Month: October 2010

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Yes, Not Now

Close-Up Shot of Keys (spelling "yes" and "no") on a Red Surface

At our last week’s coaching session my client was stressed by a decision she needed to make. She couldn’t decide if she should go ahead with a project or not do it. Both solutions caused her angst. If she went ahead with it, she felt that competing work demands would interfere with this project’s success. If she didn’t go ahead with it, she felt that she would miss a great opportunity. Her thinking was very black or white – either yes or no.

Through our coaching conversation, she realized she had another option – “yes, not now”. With this option, she decided to begin the project in 6 months instead of at the present time. Her stress level diminished because she had a strategy that felt doable.

What about you – when is “yes, not now” the best decision?

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.

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Pam Solberg-Tapper MHSA, PCC – I spark entrepreneurial business leaders to set strategy, take action, and get results. How can I help you? Contact me at CoachPam@cpinternet.com ~ Linkedin ~ 218-340-3330

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Who’s Responsible For Your Career?

Man in suit holding up a finger

career responsibilityMany think of it as a 50-50 arrangement. I carry 50% of the responsibility for my career development and my employer carries 50%. Yes, in theory, but not in reality. Here’s the rub.

What an employer considers 50%, you may consider only 10% and be dissatisfied. And what you feel is your 50% contribution, may be considered a measly 20% by your employers. This leads to mismatched expectations and employee/employer frustrations.

The Bottom Line:

If you are concerned about your career advancement, as you should be, then take complete ownership of it. These are some of the things you could do to take charge of your career:

1. Build your career capital.
Career capital consists of your qualifications, experience and reputation. It requires investments of time and resources to grow. Find workshops and trainings that would enhance your capabilities. Don’t assume your organization has no money for professional development – you won’t know unless you ask. However, you may need to do it on your own time or even with some of your own money. Realize this is an investment in your future.
2. Be known and be seen.
Take the initiative. Ask your manager for the opportunity to lead a task force or take on a project outside of your job duties. For example, head a committee recommending personnel policy changes, facilitate the next staff meeting or make a presentation to upper management or the board. It’s not only who you know or who knows you but, most importantly, who knows and is impressed by what you can do.
3. Find a mentor.
You need to have someone who can introduce you to people, give you strategic career advice and help you learn from his or her mistakes. Mentors don’t have to be in your organization. Look around your community. Who is doing interesting work? Who inspires you? Develop a relationship first before popping the mentor question.
4. Work with a coach.
While a mentor can help build your network and give advice, a coach can build your skills and help you develop a winning career strategy. That person can also work with you on the leadership or managerial challenges you’re currently facing so that you don’t make career fatal mistakes.
5. Above all, make sure you perform well.
You can do all the other stuff, but if you do not deliver, sooner or later you will trip up. So step number one in your career development is to do what you are currently doing to the very best of your ability and with all your energy – even if it is not yet what you ultimately want from your career.

Your career is your responsibility.

Yes, of course, you manager should have your best interests in mind, but your career development is not at the top of his her daily to-do list. It should be on the top of yours. So, to take charge of you career, set time aside to answer these questions:

  • What can you do right now to enrich your present job or assignment?
  • What career options can you start exploring for challenge, variety, or greater personal satisfaction?
  • What internal training courses or external seminars can you participate in for professional development?
  • Are there off-the-job experiences that could enhance your portfolio of skills and your reputation as a leader?

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

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4 Ways to Instill “The Power of One”

When I first started in the community development field, I was amazed to discover that so many of the target populations that we dealt with really felt they didn’t have a voice and that their opinions didn’t matter or count for anything. At first I had a hard time grasping the concept that someone could believe that their voice could mean nothing. But as the years passed and I worked with more and more people who felt disenfranchised and felt they had no voice, my opinion started to change.

Probably the greatest hurtle that anyone doing community development or capacity building has to overcome is the fact that many of the people they work with feel very alone and because of their dependence upon social agencies and government services, they have been made to feel like they have little control in their lives and so their opinions don’t matter.

But the power of one person can be combined with many others to make a difference in their own lives, in their communities and in our society. The power of one when united with a multitude of others with common perspectives is a huge power and a strong voice.

How do we help people to realize that their one voice has power? Well there are several ways to do this. Community development workers can:

  • Build a positive relationship with their clients – Speak sincerely, openly and honestly with your clients and demonstrate that you value their insights, opinions and perspectives. Never promise them anything that you can’t deliver.
  • Talk about current issues in the news – Talk to clients about current issues that impact their lives and ask their opinions on those issues. Encourage them to share their opinions through group discussions, coffee meetings, or having them present their opinions in a speech to their peers.
  • Ask for clients input on community – Create opportunities for clients to provide input on what they think about their communities and what they identify as issues in their community and challenges they are facing as residents of that community.
  • Set a goal – In co-operation with your client and other individuals, set a goal to accomplish in the community. Set a goal and encourage them to take ownership of that process by talking to others about it. Once the goal is achieved, your clients will begin to understand that their voice when united with others can be loudly heard and have a huge impact on their personal lives.

Question of the Day: What other ways can you think of to assist people in recognizing the power of one?

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For more resources, see our Library topic Nonprofit Capacity Building.

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By Ingrid Zacharias

Website: http://envisioningthefutureintl.ca/

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L is for Love

Red-and-white-love-shaped-balloons-floating-in-the-sky

Here are some popular love/work quotes: “Do what you love and the money will follow.” “Work is love made visible.” “If you’re not in the job you love, love the job you’re in.” How great would it be to love your work?! Do you? I can honestly say I do.

I remember knowing what it feels like (i.e. stress, anxiety, anger, frustration, boredom) to not love your work. All of these things bring you down literally; lowering your energy level and thus attracting more of what you don’t love. Yet when you love your work, you feel so light and alive – full of love. You are passionate and have endless energy. The gratitude for what you do is contagious, touching each person you come into contact with, thus attracting more of what you love.

The Law of Love

So how can we bring more love to our workplaces? According to Rhonda Byrne by the Law of Love, most commonly referred to as the Law of Attraction. Her new book The Power, sequel to The Secret shares how love is the most powerful force in the universe that we can tap into to improve all areas of our lives. The more you love what you do (even if you need to pretend you do at first); the law of attraction will bring you more things you love.

Expression of Love at Work

So how do we express love for and at our work? I just have to share this picture with you (permission to show photo granted) of my youngest son, Garrett. It’s a great example of love at work on many levels. He and I went to the photo studio and worked with a photographer who loved her work. It’s said that “love is in the details” and such was the case with this photographer, as she remained patient and loving toward us despite my 9-month old not wanting to sit still. Her love allowed me to receive one of my all-time favorite pictures. I have this in my office, which surrounds me of who and what I love.

The 5 Love Languages

One of my favorite examples of understanding the concept of love comes from the author Gary Chapman. He wrote the best-selling book The 5 Love Languages originally for couples, but it’s applicable to the workplace. In his book, it shares with us the five ways to we can show and receive love. It is important is to determine what your love language is and the love language of those around you. Here are the five love languages, along with examples of expressing love at work using that language.

  1. Words of Affirmation –written or verbal words that express how we feel about another person. It is words of appreciation that you might share with a co-worker. It is words of encouragement that you might share with your staff. It is words of thanks that you can give to your boss.
  2. Gifts –whether big or small, gifts are symbols or tokens of appreciation. Some corporations give employees gifts for a certain amount of years employed with the company. Providing a gift certificate to someone who helped you out on a project is another example. A favorite gift I once received from a colleague was chocolate-covered peanuts.
  3. Physical Touch – this is about how you connect with others physically. It could be a simple gesture of thanks with a genuine handshake or hug. (FYI: This is probably the hardest love language to express at work because of harassment laws).
  4. Quality Time –spending focused and uninterrupted time with people. You build relationships with others when you invest time in knowing who they are. An example might be having a team building day to planning a happy hour after work so you can get to know each other.
  5. Acts of Service –the things people are willing to do to get the work done. They help out, provide advice, stay late – do whatever it takes – to go the extra mile for you and provide stellar service.

How will you love today?

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Janae Bower is an inspirational speaker, award-winning author and training consultant. She founded Finding IT, a company that specializes in personal and professional development getting to the heart of what matters most.

How ONE Person Makes a Difference…
www.projectgratOtude.com

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Social Capital Markets

Different dollar bills on marble surface

If there’s one challenge many social enterprises have in common, it’s finding capital. Insufficient capitalization is a primary reason that small businesses fail or fail to grow, and that’s also the case for social enterprises.

The good news: that seems to be changing. A new field is emerging, so young that it still goes by many names (social capital markets, social stock market, impact investing), but the overall goal is the same: create structures to connect socially focused investors with socially focused ventures.

We’re not talking small potatoes here. According to some sources, there is a $120 billion untapped market of individual investors who are willing to invest resources into social enterprises that produce positive social and environmental impacts. But as yet we do not have the structures (such as social stock markets) to attract those investments.

So the race is on. Next week, the third annual Social Capital Markets Conference (SOCAP10) will convene in San Francisco on just this topic. The conference web site notes “a proliferation of (social) investment funds of $100 million each, and a new index to help investors better target their financing.” Social capital is already flowing.

Since capital flows with little regard to national boundaries, so does the work in this field. The notion of a social stock market seems to have sparked (or had its latest spark) abroad, in the United Kingdom. A recent article about that effort (and connections with the US as well) can be found in a recent article published by Foundation Center, Bring on the Social Stock Exchange.

You can keep in touch with this emerging field by keeping your browser pointed at Social Edge, where this has been a lively discussion topic lately.

Finally, a major challenge for the emergence of this field is figuring out how to measure social performance in a manner that will be meaningful and transparent to social investors. This is often called social return on investment (SROI). Check out the Performance Review discussion on Social Edge about this topic.

We’ll come back to SROI in a future blog. In the meantime, do some thinking about what it would take to make your social enterprise venture (or idea) attractive to that $120 billion opportunity.

Will your venture be ready?

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Give, Get, Get Off or Govern?

A group of businesspeople having a meeting

Company directors on not-for-profit boards are often required to make substantial donations to the cause, or to elicit substantial donations from their network. Those that can’t or won’t become major benefactors are, more or less subtly, removed from the boardroom. But does this model sit well with current notions of directors’ responsibility and the professionalization of the role.

All around the world there are stories (often in the form of court case judgements) about boards of charitable organisations who were found to have been inappropriately focussed on only a few aspects of governance – or worse still, operations – and to have neglected their governance role to the point where they were found personally liable for corporate losses or other faults. Discussions with CEOs in the sector reveal a deep frustration that not all boards are living up to current expectations but that ‘it is hard to demand more’ given that the board members are unpaid volunteers.

Prime among the CEOs lists of grievances is the inability of the board to contribute at a strategic level to the company or to provide the CEO with meaningful mentoring. Even when boards are contributing to financial oversight it is often at a superficial level such as checking expenditures against budgets rather than at a strategic level such as determining the appropriate amount of financial reserves and investment strategies. Many boards leave the financial oversight entirely to the executives or concentrate only on the aspects that they can influence such as donations, fund raisers, etc.

Then there are the ‘two tier boards’ not, alas, the carefully designed and culturally appropriate management and governing boards that prevail in some jurisdictions, but those where some board members are ‘more equal than others’. On these boards there is an inner circle of members who take a strong interest in the governance, often chairing committees whose membership excludes their ‘outer circle’ board colleagues and assuming responsibility in line with modern expectations of the director role. The ‘outer circle’ members frequently provide funding or host fundraising activities or otherwise use their personal networks to support the aims of the organisation. These boards are frequently characterised by high levels of mistrust and occasionally by mutual loathing amongst the board members. Each circle can easily resent the other as having a role that excludes the other.

Some organisations are restructuring their boards to allow for a proper governance function and creating specific committees or communities for volunteers, donors and supporters. These organisations manage to achieve a ‘best of both worlds’ solution with fit for purpose membership of societies of friends, councils of patrons or boards of directors. The result is an organisation that knows where to look for board leadership and is not disappointed when it does look there. The CEOs of these organisations report that they are better able to design engagement strategies for each group, and that they benefit greatly from the increased input of a governing board that takes on all the aspects of its professional role.

Perhaps the day of the professional director is dawning in our not-for-profits. With increased director liability, greater demands for transparency, more rigorous regulation it is certainly time for directors to play a bigger role in governance.

What do you think?

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Julie Garland-McLellan has been internationally acclaimed as a leading expert on board governance. See her website and LinkedIn profiles, and get her book Dilemmas, Dilemmas: Practical Case Studies for Company Directors.

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Volvo Fails Crisis Management 101

White Volvo car parked by roadside

How poor preparation led to a reputation damaging viral video.

Swedish automaker Volvo is under fire this week after demonstrations of their much-hyped safety systems backfired several times in front of a crowd of journalists. Compounding the issue is the response from the Volvo spokesperson, who violated Crisis Management 101 rules big time with his response after a particularly jarring incident. Check it out:

By (apparently) neglecting to prepare its spokesperson for the fairly predictable possibility of mechanical issues during a demonstration, Volvo has unleashed a viral video that’s drawing loads of negative attention world wide.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. , an international crisis management consultancy, and author of Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training.]

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How to Attract Laser-Targeted Traffic – Part 1 of 2

A targeted dart on a camera lens on a blue background

Find the Best Keywords

The internet works brilliantly because keywords drive everything. They’re the basis for every search engine that helps researchers and buyers find exactly what they’re looking for. These tips are for you if you’re an internet business owner, marketer, blogger, or ANYONE who wants to attract and engage a specific audience.

If you don’t start by strategizing, researching and then using the right keywords in the right places, you may end up with a beautiful and well-written site, but no traffic and/or no sales.

Most-Searched Keywords

Remember, you’re looking for those special words that capture individuals’ attention – information and products that:

  • Solve peoples’ pains and problems, and
  • Promise to meet their needs and desires.

Keyword research is critical to your success. The exercises described here will also orient you to important marketing insights and competitive advantages. Work smart by paying close attention to this. And have fun with it!

In order to find excellent keywords, pretend that you are your ideal customer, and that you are sitting at Google’s search bar. What words will you use in your search?

More Specific Keywords – “The Long Tail”

Go ahead and actually use the Google search bar for this first step. It’s important to narrow down your search to very specific keywords. For example, if you want to investigate how to offer your services as a fly fishing guide, a Google search for the term ‘fishing’ is way too broad. That Google search will return a very broad mix – like Wal-Mart’s aisles – full of irrelevant things such as fishing rods, camping tents and oars.

Your search terms need to be more specific. Try ‘Fly Fishing Guide’ in the Google search bar – and then narrow your search more: “Fly Fishing Guide for Tennessee Streams”. This specific, long phrase is called a ‘long-tail’ keyword (phrase) and it’s more likely to deliver the results you desire; sites that are closer to your specific need or audience.

Your Keywords List

Since keywords are everything in this business, be sure to use the very best keyword search techniques possible. Make a list of possibilities, then Google them one at a time.

If you find that you’re getting a lot of irrelevant results, even after you try more specific, long tail keywords, try these tips for Google searches (other search engines may have different tips and rules):

  • EXACT WORD: Enter ‘+’ before your keyword, such as ‘+toys’ (note: no space after the +), to return only listings that include the +keyword.
  • EXACT PHRASE: Enter your keywords in quotes, such as “safe toys for toddlers” to get return listings that use the phrase exactly as entered.
  • SIMILAR WORDS: Enter your keywords with ‘~’, such as ‘~ safe toys’ to get your word and all its synonyms.
  • MULTIPLE WORDS: Enter your keywords with ‘OR’ in between, such as ‘safe toys OR toys for toddlers’, to get return listings that have either term.
  • EXCLUDED WORDS: Enter your keywords with ‘-’ between, such as ‘safe toys – adult toys’, to exclude any listings with the second term.

Strike a balance between specific enough, but not obscure

You’ll know when you’ve found a great long tail keyword because the search results are more relevant, and you’ll see that the companies listed on the results pages could be your competitors. Click around and take note of what they sell, how they market, and how they engage their audience.

Use Google AdWords’ Keyword Tool to get the inside scoop on how many times your keywords are searched, globally and locally.

Go to: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and type in your narrowed keywords, one at a time. Google explains, “You can search for keyword ideas by entering a keyword related to your business or service or a URL (domain/website name) to a page containing content related to your business or service.”

The results will provide the number of monthly searches conducted on this term, as well as suggestions for alternate wording and their search numbers. You’re looking for keywords with at least 5,000 searches. Keywords that are searched more than a million times are not specific enough, because your chances of achieving first page results on Google are very low – there’s too much competition!

What keyword research tips work best for you?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

Ms. Chapman’s new book, How to Make Money Online With Social Media: A Step-by-Step Guide for Entrepreneurs will be available in bookstores and online November 24, 2010. With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com

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Asking For The Major Gift – Part 3 of 3

A-solicitor-in-talk-with-a-prospective-donor.

There is a simple, but not simplistic, description of what major gift fundraising is all about: It’s having the right person, ask the right person, for the right amount, at the right time, under the right circumstances.

The two right people are the cultivator/solicitor and the prospective donor. They’ve developed a common interest, a relationship with and/or a feeling for one or more of the NPO’s programs. They’ve talked about the history of the organization, how effective it’s been, all the people whose lives have been changed because of that NPO, and what the NPO’s plans are for providing more service and/or serving more people. They are definitely the two right people !!

The right amount is not just a figure determined by the Development Committee, but is the dollar amount the prospective donor knows will accomplish what s/he wants to see accomplished. [Whether it’s feeding hungry children or getting his/her name on the side of a building, it’s the donor’s need that’s being satisfied.]

The right time is when both the solicitor and the donor know it’s the right time. It’s when they’ve had the conversations (possibly over many, many months), when they know each other well enough to know it’s time. When they both know that the donor is ready to say, “Yes.” That’s the right time.

The right circumstances depend on the two people. It can be in the office, at the home of either person, over a meal, with or without spouses, on the golf course or in a taxi. With all the time that these two right people have spent together, they’ll know….

There’s no script – it’s not needed. They know each other well enough to know when, where and how.

As I’ve said, many times before, “Major Gifts fundraising is about the needs of the donor;” and, learning about those needs is the first step toward planning the Ask.

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Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, I’ll be pleased to answer your questions. Contact me at AskHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com
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Have you seen The Fundraising Series of ebooks ??
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If you would like to comment/expand on the above, or would just like to offer your thoughts on the subject of this posting, we encourage you to “Leave a Reply” at the bottom of this page, click on the feedback link at the top of the page, or send an email to the author of this posting.