Month: April 2011

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Hiring a Consultant for a Campaign Planning Study…

A committee Hiring a Consultant for a Campaign Planning Study

An email I received not long ago asked: “What can a small non-profit, looking to raise about $5 million for a Capital Campaign, expect to pay for a consultant to conduct a study and then (guide) the Capital Campaign?”

The size of your non-profit relates to the question only in the context of whether you have the constituency that can support your campaign.

The actual cost of a Campaign Planning Study would be based on:
(1) The amount of time needed to conduct the preliminary discussions … the getting to know you meetings between the consultant and your Study Committee;
(2) The time needed to construct the questionnaire for the interviews;
(3) The number of interviews that would have to be done and the time required to generate the Study Reports; and,
(4) The expenses the consultant would incur (travel, lodging, etc.) during the process.

Pre-Campaign Planning Studies run anywhere from $12,000 to $20,000, depending on the combination of the above factors, the number of individuals conducting the interviews, and the extent to which a consulting firm feels its reputation entitles it to charge more.

You can get a good idea (not a firm figure) by calling and talking with a number of fundraising consultants. You can also get a good idea of whether the folks you talk to are the kind of people with whom you (and your constituents) would be comfortable working.

As to the cost of counsel to work with you through a campaign, since the Study will suggest how long it will take to conduct a campaign, that figure can only be determined after the Study is completed.

BTW, the preparation for a capital campaign can take a year or more. In essence, the Planning Study begins the preparation process. Then, if that preparation is done properly, the actual campaign should only take a few months.

And, you should not feel that you have to hire the same consultant/firm for the Study and for the campaign. If your planning process is adequate, you’ll need minimal help from counsel for the actual campaign.

Talk with a number of consultants, check their references, have them meet your leadership, select the one who is the most comfortable to work with.

Related Reading/Blog Postings:

Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? Email me at AskHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.

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Southwest’s Sub-Par Crisis Management

A-crisis-management-team-having-a-meeting.

Bad communication spoils airline’s response

Southwest Airlines is in trouble following an incident that caused its entire fleet of Boeing 737s to be grounded for inspection, canceling hundreds and delaying literally thousands of flights. Compounding the issue is the terrible crisis management from Southwest, which has sparked negative commentaries like this one, from a Portfolio.com blog post by Joe Brancatelli, across the Web:

Remember Saturday when Southwest was mum on both its website and Twitter feed about its troubled operations? Late Sunday, it added insult to injury by finally posting a statement on its website. Southwest’s verbiage is brazen, self-serving baloney. (See it here.) Southwest claims it “is experiencing relatively few flight delays and cancellations.”

Needless to say, 300 cancellations represent about 10 percent of Southwest’s normal daily schedule. A 10 percent cancellation rate is not “relatively few.” It’s a catastrophe, since airlines rarely cancel more than 1 or 2 percent of their flights each day. And a thousand delays are not “relatively few,” either. That’s a third of the airline’s schedule.

Refusing to own up to obvious problems is a sure-fire way to worsen any crisis. There’s just no sense in it, the public can already see, and if they can’t then the media will happily ensure they do. Southwest is going to permanently lose customers as a result of not only the incident, but also its inept handling afterwards.

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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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Ten Terrific Tips for Group Facilitation

Colleagues smiling and shaking hands while in a meeting

You’ve been there. I sure have. Sometimes meetings and training sessions seem to drag because you can’t get a good discussion going. Other times, people start talking and can’t seem to stop, or arguments and conflicts devour precious time. In order to facilitate effectively, you need to know both how to get a group started, and then how to manage the discussion. Based on twenty years’ experience, these are my Ten Terrific Tips for Group Facilitation:

1. Start with easy-to-answer questions. These questions should be closed ended and not sensitive in nature, so that your audience feels comfortable responding. As you continue to build trust, you can move into more sensitive issues, and ask more open ended questions.

2. Call on the group at large, not an individual. Pose your question to everyone, then as you look around, select the person or persons you want to call on. This way, everyone stays engaged, and no one is put on the spot.

3. Use the silence. Once you have asked a question, don’t jump in with your own answer. Count to ten, if you need to, before saying anything. Let the group have time to think and respond.

4. Ask participants to write down their ideas. Have paper or note cards handy. This is especially helpful with a quiet group, when time is short or when emotions are high.

5. Ask for a volunteer to write comments or answers on a flipchart. This will keep you from having to turn away from the group to write, allowing you to keep the group engaged, or to keep an eye on a talkative group.

6. Incorporate physical movement. Have individuals move into small groups, walk up to the front of the room to post their ideas, or stand beside a flipchart to deliver their findings to the large group. Use games and puzzles that get them physically engaged.

7. Manage side conversations. Make steady eye contact with those who tend to chat, stand closer to them, or use silence until the room becomes quiet. By using these “silent” techniques, you can usually maintain control without having to say anything.

8. Break a large group down into smaller ones for discussion. Give complete directions first, then disperse into breakout groups. If directions are complicated, write them on a flipchart, along with the time to reconvene. To signal small groups to return to the large group, dim the lights or sound a timer.

9. Don’t shy away from conflict. Disagreement can be a sign of independent thinking, and can lead to better solutions in the long run. When conflict arises, try to disagree with the statement rather than with the person. If the emotional temperature gets too hot, you might suggest a short break before continuing.

10. Use courteous language. Words such as “please” and “thank you” and inclusive terms like “Let’s look at our next agenda item” or “Shall we check for consensus now?” foster a climate of respect and cooperation.

Whether you are highly experienced or brand-new to classroom training or facilitation, you have probably discovered your own tips to encourage participation and manage group dynamics. If you are willing to share, please post your best facilitation tips.

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Training-Pleasant Surprise or Nightmare?

Employee-in-a-training-class

Employees sometimes spend several hours each year in training classes. Many times, these classes get the same reception as the performance review. The two have some similarities. Both are often dreaded experiences that can turn into a pleasant surprise or a nightmare. Most likely each of you can relate to both experiences for both items.

For training, there are number of things that happen that lead to a negative experience. Have any of the following happened to you during a training session?

  • The class started late or ran over the time allotted.
  • The instructor or facilitator spent hours talking to you in a monotone voice with every word repeated on a PowerPoint slide behind them with lights dimmed in the room.
  • The instructor seemed bothered by the interruption of questions about the topic.
  • The instructor wasn’t prepared for class requiring you to sit in silence for several minutes.
  • The instructor made a consistent point of ensuring that the participants knew their credentials and expertise. Any time someone tried to share an experience with the topic, they were cut off only to have to listen to the instructor tell you how to handle it their way.

There are also several things that lead to positive learning experiences for adult learners.

  • An environment where practice and exploration are encouraged and allowed.
  • A facilitator who uses the experiences of the participants to connect the material.
  • A facilitator who is has prepared the material, the environment, and the delivery to work together to maximize learning.
  • A delivery of material that requires action, discussion, and participation.
  • A facilitator who is positive about the material and your ability to learn it and practice it.
  • Content, handouts and materials that are immediately useful to you in your current role.
  • PowerPoint is only used as a visual tool to enhance the material.

One of the key differences between the pleasant surprise and the nightmare for training falls in learner verses facilitator control. For those of us responsible for employee learning, we often spend the majority of the program development time focused on the objectives that we need the employees to learn. We build agendas and timelines then focus on how to get the all the information out within our timeframe. When the focus is on getting information out, how can we focus on the learner taking the information in and actually learning?

Stay tuned for more on this topic.

You can also find more information at www.astd.org and http://www.ialearn.org/index.php

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For more resources, See the Human Resources library.

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Sheri Mazurek is a training and human resource professional with over 16 years of management experience, and is skilled in all areas of employee management and human resource functions, with a specialty in learning and development. She is available to help you with your Human Resources and Training needs on a contract basis. For more information send an email to smazurek0615@gmail.com or visit www.sherimazurek.com. Follow me on twitter @Sherimaz.

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5 Leadership Skills for Project Managers

Guest post from Claudia Vandermilt:

As a project manager, your teams rely on your leadership skills to guide and encourage productivity and project success. When provided with quality leadership, team members often respond positively; they build stronger relationships and rise to project challenges brought forth by their leader. Arm yourself with these five critical leadership skills to help propel a winning team:

1. Provide Structure

From the very beginning of a project, you must have a structured outline of your vision for the team. Each person should be clear on your mission, the timing and how you plan on achieving project success.

Create a project-specific document, in addition to the standard documents outlining roles and responsibilities. In the document, include team biographies, each person’s role and a personal anecdote; knowing something personal about each other, such as a team member’s home town or college alma mater, provides an opportunity for group bonding.

Additionally, each team member should be tracked and rated; follow their performance regarding specific assignments and their overall-project contribution.

 

2. Communicate Clearly

Communication is key and can make or break the success of your project. Clear, consistent communication can be a challenge; the days of only communicating via phone and email are long gone.

Technological advances such as Facebook, Twitter, smartphones, video conferencing and other social networking tools allow for team members all over the world to maintain real-time knowledge of project components. It is up to you to leverage these technologies in the most efficient way, and to make sure that the communication channels you use are locally available and culturally accepted.

3. Lead by Example

All project managers must foster a positive environment. In order for project success, all members must feel confident in executing their responsibilities; you must project a winning attitude and make decisions based on the best interest of the team. Make yourself readily available to team members, and always deliver project components on time (or early). Lead your team by example, and they will respond accordingly.

 

4. Encourage Trust

Trust between team members is vital to project success. The most important factor in building trust is based on completion of commitments. Whether commitments are based on planned tasks or verbal promises, team members must be encouraged to follow through in order to gain trust within the group dynamic. Team members should respond in a timely fashion to all requests, and offer to assist others when needed.

5. Motivate

All teams need a strong leader to motivate them through a project, regardless of the size or length of the project. It is your job to find the best ways to properly motivate your team. Recognizing team members for going above and beyond the scope of their responsibilities creates a cyclical response; your positive reinforcement motivates their work ethic. Make sure to verbally thank your staff, and consider rewards such as a bonus, vacation time, team dinners or gift cards. Keep rewards simple, and make sure all team members who strive for success are recognized.

With these five essential leadership steps, you’ll increase efficiency and team performance, and encourage early deliverables leading to successful project completion. Engaging and connecting with your team helps facilitate these skills and builds stronger, more positive relationships.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Project Management.

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Claudia Vandermilt works with Villanova University as a copywriter on professional education, online certificate programs and career training. Villanova offers master certificates in project management, human resources, six sigma and other prominent fields.

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What DOES your Target Market Want?

Man in suit pinning a blue dart pin to the board

The basis of marketing is understanding what your target market wants or needs. So, how do you do this? How do you go about understanding your target market?

Understanding your market is really a blend of science and art. The key is to collect the data. I believe it is important to do this through market research techniques, and through customer visits. Ensure you maintain personal contact with your market. To me, there is so much more power from what a customer says directly to me, than through sales or even market research. The personal contact gives me a feel for the market.

However, my personal contact with the market needs to be balanced with data from market research. This information provides more scope of information, and more details than it possible in customer visits. Market research has the leeway to ask more questions, while sales calls exist to build the relationship with the customer. In addition, there is some bias when customer talks directly to people at a company. When talking to a third part, it is easier for the customer to be honest – there is less pressure to sugarcoat the message.

So, it is key to join and be active in the key associations in your industry. Get to know the industry players, your customers, your prospects. Understand what is important to them, how they view your competition, how they view your company. This is all critical context.

However, market research, if done properly will give you a less biased view of the world. It will help replace the company’s view of itself with the market view of the company. Include both customers and non-customers in your research. This will provide a truer picture.

Screen your research participants to ensure they either make the buying decision or are part of making the decision. Key questions to ask the decision-makers in the market research are:
– whose opinion do you pay attention to when buying product A
– where do you look or who do you talk to, to find companies to buy product A (on the web, magazines, people)
– what do you wish suppliers of product A would provide
– who makes the buying decision
– what criteria is your buying decision based on (you may want to have them force rank the criteria)
– where do the decision-makers hang out (associations, websites, magazines, etc.)

Generally, when performing market research, you will start with qualitative market research. This is a few, indepth interviews. The qualitative research sometimes leads to a need for more qualitative market research, or provides the basis for doing the quantitative research.

Quantitative research consists of polling a lot of participants in your target market in order to have statistically significant data. Through this, you can understand which percent want x and which percent want y. Of course, there is always a margin of error, dictated largely by the sample size and number of segments within the sample.

Combining the information from your interaction in the industry, research on the web, reading, and market research is the art. Your conclusions will drive your marketing strategy. As always, it is critical to keep a finger on the pulse of the market as change is the constant in this world.

Good luck! I’d love to hear how it goes.

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

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The Realities of Supervision

A-manager-instructing-his-colleagues-on-what-to-be-done-at-work

Is it time to strengthen your supervisory muscles?

Here are insights from years of working with managers, teams, and new leaders on the realities of supervision. For some of you it may be “old hat”; for others an “ah’ha”. In either case, know that the moment you start taking things for granted, you stop being effective. So what can you learn from these seven supervisory principles.

1. There is no routine to management work.
Changes are that your old job came with a familiar routine. You performed the tasks assigned to you and you did them in a prescribed order. Some things had to be done by noon, while others had to be completed before you left for the day. As a rule, when the day’s work was done, your day was over. But for managers, there’s no such thing as “the day’s work,” so bid a fond farewell to routine.

2. People and issues arrive un-prioritized.
As a manager, you now have more people and issues to deal with. It’s your job to filter them for urgency and importance, and help employees stay focused by doing the same.

3. People start acting differently towards you.
You’re still the same person, but you’re in a different role. Some people withdraw from you; others want to get closer. Ultimately, your employees are dealing with managerial change in their own way and trying to figure out what kind of manager you really are.

4. You have to give up your old job.
You have a new job so don’t hang on to your old one. This can be hard. After all, it’s because of your previous success that you’ve been promoted. But failure to let go of your old job causes more problems for first-time managers than anything else.

5. Guard against the perception that certain people are your favorites.
Yesterday you had co-workers; today you have employees. While it’s only natural to like some individuals more than others you no longer have that luxury as manager. Employees are keenly aware of who has direct access to you. In the past, you had coffee or lunch with the same people every day, but if you keep this up, your employees will earmark these people as “your favorites.”

6. Employees want their manager to manage them.
Friendly behavior is great, but it shouldn’t be a substitute for good managing. Your employees expect you to deal with poor performers at work. You need to demonstrate that you won’t tolerate poor performance. If you’re fair and decisive, your good performers will give you their hard-earned respect and best effort.

7. Don’t hold on to information, rather communicate, communicate, communicate.
When you’re on an airplane and it encounters turbulence or the flight is delayed, you want to know what’s happening. Not knowing makes you nervous. Employees also want to know what’s happening — what’s causing the bumpy ride. If people don’t understand, then anxiety mounts, trust declines and rumors fly. The next thing you see is morale plummeting and work not getting done. That’s why ongoing communication is so important.

Management Success Tip

Understand your role had changed. You are now in charge tasked with getting work done through others. You must move from doing to delegating; from being liked to being respected; from holding on to letting go; from knowing all the answers to getting input from others.

Do you want to develop your Management Smarts?

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New Boss: Make a Great First Impression

A-manager-addressing-line-managers-on-a-new-job-role

make a good first impressionIf you’re getting a new boss in your existing job, consider getting ‘hired’ all over again.

How many bosses have you had in your present job these past couple of years? I’ve asked this question in my career management and personal branding workshops. I heard everything from “my boss seems to hang on” to several who have come and gone to the unbelievable 5 new bosses in two years. Wow!

How do you deal with this phenomenon – management churn – the revolving door strategy of managers in some organizations?

Most of you who are reading this post are not at the level to change this strategy. That doesn’t mean you do nothing about your situation. A recent Harvard Business Review article suggests that you must look at each new boss with the notion of getting “hired” all over again. In other words, start making a good impression immediately. Here’s why.

Most managers feel more invested in people they’ve hired personally. They reviewed the resumes, conducted the interviews and made the ultimate decision to hire the person. They are invested in that person. They want the person to succeed so that they will “look good” to their boss.

But a new boss, who has inherited a team, needs to size up quickly each of his or her direct reports. Some people, with a new boss, keep doing what they’ve been doing waiting for the boss to tell them otherwise. But there’s another career strategy. That is, get ‘hired’ all over again by taking these three positive actions.

1. Set up a short, perhaps 20 minute, meeting with your new boss.
You can approach it as wanting to find out about her goals for the team so that you can make sure what you do is in sync with those goals. If the response is “I’m planning to do that with the whole team”, then say “great and perhaps after that meeting, we can meet to go over the specific responsibilities of my position.”

2. Think about what you want your new boss to know.
Develop a short presentation focusing on your accomplishments – the problems encountered and how you and the team handled them. If possible, pull together some samples of your work – reports, presentations, prototypes, brochures, whatever demonstrates your capabilities. Also be prepared if he or she asks you about present and future challenges for the department.

3. Treat the meeting like a job interview.
Start by saying, ‘Let me tell you about my role’. Review the presentation you prepared, highlighting your own achievements and those of your team. Don’t let this be a one-way conversation. Hopefully your boss will have questions so that you can go more in-depth about what you bring to the table. Then you ask your boss about her priorities for the department. Now start making the connection between the priorities and how you can meet them.

Career Success Tip

Somebody on the team may end up being the “go to guy or gal”. You might as well give yourself the opportunity to show that you could be that person.

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?