I once watched a well-respected doctor throw a pencil at a female colleague whose ridiculously long, whiny oration during a proposal planning meeting had put him and the rest of us around the bend of polite behavior.  I remember being shocked at the time but also deeply appreciative.  The meeting had truly gone way beyond human endurance.

At a Passover Seder, we recite the Ten Plagues.  You know them: blood, frogs, lice, flies, cattle disease, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, death of the firstborn.  Because I was at a Seder last night and I have an unusual fondness for lists, I’m thinking of  Ten Meeting Plagues.

1. Anonymity – skipping introductions in the interest of time
2. Hunger and Thirst – no offer of coffee or treats
3. Puzzlement - meeting purpose that is confused or secret
4. Exclusion – tiered group with clear insiders and outsiders
5. Humorlessness – absence of chitchat or jokes
6. Aimlessness - meandering, undisciplined discussion
7. Endlessness – no respect for people’s time or patience
8. Hopelessness – deep belief the meeting is meaningless
9. Discontinuity – no traction from previous meeting
10. Disinvestment – decision to bug out – literally or figuratively

These days people don’t have to throw pencils to vent their frustration.  They Blackberry – google other people in the room, play Scrabble, text other attendees they sense are bored and frustrated.  Basically, they’re there but they’re not there.  I know this.  I’m one of these BB’ing folks who can’t tolerate bad meetings and would otherwise be arming myself with pencils.

What to do?

Here are five simple steps:  1) Have a purpose and an agenda; 2) Designate someone as the facilitator who will implement the agenda and manage the conversation; 3) Keep and distribute minutes; 4) Implement the ‘everybody talks/everybody listens’ rule; 5) Be glad to see people and have a little fun. 

There’s a reason why we got into this business – it’s interesting, important, and worthwhile.  When we get together to solve a problem or plan a project, it’s an opportunity to make things better in the world.  Let’s enjoy it!

Sometimes organizations choose the wrong funding source for a project because they simply don’t know any better.  Rule #1 in diagnosing this problem:  If an organization is still handwriting its proposals, it’s probably not ready for prime time for most funding sources.  Don’t laugh.  I had a city official (not Milwaukee) say to me just last week that she was working with several community-based organizations and faith-based groups that were scratching out their funding requests with pen and paper.  Ok, so that group needs pre-funding remedial classes.

What about the organizations that should know better?

Some organizations – we used to call them bottom feeders – go after every bit of scrunge in the water.  No matter if it fits with mission, program capacity, or strategic plan.  Got money? Got proposal.  Just like people who throw $5 worth of dimes in the little fishbowls at the carnival, eventually you will win a goldfish — a 39 cent fish that you spent 13 times that much trying to land.  If you are working in an organization with this trolling philosophy, it’s almost impossible to change it.  You see, even one win reinforces the strategy.  Yay for the 39 cent goldfish!

In more discerning organizations, there is usually some analysis that precedes the decision to apply for funding from a particular source.  Smart organizations seem to do these things:

• Know about funding opportunities way before everyone else.  They don’t wait for the published RFA (Request for Applications).  These organizations are so tuned in they know what’s coming down the pike and they’re ready.
• Communicate up and down the food chain.  I am always worried about organizations where the grant go-ahead decision rests with only one or two people.  A much better situation is when a group of people – and the group might change depending on the proposal – conduct some serious ‘vetting’.  Would this funding help us achieve our goals?  Do we have the resources to a) win the grant; and b) successfully administer it? Is this some other organization’s money, e.g. has another organization in town consistently received this funding and done an ok job with it?   This kind of discussion serves two purposes – helps you decide whether to move forward and reinforces a sense of team and mission around the grantseeking effort.
• Correctly assess their own grantwriting capabilities.  I’ll just say it here:  a newbie grantwriter who’s done two foundation grants cannot write a successful SAMHSA grant (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) with 50 moving parts, complex research and evaluation requirements, and tons of other hoops that only a small and very skilled army can manage.  In other words, your resources have to be adequate to the challenge.
• Listen to the funding source’s explanation of its priorities.  If a major national foundation or federal department has published its grantmaking priorities and guidelines, it is not your place to try to change their mind.  Countless times, I’ve listened to organizations, so determined to press on in the face of screaming red lights, strategize about how to convince the funding source that its thinking is off and their thinking is right.   Ignorance and arrogance — always a winning combination.  If you’re so convinced that your idea should be considered, have a conversation with the funding source.  Start a dialogue.  You never know what will happen down the road.
• Build.  Successful grantseeking organizations connect the dots.  One funding source leads to another.  Performance, communication, networking, new opportunity.  Steady, purposeful effort aimed at building capacity. 
• Walk away.  This is so hard to do if you’re an organization that is on a growth trajectory and is very competitive.  But it’s essential to the notion of right fit.  Sometimes, you really have to walk away.

I was trained in an organization that applied for everything that walked and tried to make sense of it later.  As a consequence, I’ve written some of the most outlandish proposals you will ever read – don’t even get me started.  But that was a while ago and I’m a lot smarter now – my little goldfish plaques notwithstanding.

Flop Sweat.  That ought to be the name of my company, Flop Sweat LLC.

Flop Sweat:  nervous perspiration caused by a fear of failure before an audience.  This, my friends, is the story of my life.

So why is flop sweat/fear of failure such a constant theme in my work?  Because I think it’s important to do scary things – like public speaking, organizing big events, taking on complex projects with tight deadlines, and negotiating with tough customers of all types.

I can remember times when my fear of failure almost put me into a faint.  One example is a huge community planning event designed to bring together observant Jews and African Americans to create Vision Sherman Park.  Somewhere between the PowerPoint, the survey results, the intricate seating arrangements, the marinara sauce, and Rabbi Twerski, I found my footing but only after repeating, oh, probably a hundred times, my mother’s inevitable response as I whined about some upcoming presentation at school, “A coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero dies but once.”

Every scary thing I’ve done and survived has ratcheted up my competence and willingness to take risks.  Moreover, I’ve learned to trust my judgement and believe in my own voice.  To say to yourself, “I’m afraid but I’m doing it anyway” is very empowering and a lot better than saying, “I’m scared to death and I’m going to find somebody to hide behind.”

Friends and colleagues who complain about how boring their work is strike me as people unwilling to bust out of the tiny circle they’ve drawn around their professional role.  You know the feeling — scared to make a fool of yourself on the dance floor, you hang back with all the other drips not realizing you would be a lot less of a drip if you would just freakin’ DANCE.

So as my mother would say, “If you’re bored, you have only yourself to blame.”  (My mother was a sweet, gentle person but she did have a lot of hardcore attitudes.) My guess is that people who are bored with their work are doing the same 10 things over and over.  They find excuses why they can’t take chances — their boss won’t let them, it’s not in their job description, they might FAIL.  That’s ok.  People want to be stuck, they can be stuck.  But they won’t grow.

My career hasn’t been a  beautiful string of successes.  I’ve had several head-hanging, what was I thinking, will I ever work again moments in my business. Thank goodness, there’ve been enough successes and good work to help most people forget the mistakes.  But I can guarantee you — I am absolutely never bored.

Of course, how could I have been a bat girl?  There ARE no bat girls.  Bat people are boys.  We all know that.  Still.  I could pick up bats and keep the ump supplied with balls with the best of them.  Because I’ve been to spring training.  In fact, I’m at Brewers Spring Training in Phoenix, AZ as we speak.  And if there’s a better place to be, I sure don’t know where it is.

I’m not a maniacal baseball fan, nor a student of baseball.  However, I am married to an avid fan and attend a lot of games every year – we’re talking 25 or so not counting 3-4 spring training games.  Until very recently, watching baseball was a meditative experience for me.  But then something clicked – I think it was the day I got the metaphorical significance of Striking Out Looking – and I started to love baseball and baseball players alot.

Spring training is the loveliest thing in the world if you are any kind of a fan at all.  First of all, everything about it makes you feel new – new season, new players, new promises.  Makes everyone feel like they’re 25.  It’s also the most relaxed and mellow place on earth (except for the young guys coming up trying to impress the coaches).  There’s a road in Phoenix called Carefree Highway and, in my mind, it runs right to Maryvale where the Brewers Stadium is located.  Picture the program vendor who dumps his sack in the 8th inning to stand atop the dugout to lead the crowd in YMCA or the former MPS teacher, now beer vendor, who gives each section a grade on how well they echo his trademark yell.

Most of all, people are happy.  The players joke around and tease each other.  Prince Fielder has a big grin on his face – something you don’t see once regular season starts.  And everyone is kind and chatty and generous.  Uncharacteristically, I made a play to catch a promotional T-shirt, missed it, only to have the woman who did catch it give it to me.  Dang. 

Nothing real profound here.  Just Arizona in March with a bunch of young guys playing ball and having fun.  Hard to complain. 

Yesterday, on the way to El Rey, my husband and I drove down Washington Street.  As we passed 12th, I looked up the street and could see, a block away, the flowers and memorials in front of what had to be the home of Rachel Thompson and her two sons. I looked at the house, amazed that what had happened to this young family had occurred in this neighborhood, with people going about their business, kids on the street, life happening.  How is it even possible, I thought, that three people could massacre a family?  What kind of person could put garbage bags over toddlers’ heads and watch them suffocate?  I use the word unfathomable.  Not because it can’t be understood by anyone — it just can’t be understood by me. 

Shift gears.  Last week I went with Joe Volk and Steve Falek to meet with members of the Milwaukee Journal Editorial Board to convince them to support the Continuum of Care’s 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness.  We went up the elevator, past a sprawling newsroom, and into a paneled conference room complete with a portrait of Solomon Juneau and there we made our pitch for their support.  It wasn’t hard — it’s not easy to be against ending homelessness.  The meeting, along with a terrific plan generated by a tireless group of CoC members, resulted in a great editorial two days later complete with a picture of a homeless man straight from central casting.  

So this is the high and low – the up and down – the good and the bad.  Certainly the exhileration I felt at the Editorial Board dissipated when I learned the details of the Thompson family murders. But standing back, I’m seeing circles – overlapping circles with the family in the middle, various systems, neighbors, teachers, and social workers touching their circle, but maybe the Editorial Board experience and what it represents in terms of Milwaukee’s opinion leadership and power structure just ever so faintly touching the Thompson’s world.

If I don’t get it, the Editorial Board probably doesn’t either.  And although they are closer to the ground, I bet the social workers and parole officers and the teachers know about the day to day, they are still at a loss as to what to do to prevent this in the future.

We don’t know why those young people would murder Rachel and her kids any more than we really know why people are homeless in a country with so much wealth.  It’s going to make my head ache extra hard to hear Charlie Sykes and his ilk jump up with the ’she should’ve known better’ or he should’ve worked harder’ insta-analysis.  And the inevitable, ‘this organization or this system failed.’

The fact of the matter – and I see this every day – is that the people who run homeless shelters, police officers, juvenile court workers, social workers – they’re all doing the best they can and trying to make things better.  They might not know the answers but they keep at it. And I guess that’s what we do at a time like this.  We just keep at it.

I’ve been in business for 15 years – started in January 1995 about five minutes after the Social Development Commission made a disasterous pick for executive director, a woman who resigned two years later amid allegations of misappropriation of funds, lying about her credentials, a ton of stuff that confirmed my decision to boogie when I did.  I resigned my job as Planning Director – a job that I loved and was very good at.  It broke my heart to leave.

Because I had been in business before, I knew I could rev up the engine and get going again.  I likened myself to Rockford, the private detective living in a Malibu trailer who printed up business cards in his car on his way to con someone into giving up some valuable info.  I could do it all – planning, grantwriting, research, community involvement, all the things I loved doing.  Yep.  I could do it all and fry it up in a pan.   And that’s pretty much what I’ve done.

So because I’ve been around a while, I get a lot of calls from people who’ve decided to become consultants.  Usually, they’ve just been down-sized, are in a state of shock, and on the rebound, so to speak. They’re looking for a quick way to make it look like they chose to leave their job.  If I know them or know the person who told them to call me, we’ll have coffee so they can “pick my brain,” one of my least favorite terms but people always seem to think it’s a nice thing to say.  So I get asked lots of questions — usually the first is, “How much do you charge?”  Followed by “How do you get business?”  And, my favorite, “How hard do you have to work?”

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, ever likes my answers.  Sometimes they start telling me what they would do different.  And I think, ok, as if. Nine times out of ten, I never hear from or about these folks again.  Why?  They find a job.  Essentially they weren’t interested in the heavy lifting and unglamorous parts of running a business – the fact that while you might be master of your own ship, you’re likely to be the only person on the boat. They liked the idea of being on their own – the freedom, self-determination, and the huge fees they felt entitled to.

It’s kind of like getting married. There’s the idea of getting married and then there’s the day to day.  Having a successful business, like having a successful marriage, is about playing the long game.  It’s about being totally invested (not secretly considering options), optimistic, confident, and cheerful.  In marriage, as in business, it helps to have a short memory and start over every day.  In both marriage and business, you have to learn to quickly recover from failure and disappointment because the weight of those things can drown you.  Deciding this is IT – that you are totally committed to a course of action, whether it’s marriage or business, frees you up to do wonderful things.  For real.  I can prove it with 15 years of a great business and 26 years of a really great marriage.  Lucky to have both — but neither dropped from the sky.  As my father would say, “successful people make their own luck.”

There’s a lot written about the art of the apology.  In family life, if you don’t know how to apologize, you’re really in for a lot of heartache.  But the art of apology is just as important in professional life.  Here’s where a lot of people’s fear of taking responsibility overwhelms them.  So instead of apologizing in a timely, sincere, and meaningful way, they argue, obfuscate, blame others and make excuses.

My apology teacher was a former priest – my boss at the Social Development Commission.  Although sometimes overly responsible (apologizing for every bad thing that happened in the building), he knew how to apologize quickly and turn the discussion to making amends.  In other words, it was all about the product — not his ego. 

This is what I learned from that:  People will judge you on your overall competence – not on a single event.  If you’ve made a mistake — even if it’s a huge one — it’s how you handle the clean-up that is the critical factor.

• Make sure you understand what mistake you actually made before you start apologizing.  And don’t do that stupid  “Gee, I’m sorry you’re upset” thing that they teach all the customer service people.
• Apologize in the same venue where the problem arose.  By this, I mean if you made a mistake involving one person in a large group setting — in my opinion, you have to apologize in the large group.
• Apologize, explain specifically what you think the offense/mistake was, and ask how to make amends.  “I’m sorry. I didn’t get this survey instrument approved before I started doing interviews.  How can I make this right?”
• Don’t blame colleagues, subordinates, your children, the weather, your failing health, or anything else for the mistake.  Practice this in the shower:  “I’m sorry.  There’s really no excuse for this. I take full responsibility.”
• Force yourself to make affirmative apologies.  By this I mean that once you realize that you did something – even if the event has passed – you should go back and correct it.  This can be really tough.  I’ve done it.  But you’ll feel better and your group will respect you.
• Remember there’s a difference between being accountable and being a doormat.  I’ll apologize when I’m wrong but I won’t tolerate piling up or my own colleagues running for the hills when they were part of the mess.

Life being what it is — complicated, messy, busy — there are always plenty of opportunities to practice apologizing.  Why, I was able to do a little practicing just this past week!  Did my apology fix everything?  I don’t know.  But life’s a long game – every mistake is about doing better next time – that’s what I think.

“I want a job and a way to get there.  And I want people to treat me with respect. That’s all.  Don’t look down on me or talk down to me. It’s not my fault that I’m homeless.”  This from a homeless guy in his mid-fifties (he told me, I’m not guessing) who wasted no time telling me what was what in a focus group we conducted at a homeless shelter last week.

Let me back up.  I decided to do a series of group surveys/focus groups because I needed to include a consumer-prioritized list of service needs in a major grant I was putting together.  So it was time to get off my arse and go ask — it had been a couple of years -and I really felt like it was time to show the funding source that we were in touch with consumers. I’d already done a provider survey — a neat, tidy little online survey accomplished without moving from my office or talking to a single human being.

A big snow storm was predicted the day of our first group.  Looking at a 10-inch accumulation and blowing winds, I felt like an idiot going out to ask homeless people to rank their service needs.  But it’s what I do.  I put my survey instrument together,  packed my bag with chocolate bars, and headed out in my jeans and boots to do my job.  We needed consumer input.  My job was to get it.

At one shelter, we talked with a group of fourteen men.  My role as facilitator was to ask questions and listen.  See the guy who seems to want to talk and get him to talk.  Absorb it.  Move things along.  Maneuver the group around the interpersonal conflicts that seemed right below the surface.  And assure them that no repercussions would result from their complaints about various programs and, even, individual staff.

“Respect me.  Respect us.  Don’t treat us like crap.”  When I asked the group of homeless guys what message they wanted to send to providers, this was their answer.

I try to do this on a personal level.  When I meet a person who appears to be homeless on the street — or someone who asks me for money – I look them in the eye.  Sometimes I give them money.  Sometimes I ask if they’ve gone to XYZ agency or tried the ABC program.  I don’t ignore people when I meet them.  I look them in the eye.  I believe it’s the right thing to do.  I would want someone to acknowledge me if I was homeless and talking to them – to see that I am a person worth talking to.

But professionally, maybe it’s a different story.  I was so sure that I knew what homeless people wanted and needed that it seemed inconsiderate and redundant to go ask them.  After all, wouldn’t anyone know what homeless people would say they wanted on a snowy night with single digit wind chills?

No.

How many meetings have I sat through talking about homeless people, kids in the juvenile justice system, families in child welfare, without having any consumers in the room?  How many times have I helped decide what goals to pursue and where to allocate funding without the people affected being present?  How often have I assumed, and let others assume, that I know what people want and need.

It hit me last week.  My arrogance.  And so I’ll say here what I said in a Facebook post:  Slap me the next time I think I know what people want or need without asking them. 

People need to be asked and heard – not once every couple of years – but in an ongoing way.  A good lesson relearned.

Deadlines rule your life?  Feel like someone is always chasing you?    Having dreams about getting to the airport just as your plane is leaving? 

Oh, I hear you.  Do I ever.  My whole life is about deadlines – so I’ve learned something about how to manage complex projects in a short time frame.  Some of this you’re not going to like hearing, but here goes…

My first tip is this:   Control your project.  The temptation to farm out pieces of a project to other people is huge.  Susie Q is a researcher – hey, she should be able to write the evaluation section.  So Susie Q tries, struggles, and then gives you a draft the day before the due date.  And it’s junk.  Then what?  You end up re-writing someone’s junk which, believe me, is far worse than writing it from scratch yourself.  My advice is meet with Susie Q early, get everything out of her brain you can, and write the section yourself.  In other words, control your project!

Second tip:  Keep the decision-makers in the loop. On a big project, you need to meet with the key people at the beginning of the project, when you have an initial draft/findings and then at the end.  In between, you want to keep good email/phone communication to make sure they are comfortable with the strategic decisions you are making.  Don’t go to them with the ticky stuff – then they will (rightly) think you are over your head.  Critical thing is to manage the people who will need to sign off/accept/endorse your product.  If you don’t, they’ll jam you at the end and you will have big deadline issues.

Third suggestion:  Manage yourself.  First thing to remember is that “panic is the enemy.”  Panic generates hysteria which generates junk.  Do what you need to do to keep your wits about you – deep breathing, a walk, commiseration with colleagues – but do it quickly.  Don’t spend hours calming yourself that you ought to be spending on your project!  Another thing to remember is to force yourself to focus on what’s most important.  Keep asking yourself — what really matters here?  What will make this product successful and useful?

I have a bunch of other little tricks:

• Starting work at 4:00 a.m.  You can get more done by adding a 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. shift than working in the evening.
• Keeping information for a project in folders — a proposal might have 8-10 different folders.  This keeps me from shifting into an hysteria-producing top of my desk search mode.
• Not responding to tickiness.  I don’t like getting whipsawed by different people sending me comments.  So I figure out who’s a) the smartest reviewer; and b) the reviewer in charge and just listen to them.
• Physically laying out a project on a table top.  It is so easy to get lost in a document when you’re only reading it on the computer screen.  Print it, lay it out page by page on a big table, and walk around the table and read it.  Assess how it looks, how much attention you’ve paid to various topics, how it hangs together.  This exercise will tell you where to focus your limited time.
• Pretzels and Diet Coke.  Need I say more?

Amazing and often intimidating his audiences, The Great Rondini escapes from his chains and straitjacket night after night at the Key West Mallory Square Sunset Celebration.

If you go to Key West, you have to see The Great Rondini.  A magician, escape artist, and extremely caustic comic, Rondini specializes in zeroing in on people and making them squirm to the delight of the crowd….he remarked to my husband how nice it must be to get off the tractor for a while.  He told me if I didn’t move 3 steps closer, he would tell more race jokes.  I backed up 3 steps.

This year, though, we saw right through Rondini.  Listen, this guy’s prep is a thing of beauty.  Selected ‘audience members’ (all so authentic) buckle him up in his straitjacket, wrap him in chains, snap on locks, and mop his brow.  In past years, he would then be hoisted up by his ankles to start his escape hanging upside down.  Not so this year – maybe age has caught up with him.

So we watch – as intent as ever.  But because he’s not hanging upside down, it’s easier to figure out how he escapes.  He basically makes himself large when all the gear is strapped on, and shrinks to escape, going through all manner of gyrations to boost the crowd’s appreciation of his terrible predicament.

The writhing and cursing, struggling and bending, the exhortations to the crowd to be more enthusiastic and louder, and the studied pauses to tell more race/gay/Key West/tourist/hick jokes — it makes for a mesmerizing package.

First, he shrugs off the chains, then twists his arms inside the straitjacket until he can stand on his head and shrug it off as well.  He’s free!  The Great Rondini.    Even though I could see clearly how it was done, I still appreciated his showmanship, his wicked humor, and, maybe, his thumbing his nose at the world longevity.

Anyway, so what would this possibly have to do with planning or grantwriting?  Oh, you know I would have to find little lessons in this.  Well, here they are:

1. We give the Rondinis of the world too much credit because we get so caught up in their theater we don’t get the trick.
2. Almost everything about planning, research, grantwriting, group facilitation is about making the complex simple.
3. There is something to the notion of blue smoke and mirrors and it ain’t just for street performers.  It’s both a tool and a weapon.  But you have to be really good at it either way.

I really like The Great Rondini.  He’s a piece of work.  I admire that.