Proposals are a fundamental part of my professional reality. Having written a few hundred or so over my career, you’d think I’d be fairly good at that. And I am, in my way. I have strategies. I like to think that I give good proposal. But there are aspects of the process that are persistently challenging. The most significant part being figuring out what the client actually requires.
Next Webinar: Facilitation Success (& Failure)
The topic of facilitation is continuing to preoccupy us (and this webinar series). Mark’s final comment last month was that “success in facilitiating is abstract.” There is no way to directly measure it, except by whether or not you helped guide the group to where it needed to go. And a great question we didn’t […]
Agile Will Not Save You
Agile approaches are enjoying a very bright place in the sun. And that is to some extent deserved; they represent a very different way of working, especially when we are dealing with ill-defined problems and a need for experimentation and search. At the same time, we often define agile as needing to be different than what came before. The implication being that predecessor capabilities are inadequate, inappropriate and best relegated to the dustbin of history. The reality is very different.
Your Values Are Questionable
We’re often pretty sure that we understand what values are. Defining them clearly and compellingly, though, is an entirely different matter. Values aren’t about defining the lowest common denominator of what is important. They get at the very heart of who we are, and particularly how we operate, decide and interact. Getting them right is critical; it also takes a great deal of work.
The Vision Thing
Vision statements—like mission statements—need to be specific, meaningful and clear. They reflect our future aspirations, and are an important test of where we are going and why that is important. Like mission statements, though, vision is often vague, imprecise and overly general. For vision to do something, it has to say something.
Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It
Pick a strategic plan. Any strategic plan. Read the mission statement, and ask what it tells you about what makes the organization it belongs to unique. All too often, the answer to that is “not much.” Rather than being defining statements of purpose, mission statements are often vague, generalized and designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It doesn’t have to be this way.