understood how to keep up. Paul (09:13):
And I think that's kind of the parable about all this is when you implement something in 2007 without continuous updating, that's why I like software as a service. I would rather pay as I go and have the most effective security and all the updates and then not make those huge capital investments every seven or eight years or whatever it may be. When they let a system go a decade and they're basically using duct tape and bailing wire to keep it together, it becomes problematic because then you have three people in it that are working on the custom code to keep things functioning, AV (09:56):
But Paul (09:56):
Nobody else understands how that operates. And so they're building workarounds, be it within the system in that case, SAP, or using third party software, things that we're maybe subscription services and creating things outside the realm of that ERP to actually solve the problems that they have that the ERP should be doing for them. AV (10:20):
And it's also easy to fall into the trap of there's nothing out there that can do this for us. You become so specialized and your processes are so unique that you can't budge from that. And then you start seeking customization. And to your point, it has such ramifications on the organization now you need to re-look at your staffing and you need to hire developers, you need to hire people on staff, they can handle the infrastructure, but instead could you have some give on your processes so that you can get something off the shelf. And then customization again is a bad word, but configuration isn't right. You need to really define what that means to you and have the vendor configure the system. What's been your past experience? Let's talk about just Charlottesville. As you walk in as the new Public Works director and you have systems on hand, how did you handle those discussions with I guess it at the time? Paul (11:21):
Well, so being new, it is always very resistant and letting you see behind the door. Fortunately for me, coming in as a Public Works director and having facilities underneath my management, we had basically a relationship, albeit maybe contentious at times, facilities had to work with it and it had to work with facilities. So over the first six months, you start to build relationships and chisel away at those rough edges of the folks that don't want you to see what they're doing and how they're doing it. And it takes coffee, breakfast, lunch, donuts, bribery of all kinds of sorts to really get their walls to come down. But we did establish a really good team and it was a networking team that solved problems, but that it had that facilities could aid them in solving the problem. And then conversely, we started draw them back into the issues that we had. And that was the first, for me, the first I guess, way that we found talent network model that was really going to be instrumental in solving our issues because it takes that group of technical experts, managers and people that are responsible for it to be able to solve the problem. And so building that relationship early on and not trying to force a square peg in a round hole and make them upset because it would just shut it down. I think that's where the success came from. AV (12:56):
And I've also, you hit on a good point. You had the group that you weren't afraid to promote people to give them more responsibility and just bring 'em up and take charge of difficult problems. And I know this is going away from the topic, but it's important because it's those things that make or break a large scale modernization, effort, fail. You need the right people in the right places that have the same vision as you do and then understand that technology isn't the end all, it's just the tool. At the end of the day, the crux of this matter is still people and organization. Paul (13:35):
Yeah, absolutely. And it goes back to the people that are there during the implementation. That's a snapshot in time of the process that is a creation of what they needed and what they envisioned at that particular moment. And that could be based on the environment, the tools at hand, vendor relations, there's a lot of things that really go into that that do make it that particular moment at that particular time. And I think continuous improvement is very critical to continue to look at even post-implementation after your year down the road of go live, things are working wonderfully. I still think you need to have that group of people, albeit it could be different players because people come and go that go back and once a year take a look at the business processes to say, Hey, well why are we still doing this and making copies and sending it over to the city manager's office when he just puts it in the track or in recycle, he doesn't like paper.
(14:37)
So there's always those changes in nuances that need to be done. But moreover, I look at it as an opportunity to create efficiency in government that yields better, faster and more services. So if you look at our bottom line and government's really bad about understanding what overhead expenditures are, if you can use the ERP system and continuously improve it, you should be able to drive down your overhead to a point where instead of 12% or I'm just making a number of 15% cost of overhead, if you can bring that down to 10% and reinvest that 5% back into the community for better, faster, newer services, whatever that may be, and demonstrate it to the public in a way that's meaningful, then that takes you to the next level of reputation with the community and sophistication as well. AV (15:30):
Yeah, and again, it's not the building blocks is the vision and how you organize this thing at the people level. So what's been your experience, because having known you for a while, you're very cerebral intellectual, not everyone around you can be that at the same time. So how do you translate all of these vision statements and your clear vision into something that people at the staff level can understand and take on? Paul (16:03):
Well, for me, it started actually in January 21 when I got here, I indoctrinated my leadership team. So I basically spent an hour and a half with a presentation about how my brain operates and how my vision and my philosophy rolls out into my day-to-day operations. And so they were a little taken back because it's a lot to unload on. Somebody is like, Hey, this is how I think. But that was an introduction so that when I had one-on-ones with them biweekly over the next year, that we could start to have intimate conversations about what did they need to get done and how can I help them be successful in places where they had not been and had limitations. And I think that starting with the leadership team and laying out really first of all is understanding that we're public employees and we're public servants and we're here to do something that is a higher calling than just going to work every day
(17:04)
And trying to build that vision and that responsibility of philosophy into their everyday actions to say, okay, well it's fine that you've always done it that way every day, but how can we do it better so that we can demonstrate a proficiency to the public that we haven't yet and then market it and market our success so that they buy into what we do without having reservation. And so working through the leadership team and then down to the frontline and having tailgate talks and very similar conversations, but more suited to the audience to say, Hey, you guys do outstanding work at the ground level, but I need you to record what you do every day so that we have a chart of records that states how much material, how much equipment, much time you spent doing these particular business processes that are in your portfolio.
(17:56)
And it can be operational or programmatic, but either way, let's track your time so that at the end of the year we can say that we spent X amount of resource and people or and financial resources to get that outcome and then create AKPI that demonstrates year over year we're actually doing a better job. And just implementing that philosophy over the last two years and then starting with, I hate to say it, but starting with a paper format, we're starting to get them to understand the value in that because it went from my speech about that to, Hey, what are we doing every day to hey, now your director's responsible for an annual work plan that is going to coordinate and collaborate with other departments so that when we have the budget, their work plans are in addendum to the budget to demonstrate the connection between the resource and the outcome. And so I think they started to understand the value is like when I come to work, my director has a year programs, and then on a weekly basis my supervisor knows who shows up what the weather is and what we'll be doing that day. We record what we do and it's not the big brothers watching me. It's that at the end of the year we can say, my gosh, we mowat how many acres of grass in the parks and it costs us less than our contractor. That to me is success. AV (19:18):
How do you do this in the absence of robust systems that can do this for you? I know at least that when you started, you didn't have this, like you said, paper and pencil, Paul (19:31):
Right? And it's spreadsheets. And using our current system, springbrook, which the modules are not highly customized, I don't think the work order section of it was ever really fully developed. And it's really just at a very basic level, not getting down into the weeds too much,
(19:51)
But creating instead of, alright, you have 20 items in your business process inventory, what are your top four programs? And the first year, let's just focus on what you did for those four programs. And then as we start to get more sophisticated, we can drill down into if you think about turf maintenance versus mowing versus roadside, mowing and those nuances, that's down the road conversations, getting them comfortable with the fact that as a leadership team, we're here to promote the good deeds that they do every day that people have not understood or we have failed to market in a way that has a public buy into the fact that they have outstanding employees. AV (20:35):
So again, doesn't have anything to do with systems, right? It's systems thinking and design thinking that you then overlay the right systems on top and it's not impossible to do without the quote right systems. Paul (20:51):
And you remember back to Charlottesville, we were using Vizio and really just starting to cobble together what makes sense in terms of a business process and how to use Lean six Sigma to optimize those things and remove all the waste in it and create efficiency. And a lot of it that buy-in even early on when I was in Charlottesville, was the fact that people were frustrated that they were doing things that they knew had no value or meaning.
(21:18)
I'll give you an example. At one time the city manager had said, I need to know how many gallons of water we use in street sweeping. And they're like, okay, and hope you don't care how many miles we street sweep for. And so they kept track of how many gallons they were using in street sweeping. And I looked at the report and I said, well, why are they asking for this? Well, two city managers ago, I said, just stop recording it, okay. It's more important that, alright, we'll pick up the water on the backend and the material side, but I want to know how many lane miles of street sweeping we're doing because that's what the public cares about, not how much water we're using. AV (21:53):
Yeah, that's a good point Paul, because you grew up in public works in engineering, and how difficult or easy has it been to make the transition to Deputy CMM and then city manager? I know it includes a big chunk of your responsibility as public works. Paul (22:12):
Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead. AV (22:15):
No, there's so much more. Go ahead. Paul (22:17):
Yeah, just for me it was segueing from operations portfolio into then having public safety in the programming side of the house. So HR, IT, finance, not much different in terms of overall management strategy, but it's a different environment that if I look through your eyes as a consultant, I start looking at profitability for us as efficiency in terms of how they operate. And so then it's billable hours. And so I want to know from our permitting folks, how long do you spend on plan review, how many hours of inspection are you doing over to in fire and EMS? I want to know fire suppression, EMS runs training, break it down into all those things, public education events and things like that. And I want to understand better how you operate on a daily basis from a programmatic level. Then. So what we did when I came to the city of Piqua was I created two teams of leadership and they all kind of operate together. So I have the operations folks that they review each other's budgets and they're helping each other create their annual annual work plans. And on the other side of the house I have the programmatic and public safety because they're more the soft side people, all people oriented type thing where they're helping each other identify how can I lay out my year of work and what does that mean for my area and how does it plug into if you're an internal service, it, hr, finance, how does that support these other departments without me being over capacity? AV (24:00):
Yeah, that's a great point. Got an audience question. Given that the situation can vary from organization to another, what general recommendations or niche recommendations can you offer for tackling data archival in customer ERP systems and what obstacles should companies be aware of? I think the last piece of that question is important as you go to automate and modernize your systems and together we've run into many obstacles along the years, which ones do you think are the most important as far as selecting a system and making sure that you're not leaving good data behind in your old system? And how do you make that transition? What's been your experience? Paul (24:48):
Well, I think a lot of it is looking at the integrity of the data. And so I could go to my network right now and I could go back to 2003 and it's very scary for me because our knowledge management and our file archiving is not the greatest yet. But what happens is, is that really relevant information. AV (25:10):
And Paul (25:10):
So knowing that we're laying out a new ERP currently with a 25 20 25 implementation date, what we're trying to do is streamline our data on the backside to say what is the relevant data set and what is it going to produce for us if we import that data and if we pay for it, I want to be sure that we're getting the most effective use of that.
(25:35)
So we're trying to go through now and discern what is critical information, what is information that could be archived for later use? I can give you another demonstration of things that I've walked into, and you may have seen this. We have the AS 400 down in the basement doss space, amber screen, dirty keyboard. It's from 1990 whatever, and it's still down there because oh, we may have to go down there and look something up. The probability of that over time gets more diminished, but yet we still have record retention requirements that we have to do. So we have to kind of, I think cross there's a crosswalk between our records retention and archiving versus what we're going to be using on a daily basis to be making decisions. And so we're trying to streamline last year, this year and next year into data sets that are going to be instrumental in the ERP implementation and use and spend less time on the archiving and worrying about what we have to have for our records. Retention AV (26:42):
And old data. Archival is important. You don't have to bring 40 years of data into your new system, right? And who knows what's going to happen in the next two years as you implement your new ERP system, the advent of ai, and we've talked about natural language reporting and the ease of which will allow you to get the right data at the right time verbally without having to ask someone to write you a report that takes three months. I'm really excited for that. Paul (27:15):
I know you absolutely. AV (27:19):
Alright, audience questions. This is getting exciting now for the audience, clay Brooks, one of our newest senior consultants regarding square pegs and round holes, what are the advantages reshaping the PEG by organizing the people to suit the new system versus making a custom shaped ERP? How do the risks and costs of reorg compare to the time and money that could instead be spent on customizing software? She's making a case for customization. I don't know. Paul (27:54):
Well, I have to tell you from my vantage point, and so I've been here near three years now. We've gone through quite a few iterations of organizational development and reorganization, and a lot of it is just really taking those buckets of outcomes. So if you look at the program areas as a roll up to what the ERP is really going to be running in the background, understanding what those program areas are and how they need to be managed and what it takes from the human capital side of things to manage that is really important. And so we've spent a lot of time with our HR director, the assistant city manager, and myself basically, and I hate to admit this, but we took magnets on the whiteboard and assigned the departments and the positions and no names and really shuffled things around multiple times to try to figure out what was the most optimal arrangement to manage each of these areas because each organization's going to have either more parks and less parks and rec, more public works. We've got four pick plaza, so we have managed services with that in the golf course. So the makeup's going to be a little bit different. And so if you can align those programs with the right amount of management and the right amount of human capital to deal with it on a daily basis, to me it was starting with that overarching theme of what does the organization need to function and then drill down using the ERP into the process level
(29:27)
To then make the assignments through the map to say these are the touch points that need to be done and they're within that lane of that department. AV (29:35):
So future casting, I mean as we consultants call it visioning, blah blah, it really again nailed it down in terms of how do you want this organization to function? And then the tools will appear or you'll find 'em and something you said, and this is me trying to learn from you, being nimble and ready to change the organization based on the needs or changes externally can also be seen as indecisive leadership. But you and I know that it's required because you don't know how this puzzle fits yet. In your case, it's been three years and I think you're getting closer. In our case, I've been at this for eight years and it's still the same. The parallels are similar. You have to be nimble. How do you strike that balance? Paul (30:28):
Well, a lot of it is also too trying to be respectful to the staff. So in terms of when I came here, we have staff that have been at the city of pick, I'm not kidding you, for 33 years that are in leadership. So while they may be eligible to retire, there's still a value add to the organization, huge institutional knowledge, relationships, the things that go along with success. So waiting for their time to say, yeah, it's time for me to move on. And I guess respecting that and then taking their position and looking at it after they vacate it or when they're getting ready to vacate it, to reimagine what that really looks like I think is important. What I found too is, and I hate to admit this, government likes to push the easy button. So in order to pacify people, you find that people are promoted into a rank that they may not need or that they may not function in based on the fact that they squawk, they're unhappy, they cry, the blues, whatever it is, nash their teeth. And so sometimes weaker management will give into fine, you're now the director of engineering. AV (31:43):
But Paul (31:44):
For our organization, we're so small, it's not a director level, it's a support function. And by the way, I'm outsourcing it to a consultant because I can't afford a PE in today's environment. So it's that kind of a thing that we address in the agility or being nimble as things pop up, we have to really look at the organization and make some really critical decisions. Is it in-house or is it outsourced? And it seems to me that that parallel now with just the way the economy and the employment environment is that these specialties are very hard to fill. Just even a finance director, somebody with ACPA trying to afford somebody in today's market is just really difficult AV (32:30):
And you're not alone. So I completely understand. Kent has a question. Technology can really scare employees because they fear it can expose the weaknesses or skill gaps they may have. How do you help control the perception employees have about ERP products or I guess any enterprise wide technology? Paul (32:52):
Great, I appreciate that question. And that goes back to using paper. And again, I hate to go back in time and I as well use stone and carve the 10 commandments on it, but people are less, I think afraid of paper is a segue into a system and they have a clipboard and they have a piece of paper and you're talking about, here's the four areas of things I do and how many hours a day do I spend on it? And they throw it in their truck and then they go back. And so I think from a frontline perspective, it's easier to start very broad and say, Hey, we're just trying to figure this out. And then as time goes on, so now we're three years down the road, we've gone from those four areas to 20, and now we're adding materials and things like that.
(33:39)
Or in the terms of our permitting department, how many hours are you spending on each of the projects are the enterprise, excuse me, plan review for enterprise funds or general fund things of that nature. And I think the very thoughtful step into it is not to make it so that they sit down and feel like they're being analyzed right away as a time study. And if I was to take my iPad over here and set up survey 1, 2, 3 and Workforce and RRC GIS and hand it to somebody and say, okay, here's all your forms, go fill it out. I think they would probably have a little bit of reservation about that without understanding behind it and demonstrating for a few years ahead of that, at the end of the year we create this report that talks about how many acres of park we mow or how many EMS calls we've had and really demonstrate it in a way that supports the staff so that they feel engaged as being a part of the solution. They feel at the end of the day, they've really done something. I think that's another thing that I found too is when you go organization to organization, we're very ad hoc and responsive or reactive versus plan and executing on a schedule. And so instead of being unscheduled is 80% and schedules 20, we like to flip it around and do 80% scheduled and 20% unscheduled. And that's something new in government again, because the easy button is the easy way out. AV (35:08):
These are hard management challenges because you want people to do those tasks for you, but you're not going to get the best out of them if you don't show them the big picture and give them a problem to solve instead of a task to do. And I think that's a great way to build capacity within the organization too, because you are now showing them the big picture as a city manager, here's what I'm responsible for and how this task rolls up to the main responsibility that the council has. Paul (35:39):
And your team did a great job in the sense that when we do the mapping, again, it's the people at the frontline that do the work every day.
(35:47)
I'm not going to sit up here and profess that I know how to do their job the best. They do it every day. You tell me what it is process wise, it makes your job the easiest for you to do the most accurate and with the best quality control. And then we'll have the supervisor talk to your group about your group of people that do that job, and then how does that interconnect to the management and the reporting of that for the director that has oversight of that, and then how does that plug into the bigger system? And so by using the network team model and having all of those groups involved upfront, it eliminates a lot of the things that you don't see. So we all have blind spots and for me, my blind spots are areas that I don't deal with every day. And certainly the person that sees, oh, you better submit this report, otherwise our gap accounting is not going to be certified. Well, I don't think it's stuff like that. So we want to have all our processes put together in a way that's meaningful from the most mundane process all the way up to the philosophy of how we want to lead the organization. AV (36:59):
So we've talked about processes for what, 10 years now. And I love talking to you about this because you get it. And so the theory behind that is you study processes, you redesigned the map 'em out, and you're going to show it to a software vendor and say, make your thing, do this for us without customizations. And in my experience, the reality has been, yes, the theory still holds, but our software vendors don't necessarily listen or look at all of this upfront work we've done. It's like contractors not looking at architecture diagrams. And that's been frustrating. I know you've been through some of that also on your end. Paul (37:42):
Yes, and I think through the requirements both technical and functional requirements in the RFP, that really kind of becomes the divulging point for the vendors as to whether or not they can truly deliver. And through that assessment, you'll have a complete, or you should have a complete understanding if they're going to be able to do what they say that they can do. And then if they fail to deliver, you have a contract document that can hold their feet to the fire to make sure that they do what they say they can do. But moreover, I think from a cost saving or cost containment perspective, we started talking about this years ago. Instead of taking the widget and then having the vendor decide what your organization does and how they do it and how that interacts with their widget, it's better to determine what we do every day and show them, be upfront with it and say, Hey, here's our 150 pages of, and now you figure out how much programming time that you're going to have in development software development to take our concept of how we run our organization, the ERP, and digitize it into this tool that we need.
(38:50)
And I think all that work on the front end, while a lot of people don't understand that, just number one, the cost containment with the RFP and select vendor selection on the front end, but the go live time and the loss of capacity for your staff to fix things on the backside, not to mention the loss of reputation with the public while you go through it. And I really love the idea that we're doing this out in front. It helps the organization understand how we operate before we try to digitize. That's really business 1 0 1 is if we don't know how we do things, that's the first thing we need to understand. AV (39:28):
It's so important that we've had to use it, this documentation created upfront and when clients are trying to get out of bad contracts with vendors, because it becomes your contract compliance Paul (39:40):
Tool, AV (39:40):
Right? The vendors have agreed to do this for a certain amount, have signed off on it, and there then tends to be no way out. Paul, do you have any other thoughts, questions? Paul (39:54):
No. It's interesting. After 32 years in public service, every day I get up and I'm excited because of all the things that are on the horizon with AI and just technology and the fact that human capital is the most expensive thing on our budget line. And so trying to be agile and nimble and find tools that you can take that same person and they can do way more work and be way more effective than just having four people doing 25% of it. And to me, having folks that feel a sense of fulfillment coming to work and again, being a public servant, we're not making the most money. We're here hopefully for two reasons. One is to serve the public and do something greater than ourself, but number two is to create for us a local government that supports community development and placemaking and really creates a place where people want to move and be engaged in the community. So while we don't have a lot to do with some of those soft skills in the outside of it, creating the framework and the reputation is what draws those people to come here. AV (41:04):
That's a great thought, Paul. I wish more people thought of it like you do. And thank you for all you do for City of Piqua, and I know wherever you go have the same attitude and commitment. And there's Robert, when can we have Paul back for another episode? He's super smart. Okay, Paul (41:22):
Thanks. AV (41:24):
Alright, Paul, this has been great. I look forward to seeing you again soon and we'll do this again some other time. Paul (41:31):
Absolutely. Thank you, AV. AV (41:33):
Thanks. Paul (41:34):
Take care.
