Data-driven decision-making leads to excellence: 2023 Exemplary Public Servant Richard Derrick

No question, Henderson, Nev., residents are pleased with their city’s management. According to Henderson’s American City & County 2023 Exemplary Public Servant Award nomination: “The city has achieved and maintained a 97 percent citizen satisfaction for quality of life (highest in the nation for mid-to-large-sized cities participating in the survey), 94 percent citizen satisfaction with city services (higher than all local, regional and national benchmarks), second-safest large city in America, and top 0.5 percent ranking among fire departments in the nation.”

Richard Derrick

And Henderson City Manager-CEO Richard Derrick has played a huge role in boosting Henderson citizen satisfaction. Derrick, for instance, introduced his Path to Premier program as well as the Baldrige Performance Excellence Criteria to the city in 2010.

Derrick’s alignment of organizational approaches with the Baldrige Criteria has informed the Path to Premier city leadership system. According to the Exemplary Public Servant Award nomination, “This management framework focuses on results, relies on systems thinking to remove department silos, and moves the organization forward through a mission and vision-driven focus.”

Through Derrick’s measurement initiatives, Henderson’s customer satisfaction levels have improved. For these reasons, he has been named a 2023 Exemplary Public Servant by American City & County.

As noted in the nomination submitted for Derrick, “Today, this citywide assessment process is a standard, biennial effort that culminates in a feedback report revealing opportunities for improvement that are then fed into the strategic plan and acted upon. Over the past 13 years of the city’s Baldrige journey, the city has been recognized with two Southwest Alliance for Excellence (SWAE) Pioneer Awards and a 2021 Pinnacle Award (the first organization to receive the region’s highest performance excellence honor).”

Derrick’s focus on the customer supported the creation of the city’s “P.R.E.M.I.E.R. Customer Service” program that “works to standardize and improve customer processes and experiences by outlining the standard for how team members should interact with customers and communicating the approach across all 17 city departments.” Some highlights from the program:

Data-driven decision making is at the core of Henderson’s management and improvement strategy. As noted in the nomination, “Richard’s leadership implemented a citywide, tiered performance management program storing and presenting data via a centralized repository (approximately 920 charts and 550 data sets across 17 departments). The program emphasizes comparisons and national benchmarks to inform and improve performance. The city has established a National Performance Consortium of best-practice cities (90 percent or higher quality of life, What Works Cities certification, and/or National Baldrige award-winner).”

Derrick says one of the best tools that cities can use to measure customer satisfaction is community surveys. “Our city has two community surveys—one for residents and one for businesses. Our community surveys measure satisfaction for each of our department’s service areas and let us know our customers’ top priorities.”

Derrick says his city has a key yardstick: Customer Satisfaction with “Quality of Life.” He explains: “This is our overall measure of success. The city’s 93 percent rating is the top in the nation for mid-to-large-size cities.”

He adds that Henderson city officials use a variety of other customer feedback mechanisms, such as comment cards and department-specific surveys. “In addition, we gauge our city workforce’s engagement through surveys that provide insight into their satisfaction with the work environment and culture.”

Derrick says benchmarking and comparison instruments are essential tools in measuring performance. “Henderson not only measures itself against local governments, but also best-practice cities from across the nation. Our vision is ‘To Be America’s Premier Community,’ and benchmarking is the tool we use to measure progress toward that vision.”

It is important for cities and counties to measure employee engagement, Derrick believes. “Employees are the center of everything we do. Productivity, customer satisfaction—everything hinges on our customers and how our staffers approach the work.” He adds that Henderson initially administered its own employee engagement survey but eventually hired an outside company to deploy it and provide the results to city officials.

Derrick believes that a culture of inclusivity can translate into a high-performing city or county. “As outlined in our strategic plan, high-performing public service is a priority for us, and in order to be a premier workplace, we need a premier workforce. A culture of inclusivity is not just the right thing to do; it’s the smart and prudent thing to do.”

He notes that his city’s inclusive policies bring in a diverse array of talents and skills to his city, adding that the policies propel the city towards its organizational goals. “We have a dedicated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) Coalition, comprised of employees across the organization; they work proactively to further inclusivity and make Henderson a place to call home for everyone.”

Water conservation is a priority in Henderson, according to Derrick. “Saving water is one of our main initiatives, and we recently launched H2One—Henderson’s call to conserve. It’s part of a strategic priority to ensure a healthy, livable and sustainable city for our residents.”

Conserving water in the arid Nevada region requires participation by everyone. “That means that every city department, resident and business must play their part,” Derrick says. “Last year, we worked with our residents and businesses to reduce city-wide water usage by more than one billion gallons compared to 2022. That type of effort takes requires a city-wide approach. I am proud of our results to date, knowing we still have more to do.”

COVID provided challenges to cities across the country and, according to Derrick’s nomination, Henderson is happy with how Derrick rose to the challenge: “During the pandemic, Richard’s priority was to ensure that the community and his team remained safe, which built and reinforced customer and team member engagement and well-being. His leadership helped ensure that there was adequate childcare for first responders, health care workers and team members so that they could continue to provide services to the community, and he supported and encouraged team members to volunteer at local non-profits. Richard’s leadership enabled city departments to transition public services overnight to contactless processes supported by team-member telecommuting, which enabled the city to continue to provide services.”

Since the pandemic subsided, Henderson city workers have returned to their worksites. “We are thrilled to have a vibrant workplace with our team back in-person after the pandemic. What we learned, though, is that we could effectively conduct city business, even remotely,” Derrick explains.

He adds that city workers adapted well to the situation: “After gathering employee feedback, we learned that in-office flexibility is a crucial consideration for current employees and prospective recruits. To remain competitive in the marketplace, we have initiated a pilot hybrid telework program, providing the flexibility for many of our team members to work remotely.”

American City & County asked Derrick: Is it accurate to say the city administration follows this guide: “You can’t improve what you don’t measure”? His reply: “Certainly. Without data and facts, you are leading solely by intuition. Data-driven decision-making is central to everything we do and has helped us become one of the top cities in the United States. And we will continue to get even better by using performance measurement and outside assessments and accreditations.”

Derrick encourages cities and counties to use measures and yardsticks to track their own performance. “Participation in outside accreditations and assessments, as well as the National Performance Consortium, provides networking opportunities and partnerships that illuminate common measures and provide benchmarking and comparison opportunities.”

He points to several areas where we will see more performance measurements for cities and counties in the future: “Measures will become even more prevalent and essential in areas such as public-private partnerships and government-to-government partnerships. For example, the local school district attends and reports data at our city council meetings. Data needs to be at the center of these partnerships in order to improve public sector jurisdictions together.”

Derrick offers the following advice for city and county administrators on tracking their own jurisdiction’s performance: “Start small. Identify and focus on a few key measures that are common across jurisdictions.”

Michael Keating is senior editor for American City & County. Contact him at [email protected].