Session 1: Situation Analysis
Transcript
[First slide: title slide]
[Screen share stops]
Robert Hornsby:
So, welcome to Strategic Communications Planning. These courses are being recorded and will be available to you within about three days, and then later on these will be put on a public website. So, I'm going to continue to admit people as we go along, but I'm not going to interrupt the course. I'm Robert Hornsby, the Associate Vice President of Internal Communications, and my partner is Cassandra.
Cassandra Nathan:
Hi, everyone. My name is Cassandra, the Assistant Director, and I work closely with Robert, and I'm here to support you guys. I'm here to ensure that you make it to the finish line. Essentially. [Laughs]
Robert H.:
Right. Right. So, I'm going to jump right into the presentation. We'll have a break in the middle for breakout rooms. We're not going to be able to—because we had a few dropouts and a few late enrollments—we're not going to be able to line you up with your breakout team of choice/preference for this meeting, but we'll put you with a group of four or five people. Cassandra will explain how all that will work. So, that'll be following 20 minutes of presentation, then there'll be 20 minutes-ish of breakout, and then we'll come back together for 20 minutes of general discussion and question and answer session.
So, here we go. I'm going to share screen.
[Screen share starts]
[Second slide: Overview—Course Basics]
Here's what I was going through before. We don't need to reiterate that.
[Third slide: Class objective]
Your class objective: Define priorities. Allocate time. The methodology we teach applies to all people. Don't worry about getting it right. This is a process; we will work with you.
[Fourth slide: Overview—Three pillars of Strategic Communication Planning]
Okay. three pillars of strategic communications planning. Hope this makes more sense now. The three pillars are audience, purpose, and outcomes. So, who are you communicating with? Why are you communicating? And then after the communicating, what outcomes do you seek?
[Fifth slide: What works—an example]
Here's what works. For audience, your audience is faculty at peer institutions that we would like to hire. The purpose of the communications is to hire more faculty of color. And the impact or outcome we're looking for is a 20% increase in faculty of color in the next five years.
[Sixth slide: What doesn’t work—empty terms]
What doesn't work: when you have empty terms. When your audience is quote unquote everyone. That's not targeted, and it's hard to measure, and it's meaningless. A purpose: creating awareness. Awareness is amorphous and similarly lacks purpose. An impact or outcome: increased audience awareness. Again, it's just too vague.
[Seventh slide: Overview—Elements of a Strategic Communications Plan]
So, we're going to go through a whole series of modules week by week, and these are the six modules. So, we begin with situation analysis, which we'll talk about today. Then, we'll go through the goals, strategy, tactics, metrics, and evaluation. So, this boils down to the “why,” the “what,” and the “how,” and we'll reiterate this many times. Goals are the “why.” Strategy is the “what.” Tactics are the “how.” And we'll break that down and unpack it in each session.
[Eighth slide: Situation Analysis]
So, starting with situation analysis. Situation analysis is just that: where you ask the big question, Where are you today, really? Who's your audience? What do they know? How do you reach them? It can be helpful to compile an inventory or a map of your assets—written materials, websites, graphics, photography, all these things.
[Ninth slide: Institutional Goals]
So, we make a differentiation between institutional goals and communications goals. So, let me break that down for you. Institutional goals are usually about growth or increase but could be about stability or other attributes. But importantly, they're about quantifiable—often, most often—about quantifiable attributes such as numbers of students, faculty positions, research funding, construction projects.
So, where would you find the institutional goals for your organization? Anybody? Raise a hand or wave at me.
No? All right. Institutional goals–
Cassandra:
In the chat, Angela says “Mission statement.”
Robert H.:
Yes. Okay. Thank you, Cassandra. You can prompt me on that because as I'm going through this, I can't see the chat at the same time.
Cassandra:
No problem.
Robert H.:
So, mission statement is one of the places you find your institutional goals. Also can be your annual report, a dean's letter, in fundraising proposals, admission materials. Are there others? Probably.
Cassandra:
Ramona says, “A strategic plan.”
Robert H.:
Yes. If there is a strategic plan, your plan should mesh with a strategic plan. Let’s just see a show of hands. How many people have a strategic plan in their unit?
[A few people raise their hands]
Okay, a few. That's more than usual.
[Tenth slide: Situation Analysis—Audience questions]
So, we're moving on to audience. So, the questions that you ask when you're developing your situation analysis. Who are your audiences? Is there a hierarchy? Is one audience more important than another? What's your profile? What do the audiences know about you?
You can't make a lot of assumptions about this. What you broadcast to the outside world may not be how they perceive you. You may be saying, “Greatest thing,” you know, “Biggest program!” And then, you know, you do some analysis and find out that, you know, in terms of your ranking, you're, you know, 20 out of 100 rather than being the number one program in the nation, which is what is a common pitfall in these kind of things.
What's your audience's current perception of you? And this is a little bit different than your statue or your reputation. So, this is about sentiment. Is their perception of you positive, negative, or neutral? And that can also apply to specific projects or projects or news stories or events within a continuum of, you know, the academic year or over multiple years.
So, what are the platforms that you use? So, for the purposes of this course, platforms are the means of delivery—the methods and the technologies and the ways that you transmit or deliver content to your audiences.
[Eleventh slide: Situation analysis—Purpose questions]
So, moving on. After audience– Oh boy, there's my light from my office. Sorry about that.
Purpose questions: How to help you understand the purpose of your unit. What does your unit hope to accomplish in the next six months or the next year? Is there a hierarchy to that? Is some aspect of your communications more important than others? On the institutional side, is your big focus enrollment of students? Is it hiring? Is it shoring up the resources of your school, department, or unit? Are there new or emerging purposes? So, this can be a dialogue that you have with your boss or with other members of your unit.
The fourth question is, Does your organization have the resources it needs? So, you may be in a place where, “Well we need to do x, but we need a $10 million grant before we can do x. So, you need to help us get the $10 million grant.” Perfectly legitimate.
[Twelfth slide: Situation Analysis—Outcome questions]
So, here are some questions about outcomes or impact. What would be the very best outcome for your organization? How would that directly benefit your organization? How would it benefit your audiences? That's different from your organization because those aren't people that work for you. And are there data markers or milestones that would indicate your organization is surpassing its goals?
[Thirteenth slide: Situation Analysis—Internal questions]
So, let's talk about some internal questions that are legitimate that you should be asking yourself as you're approaching your situation analysis. What's the current personal workflow or schedule or regularity of your activities? Are you putting out a weekly newsletter? Are you updating your website every day? Are you updating your website once every five months? What's your current allocation of resources across various communications areas? What are the tasks at hand? What order do they follow? And who handles which thing?
So, this can be helpful if you work in a small team. And if you're a one-person shop, that's okay. Go ahead and sort of outline– This gives you a snapshot of what you're doing and how you're doing it. So, in your situation analysis plan, you can make your case for a change of direction, a change of role or responsibility, or request more resources. So, you're going to lay out and say, “Okay here's what my institution or my unit is all about, and here's what our institutional goals are, and here's how many resources we have right now to put toward those goals: A team of three people, a team of ten people, a team of one person. And in my plan, I'll show you how we can achieve some of these goals, but also what it's going to take to get those things accomplished.”
Especially if they're not possible with the current resources that you have. You may need to bring in another person. You may need to hire an outside consultant to design your website because that's not your skill set. You may need to hire a freelance writer to help you put together a newsletter because your bandwidth is already full managing your website and your social media content. So, these are all the kind of things that, you know, your boss says, “Oh you know, we're going to do a new website and we're going to do a new newsletter.” And he was like, “Okay, who's going to do these things?” And how can they possibly get done?
[Fourteenth slide: Situation Analysis—Internal questions—important but confidential]
Also, internal questions. These are important but confidential. So, how do you understand and feel about your current situation? And then there's some candid and private questions to ask yourself: Are you overworked? Underutilized? Lacking resources? Are you and your unit focused on correct priorities? So, we tell you it's can be cathartic to write this out, and you can do that in your first draft or your situation analysis.
That's not something you're going to show to your boss, for example, but it can be really helpful to just get it out of your system at this stage of the process. So, as you go along, you can refine your proposal, and you can take that knowledge and use it. But you don't have to sort of disgorge personal details or something that might be unflattering to you or your department. Not necessary to have it be part of your plan.
[Fifteenth slide: Situation Analysis—Breakout Rooms]
So, we're okay on time. Sorry about the screw up at the very start. Cassandra's gonna talk to you about breakouts, and then we'll set you up for breakouts. So, I'm gonna stop share screen right now.
[Screen share stops]
Cassandra:
All right. Hi. You guys can hear me? Okay, great. I'm off mute.
So, we're going to go into a breakout session. So, this gives you guys an opportunity—let me just pull this up real quick—this will give you guys an opportunity to network and get to know one another. But just a heads up, the time really does go quickly. So, you guys want to give a fair chance to everyone to talk. So try not to go–
How long are we going to let them stay this time, Robert?
Robert H.:
We're going to go at least 15 minutes.
Cassandra:
Okay, so you guys are going to go 15 minutes. So, you guys will probably have about four people in each space. So, the idea is to give everybody a chance to actually respond. This is for the full duration of the eight weeks. Give everybody a chance to respond. If you have a little bit of extra time, you can fill in the empty space with what's going on—more context about your unit, if that's fair.
So this breakout room, you guys are going to introduce yourselves to your teammates. This will likely not be the same teammates according to the roster. The roster will be updated after class. And you guys, I'll send you guys individual emails so that you know who's part of your team. Your team is salient to the success of your journey here. Okay? You guys want to network; you want to touch base with one another; you want to comment—we'll get to that soon—on their assignments, but you want to stay engaged and involved.
So, in this breakout session you're going to discuss: One, Who is your primary audience? Second, What is a primary purpose? So, an example of that is– Without saying awareness. When you're talking about your primary audience, you want to say it without saying “everyone.” So, the idea is to get specific—get as specific as possible such that you're talking to someone who's not part of the university, and they would have no idea what you're talking about. Finally, What is a primary outcome you seek? Omitting awareness again. Sometimes people think that that's enough, but we want you guys to be as specific as possible.
So, I'll recap for you: First question you're gonna answer, Who is your primary audience? (Without saying, “everyone.”) Second, What is a primary purpose for your unit? (Without saying, “awareness”). And finally, What is a primary outcome you seek? (Again omitting “awareness.”) And then we'll come back.
[Small time jump in the video]
Robert H.:
Hi! Katie, where are you from?
Katie McCluskey:
I work on the Strategic Communications team for Facilities and Operations, so I think it's kind of funny when you asked us to answer those questions and to not say “everyone.”
Robert H.:
[Laughs]
Katie:
Because the answer to that question really depends on which unit within Facilities and Operations I'm working on because there are so many departments, and there's more than 10 of them.
So, I'll give an example of one that I work on a lot just for the sake of this discussion, but I frequently work with Columbia undergraduate housing. And in that case, our primary audience is students, though a little bit spills over into parents, for example, parents of the students who are going to live on campus. And our goal– Sorry, I'm trying to pull up the email. It had this outline. So, the purpose of our communications—I would probably say that the purpose is usually service oriented, so the students who live on campus have to do so through Columbia Housing, and there are quite a lot of policies and deadlines that are associated with living in our facilities.
And it kind of ranges between things that they absolutely have to know because they have to agree to, say, terms and conditions, and they have to pay room and board. And then some of it are things that might be a little bit more fun. Although more of the, I think, typical, like, fun residential experiences are handled through Res Life as opposed to Housing.
Robert H.:
What percent of your communications is transactional and what other is this more, like, invites and events?
Katie:
It's probably at least 90% transactional. You know, some of the events we do are, like, around, say, room selection. We just had some info sessions sort of walking students through it. And then I think it also depends on on which platform we're using, so–
Robert H.:
Okay.
Katie:
Like, our email is much more transactional, but our social media–
Robert H.:
Oh, sure.
Katie:
–is the opportunity to be a little more fun.
Robert H.:
Oh, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, sure.
Katie:
And I would say that our outcomes that we expect our communications to achieve—probably clarity is one of the top ones: To be as clear and straightforward as possible so that our students are always aware of what's expected of them and what they need to do so that they don't they don't lose their housing. And there are sort of a number of different ways that a student can lose their guaranteed housing status, and it's a little unclear. And so consistency, clarity, and probably being seen as a trustworthy and reliable source are all very important to us.
Robert H.:
So, those are more attributes than they are outcomes. So, your outcomes are something more measurable like 98% compliance with social distancing, or only 3% of people miss the deadline. So, that's a sort of institutional outcome.
Katie:
Unfortunately, there's not a lot– You know, in terms of missing the deadline, students can choose not to participate, and so it's hard to say if we have a goal if that–
Robert H.:
Oh, for sure. I’m just saying that there are– The difference between sort of a qualitative attribute, like clarity, and an outcome is that an outcome has a more measurable result. So, you can say, for example, on social media that you had, you know, more click-throughs—people actually read the thing—and so you have a, you know, a greater confidence that the message was delivered. And then on the institutional side, fewer people missed the deadline than last time around. So, those are sort of a communications outcome that's linked to an institutional outcome. It’s just a different way of sort of positioning the ideas of what an outcome actually is.
What about you, Angela?
Angela Slagle:
So, I'm a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is up in Palisades, New York. It's the Lamont campus of Columbia. And part of my position here involves being kind of a—what we think of as a—program manager for a National Science Foundation grant. And the program is called the U.S. Science Support Program, and what it's there to do is to provide financial support for scientists at U.S. institutions that participate in what's called the scientific Ocean Drilling Program. It's an international program, but our office is kind of the support unit for the U.S. piece of that scientific Ocean Drilling Program. And in most straightforward terms, we provide financial support to scientists whose researches relies on sailing on research cruises.
Robert H.:
Okay.
Angela:
So, we provide some salary support for those who sail. We provide some research support for scientists who have projects working on the data collected on those research cruises. And we also support kind of planning meetings and workshops that are associated with this program. Some of those may be planning the next research cruise.
Robert H.:
Right.
Angela:
Some of them may be bringing together early career researchers and kind of teaching them about the program, helping them develop skills for writing proposals.
Robert H.:
Pipeline.
Angela:
Things like that.
Robert H.:
Great.
Angela:
So, that's kind of my role. So, the broader aim of the program is all of that, but what I wanted to do in this course was kind of focus on one of the things that's my special area within this program, which is really science communication. So, my kind of audience is mainly the science community here in the U.S.--
Robert H.:
Okay.
Angela:
–that are participating in this program. What we do is both provide that financial support, but we also solicit proposals—proposals to hold workshops, to hold meetings, to carry out personal research projects that are related to this program.
Robert H.:
So, let me ask, Do you see that as a, like, you need to educate people about the program? Or they know about the program; you just need to promote it?
Angela:
We actually have both. Those are both kind of purposes. The one I've kind of honed in on a little bit was letting people in our kind of community know about these financial opportunities. And so what I'd like to do is increase the number of proposals we receive for our financial support programs. I have this sense that not enough people are aware of the support programs that we have, so I kind of want to step up the way we communicate about those opportunities and increase the number of proposals we get.
Robert H.:
Okay. And Chris, tell us about yourself.
Chris Molinari:
Hi, everybody. Just a quick side: Angela, I worked recently—well, about a year or two ago—with Gisela Winckler on the Joides Resolution.
Angela:
Oh yeah. Totally.
Chris:
Very much aware of that.
Angela:
We provided support to Gisela for that project.
Chris:
Yeah. I'm here in Santiago, Chile. I'm the Communications and Programs Manager for the Columbia Global Centers in Santiago. Kind of like Katie, we have a really varied audience. I'm not going to say “everybody;” I'll stay away from that word. But we do have a very varied audience. I'd say our primary audience is the alumni living in Chile and in other countries in Latin America.
Robert H.:
Okay.
Chris:
Our primary purpose for the Global Centers is to bring Columbia to the world and the world to Columbia. That's kind of the overall motto/goal. The primary purpose: So, our communications in that aspect, and considering that our primary audience would be the alumni, is to really engage with them and get them signed up for our mailing lists, engage with them, having them participate in activities that we do. As of the last year or so it's mostly been webinars because of the COVID.
And I guess the outcome is also a little bit too varied. There's a few different areas that we'd like to focus on. One is to get more engagement and more people involved, not only in Chile but also in Argentina, Colombia, and Peru specifically. And I think one of the other outcomes that we would like to see: We—all the Global Centers—run basically on donations. Here in Santiago, we're lucky enough to have a single donor who's a very wealthy individual here in Chile who basically subsidizes our activities. We'd like to see that expand to other people in Chile and Latin America donating to the center so that we're not dependent on just one person.
Robert H.:
Okay. So, after the breakout, we're going to ask some questions. You guys can think about this now. What are some areas that are common? On what areas are very different between your audiences and your purposes and your outcomes? So it is, like, who you're targeting them, why you're reaching out to them, and what you expect to happen afterward. And we'll talk more about those in the following session.
I'm going to go off onto the other breakout rooms and see how they're doing, and I'll leave you to it. And we'll close breakouts in about five more minutes.
[Small time jump in the video]
Welcome back. I hope you had a good first introductory session. Let's talk about what we learned. Of the concepts and the sort of general overview that I presented before breakout rooms, Did it stump anybody? Did you have trouble figuring out audience, purpose, or outcomes? Just raise a hand and unmute yourself.
Go ahead, Chris.
Chris:
Yeah. As I explained to our group, I work at the Global Center in Santiago, Chile. And I think it's difficult for us to define what the outcome is that we're looking for when we're doing our communications strategy.
Robert H.:
Okay. So, let's talk about that. Chris, who are your audiences, real quick.
Chris:
Our primary audience are alumni in Latin America as well as students—international students—but we also have a number of other stakeholders including politicians, scientists, journalists. We have a number of different groups of interest for us.
Robert H.:
And in terms of purpose, what would you consider to be the—maybe there are two or three—what would be the prime purpose of communicating with these groups?
Chris:
So, I think it would differ per group.
Robert H.:
Okay.
Chris:
Sticking to the primary group of the alumni–
Robert H.:
Good point.
Chris:
–in Latin America is to really be the link for them with Columbia—getting them engaged with the university itself and with each other, forming a network, and really getting the value out of being a Columbia alum.
Robert H.:
Okay. So, what would be another audience with a different purpose?
Chris:
Another audience would maybe be a little bit more external, so we could be talking about policymakers. And our purpose there would be to engage with them but also look to possibly influence or have a say from Columbia professors and alumni in defining policy for Chile, for example, or another country.
Chris:
Okay. So, class, given Chris's explanation, for he's got two audiences—-one are alumni and one are policymakers—what kind of outcome would be a good thing for him or for his unit? Anybody? Come on, raise your hand and shout it out. Something. Go ahead.
Carol Cotterill:
I'll give it a go. So, I guess for the policymakers, a good outcome would be having a certain number of meetings with them or getting to actually speak to a certain number of people that was an increase—a percentage increase—on what you are currently doing. And with the alumni, I would—thinking about how I deal with all of the emails I get from my alumni association group—I guess it would be participation or somehow measuring who actually clicks on links and actually reads what you're sending them and getting an increase on that.
Robert H.:
Very good. Carol, what unit are you in?
Carol:
I'm out at Lamont-Doherty working for the U.S. Science Support Program for IODP out of Marine and Large Programs.
Robert H.:
Okay. So, who has an audience that's completely different than what Chris talked about? Maybe your primary audience is external.
Go ahead, Robert.
Robert Tulman:
Sure. So, we have–
Robert H.:
What unit are you in?
Robert T.:
Sure. I work for the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. I work with Lauren Perlmutter who just recently took the class, had great things to say, by the way.
But our audience falls into a few different pockets, one of the largest being uh ex-patients, whether even a patient of us or just a patient of a certain condition or clinical area. But most are not alumni. You know, we do have an audience bucket that of course are, you know, former students of VP&S. But as far as what our team does is mostly patients and people interested in a clinical specialty—external.
Robert H.:
And what do you want them to learn or know? What's the purpose?
Robert T.:
Yeah, sure. So, I mean we're in a unique position in that most of our audience actually has a deep emotional connection or, you know, fairly engaged in a certain subject. So for us, it's about keeping people engaged. Right? And why Columbia? Why CUIMC? You know, whether that's through virtual events or newsletters or what have you. But yeah, I would say that that's what we focus on.
Robert H.:
We'll talk a lot about engagement as the course goes on, so that's good. And what kind of outcomes are you looking for?
Robert T.:
Sure. So, we're always looking for, well, what we like to call, you know, it's sort of like pipeline building. It's not one-to-one relating to donors or fundraising or things of that nature. It's more so having a steady audience base for each clinical area, you know, whether it's Center for Radiological Research which is doing fantastic work—their audience base may not be as large just because of this, you know, how specific their work is as let's say the cancer institute. So for us, it's about when we have an audience base, maintaining it, making sure that they stay with us, and that we're keeping them interested and involved.
Robert H.:
Right. and this is a point that we'll come back to in a couple of other contexts. And that's one of the reasons that we discourage people from communicating with everyone because everyone is a large and amorphous group that can't be measured, and it consists of segments who have different needs and different reasons to connect with you and different ways to connect with you. And one of the points that Robert made was, you know, one audience may be smaller than another, but the important thing is you want to be communicating to the right group.
So for example, you could be communicating broadly to everybody that watches Fox News, for example. How many people of that group do you think will actually be contributors to Columbia University's justice program? Okay, so you could be wasting a lot of your energy trying to communicate broadly to a bunch of people that don't really care or don't have the connection that you're trying to make or don't value what you're trying to offer and have no sense of engagement. So, the important thing is to be thinking about who's the right audience, and it may not be the biggest audience, but if you're contacting twenty donors and three of those donors write you a $10 million check, you're good to go. And that's what it comes down to.
That's what we're talking about—sort of purposeful outcomes. And it's a bit of a difference, and you'll see that throughout the course we'll come back to this and we'll talk about it in other contexts. This is more of a marketing mindset than some of you may be accustomed to. So, it's about not necessarily everything being transactional. But if you're doing some activity, it's got a purpose and you want something to happen at the other end, even if it's just a change in perception. It's like, if you can just sort of move the needle enough that more people feel favorably or positively about you than did before, then that's measurable. Now we have with social media, we have all sorts of tools to judge those things. I mean, there have always been tools to judge that, but they've been a little more vague and less specific.
Did this whole exercise throw anybody for a loop? Had you never been asked these questions before? Everyone's been asked these questions before. No, hang on. Who's this? Ramona. Ramona says no, she's not been asking these questions before. Why not, Ramona?
Ramona King:
Well, I mean, I'm really–
Robert H.:
What unit are you in?
Ramona:
I'm in University Life, and I'm really new in my role. So, I was sort of thrown in in a very, you know, like, just kind of, like, do the turn and, like, execute the tasks and do the work. So, I'm really excited now to have the chance to kind of, like, dive deeper into the why of things in our work.
Robert:
Did anybody else have a similar experience as Ramona where you're just sort of, like, got on the job. And raise your hand. Come on. Carol's got her hand up. All right, all right. Now this is the honest people. Like, you just start working.
Ramona:
Right.
Robert H.:
Your boss says, “Oh here's what we're going to do. Go do it.” You don't get a chance to have a conversation about why. Maybe it's not clear who you're communicating to or what you're expecting to have happen at the other end or what your boss is expecting. Certainly they expect it to be better than it was, or you wouldn't be in this place. You wouldn't be doing the job because who wants to be doing worse. “Oh, let's do worse than we did before.” That never happens.
And we're often asked to do more things that are outside of our skill set or that we're not exposed to, so it's a very common thing to be in an area where no one's asking the big questions. And you may find as you move along through your plan that you're the only one asking the big questions, and that's happened to a lot of people. And there may be that the big questions are being discussed at a level above you, but one of the things that we talk about repeatedly is that communications to have a seat at the table when it's coming together so that you can understand what you can do to help rather than think of communications in whatever form or whatever platform you're working on as an afterthought.
That's just sort of putting wrapping paper on something, and this is a very common thing. “We're going to go do this program. We don't know what the outcome is going to be. Make it look nice. Put together a website, and shove it out the door and hope for the best.” Well, how many people have that experience in their life? Me, like dozens. Like, “Make some magic. Shove it out the door. I don't really care. Get it done. We'll see what happens at the other end.”
And what happens is often then it comes, “Well, if the communications had been more effective, nicer looking, if you'd reached more people or whatever, then this program would have succeeded.” But let me clue you in—we'll talk about this a little bit more when we talk about goals—achieving institutional goals is not the same thing as achieving communications goals.
And I'll leave you with this final thought: You can have institutional goals that face barriers that are financial, philosophical, geographic, or attitudinal that prohibit you as a communicator and prohibit a program from moving forward successfully.
I'll give you a quick anecdote from my prior life. Before I came to Columbia, I was a PR Executive working on Fortune 100 companies. General Motors was my client. They hired me to put together a program to promote customer loyalty among truck owners in Texas. I'm from Texas; my dad drove a pickup truck his entire life. I know the market really well. That's why they put me on this project. They were terrified that Toyota was going to open up a plant and make a superior truck called the Tundra which had the J.D. Power, all those awards. And so we spent a year shoring up Chevy customer loyalty, and we did it with a multifaceted program involving local GM dealers, municipalities, non-profit organizations, local arts and arts groups.
It was multifaceted thing that ran for an entire year in five different markets, and at the end of the year they asked, “Well, what's the outcome?”
I said, “Well, I've done all this great stuff for you.”
And they said, “Yeah, but you didn't sell more trucks.”
I said, “What do you mean I didn't sell more trucks? That wasn't my job.”
Like, “Well, we wanted you to– You know, we wanted to see an increase in truck sales.”
Like, “No, you hired me to shore up loyalty, which is about customer sentiment so people feel really good about you, and people that own a truck will come back and buy a truck. But the goal of this campaign wasn't to try and get Ford owners or Toyota owners to come over and buy Chevy instead; it was to store up loyalty and we've done that.”
And they said, “Oh, well, what could really make people buy more trucks?”
And I said, “Well, maybe if the trucks were a better value and the doors didn't fall off, you know. That might have had some effect on whether you sold more trucks or not, wouldn't it?”
And they're like, “Oh Rob, you're right. Rob, let's hire you to do another thing.”
That's all to say that there may be financial barriers or personnel barriers or a structural barrier between what your organization wants to achieve and what's possible to deliver with communications. So, we will make sure that in our plans that we're not talking about having you be the person 100% responsible for raising $50 million because that's not the way this works.
We're toward the end of time now. Is there any final question that anyone will like to ask? Raise a hand. Unmute.
Cassandra, would you like to leave people with some parting thoughts and perhaps mention your office hours?
Cassandra:
Yes. So, I have office hours which I'm happy to finagle for you guys on Wednesdays. Meaning if you want to meet as a group, which I highly recommend you stay together with your group, I'm happy to be available to you guys on a Wednesday at a time that works for you guys. So my personal goal, you know, the goal that I seek is to ensure that you guys have your strategic communications plan complete. Get you guys to the finish line. I shared with someone with the other group that sometimes people get analysis paralysis, so they get halfway through and three quarters of the class has finished and then some people are second guessing themselves. Don't overthink it. [A phone alarm goes off.] You got it, I promise you. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out.
What I have noticed are the groups that stay the closest together is usually the group where everyone has completed their plan. So, with that being said network, network, network and reach out. Robert and I are extremely responsive via email, and if we need to get on the phone I'm happy to do that as well.
Robert H.:
So, your mission for the next class is to begin writing your situation analysis. No less than one page. Can be as many pages as you want. We've seen, you know, five page situation analysis drafts. Not a problem. Don't worry about how nice it looks. Just get all your thoughts out there. We'll work with you. In the interim, Cassandra will be assigning you to your teams, and usually group about four or five people in a team. So you don't have a team assignment for the coming week.
Next Thursday, end of day, submit your situation analysis, and Cassandra will send you a link to either– If you're on the Morningside, Manhattanville, or Lamont-Doherty, you can use a Google link. We also have a separate platform called LabArchives for people that are part of the Medical Center, so that's HIPAA compliant. You guys will be submitting your assignments into that platform. We look at both platforms and all of it together.
So, we will give you comments on your situation analysis usually about two days after you submit them. Once you submit situation analysis, we'll share that among teams and you can see what each other are doing, and you can make comments. So, your initial assignment is to write a situation analysis. No more than, you know, no more than five pages, at least one page, that sort of covers audience, purpose, and outcome. You can dive more deeply into the questions that we posed. Cassandra will load up the PowerPoint from earlier today.
So Michael Ader, you had missed the very first– You'll be able to see the PowerPoint and so the questions that were posed. So Cassandra, can you make sure and load that up into the Google folder for the class when we close up?
All good. Thank you so much. We'll get started more quickly and more effectively next time. Good luck with your situation analysis. Don't hesitate to contact me or Cassandra, and we will see you next week.
Cassandra:
Yes.
Unidentified attendee #1:
Thank you.
Cassandra:
Take care, guys.
Unidentified attendee #2:
Thank you.
Unidentified attendee #3:
Thank you.
[Screen share stops]
Robert Hornsby:
So, welcome to Strategic Communications Planning. These courses are being recorded and will be available to you within about three days, and then later on these will be put on a public website. So, I'm going to continue to admit people as we go along, but I'm not going to interrupt the course. I'm Robert Hornsby, the Associate Vice President of Internal Communications, and my partner is Cassandra.
Cassandra Nathan:
Hi, everyone. My name is Cassandra, the Assistant Director, and I work closely with Robert, and I'm here to support you guys. I'm here to ensure that you make it to the finish line. Essentially. [Laughs]
Robert H.:
Right. Right. So, I'm going to jump right into the presentation. We'll have a break in the middle for breakout rooms. We're not going to be able to—because we had a few dropouts and a few late enrollments—we're not going to be able to line you up with your breakout team of choice/preference for this meeting, but we'll put you with a group of four or five people. Cassandra will explain how all that will work. So, that'll be following 20 minutes of presentation, then there'll be 20 minutes-ish of breakout, and then we'll come back together for 20 minutes of general discussion and question and answer session.
So, here we go. I'm going to share screen.
[Screen share starts]
[Second slide: Overview—Course Basics]
Here's what I was going through before. We don't need to reiterate that.
[Third slide: Class objective]
Your class objective: Define priorities. Allocate time. The methodology we teach applies to all people. Don't worry about getting it right. This is a process; we will work with you.
[Fourth slide: Overview—Three pillars of Strategic Communication Planning]
Okay. three pillars of strategic communications planning. Hope this makes more sense now. The three pillars are audience, purpose, and outcomes. So, who are you communicating with? Why are you communicating? And then after the communicating, what outcomes do you seek?
[Fifth slide: What works—an example]
Here's what works. For audience, your audience is faculty at peer institutions that we would like to hire. The purpose of the communications is to hire more faculty of color. And the impact or outcome we're looking for is a 20% increase in faculty of color in the next five years.
[Sixth slide: What doesn’t work—empty terms]
What doesn't work: when you have empty terms. When your audience is quote unquote everyone. That's not targeted, and it's hard to measure, and it's meaningless. A purpose: creating awareness. Awareness is amorphous and similarly lacks purpose. An impact or outcome: increased audience awareness. Again, it's just too vague.
[Seventh slide: Overview—Elements of a Strategic Communications Plan]
So, we're going to go through a whole series of modules week by week, and these are the six modules. So, we begin with situation analysis, which we'll talk about today. Then, we'll go through the goals, strategy, tactics, metrics, and evaluation. So, this boils down to the “why,” the “what,” and the “how,” and we'll reiterate this many times. Goals are the “why.” Strategy is the “what.” Tactics are the “how.” And we'll break that down and unpack it in each session.
[Eighth slide: Situation Analysis]
So, starting with situation analysis. Situation analysis is just that: where you ask the big question, Where are you today, really? Who's your audience? What do they know? How do you reach them? It can be helpful to compile an inventory or a map of your assets—written materials, websites, graphics, photography, all these things.
[Ninth slide: Institutional Goals]
So, we make a differentiation between institutional goals and communications goals. So, let me break that down for you. Institutional goals are usually about growth or increase but could be about stability or other attributes. But importantly, they're about quantifiable—often, most often—about quantifiable attributes such as numbers of students, faculty positions, research funding, construction projects.
So, where would you find the institutional goals for your organization? Anybody? Raise a hand or wave at me.
No? All right. Institutional goals–
Cassandra:
In the chat, Angela says “Mission statement.”
Robert H.:
Yes. Okay. Thank you, Cassandra. You can prompt me on that because as I'm going through this, I can't see the chat at the same time.
Cassandra:
No problem.
Robert H.:
So, mission statement is one of the places you find your institutional goals. Also can be your annual report, a dean's letter, in fundraising proposals, admission materials. Are there others? Probably.
Cassandra:
Ramona says, “A strategic plan.”
Robert H.:
Yes. If there is a strategic plan, your plan should mesh with a strategic plan. Let’s just see a show of hands. How many people have a strategic plan in their unit?
[A few people raise their hands]
Okay, a few. That's more than usual.
[Tenth slide: Situation Analysis—Audience questions]
So, we're moving on to audience. So, the questions that you ask when you're developing your situation analysis. Who are your audiences? Is there a hierarchy? Is one audience more important than another? What's your profile? What do the audiences know about you?
You can't make a lot of assumptions about this. What you broadcast to the outside world may not be how they perceive you. You may be saying, “Greatest thing,” you know, “Biggest program!” And then, you know, you do some analysis and find out that, you know, in terms of your ranking, you're, you know, 20 out of 100 rather than being the number one program in the nation, which is what is a common pitfall in these kind of things.
What's your audience's current perception of you? And this is a little bit different than your statue or your reputation. So, this is about sentiment. Is their perception of you positive, negative, or neutral? And that can also apply to specific projects or projects or news stories or events within a continuum of, you know, the academic year or over multiple years.
So, what are the platforms that you use? So, for the purposes of this course, platforms are the means of delivery—the methods and the technologies and the ways that you transmit or deliver content to your audiences.
[Eleventh slide: Situation analysis—Purpose questions]
So, moving on. After audience– Oh boy, there's my light from my office. Sorry about that.
Purpose questions: How to help you understand the purpose of your unit. What does your unit hope to accomplish in the next six months or the next year? Is there a hierarchy to that? Is some aspect of your communications more important than others? On the institutional side, is your big focus enrollment of students? Is it hiring? Is it shoring up the resources of your school, department, or unit? Are there new or emerging purposes? So, this can be a dialogue that you have with your boss or with other members of your unit.
The fourth question is, Does your organization have the resources it needs? So, you may be in a place where, “Well we need to do x, but we need a $10 million grant before we can do x. So, you need to help us get the $10 million grant.” Perfectly legitimate.
[Twelfth slide: Situation Analysis—Outcome questions]
So, here are some questions about outcomes or impact. What would be the very best outcome for your organization? How would that directly benefit your organization? How would it benefit your audiences? That's different from your organization because those aren't people that work for you. And are there data markers or milestones that would indicate your organization is surpassing its goals?
[Thirteenth slide: Situation Analysis—Internal questions]
So, let's talk about some internal questions that are legitimate that you should be asking yourself as you're approaching your situation analysis. What's the current personal workflow or schedule or regularity of your activities? Are you putting out a weekly newsletter? Are you updating your website every day? Are you updating your website once every five months? What's your current allocation of resources across various communications areas? What are the tasks at hand? What order do they follow? And who handles which thing?
So, this can be helpful if you work in a small team. And if you're a one-person shop, that's okay. Go ahead and sort of outline– This gives you a snapshot of what you're doing and how you're doing it. So, in your situation analysis plan, you can make your case for a change of direction, a change of role or responsibility, or request more resources. So, you're going to lay out and say, “Okay here's what my institution or my unit is all about, and here's what our institutional goals are, and here's how many resources we have right now to put toward those goals: A team of three people, a team of ten people, a team of one person. And in my plan, I'll show you how we can achieve some of these goals, but also what it's going to take to get those things accomplished.”
Especially if they're not possible with the current resources that you have. You may need to bring in another person. You may need to hire an outside consultant to design your website because that's not your skill set. You may need to hire a freelance writer to help you put together a newsletter because your bandwidth is already full managing your website and your social media content. So, these are all the kind of things that, you know, your boss says, “Oh you know, we're going to do a new website and we're going to do a new newsletter.” And he was like, “Okay, who's going to do these things?” And how can they possibly get done?
[Fourteenth slide: Situation Analysis—Internal questions—important but confidential]
Also, internal questions. These are important but confidential. So, how do you understand and feel about your current situation? And then there's some candid and private questions to ask yourself: Are you overworked? Underutilized? Lacking resources? Are you and your unit focused on correct priorities? So, we tell you it's can be cathartic to write this out, and you can do that in your first draft or your situation analysis.
That's not something you're going to show to your boss, for example, but it can be really helpful to just get it out of your system at this stage of the process. So, as you go along, you can refine your proposal, and you can take that knowledge and use it. But you don't have to sort of disgorge personal details or something that might be unflattering to you or your department. Not necessary to have it be part of your plan.
[Fifteenth slide: Situation Analysis—Breakout Rooms]
So, we're okay on time. Sorry about the screw up at the very start. Cassandra's gonna talk to you about breakouts, and then we'll set you up for breakouts. So, I'm gonna stop share screen right now.
[Screen share stops]
Cassandra:
All right. Hi. You guys can hear me? Okay, great. I'm off mute.
So, we're going to go into a breakout session. So, this gives you guys an opportunity—let me just pull this up real quick—this will give you guys an opportunity to network and get to know one another. But just a heads up, the time really does go quickly. So, you guys want to give a fair chance to everyone to talk. So try not to go–
How long are we going to let them stay this time, Robert?
Robert H.:
We're going to go at least 15 minutes.
Cassandra:
Okay, so you guys are going to go 15 minutes. So, you guys will probably have about four people in each space. So, the idea is to give everybody a chance to actually respond. This is for the full duration of the eight weeks. Give everybody a chance to respond. If you have a little bit of extra time, you can fill in the empty space with what's going on—more context about your unit, if that's fair.
So this breakout room, you guys are going to introduce yourselves to your teammates. This will likely not be the same teammates according to the roster. The roster will be updated after class. And you guys, I'll send you guys individual emails so that you know who's part of your team. Your team is salient to the success of your journey here. Okay? You guys want to network; you want to touch base with one another; you want to comment—we'll get to that soon—on their assignments, but you want to stay engaged and involved.
So, in this breakout session you're going to discuss: One, Who is your primary audience? Second, What is a primary purpose? So, an example of that is– Without saying awareness. When you're talking about your primary audience, you want to say it without saying “everyone.” So, the idea is to get specific—get as specific as possible such that you're talking to someone who's not part of the university, and they would have no idea what you're talking about. Finally, What is a primary outcome you seek? Omitting awareness again. Sometimes people think that that's enough, but we want you guys to be as specific as possible.
So, I'll recap for you: First question you're gonna answer, Who is your primary audience? (Without saying, “everyone.”) Second, What is a primary purpose for your unit? (Without saying, “awareness”). And finally, What is a primary outcome you seek? (Again omitting “awareness.”) And then we'll come back.
[Small time jump in the video]
Robert H.:
Hi! Katie, where are you from?
Katie McCluskey:
I work on the Strategic Communications team for Facilities and Operations, so I think it's kind of funny when you asked us to answer those questions and to not say “everyone.”
Robert H.:
[Laughs]
Katie:
Because the answer to that question really depends on which unit within Facilities and Operations I'm working on because there are so many departments, and there's more than 10 of them.
So, I'll give an example of one that I work on a lot just for the sake of this discussion, but I frequently work with Columbia undergraduate housing. And in that case, our primary audience is students, though a little bit spills over into parents, for example, parents of the students who are going to live on campus. And our goal– Sorry, I'm trying to pull up the email. It had this outline. So, the purpose of our communications—I would probably say that the purpose is usually service oriented, so the students who live on campus have to do so through Columbia Housing, and there are quite a lot of policies and deadlines that are associated with living in our facilities.
And it kind of ranges between things that they absolutely have to know because they have to agree to, say, terms and conditions, and they have to pay room and board. And then some of it are things that might be a little bit more fun. Although more of the, I think, typical, like, fun residential experiences are handled through Res Life as opposed to Housing.
Robert H.:
What percent of your communications is transactional and what other is this more, like, invites and events?
Katie:
It's probably at least 90% transactional. You know, some of the events we do are, like, around, say, room selection. We just had some info sessions sort of walking students through it. And then I think it also depends on on which platform we're using, so–
Robert H.:
Okay.
Katie:
Like, our email is much more transactional, but our social media–
Robert H.:
Oh, sure.
Katie:
–is the opportunity to be a little more fun.
Robert H.:
Oh, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, sure.
Katie:
And I would say that our outcomes that we expect our communications to achieve—probably clarity is one of the top ones: To be as clear and straightforward as possible so that our students are always aware of what's expected of them and what they need to do so that they don't they don't lose their housing. And there are sort of a number of different ways that a student can lose their guaranteed housing status, and it's a little unclear. And so consistency, clarity, and probably being seen as a trustworthy and reliable source are all very important to us.
Robert H.:
So, those are more attributes than they are outcomes. So, your outcomes are something more measurable like 98% compliance with social distancing, or only 3% of people miss the deadline. So, that's a sort of institutional outcome.
Katie:
Unfortunately, there's not a lot– You know, in terms of missing the deadline, students can choose not to participate, and so it's hard to say if we have a goal if that–
Robert H.:
Oh, for sure. I’m just saying that there are– The difference between sort of a qualitative attribute, like clarity, and an outcome is that an outcome has a more measurable result. So, you can say, for example, on social media that you had, you know, more click-throughs—people actually read the thing—and so you have a, you know, a greater confidence that the message was delivered. And then on the institutional side, fewer people missed the deadline than last time around. So, those are sort of a communications outcome that's linked to an institutional outcome. It’s just a different way of sort of positioning the ideas of what an outcome actually is.
What about you, Angela?
Angela Slagle:
So, I'm a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is up in Palisades, New York. It's the Lamont campus of Columbia. And part of my position here involves being kind of a—what we think of as a—program manager for a National Science Foundation grant. And the program is called the U.S. Science Support Program, and what it's there to do is to provide financial support for scientists at U.S. institutions that participate in what's called the scientific Ocean Drilling Program. It's an international program, but our office is kind of the support unit for the U.S. piece of that scientific Ocean Drilling Program. And in most straightforward terms, we provide financial support to scientists whose researches relies on sailing on research cruises.
Robert H.:
Okay.
Angela:
So, we provide some salary support for those who sail. We provide some research support for scientists who have projects working on the data collected on those research cruises. And we also support kind of planning meetings and workshops that are associated with this program. Some of those may be planning the next research cruise.
Robert H.:
Right.
Angela:
Some of them may be bringing together early career researchers and kind of teaching them about the program, helping them develop skills for writing proposals.
Robert H.:
Pipeline.
Angela:
Things like that.
Robert H.:
Great.
Angela:
So, that's kind of my role. So, the broader aim of the program is all of that, but what I wanted to do in this course was kind of focus on one of the things that's my special area within this program, which is really science communication. So, my kind of audience is mainly the science community here in the U.S.--
Robert H.:
Okay.
Angela:
–that are participating in this program. What we do is both provide that financial support, but we also solicit proposals—proposals to hold workshops, to hold meetings, to carry out personal research projects that are related to this program.
Robert H.:
So, let me ask, Do you see that as a, like, you need to educate people about the program? Or they know about the program; you just need to promote it?
Angela:
We actually have both. Those are both kind of purposes. The one I've kind of honed in on a little bit was letting people in our kind of community know about these financial opportunities. And so what I'd like to do is increase the number of proposals we receive for our financial support programs. I have this sense that not enough people are aware of the support programs that we have, so I kind of want to step up the way we communicate about those opportunities and increase the number of proposals we get.
Robert H.:
Okay. And Chris, tell us about yourself.
Chris Molinari:
Hi, everybody. Just a quick side: Angela, I worked recently—well, about a year or two ago—with Gisela Winckler on the Joides Resolution.
Angela:
Oh yeah. Totally.
Chris:
Very much aware of that.
Angela:
We provided support to Gisela for that project.
Chris:
Yeah. I'm here in Santiago, Chile. I'm the Communications and Programs Manager for the Columbia Global Centers in Santiago. Kind of like Katie, we have a really varied audience. I'm not going to say “everybody;” I'll stay away from that word. But we do have a very varied audience. I'd say our primary audience is the alumni living in Chile and in other countries in Latin America.
Robert H.:
Okay.
Chris:
Our primary purpose for the Global Centers is to bring Columbia to the world and the world to Columbia. That's kind of the overall motto/goal. The primary purpose: So, our communications in that aspect, and considering that our primary audience would be the alumni, is to really engage with them and get them signed up for our mailing lists, engage with them, having them participate in activities that we do. As of the last year or so it's mostly been webinars because of the COVID.
And I guess the outcome is also a little bit too varied. There's a few different areas that we'd like to focus on. One is to get more engagement and more people involved, not only in Chile but also in Argentina, Colombia, and Peru specifically. And I think one of the other outcomes that we would like to see: We—all the Global Centers—run basically on donations. Here in Santiago, we're lucky enough to have a single donor who's a very wealthy individual here in Chile who basically subsidizes our activities. We'd like to see that expand to other people in Chile and Latin America donating to the center so that we're not dependent on just one person.
Robert H.:
Okay. So, after the breakout, we're going to ask some questions. You guys can think about this now. What are some areas that are common? On what areas are very different between your audiences and your purposes and your outcomes? So it is, like, who you're targeting them, why you're reaching out to them, and what you expect to happen afterward. And we'll talk more about those in the following session.
I'm going to go off onto the other breakout rooms and see how they're doing, and I'll leave you to it. And we'll close breakouts in about five more minutes.
[Small time jump in the video]
Welcome back. I hope you had a good first introductory session. Let's talk about what we learned. Of the concepts and the sort of general overview that I presented before breakout rooms, Did it stump anybody? Did you have trouble figuring out audience, purpose, or outcomes? Just raise a hand and unmute yourself.
Go ahead, Chris.
Chris:
Yeah. As I explained to our group, I work at the Global Center in Santiago, Chile. And I think it's difficult for us to define what the outcome is that we're looking for when we're doing our communications strategy.
Robert H.:
Okay. So, let's talk about that. Chris, who are your audiences, real quick.
Chris:
Our primary audience are alumni in Latin America as well as students—international students—but we also have a number of other stakeholders including politicians, scientists, journalists. We have a number of different groups of interest for us.
Robert H.:
And in terms of purpose, what would you consider to be the—maybe there are two or three—what would be the prime purpose of communicating with these groups?
Chris:
So, I think it would differ per group.
Robert H.:
Okay.
Chris:
Sticking to the primary group of the alumni–
Robert H.:
Good point.
Chris:
–in Latin America is to really be the link for them with Columbia—getting them engaged with the university itself and with each other, forming a network, and really getting the value out of being a Columbia alum.
Robert H.:
Okay. So, what would be another audience with a different purpose?
Chris:
Another audience would maybe be a little bit more external, so we could be talking about policymakers. And our purpose there would be to engage with them but also look to possibly influence or have a say from Columbia professors and alumni in defining policy for Chile, for example, or another country.
Chris:
Okay. So, class, given Chris's explanation, for he's got two audiences—-one are alumni and one are policymakers—what kind of outcome would be a good thing for him or for his unit? Anybody? Come on, raise your hand and shout it out. Something. Go ahead.
Carol Cotterill:
I'll give it a go. So, I guess for the policymakers, a good outcome would be having a certain number of meetings with them or getting to actually speak to a certain number of people that was an increase—a percentage increase—on what you are currently doing. And with the alumni, I would—thinking about how I deal with all of the emails I get from my alumni association group—I guess it would be participation or somehow measuring who actually clicks on links and actually reads what you're sending them and getting an increase on that.
Robert H.:
Very good. Carol, what unit are you in?
Carol:
I'm out at Lamont-Doherty working for the U.S. Science Support Program for IODP out of Marine and Large Programs.
Robert H.:
Okay. So, who has an audience that's completely different than what Chris talked about? Maybe your primary audience is external.
Go ahead, Robert.
Robert Tulman:
Sure. So, we have–
Robert H.:
What unit are you in?
Robert T.:
Sure. I work for the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. I work with Lauren Perlmutter who just recently took the class, had great things to say, by the way.
But our audience falls into a few different pockets, one of the largest being uh ex-patients, whether even a patient of us or just a patient of a certain condition or clinical area. But most are not alumni. You know, we do have an audience bucket that of course are, you know, former students of VP&S. But as far as what our team does is mostly patients and people interested in a clinical specialty—external.
Robert H.:
And what do you want them to learn or know? What's the purpose?
Robert T.:
Yeah, sure. So, I mean we're in a unique position in that most of our audience actually has a deep emotional connection or, you know, fairly engaged in a certain subject. So for us, it's about keeping people engaged. Right? And why Columbia? Why CUIMC? You know, whether that's through virtual events or newsletters or what have you. But yeah, I would say that that's what we focus on.
Robert H.:
We'll talk a lot about engagement as the course goes on, so that's good. And what kind of outcomes are you looking for?
Robert T.:
Sure. So, we're always looking for, well, what we like to call, you know, it's sort of like pipeline building. It's not one-to-one relating to donors or fundraising or things of that nature. It's more so having a steady audience base for each clinical area, you know, whether it's Center for Radiological Research which is doing fantastic work—their audience base may not be as large just because of this, you know, how specific their work is as let's say the cancer institute. So for us, it's about when we have an audience base, maintaining it, making sure that they stay with us, and that we're keeping them interested and involved.
Robert H.:
Right. and this is a point that we'll come back to in a couple of other contexts. And that's one of the reasons that we discourage people from communicating with everyone because everyone is a large and amorphous group that can't be measured, and it consists of segments who have different needs and different reasons to connect with you and different ways to connect with you. And one of the points that Robert made was, you know, one audience may be smaller than another, but the important thing is you want to be communicating to the right group.
So for example, you could be communicating broadly to everybody that watches Fox News, for example. How many people of that group do you think will actually be contributors to Columbia University's justice program? Okay, so you could be wasting a lot of your energy trying to communicate broadly to a bunch of people that don't really care or don't have the connection that you're trying to make or don't value what you're trying to offer and have no sense of engagement. So, the important thing is to be thinking about who's the right audience, and it may not be the biggest audience, but if you're contacting twenty donors and three of those donors write you a $10 million check, you're good to go. And that's what it comes down to.
That's what we're talking about—sort of purposeful outcomes. And it's a bit of a difference, and you'll see that throughout the course we'll come back to this and we'll talk about it in other contexts. This is more of a marketing mindset than some of you may be accustomed to. So, it's about not necessarily everything being transactional. But if you're doing some activity, it's got a purpose and you want something to happen at the other end, even if it's just a change in perception. It's like, if you can just sort of move the needle enough that more people feel favorably or positively about you than did before, then that's measurable. Now we have with social media, we have all sorts of tools to judge those things. I mean, there have always been tools to judge that, but they've been a little more vague and less specific.
Did this whole exercise throw anybody for a loop? Had you never been asked these questions before? Everyone's been asked these questions before. No, hang on. Who's this? Ramona. Ramona says no, she's not been asking these questions before. Why not, Ramona?
Ramona King:
Well, I mean, I'm really–
Robert H.:
What unit are you in?
Ramona:
I'm in University Life, and I'm really new in my role. So, I was sort of thrown in in a very, you know, like, just kind of, like, do the turn and, like, execute the tasks and do the work. So, I'm really excited now to have the chance to kind of, like, dive deeper into the why of things in our work.
Robert:
Did anybody else have a similar experience as Ramona where you're just sort of, like, got on the job. And raise your hand. Come on. Carol's got her hand up. All right, all right. Now this is the honest people. Like, you just start working.
Ramona:
Right.
Robert H.:
Your boss says, “Oh here's what we're going to do. Go do it.” You don't get a chance to have a conversation about why. Maybe it's not clear who you're communicating to or what you're expecting to have happen at the other end or what your boss is expecting. Certainly they expect it to be better than it was, or you wouldn't be in this place. You wouldn't be doing the job because who wants to be doing worse. “Oh, let's do worse than we did before.” That never happens.
And we're often asked to do more things that are outside of our skill set or that we're not exposed to, so it's a very common thing to be in an area where no one's asking the big questions. And you may find as you move along through your plan that you're the only one asking the big questions, and that's happened to a lot of people. And there may be that the big questions are being discussed at a level above you, but one of the things that we talk about repeatedly is that communications to have a seat at the table when it's coming together so that you can understand what you can do to help rather than think of communications in whatever form or whatever platform you're working on as an afterthought.
That's just sort of putting wrapping paper on something, and this is a very common thing. “We're going to go do this program. We don't know what the outcome is going to be. Make it look nice. Put together a website, and shove it out the door and hope for the best.” Well, how many people have that experience in their life? Me, like dozens. Like, “Make some magic. Shove it out the door. I don't really care. Get it done. We'll see what happens at the other end.”
And what happens is often then it comes, “Well, if the communications had been more effective, nicer looking, if you'd reached more people or whatever, then this program would have succeeded.” But let me clue you in—we'll talk about this a little bit more when we talk about goals—achieving institutional goals is not the same thing as achieving communications goals.
And I'll leave you with this final thought: You can have institutional goals that face barriers that are financial, philosophical, geographic, or attitudinal that prohibit you as a communicator and prohibit a program from moving forward successfully.
I'll give you a quick anecdote from my prior life. Before I came to Columbia, I was a PR Executive working on Fortune 100 companies. General Motors was my client. They hired me to put together a program to promote customer loyalty among truck owners in Texas. I'm from Texas; my dad drove a pickup truck his entire life. I know the market really well. That's why they put me on this project. They were terrified that Toyota was going to open up a plant and make a superior truck called the Tundra which had the J.D. Power, all those awards. And so we spent a year shoring up Chevy customer loyalty, and we did it with a multifaceted program involving local GM dealers, municipalities, non-profit organizations, local arts and arts groups.
It was multifaceted thing that ran for an entire year in five different markets, and at the end of the year they asked, “Well, what's the outcome?”
I said, “Well, I've done all this great stuff for you.”
And they said, “Yeah, but you didn't sell more trucks.”
I said, “What do you mean I didn't sell more trucks? That wasn't my job.”
Like, “Well, we wanted you to– You know, we wanted to see an increase in truck sales.”
Like, “No, you hired me to shore up loyalty, which is about customer sentiment so people feel really good about you, and people that own a truck will come back and buy a truck. But the goal of this campaign wasn't to try and get Ford owners or Toyota owners to come over and buy Chevy instead; it was to store up loyalty and we've done that.”
And they said, “Oh, well, what could really make people buy more trucks?”
And I said, “Well, maybe if the trucks were a better value and the doors didn't fall off, you know. That might have had some effect on whether you sold more trucks or not, wouldn't it?”
And they're like, “Oh Rob, you're right. Rob, let's hire you to do another thing.”
That's all to say that there may be financial barriers or personnel barriers or a structural barrier between what your organization wants to achieve and what's possible to deliver with communications. So, we will make sure that in our plans that we're not talking about having you be the person 100% responsible for raising $50 million because that's not the way this works.
We're toward the end of time now. Is there any final question that anyone will like to ask? Raise a hand. Unmute.
Cassandra, would you like to leave people with some parting thoughts and perhaps mention your office hours?
Cassandra:
Yes. So, I have office hours which I'm happy to finagle for you guys on Wednesdays. Meaning if you want to meet as a group, which I highly recommend you stay together with your group, I'm happy to be available to you guys on a Wednesday at a time that works for you guys. So my personal goal, you know, the goal that I seek is to ensure that you guys have your strategic communications plan complete. Get you guys to the finish line. I shared with someone with the other group that sometimes people get analysis paralysis, so they get halfway through and three quarters of the class has finished and then some people are second guessing themselves. Don't overthink it. [A phone alarm goes off.] You got it, I promise you. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out.
What I have noticed are the groups that stay the closest together is usually the group where everyone has completed their plan. So, with that being said network, network, network and reach out. Robert and I are extremely responsive via email, and if we need to get on the phone I'm happy to do that as well.
Robert H.:
So, your mission for the next class is to begin writing your situation analysis. No less than one page. Can be as many pages as you want. We've seen, you know, five page situation analysis drafts. Not a problem. Don't worry about how nice it looks. Just get all your thoughts out there. We'll work with you. In the interim, Cassandra will be assigning you to your teams, and usually group about four or five people in a team. So you don't have a team assignment for the coming week.
Next Thursday, end of day, submit your situation analysis, and Cassandra will send you a link to either– If you're on the Morningside, Manhattanville, or Lamont-Doherty, you can use a Google link. We also have a separate platform called LabArchives for people that are part of the Medical Center, so that's HIPAA compliant. You guys will be submitting your assignments into that platform. We look at both platforms and all of it together.
So, we will give you comments on your situation analysis usually about two days after you submit them. Once you submit situation analysis, we'll share that among teams and you can see what each other are doing, and you can make comments. So, your initial assignment is to write a situation analysis. No more than, you know, no more than five pages, at least one page, that sort of covers audience, purpose, and outcome. You can dive more deeply into the questions that we posed. Cassandra will load up the PowerPoint from earlier today.
So Michael Ader, you had missed the very first– You'll be able to see the PowerPoint and so the questions that were posed. So Cassandra, can you make sure and load that up into the Google folder for the class when we close up?
All good. Thank you so much. We'll get started more quickly and more effectively next time. Good luck with your situation analysis. Don't hesitate to contact me or Cassandra, and we will see you next week.
Cassandra:
Yes.
Unidentified attendee #1:
Thank you.
Cassandra:
Take care, guys.
Unidentified attendee #2:
Thank you.
Unidentified attendee #3:
Thank you.