The drive to create a business plan in the least amount of time has reached a new high … or low. Last week, Inc. 5000 published an article suggesting you can and should be able to present your entire business model on paper in (gulp) just 20 minutes. The idea is from a recent book, Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to Plan that Works, by Ash Maurya.
I’m just getting started. If you read my latest post, you’ll have a clue without a lot of re-hash of where this is going. That post concentrated on the problem, mostly on the patients’ side. Please forgive me as I slip occasionally into that mode from time-to-time, but I’ll try to stay focused. This is not easy to write.
Doctors deal with death easily. “Easily” in they don’t have to tell the patient and they tell the family and leave. With patients who you have to tell bad news: the incurable illness, the crippling, painful death that will occur in weeks, months or years–results vary on their bedside manner.
Now you thought I was going to blast away. I wasn’t, but I was fortunate to have a team dedicated to deal with what needs to happen and more when I was diagnosed with tongue and throat cancer. All the cancer is supposedly gone now–except the waiting it might come back in five years. The constant testing and re-testing, and treating of the side effects of radiation, chemo and surgery. Once the treatment was done or on my return visits, most of the doctors and staff were aware and made me feel good for the moment.
However, that moment goes away. The constant follow-ups and re-testing to make sure it hasn’t come back or manifested itself somewhere else in your body and what awful things are they going to have to do now. Will I have to speak by means of a machine or controlling my belching as I’ve seen on TV or will I wither and die? What about seeing my kids grow up? How is this affecting my wife and others?
Do I need to talk about depression?
Re-branding when you can’t do what you used to do? I used to be an actor. My voice is not awful now, but I doubt I have the range I used to. I suppose I could be a different character actor? Forget the audiobooks, speaking engagements, day to week-long training sessions–too strenuous and require much more vocal variety than I can give now. My life as I knew it disappeared with the diagnosis, and pretty much after the treatment so did the kindness. You’ll know in six months the whole effect radiation and chemo does to your body. My actual treatment was six weeks, but the radiation and chemo keep working on the good cells that are left. This info is glossed over in the beginning–after all they are saving your life. Whose life?
“At least it’s better than the alternative.”
I don’t know how many times I heard that one, and still hear it from people who don’t know what else to say.
Good news for me though. I just became the Artistic Director of Spotliters, a community theatre in south New Jersey; its a great group and it feels great to be wanted. I’m writing more now, but my passion will have to shift and I have to pull a lot of energy in writing, coaching actors, directing, and coaching new actors, teaching a board of directors about theatre to keep busy. I have two more books nearly finished, and a novel to begin. I will continue this blog as long as Carter will have, and you’ll have me. I’ll try to keep it focused on training and development. This is off-track a bit, I admit.
Related is that I do a blended night class a week of Public Speaking (eight days in-class and online homework and prep) and signed on to teach some online only courses down the road.
But I did like my old life and its hard to let loose of those dreams–especially the older you get. The psychologists I’ve seen have confirmed what I already figured out for myself: tough-minded, always fix things in life, put yourself through school, an achiever faced with cancer is lost and depressed.
Reinvention is necessary. I knew all this before I started, but doctors only know how to review to other doctors. Upfront they might have information, but unless you go to them, it doesn’t appear they look for the information. And you know what stuck feels like, like drowning…
You would think there would be a lot of support groups; there aren’t–and I live an hour from New York, twenty minutes from Philadelphia. You would think in that market there was help available from people who have been there, people going through it. People who specialize in the aftermath (not afterlife); it wasn’t my plan to die right away and I don’t think it is the plan of many who don’t survive the aftermath of treatment for the reasons I have expressed.
You don’t necessarily need a psychologist to tell you have PTSD and you’re depressed; you need doctors who can at least direct you to help. You may need a psychiatrist to give you a pill to make you temporarily forget who you are.
Trainers who deal with change and changing attitudes, motivators are perfect to pick up the ball and run with it. Make sure the cancer docs know your name, your group and what it does for patients after care. Give lessons to medical people that goes beyond what they learn in school.
Older and sick people are not children; they want control, some control. My wife took off six weeks from work to help feed me through a tube because I didn’t want to think about it. I took my food through the tube (it was tasteless anyway because of the radiation and chemo) but I did it to take a break from having to drink enough of the stuff all day long. Three months after treatment, I can taste a little, but the bulk of my calories come from the shakes I make so creatively. I also taste some of the chemicals and preservatives because I don’t have all my taste buds. Something not spicy to someone else is fire in my mouth. My sense of smell is so enhanced the smell of grocery produce practically makes me ill. Food still smells wonderful; I just can’t taste it.
It’s not that the medical staff don’t try to help after treatment, but their concern is medical and keeping you alive, and most come from a science and math background. Frankly those people are generally fact-based and may not seem as empathetic or sympathetic as we are.
Doctors and medical staff do seem quite proud of themselves as they leave the office thinking of how much good they accomplished and they have a right to be proud. However, you go home wondering how you are going to sleep and if you’ll even wake up. If something else goes wrong, what then? Emergency room and you won’t see your doctor there.
You will hate it. You know something else is wrong. Nurses may even tell you “not to ring so often because they have other patients, too.” It happened to me. I couldn’t do anything without help, and I had to wait hours for a bad attitude.
Specialized training beyond medical school is the answer. It’s not just psychology courses either. Ever meet a psychologist or psychiatrist who can’t hold a conversation unless it’s work related?
No, this has to do with communication, listening skills, and relating to others. These are skills trainers can do best. In fact, develop a program that deals with patients who suffer the after affects and turn it into a group training/help group for patients.
The doctors, nurses and med-techs from my experience know others need training. Sounds like a good gig to me. It would help to have patients who could help, but it is close to home. You’d have to watch that carefully.
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For more resources about training, see the Training library.
By the way, I’m quite up to speed now so check out my website. I may not be doing audio books or acting, but I’m writing more books. My novel, Harry’s Reality, is out now as well as The Cave Man Guide to Training and Development. My next two short non-fiction books have to do with the real life application of theatre as an exploration of the human race and its sometimes odd, but understandable, behavior from an unusual perspective.
As for Harry’s Reality, here is a man who can’t remember a part of his past and can see the reality once in a while–that reality other people never see. He wants it all. And he wants his life and his world back. Vote for Harry Bolls for President. Happy training.
In my post on August 28th, I discussed financial readiness and outlined the organizational financial records and project financial information that you will need to have ready in order to submit a grant application.
This post provides three additional points for you to consider before launching a corporate and/or foundation grants program at your NPO:
The “25% Rule”
The most common measure of nonprofit organizational efficiency is the percentage of total expenses going to program costs. Charity Navigator, GuideStar, other non-profit ranking services, the federal government and foundations definitely evaluate this percentage.
According to Charity Navigator, 7 out of 10 charities that they evaluated spent at least 75% of their budget on programs and services, and 9 out of 10 spent at least 65%.
The Combined Federal Campaign requires that participating organizations certify that their combined fundraising and administrative costs constitute no more than 25 percent of the organizations’ total revenues. (Note that this calculation differs from that used by Charity Navigator because it is a ratio of admin + fundraising costs divided by total revenue instead of total expense.)
Most foundations expect a similar if not greater level of organizational efficiency. I recently ran across a foundation that requires, “administrative and fundraising expenses of less than 20% of the total expenses of the organization.”
So, if your NPO is spending at least 65% (ideally 75% … or more) of total expenses on program costs, then you might want to consider starting a grants program to secure income from foundations.
Program Readiness
In addition to having your financial house in order, you will also need to have well-established program (or project) goals, activities and metrics in order to seek grant funding.
The Missouri Common Grant Application, referenced in my last post, downloadable here, provides a good example of what will be required. Specifically:
• What are your project goals?
• What activities do you intend to engage in or provide to achieve these goals?
Please provide an in-depth description of the activities/services, including:
1) how much, 2) how often, 3) how long activities/services will be provided
• What are the anticipated short and long-term measurable outcomes that would be
achieved by this grant?
• What is your organization’s evaluation process?
• How do you plan to track and measure the effectiveness of your project?
These goals, activities and metrics need to be included in your grant applications, and if funded, outcomes will need to be included in your grant reports.
Capacity
My final point for you to consider before launching a grants program at your NPO is capacity, both within your program staff and development staff.
Are your program staff members capable of implementing the program according to the plan outlined your grant application? Can they collect and document the outcomes that will need to be included in grant reports?
Do you have the capacity in your development department to work closely with your program staff to define program goals, activities and metrics, and compile results for grant reports? Do you have the time to adequately steward your foundation donors with ongoing communications, meetings, tours, etc.? If you spend time on a grants program, would you lose individual donors because you don’t have the time to steward them appropriately?
And, of course, I strongly recommend that you review these points with your development team. Then, if everyone is on board, you can launch your grant program; and, be sure to check back here for my continuing series on effective grant programs!
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Lynn deLearie Consulting, LLC, helps nonprofit organizations develop, enhance and expand grants programs, and helps them secure funding from foundations and corporations. Contact Lynn deLearie.
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Have you seen The Fundraising Series of ebooks ??
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In the previous post, I talked about focusing on some of the more fundamental and helpful components of a document (charts, figures, images, flowcharts, pictures) and their usage. My next favorite tool along this line of usage is the application of tables. Using tables for simplifying the presentation of data provides a comprehensive arrangement of a structure, outline, pattern or order of what is being focused on. It is a great presentation tool and visual aid for comparisons, breakdowns, lists, functions and descriptions.
Tables come in all sorts of sizes and shapes. You can highlight specific headings or columns or rows or even highlight diagonal sections or even just certain individual cells of a table. Think of a tic-tac-toe game for highlighting cells to distinguish relevant elements.
As an example, use this particular form of highlighting when you have a table denoting products features versus competitors’ features. You can show similarities of a product vs. dissimilarities by highlighting just those cells containing items you want to point out like pricing of one vs. another. Usage of this type of table is great for marketing or creating a proposal depicting, e.g., the pros and cons of a product or project.
Tables are noted for data display and also for their ease of use and flexibility for allowing the inclusion of graphic charts (pie, bar, scatter, etc.) to reemphasize or to give anther representation of what is in the table for further clarification.
Tables can also be created with separated but adjacent columns to present a more visual appealing look. By using your imagination, you can have tables in the form of tables within table cells or figures, text boxes, or even images within table cells. This is really useful if you wanted to for example, put borders around certain portions of text located within a cell for emphasis.
You can also create your own table styles, e.g., you can insert columns and then select borders and select dashes, or zigzags for vertical break points. Just use your imagination and create your very own unique tables. The zigzagged portion of the table could be used to show what is to be eliminated or cut off from a product. You can color portions of cells for emphasis to give it more weight or prominence.
There are many things you can do using a table. We are surrounded by table designs; look at the periodic table filled with our chemical makeup. When working with data structures, table sets are automatically created using embedded tables. When we impart descriptions, we use table formatting for our columns and rows. Use them whenever you can. Design and shape the tables any way you wish. You can shape them in the form of alphabets or some similarity to reinforce something you might be teaching.
Tables will help you present the information in a user-friendly way and keep you organized. It will take patience to create the table style you want to use or, you can just apply any pre-formatted table and customize it to what you need. They are worth applying to your documents.
It helps them assess a project-task-assignment, which can be as small as taking an hour or two or as big as something taking a few weeks or months, before diving in.
These five key questions will help you decide on the Four “D’s” of priority management: Do it – Delegate it – Delay it- Dump it:
1. Why am I doing this?
Ever find yourself working on something but you don’t know why? Someone just told you to do this or that? It’s pretty common I thing. It’s important to ask yourself (and others): What is this for? Who benefits? How does this help achieve our team, department or organization goals? Knowing the purpose, the rationale or the “why” will help you be better focused.
2. What problem am I solving?
What’s the real problem? What’s happening that is not suppose to happen or what’s not happening that is suppose to happen? Who owns the problem – is it me, my team, my department or someone else? Sometimes you’ll find that you’re working on what someone else thinks is crucial but is it really? That’s when it’s time to stop and reevaluate what you’re doing.
3. Is this actually useful?
Are we making something useful or just making something? It’s easy to confuse enthusiasm with reality. Sometimes it’s fun to build something that’s cool, but will it make a difference for the customer. Cool wears off, usefulness never does.
4. Am I adding value?
Adding something is easy, adding true value is harder. Is what I’m working on actually making the product or service more valuable for our customers? Can they get more out of it than they did before? There’s a fine line between adding value and just adding more features that few people want.
5. Is there an easier way?
There are lots of ways to do things, but for simplicity’s sake let’s say there are two primary ways: The easier way and the harder way. The easier way takes 5 units of time. The harder way takes 10 units of time. Whenever you’re working in the harder way you should ask yourself is there an easier way? You’ll often find that the easier way is more than good enough for now.
This is the big question: Is it really worth it? This one should come up all the time. Is what I’m doing really worth it? Is this meeting worth pulling me and 6 people off their work for an hour? Is it worth getting all stressed out over ____________? You decide what to put in blank. Also see Manage Your Productivity, Not Just Your Time.
Now it’s your turn. Are you doing work that really matters or are you just putting in the time? What are you doing to work smarter rather than harder?
Do you want to develop your Management Smarts?
The tape of Mitt Romney slamming Obama supporters at a private donor dinner is one of those situations that there really is no explaining your way out of. Full of reputation-wrecking quotes like this one, discussing his own father, “Had he been born of Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot of winning this,” and the following, in reference to the 47% of the U.S. population that supports Obama, “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility,” it’s a crisis management nightmare of epic proportions.
Besides providing plenty of fodder for The Daily Show, the viral rampage of this video serves as a reminder to anyone seeking to maintain their positive reputation. It doesn’t take a trained spy or experienced journalist to capture video of you in your most candid moments. Whether you’re discussing bribing the safety inspector or how wild the company party was last night, the prevalence of cell phones and easy availability of Bond-esque cameras made to look like everything from pens to designer watches, means that your “private” conversation could be on the web mere minutes after you leave the room.
When literally anything you do could be caught on tape, what can be done to protect your reputation? Well, the easiest part of crisis prevention for this risk is to not say or do things that you’re ashamed of, or that violate company policy/legal boundaries. In addition, if you’re a business, ensure that all employees are properly educated regarding company policies on recording devices, as well as consequences for sharing confidential information or conversations.
If you do get caught with your figurative pants down, the best choice is to fall back on Crisis Management 101. Admit your mistake, deliver a heartfelt mea culpa, and explain how you will work to prevent a similar situation from happening again. This doesn’t mean your video won’t still be the topic du jour, but with a proper apology the public can be surprisingly forgiving. As far as Romney, he’s chosen to embrace the comments and plow ahead as if he had planned the leak all along. Now, there is the possibility that his choice was the right one, but with overwhelmingly negative sentiment surrounding the video sweeping the nation we’re guessing that it’s not going to help come November.
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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, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training, and co-host of The Crisis Show. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]
At my blog Marion Conway – Nonprofit Consultant I have just written about conducting a Nonprofit Lifecycle Analysis at a Board retreat. Frequently, I write complimentary articles at the two blogs, but this subject really lends itself to one article. So here is a summary and the link to my blog article.
I was working with an excellent, engaged Board and the lifecycle analysis was very helpful for them as a springboard to beginning their strategic planning process. The analysis brought into focus issues that should be in their plan that might not otherwise be there. It was important that the board was engaged because they were able to take an honest look at their strengths and which areas needed improvement to bring their organization to the next level. I used Nonprofit Lifecycles: Stage-Based Wisdom for Nonprofit Capacity
by Susan Stevens (2002) as a foundation for the discussion and Building Nonprofit Capacity: A Guide to Managing Change Through Organizational Lifecycles
by John Brothers and Anne Sherman (2011) to provide a more modern framework with an updated picture of priorities for the infrastructure stage with growth and sustainability as the focus.
See the whole article and view the slides here.
Marion
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For more resources, see our Library topic Nonprofit Capacity Building.
Which ones get you into trouble? And will they or are they stalling your leadership or career?
Infographics have very quickly proved to be a valuable aspect of any online marketing campaign. Regardless of your industry or target audience, they seem to bode well across the board, which is great for your small business.
While experts have nothing but good things to say about infographics, its success has been studied and proven. Hubspot.com found that blog posts with infographics got 72% more views and created 178% more inbound links. So, as a successful addition to your marketing efforts you want to get as much from this new fad as possible. From tracking to targeting, there are a few important things to keep in mind.
You work with a very competent, highly skilled marketing team – there’s no doubt about that. However, there are some resources they just may not have access to. When this is the case, it makes sense to pair with a company that specializes in tricky and interesting statistics. But, don’t worry; you’ll get more out of the deal than just a few mind-blowing facts.
While infographics have infiltrated almost every industry, that doesn’t mean you can put them anywhere and reap the benefits. To see a positive effect you have to treat it like any other piece of marketing material by putting it in front of the right people. Whether that is on a photo sharing site or your email campaign, be sure to gear it to the right customers.
Finally, as with anything in your marketing portfolio, you want to be sure to track your infographic. As a highly shared branding token, you want to ensure the right tracking methods are used in order to re-target the photo or place it elsewhere. There are two main aspects to your infographic tracking.
Infographics are a marketing gold mine. Easy to share and understand, it’s a simple method for increasing brand impressions while impressing your customers and other industry experts.
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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.
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Guest Author Bio: Jessica Sanders is an avid small business writer touching on topics that range from social media to telemarketing and web design. She is a professional blogger and web content writer for ResourceNation.com.
