Business Travel Tips – Episode One

Travelling for business may be somewhat less necessary than it was a decade ago, what with the digital connectivity tools that are widely available to most of us these days. But there are times when you really have to travel, to meet others face-to-face, in order to get your work done most effectively. Here is one suggestion that will help insure that your travel is not only effective, but efficient and (relatively) hassle free.

Choose your means of travel to fit the distance and the season

For long-haul trips – over 200 miles or more, air travel is almost always the only sensible choice. But shorter trips can be more effective if you consider other alternatives. Not only can it be cheaper, but when you consider the time it takes to drive to the nearest airport, park the car, get to the terminal, check bags, clear security, etc. it might even take less time. Recently I was delayed at the airport for nearly 3 hours, catching a plane that actually only spent 50 minutes in the air. By the time I boarded, I would have been at my destination if I had driven from home.

Taking the train is a great idea, if you are fortunate enough to be travelling to a destination served by an accessible train line. Business class seating on the train is a lot more comfortable than most coach airplane seats. Many Amtrak trains and international train lines provide Wi-Fi and electrical outlets at your seat so you can connect to the internet and get things done. Weather, with the exception of blizzards, is rarely a factor in train travel – you won’t get delayed or diverted because of gusting winds or strong thunderstorms when you ride the iron horse.

Auto travel requires more work on your part (or not so much if you have business travelling companions who can share the driving). A great bonus is having satellite radio, or an iPod (or other MP3 player) connection though your auto’s sound system. There are dozens of excellent business related podcasts (e.g. Harvard Business Review’s IdeaCast, The BBC’s Bottom Line, Duct Tape Marketing) that you can bring along with you to make that automobile trip a learning or creativity-enhancing time for you.

The “mileage free” policies of most major car rental agencies makes it cost-effective to consider renting a car for a business trip, rather than putting more wear and tear on your own vehicle. You will almost certainly get a well-maintained, low mileage, very clean automobile. Most metropolitan areas have multiple locations for car renting, so it is often unnecessary to be near an airport to be able to get a car easily. Bonus thought, if you are thinking about buying a new car, check with your local rental agencies to see if they have a make and model you are interested in, and combine your business trip with a great road test of what might be your next auto purchase!

The Multi-Talented Grant Writer

“There is a ton of money out there for you to tap into, and this workshop is designed to help you understand how to get your hands on some of it.” I often begin a workshop on grant writing by making this blunt statement.

But, it’s true. Public charities, private foundations, corporations and government entities make literally billions of dollars available each year. If you aren’t getting your hands on some of this funding, you should be. The corollary truth, though, is that there are far more grants available than there are good grant writers who possess the capability to win such awards.

In many cases, the problem is prioritization. Organizations often include “grant writing” as a job duty that is lumped in a general category of “other duties” for a staffer who has other primary duties. The main job of these individuals is NOT to vie for outside funding. They may be executives, managers, supervisors or administrative staff. They may have inherited the role of grant writer by accident, and are trying to figure out how to fit this task into a seemingly endless list of other jobs that need to get done.

Even if your organization has the ability to designate a person or group of people as your grant writing department, the talents necessary to write compelling proposals and win significant funding are far from trivial. Let’s take a look at some of the competencies that make up the skill set of effective grant writers.

Researcher: Although it is true that there is a ton of funding available, not all opportunities are right for every organization. Grant making organizations tend to have specific causes, or target populations or methods in which they are willing to invest. Your organization needs to match up! Before the first plan is made, the first word is written, a good grant writer has done extensive research. Often, a need is identified and significant research goes into finding funders who might be able to help.

Journalist/Writer/Storyteller: Sounds obvious, of course, but having been on the reviewing end as well as the writing end, I can tell you that there are many proposals made that fail to connect with funders because the writing was faulty, the story poorly told. Good writing skills are a must, and the ability to tell “a tale well told” in support of your request will win you funding!

Editor/Proofreader/ Fact Checker: Similar to the above, good grant writing requires the ability to proofread a document for grammatical, usage, and punctuation errors. If your skill level extends only to the ability to use a spell checker, you might write “hear” when you meant to say “here”, or “peak your interest” when you should have said “pique”. Sensitive radar for finding and eliminating jargon or trite phraseology pays off as well. Distilling 32 pages of double-spaced text into the 20 page requirement limitation without diluting the message is often a major challenge the grant writer faces. And, of course, the ability to check factual information and statements that are included in the proposal can make the difference between success and failure even after a grant is awarded.

Creative Thinker/Problem Solver/ Synthesizer: I have been chided in the past for my belief that a good proposal is “sexy”. By this I mean that your application not only should demonstrate how you will deliver services and solve problems, but how you will do it in a creative, innovative fashion. Many funders have been giving money out for years, what often catches their eye are fresh, new, and (dare I say) exciting ideas addressing how to reach a goal.

Able to meet deadlines/Planner/Project manager: The need to be organized and meet deadlines varies with the complexity of the proposal. I’ve sent in one page applications and small books. One thing most all of these opportunities have in common is a deadline, and even if the requirements are minor, when you miss the deadline it matters little how well written your proposal is, how cleverly you plan to craft your project, nor how deserving your organization may be. Your submission will be relegated to the trash. Complex proposals often require the involvement of many other people to be adequately prepared. The service delivery staff has to describe how they will do the work, the CFO has to prepare the budgets, the compliance officer must insure that promises made will be able to be kept, supporters may need to send in letters of endorsement or support. Bringing the many pieces of the puzzle together in time to meet the submission deadline requires significant project planning skills.

Collaborator/ Communicator/ Translator/ Diplomat: Because there are often many players who play a part in the development of an effective proposal, the successful grant writer fosters teamwork, and resolves conflicts among the team members. This “captain” insures that each person knows what he or she is expected to do, and by when, to bring the project in on time, learns to speak many “languages”, and to facilitate communication among the parties involved. Taking disparate pieces, written by multiple hands, and reworking them so that the proposal speaks in a common voice is both a skill and an art.

Data Analyst/ Statistician:  The ability to analyze data is crucial at all stages of the process, through and including award date and the aftermath. Compelling case statements need to be written to justify requests for funding, available resources cited in the proposal must be adequate to achieving the promised results, and requested funds must cover costs. Once a grant is awarded, the obligation shifts to demonstrating to the funder that the money is being spent well, as promised, and is achieving the expected outcomes. Failure to supply required data at this stage can insure you will never be funded from that source again, and at worst could lead to funder choice to terminate the grant prematurely.

Financial Manager/ Understanding of fiscal reporting: For reasons already cited, the good grant writer has to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of business mathematics, fiscal processes, budgeting, expenditures, and financial reporting to be effective.

Advocate: At the core of everything, the grant writer believes in the organization, the capabilities of the staff, and the people who will be helped. Regardless of all other skills, it is virtually impossible to write a compelling grant proposal if you are indifferent to the cause.

Thus, a grant writer needs to wear eight, or a dozen or even 20 hats! It’s not surprising that many organizations find it sensible to contract with seasoned professionals to write grants on their behalf. Whether your efforts to capture funding are homegrown or contracted, it is important that the skill sets described here are available if you want to create a track record of successful grant awards. The money is there, now go and get your share!

Should (some of) Your Employees Work From Home?

Marissa Meyer, soon after taking over the reins at Yahoo, surprised many by banning “working from home”.  Defending this change in policy, seen by many as almost counter-intuitive for an Internet-centric organization like Yahoo, Meyer stated that she wanted people to be more “collaborative and innovative” and that she felt this was more likely if people shared work space.  The internal Yahoo memo that announced the ban on home working though also suggested that the company felt that speed and quality of work were negatively affected. There are acknowledged challenges to managing remote workers as well as coordinating work among team members, although many of these obstacles are being surmounted by technology tools and “apps” that facilitate communication between people who aren’t in the same location – companies with geographically-distributed locations have learned to deal with this already.

Now, it’s fairly simple to see some of the benefits of allowing people to work from home. You save them the cost of a commute, you may save on office space (if I don’t have to give you a room or even a cubicle, my office space – and the overhead associated with it- is smaller), people are more likely to get work done when they are sick, people who want to work AND take care of  young children don’t have to make a choice between the two. These arguments often lose out to the fear of “inefficient workers”. But are “work from home” employees REALLY less efficient?

Anyone who has watched the TV show “The Office” will recognize the many distractions that are present in the modern-day office. Co-workers who just want to pass the time or socialize, coffee (or smoking) breaks that last far longer than they should, parties and celebrations, drama, the loud co-worker in the next cubicle distracting you. All of these issues disappear when you work at home. Focus and efficiency is often increased.

A 2012 study from the University of Texas concluded that home based workers put in 5 to 7 more hours of work per week than their co-workers who stayed exclusively in the office. These same individuals were more likely to work overtime when needed.

Steve Dubner, the co-creator of Freakanomics, recently cited a study from a Chinese call center that used a sample size of 500 and discovered that the employees who worked from home were actually 13 percent more productive than their cohorts who stayed in the office. And, as one researcher noted ” They also started and stopped on time, because they didn’t turn up late because commuting, or the plumber didn’t turn up or they were sick, etc.”

Forbes magazine, commenting on the same study, also noted that there was 50% less attrition among the workers who telecommuted. Further though, Forbes reported that once the study was concluded, about half of the workers who had been randomly selected to work from home chose to return to the office. They may have felt too isolated in their home working environment, among other reasons.

What appears to be likely is that, for employees who have jobs that could be performed at home, giving them a choice to stay in the office environment or do their work from home might maximize the potential for productivity.

Our take on it – any company that is willing to consider having some of their employees work from home should consider the following steps:

  1. Assess employee interest – frankly if your workers are not interested in working at home, you probably shouldn’t pursue it for the time being.
  2. Research job duties and descriptions to determine which jobs are most suitable for off-site working arrangements. In most organizations, not every position would be eligible.
  3. Similarly, recognize that some jobs are suitable for a “partial” solution, where an employee might work from home, say, three days a week and come into the office the other days.
  4. Consider a pilot project, selecting a representative sample of workers and allowing them to work from home, but measure outcomes for productivity gains or losses.
  5. Give your eligible employees a choice between working at home or staying in the office, and let those choices be reversible.

Please contact us if you would like more information about developing a work-from-home strategy for your company.

Virtual Environment Proves Effective Therapy for Burn Victims

Recovery from serious injury is always hard, but it would be difficult to imagine a more excruciatingly unpleasant recovery process than that which you might have to undergo after sustaining severe burns over a large part of your body. Follow up care includes difficult physical therapy to keep range of movement in badly burned limbs, and regular peeling away of damaged tissue to support healthy skin reconstruction. The sessions are usually daily, lengthy, and extremely painful.

Enter Snow World, a three dimensional virtual environment that has been used to provide both distraction and comfort to patients during this difficult therapy. While the treatment is taking place, the burn victim is playing in a virtual world, filled with ice and snow, hills to slide down and paths to walk, along with the occasional snowball fight with penguins and polar bears.

Snow World was constructed by Dr. Hunter Hoffman, who is director of the University of Washington’s VR Analgesia Research Center. Renowned musician Paul Simon contributed background music, which adds another soothing component to the overall experience. Hoffman contends, and has research to back it up, that it isn’t just the “game” aspect of his application that helps, but also the 3D surround element of the virtual environment – often referred to as “immersiveness” or “presence”. It is the feeling that you are actually within the virtual environment, even if you are represented by an avatar, or viewing the entire imaginary world from a first-person perspective.

Both patient self-report and the more scientific method of fMRI measurement have demonstrated that time spent in the virtual environment reduces the impression of pain and the actual pain signals that are sent to the brain. This in turn can have a profound impact on the amount of pain medication that the patient has to use. Large doses of pain medication have some critical “downsides”, including addiction potential, and a sedative effect which can make it difficult or impossible for the medicated person to have meaningful interactions with others.

Read more about Snow World and one of the very special patients being treated with this technology , and see the environment for yourself at ScienCentral.

© Copyright Innovaision - Theme by Pexeto