Black Belts Overview
What is a Black Belt?
Before Metro Nashville began to implement managing for results, the Strategic Planning and Performance Management deployment team made a critical decision – that the immense skilled effort to create Strategic Business Plans would be led, not by consultants or full-time staff as was done in other local governments, but by employees from across Metro.
These leaders – called “Black Belts,” after similar roles played by employees in manufacturing company quality initiatives – are recruited from all levels of departments/agencies in Metro. Metro’s Black Belts have powered the successful implementation of managing for results, leading the creation of Strategic Business Plans and championing the process inside their own organizations.Black Belt candidates receive intensive training on the managing for results tools and methods, change management, and facilitation techniques. Black Belts then work in teams to facilitate departments through the Strategic Planning and Performance Management process. In order to ensure objectivity, no department employee can lead his/her own department through the procedure. Strategic Planning and Performance Management creates an environment that focuses all energy and resources on results from customers. Black Belts have the opportunity to implement this mission. A Wave I Black Belt, Steve Hackney, was excited about “restoring the sense of pride back into public service.”Through the strategic business plan development Strategic Planning and Performance Management gives the departments the opportunity to tell the story of where taxpayer dollars are going and the results those dollars deliver.
Ultimately, Black Belts play a vital role in the success of Strategic Planning and Performance Management. They serve as catalysts for organizational change and role models that demonstrate the language, attitudes, and beliefs that focus everything on results for customers. Nikki Meyer, a Wave II Black Belt and department head, says “I would absolutely do it again.”