Career Success Part 1: Don’t Let Your Guard Down

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Do you want to know how to jump-start or advance your professional career? There are three keys. Here’s the first one: Monitor your changing environment so you won’t be caught off guard.

Visualize your career environment as one huge jigsaw puzzle. It consists of your present job, your company, your industry, your profession, your regional, national and world economy. You may only be aware of certain pieces of the gigantic puzzle. However, those other pieces are also extremely important. They can stop you in your career success tracks or enable you to take advantage of new career opportunities. The following three tactics will help you monitor your changing environment to prevent you from be caught with your pants down.

1. Act As an Information Magnet
Don’t be a modern-day Rip Van Winkle. Don’t wake up to a world you no longer understand and feel comfortable in. Are you so tied up in everyday life that you fail to see the shifts in your workplace and in the marketplace?

As pace of change accelerates, careers will be affected by what’s happening inside and outside your workplace. Don’t find yourself in an information vacuum. Stay in tune with the changing workplace. Realize that information is power and it is absolutely necessary for career survival.

2. Scan the Changing Landscape
Imagine your career as steering a ship down an unexplored river. To ensure safe passage, you must be attentive to ever-evolving conditions. These are the powerful trends occurring in society, business, and technology that will be impacting your professional life and career. So get out of your narrow tunnel and start seeing the big picture. What are you seeing, hearing or reading? What’s happening in your company, or the marketplace or the political and legislative arenas?

Then start thinking strategically. Ask yourself: What are the immediate and the long range influence of these trends? How can this information directly or indirectly affect me, my industry or my profession? How are changes that I see today likely affect my job security tomorrow? What can I start doing today to prepare for the next year, or three years, or five years?

3. Prospect for Opportunities
For example, the flattening of organizations is really a two-edged sword. It can reduce the chance for promotion, but it also can create opportunities for you to take on responsibilities that you may not have been able to when positions were more narrowly defined. In times of rapid change, there are always critical things that may fall through the crack. So start looking for some problem areas. Do you have a way to fix it? Part 2 is Get Ahead of the Crowd.

Carer Success Tip:

When asked, “How come you are always where the puck is?” Wayne Gretsky, the well known hockey player, answered: “I’m not where the puck is, but where the puck is going to be.”

Where is the puck going to be for you? Where are the potential growth areas are in your field, in your industry, in your company?

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

You Can’t Just Ask For Money !!

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Well… actually you can, if you’re asking your friends and relatives; but, if you ask foundations, corporations, major donors or the general public, you’d likely be wasting your time and resources.

Sometimes, especially with new nonprofits, people don’t realize that the mere existence of an organization is not sufficient justification to ask others for money. And, just because you think that your organization is worthy of support doesn’t mean that prospective donors will agree.

There are two prerequisites for the fundraising process – actually there are more than two, but these are bottom-line basic:
1.  A description/discussion of the services you are/will be providing,
why those services are needed, and by whom.
2.  An annotated budget, or some form of financial narrative that
describes/discusses your funding needs

There must be a clearly defined need before an organization can/should do any fundraising. The first step is to state/write your case for support in such a way that there is no doubt in the minds of any member of the Board or staff what it is that you intend to accomplish — all must agree, and speak with one voice.

You must discuss who you’re going to serve, what need(s) will be satisfied, why no other organization has addressed those needs or why you can do it better than any other organization.

Once you’ve agreed on what you want to accomplish, you must (specifically) define the resources you will need to pursue your mission – equipment, personnel, cash !!

A detailed budget can also help to focus potential donors on some aspect of your program/activities that has meaning for them.

You have to be able to show/tell a prospective donor where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, how s/he can help … and how s/he will benefit from helping your organization. (And that last element may well be the most important.)

There are too many nonprofits out there competing for the donated dollar. You have to give potential donors a reason to want to support you.

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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 Hank@Major-Capital-Giving.com

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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.

Technical Writer’s Dilemma – Images Or Text Only?

A confused lady faces dilemma

One of the most difficult things to do is to describe to someone how to put something together or how to operate a device. How do you communicate to someone the procedure to put parts together to build a plane, boat, or car? Or how do you put the pieces of a table or chair together? For objects such as Lego pieces, images are constantly used rather than text as that seems to be the easiest way to communicate to the target audience (mainly children – but I do like them as well). So why don’t we always use pictures? We can label each item numerically or alphabetically and just say to insert A1 to B1 and B1 to C1 and work our way to the end of the alphabet and then begin again with A2 to B2 and B2 to C2. Everything remains in sequence. But what if you needed to turn B2 at an angle to fit into A2 or how do you indicate the procedure to screw or hammer the bolt or nail A1 to B1? Can a picture show that? Using only images can work in certain cases, but for other situations, it would be more advantageous or easier to communicate the instructions via images and text. Images (drawings, cartoons, stick figures, etc) alone, can convey certain instructions but you need to be constantly imaginative. If you are not, the easiest way would be to describe the procedure and apply an image.

Look at a toaster manual. I cannot think of one appliance that we have purchased that does not have a manual minus text and images, such as, the toaster manual. Notice that even before we are told how to operate the toaster, or how to plug the toaster into an outlet, we are given warnings with what not to do. All critical information is always towards the front after the introduction section. The technical writer realized that there was a danger involved in using the appliance and decided to place the warnings up front. Notice that the warnings are not just plain text. They have a special warning icon as well as being denoted in a different font. How can the warning have been displayed via images alone? The next section within the manual (following the precautions) contains diagrams of all the mechanical parts that the consumer needs to be aware of for the operation of the toaster. Again, text and images are used.

I know I chose a simple devise, to develop a question or a point, but what if we were describing the use of a more complicated piece of equipment? And what if we were to distribute this device globally? How would we be able to illustrate how to operate it?

As technical writers we always have to remember to communicate the essentials in a simple and appealing format. So I think in most cases, you need both images and text, but yes there are cases where only images do work. What do you think?

Handling Negative Comments

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Quality response is key

The surging popularity of social reviews by customers, along with the increasing heed they are paid by those seeking to hire a contractor or make a purchase, makes responding to and resolving complaints a major priority. Many will be rational, some will be pure emotional venting, and yes, there will be the trolls that are out to catch their jollies by provoking a rise out of you. The following quote, from a Social Axis blog post, holds some solid advice to get you on your way:

If someone is leaving negative comments about your company, respond! Even if they are intentionally attacking your company (or ‘trolling’), then invite them to please contact you directly so you can help them with their issues. And remember, if someone is leaving comments that personally attack your employees or customers, or that contain profanity or inflammatory language, you should delete them. Now if they are simply saying that they think your company sucks, deleting these types of comments will tend to draw more of the same. People can see when someone has crossed the line with the tone of their comments, and they won’t fault a blogging company for deleting comments in this case.

We would like to amend this with one recommendation – if the trolling is taking place on another forum or blog that you do not control, it’s often not a good idea to post your response there. Many times it will only serve to drive more views to the offending page, when your true goal is to attract them to your own.

If you need more motivation to ensure stakeholders are happy on a daily basis, the popularity of social review means another thing – when negative comments surface, fans of your company will often leap to its defense, backing you up and creating a powerful crisis management force.

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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 Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

History of Organization Development (Part 4 of 6) — Frederick Taylor, the First Modern ‘Change’ Consultant

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(Guest post from John Scherer, Co-Director of Scherer Leadership International. This is the fourth blog post in a six-part series about the history of Organization Development, “On the Shoulders of Giants.”

NOTE: Most of what I have learned about Frederick Taylor I received from my long-time OD colleague, Marvin Wseibord, both in personal conversations and from his marvelous book, Productive Workplaces. Marv has had this extraordinary ability to help us see a unique ‘twist’ on OD ‘giants’ and their lives, creating a kind of ‘Satori moment’ that makes the well-known person more human, more real. It was in conversations with him some years ago—and many readings of PW (as fans call the book)—that led to this treatment of Frederick Taylor, based entirely on Marv’s work. This may be my writing, but it is Marv’s insights. . .

Following the Civil War in America (1861-1965), industrialization went rampant. Large factories started dotting the landscape where farms had stood before. Machines, the exciting new technology, were promising to make business owners wealthier than ever—if only they could ‘get those lazy and greedy front line workers to use those machines to their maximum potential’. Over time, an ever-widening gulf appeared between the wealthy business owners who wanted more productivity and the disgruntled and exhausted workers who were doing the work. One outcome of this push/pull was the growth of unions, which aimed to provide leverage for protecting front-line employees from turning into essentially slaves-with-a-paycheck.

It was inside of this social cauldron that Frederick Taylor (born April, 1856, died March, 1915) developed and implemented the first truly systematic and scientific approach to resolving workplace production problems.

No one in our long chain of OD ancestors is as controversial as Taylor. Many see him as the first well-known hard-hearted efficiency expert-with-a-stopwatch, whose goal was to increase the efficiency of a factory by re-making every employee into the exact image of the perfect worker who could do a specific task the fastest and the best. To accomplish this, Taylor laid out four fundamental Principles of ‘Scientific Management’ (a 1911 term he used after Supreme Court Justice Brandeis coined it in a 1910 railroad court case). Management should:

1. Replace much-used ‘rules of thumb’ methods of doing a job with principles based on the scientific study of the tasks involved.

2. Select employees scientifically, based on specific job requirements and train them intentionally, rather than letting them train themselves or just hoping they learn how to do what they need to do.

3. Develop and provide detailed instructions for each task and supervise (measure) them in their performance.

4. Create an equal division of labor between themselves and front-line employees, with managers applying the principles of scientific management to workers who do the work.

Unlike the majority of OD people today who pursue their field via graduate school, Taylor spurned a scholarship to Harvard Law School (his eyesight was poor and he didn’t want to be embarrassed in court) to become an apprentice pattern maker and machinist! He started at the bottom and after finishing his four-year apprenticeship, started working at a steel plant, where he made his way up through the ranks from Gang-Boss over the lathe workers, Machine Shop Foreman, and eventually Chief Engineer. Taylor’s first-hand experience on the shop floor showed him that few, if any, workers were putting out as much as they were capable of and he set out to do something about that. Through a correspondence course (!), he earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering and created a consulting firm with business cards that read:

Frederick Taylor

Consulting Engineer

Systematizing Shop Management and Manufacturing Costs

a Specialty

One story used to underscore the image of Taylor as a productivity-obsessed management ally: during one of his engagements with a coal company he searched among the workers for the fastest pig iron shoveler, and found him in a man named Schmidt. Taylor and his team of consultants studied Schmidt to find out how he was able to shovel more pig iron than anyone else. They analyzed everything they could about him:

  • The shape, weight, capacity, and design of the shovel he was using.
  • The number of shovel loads he was moving per minute.
  • His technique—how he held the shovel, moved his body and swung the load.
  • How he structured his work and rest periods during a typical day.

What they found surprised management and a few people following the study. One example: Schmidt’s arms were free of any load 57% of the day. Far from being the driving, efficiency-at-any-cost, push workers to their limits person, Taylor was focused on making work easier, not harder. In fact, according to one Taylor biographer, Schmidt jogged to and from work each day for two months, and built a house in his spare time!

It is easy, however, to see how history has missed Taylor’s ‘human’ side and seen him as a friend of management, driven to squeeze every possible ounce of energy from every worker. Taylor figured out that processes could be made more efficient by breaking things down into discreet tasks, with each worker becoming an expert on one of those tasks. This approach of breaking a work flow into pieces still rules in some production facilities, but, as you will see later, it leads to a ‘thicker’ and ‘wider’ workforce which, given today’s wage structure, is untenable. The other inherent problem with Taylor’s approach is quality: with everyone along they way only responsible for their single piece of the process, who ‘owns’ the final product?!

But few people realize that Taylor was the father of matrix management, seeing the need for certain specialties that would support the entire production line process. He usually instituted an incentive wage system, which paid the person, not the job. He was in many ways the champion of the front line worker, seeking to instill greater labor-management cooperation to solve problems. Taylor believed that respect in the workplace should be based on knowledge and performance, not position, and, believe it or not, Taylor was the one who championed ‘servant leadership’ among supervisors. As Marvin Weisbord points out in Productive Workplaces, his wonderful book about all this, unbeknownst to many OD people, Taylor’s overriding objective was productive labor-management cooperation, not simply time-and-motion efficiency.

Taylor’s thinking dramatically shaped the world’s workplace and its leaders in the early 1900’s and continues to shape them—and our OD work—today. But his undoing came as a result of his absolutist beliefs in a) maintaining tight personal control of his interventions to ensure implementation of changes, and b) piecework—breaking down tasks into their simplest ‘chunks’ and requiring a single person do a single task. It was left to our next OD ancestor, Kurt Lewin, to discover an even better way to discover good ideas for work improvement, and get people to actually follow through with them. Lewin’s approach meant, however, letting go of control and trusting the people themselves to figure out—with some support and guidance—what to do. Stay tuned next time for more on Lewin and the extraordinary debt we owe him!


Reference List of Books from This Series

For More Resources About Organization Development, see These Free Management Library Topics:

John Scherer is Co-Director of Scherer Leadership International, and Billie Alban is President of Alban & Williams, Ltd. This blog is an adaptation of their chapter in the ‘bible’ of the field of OD, Practicing Organization Development (3rd Edition, 2009, Rothwell, W.J., Stavros, J.M., Sullivan. R.L. and Sullivan, A. Editors). Many colleagues contributed, among them Warner Burke, John Adams, Saul Eisen, Edie Seashore, Denny Gallagher, Marvin Weisbord Juanita Brown and others. They have drawn heavily from Weisbord’s wonderfully rich, easy-to-read, and well-documented description of the origins of the field in Productive Workplaces (1987 and revised in 2012).

Correcting a Customer Complaint Crisis

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Get it right, or the world will hear

When passengers aboard a Middle East Airlines flight discovered that not only did their plane have no air conditioning in the scorching heat, but was also full of broken tables, malfunctioning entertainment systems, and safety booklets stuck together with chewing gum, the logical first step was to ask the flight team about the plane’s shabby condition. Blown off by the lead stewardess, disgruntled passenger Hussein Dajani took his complaint to MEA’s Facebook page after landing, where he found support and many corroborating stories from fellow MEA customers.

MEA’s response? They banned Dajani’s account from their Facebook wall and deleted his posts. We’ve said it before, and you know we’ll say it again, deleting legitimate criticism is a surefire way to create a need for crisis management in your organization. With mainstream media in the region picking up the story, MEA had only one choice, take massive reputation damage in the court of public opinion, or set things right. This time MEA leadership made the correct call, and issued a fairly solid statement right where the action was, on their Facebook wall. Featuring an admittal of fault and outlining a plan to become more aware of both service issues and customer complaints, as well as offering a direct contact for customer complaints and including an increased interest and presence in social media, this step helped diffuse much of the negative sentiment gathering around the airline.

One thing MEA could have done better (avoiding the initial situation aside) is to include an actual apology in its statement, ideally in the opening paragraph, which reads:

In the past week or so, videos and pictures have been circulated on the web pointing out problems customers have faced on a couple of MEA flights. They included service quality issues such as an out of use seat and a dysfunctional display unit amongst others. These videos and pictures created with the intention of raising awareness about MEA’s customer service, and which have caused others to provide valuable comments and feedback, have been taken on-board wholeheartedly.

Tack a “We thank our customers for sharing with us, and apologize for any confusion or discomfort they may have experienced” onto that, and you raise the effectiveness of the entire statement. Overall, decent crisis management from MEA, especially for company that is still learning. So long as it truly works to solve the underlying issues at hand, MEA should come out of this one unscathed.

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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 Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

In His Hands

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With tears streaming down my face, I watched a young father from our church carry In His Hands the casket of his baby daughter. I held tight my two sons that were with me with at the funeral, feeling the immense sorrow that they must be feeling as parents who would never get to raise or know their newest child like their other two daughters.
The father led the processional as his baby girl lay in his arms inside the hand-made casket. Close behind him was his wife with their two daughters on both sides of her holding hands. Seeing them come together as a family like this; their love, strength, sorrow, joy and courage emanated throughout the entire church.
I personally was overwhelmed with emotions, for the deep sadness of losing a child and for their deep faith for all of them to be able to stand before the church now without completely losing it.
As they proceeded down the aisle in the opening song, the image of In His Hands came to me. Not only was the father carrying his daughter In His Hands, to let their baby girl go to now eternally be In His Hands. God would now be taking care of this soul forever.
The priest presiding over the mass, said how it’s not about the amount of time we spend on this Earth, it’s about the amount of love our mission serves. Only God knows what this little’s baby’s mission is and it seems unfair to all of us that she didn’t get more than ½ hour on this Earth to live it out.
From what I’ve heard about this couple of this experience, some of this little’s girl’s mission is already ripping at people’s heart and values. You see at some point during her pregnancy, they discovered that their little girl was severely disabled and not expected to live. This couple chose life, to give birth to this girl no matter what she looked like or how long she lived.
Having given birth myself three times, I couldn’t imagine going through one of the most painful experiences of your life not to be overjoyed with your new living, breathing child that you could love for a lifetime. They were overjoyed as well, just not able to physically enjoy raising their daughter.
The pictures at the funeral glowed with love. There is a gorgeous picture of the family all admiring the baby girl as she’s still inside her mother’s womb, with an angelic love surrounding them. Then there are those precious moments when they are holding her right after she is born, filled with warm embraces, loving kisses and hands folded and held together. Before I saw the father carrying the casket, I saw the pictures of him making the casket for her. It was created with such love, like the love I could imagine that Jesus put into the making of all he did as a carpenter. Again, tears.
We are all blessed to have both Earthly fathers and a heavenly father. Both are loving fathers whose privilege it is to hold us children In His Hands. While our Earthly fathers may no longer be with us physically or the father’s children may not be with us physically, we can ALL the time be In His Hands, of our heavenly father.
I think of how many times as a mother, I just need to put whatever it is that I’m dealing with In His Hands. When I don’t know what to do or how to handle something, I pray and ask for the loving and heavenly guidance of my Father. Then I think sadly of how too many times I don’t do this. I keep holding on to it tight In My Hands, thinking that I can handle it and know best.
This was really hitting home to me as my youngest son, 2 ½ years old, was really struggling in mass. Even as we were in another room, I just couldn’t calm him and he kept wanting to yell and run away from me. I didn’t know what else to do so we went outside. I shared my frustration and then prayed and let it go. Soon I felt compelled to hold Garrett In My Hands. I gave him the biggest hug and just held him for minutes. He calmed down and so did I.
Like my son and I, we’ll often struggle, try to fight or do anything to get away from being embraced by those who love us. Yet when we finally reach desperation and let go to let God pick us up with his peaceful embrace we are comforted like never before. Garrett was a HANDFUL, but I was reminded how truly blessed I am that I can still hold his hand.
Whether our children are living with us, are living away from us or are in heaven, this family has inspired me and hopefully you that we will to always put our most precious gift, In His Hands. We can then trust that He’ll guide us in the best way to care for our children, as we’ve allowed God to be closest to them. We can trust that if their time is to go before us in heaven, we know that God is already holding them tight.
I pray that you and I, like this family has done so incredibly, to give it all to Him and rest peacefully In His Hands.

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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. She started Project GratOtude, a movement to increase gratitude in people’s lives.

Tool for Change: Transformational Empowerment

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Change management is a hot topic in the Leadership and Organization Development world. While many people in organizations are leery of change, either due to change fatigue, or because they think the next change is simply the fad of the month, change can either be good or bad depending on many factors. If you want to upgrade to a new computer or buy a new car, you likely will embrace change.

So depending on how ready you are for change, how much you think the change will help you, and how successful you feel you’ll be making the change, you may welcome or avoid change.

Sometimes we got those cosmic nudges, if not a 2X4 slap across the face, to change. Sometimes what appears on the surface to be bad news, may in the end result in a positive change. Next time you are challenged with a change, stop to ask if or how the change will serve a higher purpose. Will the change shift you to a better place? The 2X4 slap and subsequent change may be a blessing in disguise.

If you intentionally want to change some aspect in your life, you can follow some concrete and systematic steps for change. I’ve developed a process called Transformational Empowerment to support people making change. These ideas came from my work with coaching clients and corporate training. The Transformational Empowerment process uses some basic spiritual principles to support you in making profound and lasting changes.

If you are looking to make a job or life change, and truly want the change to stick, I invite you to use the steps for Personal Mastery outlined in my Transformational Empowerment process. Visit my website (www.lindajferguson.com) to receive a free series of handouts and videos that will help you in your change process. I share stories in a series of emails that show how each of the steps work.

Try out the ideas of my Transformational Empowerment process and you’ll be well on your way to create a significant life shift, to reach your goals, or to fulfill your heart’s desire.

Embrace the journey. The change may do you good.

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

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Now available!! Linda’s new book, “Staying Grounded in Shifting Sand” – Click here to order.


“Like” Linda’s Fan Page – https://www.facebook.com/LindaJFerguson to get notices of these blog posts and other updates of Linda’s work.

Click this link to order Linda’s 10th Anniversary edition of “Path for Greatness: Work as Spiritual Service”.

Visit Linda’s website- www.lindajferguson.com to receive valuable handouts and videos for personal growth and professional development.

What I Learned from My Students

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A common understanding in the learning field is that the best way to learn is to teach someone else. During the past year, I have had the privilege to learn a great deal from my HR students.

What my students taught me this year:

  • HR is still misunderstood in many organizations.

Many of my students had a different answer to the question of what HR does. There were many surprised and overwhelmed faces as I talked about all the different domains and roles of HR in the workplace. HR is more than just hiring and firing. We are million things in between.

  • Students choose to study HR for many different reasons.

I believe HR is the best profession in the world. However, with all the misconceptions of HR students have, the choice to study it is sometimes fueled by them. Sometimes students choose HR because there is no math and other times, they have been told that it is easiest way to get a degree. Then they are those students who know it is an integral part of business because they have seen the effects of bad HR and they want to do it better. Regardless of the reason for the choice, these students are our future of HR. Watching them come to an understanding of what HR really is about was a most enjoyable experience.

  • Not everyone comes with the same experiences and views.

People’s experiences have a profound impact on their views and opinions. It is often easy to see it in personal relationships. It is also true in the classroom and the workplace. It is important to remember the same of ourselves.

  • HR is still the best profession in business. I have always believed that HR is the best profession. That opinion was formed early in my career as a manager after a critical moment in the trenches. At the moment I realized management and leadership was not about me, it was about them. I already understood that it was about the customers, but in the moment I became clear that it was about the customers and my team, I really started to see impactful change. By improving my focus on developing top talent, I achieved the greatest financial results. HR is impactful, both good and bad.

Let’s keep doing good HR and moving he profession forward. And if you want to keep learning, teach.

For more resources, See the Human Resources library.

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

Federal Grants — Write and Review !!

Writing and reviewing federal grants

My previous posting discussed the planning and organizing processes. This time, we will address steps three and four – writing, reviewing and rewriting.

Write the first draft quickly
• Work from your notes and worksheet.
• Write heading and subheadings first and use them as a guide.
• Begin with the easiest parts of your sections. No proposal is ever written linearly, from first page to last!
• Write quickly, without concern for formatting, grammar, syntax and spelling.

Use your outline
• Focus on the funder’s hot buttons that you have identified.
• Focus on your organization’s solution.
• Validate, validate, validate! Do not make claims you cannot prove.

Use paragraphs effectively
• Limit your paragraphs to one main idea.
• Begin each paragraph with a thesis statement.
• Put the most important point first.
• Use plenty of bulleted and numbered lists.
• Put details at the middle and end of your paragraphs.
• Make sure that your paragraphs flow logically.
• Use transition sentences as your glue.

Following these steps, you should be able to produce a serviceable first draft of your grant proposal.

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Dr. Jayme Sokolow, founder and president of The Development Source, Inc.,
helps nonprofit organizations develop successful proposals to government agencies. Contact Jayme Sokolow.

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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.