Laura’s Winning Ideas

I regularly rail about the folly of violating copyright.

Look at the Other Side of the Coin

However, I have an alternative viewpoint when my own copyright is violated. When folks “borrow” my materials, I am thrilled so long as they attribute the work to me and/or my website.

I was not born with this enlightened perspective.

Back in 1996, I was writing my training manual, The Magic of Winning Proposals. Friends were subcontracted to help me write and edit the manual. I threw all the pages up on the web, so everyone would have one source for the latest version of each page. I knew the search engine spiders would eventually find these pages, and made a note to myself to remove them as soon as possible. (This was before a small operator could easily firewall portions of their website, and FTP was too slow for our purposes.)

At the same time, I was new in my consulting practice. I was tracking my time carefully so I could figure out my split of of hours spent on billable, marketing, and administrative tasks. Because I was tracking my hours, I knew exactly how much time I spent responding to freeloaders. Freeloaders are the folks who called and snowed me as to their actual ability to pay for my advice. They would talk about hiring me, pick my brains, ask for a full blown proposal and then disappear. I knew I had to get better at screening freeloaders so I could spend my time in a fashion that would pay the mortgage.

After a few weeks work on my training manual, the search engines found my pages. I was surprised to see that these draft pages rose in the search engines over my carefully written home page and website pages. I was determined to wrap things up in the next 3 weeks and take those pages down.

However, I noticed something that didn’t make sense. The hours I spent on freeloaders dropped off to almost nothing. And, I’d started getting thank you notes from people who couldn’t afford to hire a consultant or trainer, but who needed some tidbit of information about my areas of expertise, Winning Proposals and Building Virtual Teams.

I’m a sociologist by training, and figured out what was happening. Some folks needing help couldn’t afford to hire me. They would find my website, and knew I had knowledge they needed but could not afford. When they were unsuccessful finding answers to their questions, they would begin to justify their “need” against my “fees.” Then, they would approach me to get the help they needed without paying me, and justified a dishonest approach because I was “withholding” from them.

Without realizing it, I’d created a negative vortex that was costing me hours of wasted effort, PLUS eliminating any positive impression that might result in work for me in the future. With this mindset, these people would never come back to hire me when their firm got bigger. With this mindset, they couldn’t regard me well. With this mindset, they wouldn’t remember me and call when they’d moved on to a larger firm where my services would be helpful.

This stopped when I “gave away” my training manual.

And I’ve been given contracts by people who found my manual, used it, and later were in a position to expand their expertise, and hired me to help them.

Funny thing is, I’ve never lost a contract because my manual is available on-line for free. Larger firms who can afford my services realize there are lots of books on my topic. They aren’t buying my manual, they are buying my expertise and ability to motivate their staff.

My competitors were sure I was nuts.They can’t believe I have my training manual on-line, though some of them are catching on to the profitability of “giving it away.”

My clients regularly get the pitch to cut costs by giving away data. One of my clients, a fortune 50 company, realized they’d wasted thousands on sales calls because they had a database they’d locked behind their firewall that non-customers needed to query. Once they unlocked the database and “leaked” the URL to the query page, they dropped a nice percent of sales calls (costing $5,000 each) and got thank you notes instead.

What valuable materials are you keeping locked away that are costing you money by witholding them from the wild?

When I was in college, a radical campus group petitioned for funding from Student Government. I was Student Body President, and we were happy to supply these radicals with the tools they sought, portable video cameras (back then, portable was a 40 pound contraption with trailing cables to a big box recorder on a dolly, that trailed behind the cameraperson. They called themselves National Town Meeting.

Their idea was that technology was reaching a point at which democracy could be a reality. That is, that voters, if provided the information in a video feed, could decide for themselves what government should or should not do, rather than relying on representatives to make the decisions for them. They traipsed around putting all sorts of meetings on the campus television channel. It was radical stuff to roll in and broadcast a Board of Trustees meeting. This level of publicity was uncomfortable at the time. National Town Meeting dared to tape the Illinois State Legislature in session and were threatened with arrest.

Years later, CSpan was authorized and it became normal to tune in to local, state and federal governing sessions in action. Boring, but normal.

Today, we call this Transparency and consider it a virtue to be willing to lay bare the mechanics of governance.

President Elect Obama used the internet to communicate with his campaign volunteers and staff to an overwhelming extent.

During the transition they continued the practice. One example, was a “Seat at the Table.” This policy provides notes of all meetings with outsiders, and posts documents from those meetings on-line. The website is set up as a blog, with the opportunity to comment and make suggestions.

Websites for transparency of the spending on the stimulus package are already up at www.recovery.gov

I love hearing that government agencies are gearing up to get more on-line than ever before. GSA is leading the way with management of their site, www.USA.gov encouraging new uses for the site and assisting agencies.

Some state governments have already learned the economics of transparency. Here in Wisconsin, an amazing amount of state business can be conducted on-line, saving plenty of labor and time for both government and citizens. The expense of transitioning might be born by the stimulous bill, with savings that continue long after.

If your clients are government agencies, how can you help? Are there ideas you have about digitizing technical data for public access? What would streamline services if only you could . . .

Are you on-line to the extent suitable?

Rent a Reviewer: might be a good idea to get some fresh eyes on your proposals!

It is inexpensive to hire me to review a proposal for you. I can travel to review with your review panel, or work remotely on comments for your proposal team.

I also am available to come manage a review meeting, helping coax actionable, helpful, comments from your review team. In one instance, I was asked to moderate a review team of 20 executives from six firms, with a Senior Vice President with a reputation for gutting proposals at the last minute. The proposal team was worried about what reasonably could be done if the review became a drubbing of this large, important proposal.

In that case, we brought sucinct comments to the team, which could be implemented in the time remaining, and resulted in short-listing the team.

Call me to schedule a review of your proposal!

Question: Hi Laura,
I read your posts about Fun at Work and loved your ideas. I am an Admin Assistant for a satellite office of a large company. Our satellite office has roughly 14 people, but there are usually around 7-8 people in the office at a time since many employees can work from home or are traveling, and I am the only means of Administrative support physically in the office. I am finding it difficult to keep spirits up with the sagging economy and such a small office — many of our employees tend to complain no matter what I suggest. I have planned a few potluck lunches which we all enjoy and will probably institute a chili or salsa making contest as well.
With limited space, budget, and employee numbers, I would greatly appreciate some ideas to put smiles on some faces.

Tough crowds. I love ‘em.

Here are a few ideas. The first two are holiday events (tuck them away for next year) and the third is good anytime, with a few random suggestions to get your own creative juices flowing.

A) Mystery Gift Exchange

Create descriptions of each person that does not identify them. You are the perfect person to know some tidbits about each person that are not generally known by the rest of their colleagues.

For example:
I once played pool with a professional pool shark, as his ?bait man.? I would start the play, and be good enough to be a challenge, but not good enough to be overwhelming. Once we had an agreement to bet on the game, I’d set up the table for the professional, and then step aside while he cleared the table.

When I was fifteen, I bought my first car. It was a drag racer, and my buddies and I were going to soup it up for racing. My Dad went along to sign the papers and drive the car home since I was too young to drive on the streets. When he drove it, he realized the car was dangerous because it was already very fast off the start. He made me agree never to drive this thing on the streets because it was so dangerous. I guess it didn’t occur to him that drag racing might be dangerous as well.

My sister lives in Nicaragua as a missionary.

My mother worked on an assembly line for a munitions plant during WWII.

Pass out the descriptions to folks as their Xmas gift exchange. No fair sneaking around trying to figure out who you have. You have to buy a gift based only on the description you have.

You’ll be surprised at the gifts folks come up with. Much more interesting than the usual desk calendars you see at office gift exchanges. Participation is pretty good because no one knows who has the boss’ description.

B) Xmas Pixies

You draw names for your secret pixie, and no one tells anyone whose name they got. Between the drawing, and your holiday party, the pixies get to work.

Secret pixies can be good (leaving a few pieces of chocolate on their desk while they are away at lunch) or nasty (emptying their trash can on their chair while they are away at lunch). Folks who witness a pixie can’t let on that they know who the secret pixie is. Most pixies vacillate between being good and nasty. (Leave a bowl of fresh popped popcorn one afternoon, pour a cup of salt on their desk the next afternoon with a note ?Forgot the salt.?

C)   Kidnap your bosses stapler, favorite coffee mug, favorite pen.

The purloined item will be traveling a good deal, so get a sturdy container for shipping it back and forth. Take several pictures of yourself with the item, holding, using, scrubbing or having the item in the background. Print the pictures to send along with the instructions. Include these instructions in the shipping container with your pictures:

Tag! You are it! BOSS’SNAME will be looking for me soon, but I am anxious to get out of that stuffy office. Thanks for letting me visit.
Take a picture for my vacation album, add it to my box, and send me on my way to someone else from the office who I haven’t yet visited. OOPS! Don’t forget to cross your name and address off the list, or I’ll end up back again to visit soon!

By the time the item has made the rounds, it will likely be a topic around the group, by email and phone. Your boss may ask about the item, and that is always helpful.

This is a nice stunt for the month or two before Boss’s birthday. Helps to knit folks together. If you have a WIKI for your office, the pictures could be posted there, in an album you’ve tucked away on the site.

Good morale boosters are designed around your own office antics, and avoid ridicule. For example, we had a PM who mentioned that they hated yellow M&Ms. When a big project was won by that PM, we awarded them a jar of M&Ms with the yellow ones picked out.

When a fellow retired from full-time employment but continued on as a part-time consultant, we gave him a “gold office key” as a retirement gift, rather than a gold watch. (Took an office key out and had it gold plated)

Once you get the hang of noticing things peculiar to your teamates, it gets easier to knit folks together with morale boosting events. Practice makes perfect.

Have fun!
Laura Ricci

P.S. Congratulations to you for leading organizational change. I hope your boss appreciates your efforts or comes to recognize them before someone else recruits you to their firm.