Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Organizational Strategy topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Staff outline organization changes, community navigation plan and a 15-project pipeline
Summary
Chief operating officer and staff reviewed an updated organizational chart centered on a new Community Navigation function, described workforce and small-business priorities, and staff summarized a pipeline of roughly 15 economic development projects with large potential capital investment.
Partner Tulsa staff presented a strategy update, an organogram and an update on business attraction and small-business work. Trustees discussed how the new structure will link to measurable outcomes.
Renita, identified as chief operating officer, presented a diagram intended to communicate the organization's activities: actions, outputs and outcomes. She said the graphic is meant as an external communications tool and that internal work is under way to define competencies, job descriptions and an updated policy handbook. The centerpiece of the chart is a new Community Navigation function: Renita said Partner Tulsa plans to hire a director of Community Navigation and community navigators assigned by quadrant to coordinate local services, help small businesses and act as a frontline liaison to neighborhoods.
Staff described a division of responsibilities between business-retention-and-expansion (BRE) and community navigation: BRE will handle large-scale business attraction and big-box projects while community navigators will focus on small-business retention, permitting, licensing and neighborhood-level outreach. Staff said they are using a customer-relationship-management (CRM) tool and recently ran an internal “CRM sprint” to clean records. Staff committed to producing pipeline metrics for trustees.
Jonah (John) Toye, small business development manager, previewed a busy May calendar of events for small business, including National Small Business Week activities, a state-of-entrepreneurship report and microgrants focused on permitting. Toye said staff will publish counts from the CRM and noted ongoing efforts to coordinate the many small-business resources in the city.
On economic development pipeline work, staff said there are about 15 active prospects tracked with partner agencies and the chamber; staff cited sectors that include plastics manufacturing, chemical, data center, logistics, film and biotech. In the meeting staff cited an aggregate potential capital investment figure if all prospects landed; they also said that reality is one or two projects landing would have meaningful local economic impact. Trustees requested a regular monthly report showing the top sales targets, win-loss rates and why projects are won or lost.
During the discussion trustees asked for clearer, time-bound KPIs linked to the new Community Navigation roles (for example: number of BRE engagements per month; small businesses assisted; permitting cycle-time improvements). Staff said Thrive (a retained consultant) is developing job descriptions and competency frameworks to match the navigators to measurable outcomes and that more detailed metrics will be provided in future reports.
The board did not take formal action at this portion of the meeting; staff said they will circulate the work plan and update the board with hiring and CRM metrics.
