Agenda - 05-15-2014 - 5 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

9 Attachment B Prepared 050814 7. individual commissioners should not try to interject their own views — the message needs to come from the County as a vision of the majority of Commissioners 8. one aspect of a Plan is sitting down and writing out what you already do 9. media relations policy section could become either unwieldy or too brief, maybe shoot for something that is "long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be interesting" 10. input from citizens and Commissioners regarding the County website needs to be continual 11. absolutely should be a component related to measuring success 12. need employees to understand what County is doing so they can be knowledgeable and be ambassadors 13. improving relationships among emergency departments should be at forefront 14. consistent brand should be part of our communication SUCCESS: Discussion here focused on how to balance empirical information vs. visceral or anecdotal information in evaluating the relative effectiveness of a Plan. Broadly, respondents tended to note the desirability, but difficulty, of trying to judge success empirically. It is important to develop and report performance measures within the County's resources to do so. A number of respondents noted the value of less formal measures or indicators of a Plan having positive impacts, such as an increase in compliments from members of the public, evidence of greater public awareness and understanding of County programs /policies /events, and a reduction in expressed anger by the public when the Board is dealing with complex and /or controversial subjects. 1. get out positive, proactive messages on various themes (e.g. education, environment, solid waste) 2. first of all, there needs to be a Plan! 3. if you don't have negative publicity and people aren't yelling at you 4. if we get more people telling us we did a good job on something or an employee explained something really well 5. Plan must have goals and objectives, a vision, and mission statement 6. citizens coming to meetings to give us input as opposed to them coming and yelling at you because you're doing something wrong is a kind of barometer 7. "when topics are non - controversial, then you could say we did a good job" 8. anecdotal evidence can be useful; the challenge is that no matter what you say factually, some people will still believe what they want to believe; communication success is very hard to measure 9. "sometimes even a data driven person like me has to accept that you can't have all the empirical measures" 10. results of staff "word association" with "what feels like success" — public engagement; inclusion; informed; fluid; limited backlash; democratic; proactive vs. reactive COMPREHENSIVENESS: This heading was intended to get at points important to Commissioners or staff that were not elicited by the questions set out under the other topic headings. Any issues raised that did not seem to me to fall clearly under a different heading are captured on the "Issues for Future Considerations" list at Appendix C. My thought process in setting up this section was to ensure that any comments or observations that do not need to be addressed in the immediate present (i.e. at the May 15 work session) should be preserved for consideration by a strategic communications team one or three or six months down the road. Various" kernels of wisdom" raised during the interviews are thus recorded and may be evaluated further down the road for incorporation into a draft Plan.