Organizational Change and Communications

Urban Communications Plan There are essentially three stakeholder groups for the communications plan. The City in the sense that whatever plan is communicated will in part hold agents of the city accountable for following through on whatever promises are made in the plan. The second is the incoming people and those interested in moving to Oakland. False controversy over migration is something that can dissuade people from coming to Oakland and investing in the city.

The current residents, especially the nimby-types who are complaining about change, are really a tertiary group in the communications plan. The second group is really the most important target for the communications plan at this point because the City wants to encourage continued investment that will create jobs, decrease crime, and increase the quality of life. These main stakeholders may be newer residents of Oakland, but they may also be people who are considering moving to Oakland.

Perhaps most important are people who look at the area's shifting demographics and are considering starting a business in Oakland. Leveraging lower rents, Oakland can begin to attract start-ups, artisanal businesses and other engines of job creation. SMART Goals The communications plan has to have some specific goals. Marriage to the idea of SMART goals, however, ignores the fact that not all knowledge is capture in finite, measurable numbers. There is nothing smart about blindly tossing out numbers and calling them goals.

There has to be a "why." So first it is advise to consider the overarching goal, which is to change the narrative from one that conveys a message that newcomers and change are inherently bad, to one that embraces Oakland's arrival as a modern city. The reality is that global cities all of the world are facing these same changes, with sharp increases in housing costs, rapidly-changing neighborhoods, and complaints from people who aren't prepared to adapt to change.

Oakland can't stop global economic forces; it's messaging cannot convey sympathy for foolish attempts to do so. People who don't want to adapt to the way the world is today honestly have no hope of winning, and their lashing out against "others" is exactly what the City doesn't not want to help facilitate in its messaging.

So the City really needs to change the tone and narrative of this discussion towards the fact that newcomers are diverse, they are families, they create jobs, they bring money into the city, and they result in lower crime rates and a higher quality of life. A key element to creating SMART goals is to know where you stand today. This is especially needed for a plan that aims to change perceptions -- your goals will likely have a starting point and an ending point.

In other words, you can't increase something 10% if you don't know the current level. So before setting out SMART goals, some formative research is required, so that the evaluative research can be compared to it later (Macnamara, 2011). One can tie some specific goals to this overarching objective. First, there will be measurable output goals associated with each element of the communications plan. That just means targeting the number of tweets, Facebook posts, ad buys, blog posts and other such outputs.

Output targets simply hold the communications department accountable to a certain level of production, to ensure that this program does not fall by the wayside or become superseded by other priorities -- that whatever content strategy is put into place is executed consistently over time. This should include goals about measurement and testing, as well as raw output. That means setting goals around the number of A/B tests you will do, or to ensure that you develop -- and can accurately track -- x number of meaningful metrics.

In other words, you don't start with SMART goals; you have to understand why you want to track those measurable and make sure that you actually can. "Measurable" doesn't just mean "quantitative," it means you have to be able to accurately measure it, and that's easier said than done for really intelligent communications objectives.

Some goals that are a good starting point for this communication s plan are: • 1 blog post on the City website each week about the positive nature of change • 5 tweets per week about something positive relating to the change. • Increase Twitter followers by 100% in 1 year • Increase positive Twitter interactions by 50% in 1 year • Increase website to traffic to our Invest Oakland portal by 200% in 1 year.

• Increase positive opinion of Oakland among people who live elsewhere in the Bay Area by 10% within one year (need a baseline survey) • Shift the balance between positive and negative stories in third-party media by 20% within one year • Increase awareness among current Oakland residents about City services to help them within one year (job training programs, etc.) to 75% • Increase awareness among renters of renters' rights to 50% within 1 year. • Add one local Oakland high school graduate to the communications team These are just a sample of goals.

It is expected that there would be quite a few more goals, both pertaining to output and to results. Results-driven goals are important because they give focus in terms of the messaging, and they set important targets. Communications managers at the City can change tactics if their approaches or messaging are not showing results. Schedule for Communications Plan This communications plan is set for one year, at which point new goals will need to be set.

The overall messaging will probably continue for many years, but for the plan to have meaningful SMART goals, it should only last for one year so that fresh goals can be set against next year. There should be a month-by-month schedule for rollout. Some activities will be ongoing, such blog posts and tweets. But there also needs to be an schedule for the communications plan to take it through the year.

Q1: Create Local Awareness • Create new slogan for the City around the message • Train key civic leaders on the message to ensure consistent delivery across all platforms, including media spots • Use State of the City to further elaborate on key elements of the message • Support with press releases • Create collateral such as street banners and install them • Media spots in Oakland, SF, Silicon Valley to highlight the message by civic leaders • Create website describing the vision for Oakland -- set a target like 2020 for when this vision will fully come to fruition Q2: Strengthen Local Awareness • Flyers, pamphlets to highlight renters' rights, and city services • Highlight City programs in social media and on website • Press releases to focus on success stories -- get some early wins • Ongoing social, blogs.

Use FB, Twitter, Instagram, FB Live at the least • Initiate social ads, targeting other Bay Area residents Q3: Bolster External Awareness • Strategic use of public appearances to emphasize high-level support • Engagement with stakeholders, and measure Q1/Q2 success • Re-evaluate tactics -- are changes needed? Q4: Expand strategy national • Leverage body of content that's been built to create broader narratives for national press • Press tours with local and national media to highlight success stories • Add testimonials from local residents to highlight successes • Increase ad spend to ensure audience is reached • Review collateral, interviews to ensure that everybody is still on message There's much more to this, but these are a starting point for the approach.

During the initial stages of the plan, the message has to be distilled into a slogan, and a clear vision so that the different internal and external stakeholders have something to buy into -- without buy-in from City employees the messaging will falter and the execution of the strategy will suffer. The communications plan has to include an internal element to the extent that organizatioaal change is required to enact the strategy that that communications plan is supporting (Anderson & Anderson, 2015).

Messaging needs to be consistent, and on-brand, so training is required to ensure this. Focus will be local media only to keep things simple. The next two quarters will expand the footprint of the communications plan gradually to encompass the region. After the initial launch of the plan, it needs to be bolstered through steady repetition. By Q3 there will be a need to highlight some early wins in order to ensure that buy-in for the vision does not wane.

But this is also a point where some evaluation can begin. It is necessary to know how well the plan is progressing towards the one-year SMART goals. It is also necessary to evaluate the general success of the tactics and metrics -- are there things we're not measuring that we should be, for example? The fourth quarter will take the campaign national, to counter the negative rhetoric on things like Vice, and the historically poor reputation that Oakland has overall. Adding in testimonials helps reinforce the vision.

Q4 is also when planning for the next year of the plan will begin -- evaluating the successes and failures of the first year, making adjustments, and determining what to emphasize in Y2. Measures Some of the SMART goals are easy to measure -- output numbers, but also things like Twitter followers. Somebody will have been tasked with gathering media mentions, and it will be time to look that data over.

Further, surveys will be required at the end of the year to measure some of the SMART goals, such as awareness of City programs, and awareness of renters' rights. A survey to determine what people outside Oakland think of Oakland can be done as well, though that part of the campaign really only started in Q3. Still, having a sense of whether this is working is key at this point, and surveys of the public are needed to measure public opinion.

By combining a number of different measures, the communications manager will be able to determine whether or not communications staff have been able to deliver the output, and whether that output had the desired effect on perceptions. At this point, a gap analysis of where the City wanted to be at the end of the first year and where it is can be used to help shape Q4 strategy. One of the other things that has to be measured is the effectiveness of individual tools. For.