Monday, March 24, 2014
Leaders dose these things
http://www.robinsharma.com/blog/03/the-7-beautiful-things-excellent-leaders-do/
How to be yourself
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2014/02/06/how-to-be-yourself-when-no-one-wants-you-to/
Monday, March 17, 2014
Desighning a web site
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevecooper/2013/11/30/designing-a-website-for-2014/
Stop prooving to others
http://www.marcandangel.com/2013/11/24/7-reasons-to-stop-proving-yourself-to-everyone-else/
Get comfertable with being uncomfortable
http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/get-comfortable-with-being-uncomfortable.html
Older businews man struggle with innovation
http://www.inc.com/adam-vaccaro/older-entrepreneurs-struggle-with-innovation.html
India can win gold game
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/s-gurumurthy/india-can-win-the-gold-game/article5504785.ece
A good hand job to womwn of your dream
http://sexuality.about.com/od/tipstechniques/ht/give_a_handjob_.htm
Job search online
http://lifehacker.com/find-unadvertised-job-openings-with-a-clever-google-sea-1495871716
Mem and womwn on net
http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/02/19/whom_men_who_use_this_pronoun_in_online_dating_ads_get_more_contacts_from.html
How to read a bussiness book in an hour
http://www.inc.com/tom-searcy/how-to-read-any-business-book-in-an-hour.html
Do these things in morning
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/doing-these-simple-things-after-waking-makes-your-day-better-but-you-dont-realize.html
Do not run away from problems
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/30-things-you-should-stop-putting-yourself-through.html
Productive people refuse to do
http://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/9-things-really-productive-people-refuse-to-do.html
Learn language
http://lifehacker.com/5903288/i-learned-to-speak-four-languages-in-a-few-years-heres-how
Lessions from einstein
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/life-lessons-from-albert-einstein.html
No negativity
http://www.marcandangel.com/2014/02/23/15-powerful-beliefs-that-will-free-you-from-negativity/#more-721
Friends you need
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/8-types-friends-you-need-have-your-life.html
Interview questions
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140224001604-203184238-the-undercover-interviewer-do-you-have-any-questions-for-me?_mSplash=1
Nature of happy people
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/10-adorable-characteristics-happy-people-have.html
Sharpen memory
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/11-unexpected-ways-sharpen-your-focus-and-boost-your-daily-productivity.html
Towards the fear
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2013/03/14/go-toward-your-fear-do-less-and-five-more-surprising-leadership-lessons-for-women/
Sleepibg a man on first date
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/sleeping-guy-first-date-make-less-likely-call-back-75998/
Succeed as business man
http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/04/the-easiest-way-to-succeed-as-an-entrepreneur/
Female movie charactor
http://thoughtcatalog.com/lauren-modery/2014/03/7-female-movie-characters-that-anyone-would-love-to-have-a-drink-with/
Marketing eight phrases
http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/marketing-strategies-8-phrases-to-avoid.html
Amit ki Geeta
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s268/sh/d721a67f-f2e7-4f5a-b721-249a426e9dfc/5dcf9711b9bd338c16f9b74b1291ac69
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Successful people are insanely productive
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140311155326-40057345-6-secrets-that-make-successful-people-insanely-productive?_mSplash=1
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Challenging is challenge
http://jayavivakindo.blogspot.in/2012/08/how-challenging-is-challenge.html?m=1
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way
The three dumbest guys I can think of: Charles Lindbergh, Steve Jobs, Winston Churchill. Why? Because any smart person who understood how impossibly arduous were the tasks they had set themselves would have pulled the plug before he even began.
Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be—and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway.How do we achieve this state of mind?
By staying stupid. By not allowing ourselves to think.
A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.
Don’t think. Act.
We can always revise and revisit once we’ve acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act.
Be Stubborn
Once we commit to action, the worst thing we can do is to stop.What will keep us from stopping? Plain old stubbornness. I like the idea of stubbornness because it’s less lofty than “tenacity” or “perseverance.” We don’t have to be heroes to be stubborn. We can just be pains in the butt. When we’re stubborn, there’s no quit in us. We’re mean. We’re mulish. We’re ornery.
We’re in till the finish.
We will sink our junkyard-dog teeth into Resistance’s ass and not let go, no matter how hard he kicks.
Blind Faith
Is there a spiritual element to creativity? Hell, yes. Our mightiest ally (our indispensable ally) is belief in something we cannot see, hear, touch, taste, or feel.
Resistance wants to rattle that faith. Resistance wants to destroy it. There’s an exercise that Patricia Ryan Madson describes in her wonderful book, Improv Wisdom. (Ms. Madson taught improvisational theater at Stanford to standing-room only classes for twenty years.)
Here’s the exercise: Imagine a box with a lid. Hold the box in your hand. Now open it. What’s inside?
It might be a frog, a silk scarf, a gold coin of Persia. But here’s the trick: no matter how many times you open the box, there is always something in it.
Ask me my religion. That’s it. I believe with unshakeable faith that there will always be something in the box.
Passion
Picasso painted with passion, Mozart composed with it. A child plays with it all day long. You may think that you’ve lost your passion, or that you can’t identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true. Fear saps passion. When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.
This is an excerpt from Do The Work, the new title by Steven Pressfield, author of the classic title The War of Art. It is published by the Domino Project, Seth Godin’s new publishing venture with
Best Advice: Take The Money
- View Original
- February 25th, 2014
This post is part of a series in which LinkedIn Influencers share the best advice they've ever received. Read all the posts here.
The legendary Bill Campbell was my boss at Intuit. He was also confessor to Steve Jobs and on Apple's board, consigliore at Google, and mentor to countless tech leaders. Bill got his start as a college football coach and is still known throughout Silicon Valley as the Coach. He's a man of few words — often of the colorful, locker-room variety — but intense loyalty to his teams.
He was on the board of one of Marc Andreessen's companies when the board members were considering taking money from a new investor. The debate raged on: Was the valuation high enough? Would the deal dilute the founders' ownership stake and control too much? Finally, someone asked Bill's opinion, and he looked up and said (roughly translated), "Take the friggin' money."
Take the money. This is the best advice I've received in my twenty-plus years in Silicon Valley. If you're starting a tech firm, you'll always need money — and you'll always need more of it than you think you will. Money is not always available. So when it is, take it.
I've worked on small startups, where nobody takes a salary and you spend the bulk of your limited time trying to raise a couple hundred thousand from angels. This is time that ought to be spent building products. So when you stumble upon investors who believe in your idea, don't let them rest until they’ve signed the term sheet.
I've also seen high-stakes financings where the numbers are outrageous. We launched PayPal in 1999 and signed up one million customers in the first six months. Our growth was eye popping, but so were our losses. We were losing $10 million ... a month! We had already raised tens of millions of dollars but needed a lot more.
We were mostly a bunch of kids just out of school — I was the old man — working in a loft office over a bakery in Palo Alto. We had no revenue and were hemorrhaging cash. But it was 2000, and my colleagues, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, were fearless. We decided to go raise $125 million.
Our growth was so hot that investors lined up around the world. We were oversubscribed and turning money away. One group from Korea, having been told we could not accept its investment, simply wired $5 million into our bank account. Scared the hell out of me, and we wired it back right away.
We closed on the $125 million in March 2000 — the very month the Internet bubble burst. It seemed as if PayPal was the last company to get money. Investors ran for the hills, and nothing much got financed for the next 18 months.
PayPal eventually turned quite profitable, but the investment necessary to get to scale was huge. March 2000 may have been the only time in history that you could have funded such a wildly ambitious attempt to build a new payment system.
I've also been on the boards of companies needing money for a restart. In the late 1990s, Jake Winebaum started Business.com and Purnendu Ojha started NexTag, only to have their businesses collapse when the Internet bubble burst. But each founder held on, slashed head count, and fought for a lifeline of funding.
What did I learn from Bill, Elon, Peter, Jake, and Purnendu?
Take the money.
A similar piece appeared in Inc.
Photo: iStockphoto
Dads' Age Linked with Kids' Mental Health Problems
- View Original
- February 26th, 2014
Men planning to have kids may want to keep an eye on their biological clock: A growing body of research suggests that children born to older fathers are at higher risk for psychiatric and academic problems.
In a new study, researchers found that the increase in risk of problems may be even larger than previous estimates.
Researchers looked at health data on everyone born in Sweden between 1973 and 2001 (more than 2.6 million children), and compared the risk of various mental-health problems in children born to older fathers to that of children born to younger fathers. The researchers also included comparisons between siblings and cousins.
Compared with children born to fathers who were 20 to 24 years old, the children of fathers ages 45 and older were 3.5 times more likely to develop autism, 13 times more likely to develop attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 24 times more likely to develop bipolar disorder, the study found. [5 Controversial Mental Health Treatments]
The children of older fathers were also at higher risk for psychosis, suicide attempts, substance abuse, failing grades in school and low educational attainment, according to the study, published today (Feb. 26) in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
"I think this body of research should inform couples, doctors and the society at large about the pros and cons of delaying childbearing," said study researcher Brian D'Onofrio, an associate professor of psychology at Indiana University.
"We are not saying that every child born to an older father is going to have these problems," D'Onofrio told Live Science. "But this study adds to a growing body of research that shows that advancing age is linked to some rare but serious problems. Moreover, our study suggests that this increased risk is, in fact, larger than previous estimates."
Aging & sperm cells
Historically, researchers and mental-health professionals have focused onmothers' ages in relation to childbearing. "Only recently has research started focusing on fathers' age," D'Onofrio said.
Unlike women, who are born with all of their eggs, men continuously produce sperm, and the older a man gets, the greater the chances there will be genetic mutations in his sperm. These mutations are passed on to children, without affecting the man himself. That's why a man's age at childbearing may be related to his child's risk for disorders that are linked to new mutations, such as those linked with autism and ADHD, the researchers said.
It is estimated that a 36-year-old man will pass on twice as many new mutations to his child as a 20-year-old, and a 50-year-old man will pass on four times as many, according to a study published last year in the journal Nature.
A number of earlier studies have found links between fathers' advanced age and psychiatric or developmental disorders in their children. However, it is unclear whether personality traits, hereditary features or some environmental factors underlie the link, because most studies compare children born to young fathers to unrelated children born to older fathers.
"That's comparing apples and oranges," D'Onofrio told Live Science. "Men who have children when they are younger can be very different from men who have children when they are older."
In the new study, researchers compared the differences between siblings born to older fathers with the differences between siblings born to younger fathers. This helped account for genetic and environmental factors, which are shared by siblings, the researchers said.
All in the family
The researchers also compared firstborn children with their firstborn cousins who were born to fathers of different ages, to account for possible effects of birth order.
"What we found was that, every way we analyzed the data, we reached the same conclusion," D'Onofrio said.
The researchers also looked at mothers' ages, and found that children with older mothers also had an increased risk of autism, ADHD and bipolar disorder.
However, older maternal age was also linked with a decreased risk for substance abuse, failing grades and educational attainment in children.
"Advanced mother's and father's ages may be protective for children in the sense that it is associated with better caregiving, more financial security, better monitoring — all of these things that we know from other psychological studies," D'Onofrio said.
Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way
The three dumbest guys I can think of: Charles Lindbergh, Steve Jobs, Winston Churchill. Why? Because any smart person who understood how impossibly arduous were the tasks they had set themselves would have pulled the plug before he even began.
Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be—and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway.How do we achieve this state of mind?
By staying stupid. By not allowing ourselves to think.
A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.
Don’t think. Act.
We can always revise and revisit once we’ve acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act.
Be Stubborn
Once we commit to action, the worst thing we can do is to stop.What will keep us from stopping? Plain old stubbornness. I like the idea of stubbornness because it’s less lofty than “tenacity” or “perseverance.” We don’t have to be heroes to be stubborn. We can just be pains in the butt. When we’re stubborn, there’s no quit in us. We’re mean. We’re mulish. We’re ornery.
We’re in till the finish.
We will sink our junkyard-dog teeth into Resistance’s ass and not let go, no matter how hard he kicks.
Blind Faith
Is there a spiritual element to creativity? Hell, yes. Our mightiest ally (our indispensable ally) is belief in something we cannot see, hear, touch, taste, or feel.
Resistance wants to rattle that faith. Resistance wants to destroy it. There’s an exercise that Patricia Ryan Madson describes in her wonderful book, Improv Wisdom. (Ms. Madson taught improvisational theater at Stanford to standing-room only classes for twenty years.)
Here’s the exercise: Imagine a box with a lid. Hold the box in your hand. Now open it. What’s inside?
It might be a frog, a silk scarf, a gold coin of Persia. But here’s the trick: no matter how many times you open the box, there is always something in it.
Ask me my religion. That’s it. I believe with unshakeable faith that there will always be something in the box.
Passion
Picasso painted with passion, Mozart composed with it. A child plays with it all day long. You may think that you’ve lost your passion, or that you can’t identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true. Fear saps passion. When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.
This is an excerpt from Do The Work, the new title by Steven Pressfield, author of the classic title The War of Art. It is published by the Domino Project, Seth Godin’s new publishing venture with Amazon
8 Conversational Habits That Kill Credibility BY Geoffrey James
- View Original
- February 19th, 2014
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Dressing for success may create a good impression, but people judge your intelligence and credibility based upon what comes out of your mouth. Here are eight verbal habits that immediately mark you as somebody who's either foolish or shifty:
1. Jargon
Jargon (aka "biz-blab") consists of hijacking normal words and using them in odd ways to make them sound "businessy." Example: "We're reaching out to our customer advocates to leverage a dialogue on...." While others who speak fluent biz-blab might not take notice or care, everyone else cringes and rolls their eyes.
Fix: Use words as they're defined in the dictionary. Example: "We're contacting our customers to discuss...." That way, you'll sound more like a professional and less like a cartoon businessperson.
2. Clichés
These are those metaphors that have been used so frequently that all the juice has been leeched from them. Examples: "out-of-the-box thinking" or "hitting one out of the ballpark." Clichés aren't just unoriginal but also reveal a lack of respect for the listener. If you really cared, you wouldn't trot out these creaky phrases.
Fix: Avoid metaphors completely or use original ones. If that's too hard, tweak the wording of clichés to make them less cliché-ish. Example: my use of "leeched" rather than "squeezed" in the paragraph above. Worst case, adding "proverbial" can refresh a cliché with a pinch of irony. Example: "out of the proverbial ballpark."
3. Prolixity
Using big, impressive sounding words rather than smaller, common ones can leave listeners with the impression that you're pompous and pretentious. Examples: "assess strategic options and tactical approaches" (i.e. "plan") or "implement communications infrastructure" (i.e. "add wireless"). Fancy-schmancy wording adds bulk and extracts clarity.
Fix: The core problem here is the need to feel as if your business and your activities are more important and impressive than they really are. The fix, therefore, is a big dose of humility. Business is neither rocket science nor brain surgery--it is, in fact, a place where plain talk is both valued and appreciated.
4. Hiccups
This is when, uh...you insert a word or sound into a sentence when, like...you're pausing to think, um...exactly what you're going to say. I once heard a guy say "um" over 100 times in a five minute presentation. By the end, the audience was practically tearing their collective hair out in annoyance.
Fix: This one is easy. Simply eliminate the hiccup word and pause instead. When you simply pause in silence, rather than trying to fill the thinking space with the hiccup, you end up sounding wise and like you're choosing your words carefully. You may need to record yourself a few times to break the habit, though.
5. Upticks
An uptick turns a statement into a question. The uptick can be a raise of pitch at the end of the sentence or, worse, can be signaled by an actual phrase, like "[statement], you know?" or "[statement], eh?" Upticks communicate that you're not confident of your ability to communicate clearly, hence the constant checking.
Fix: If you're unsure whether the other person is following your statements, ask a specific question such as "Are you following me?" or "Does that make sense so far?" In other words, either ask questions or make statements. Don't try to fudge them together, OK?
6. Weasel Words
These are attempts to fool employees by disguising ugly facts as bloodless abstractions. Examples: using "development opportunity" when you mean "drudgery," or saying "rightsizing" when you mean "firing people." Weasel words mark you as a coward who's afraid to face the social stigma of making an unpopular decision.
Fix: Show some courage! You'll get more respect and credibility in the long run for telling unpleasant truths than for pleasant-sounding lies. Because--here's the thing--everyone knows anyway and you're not fooling anybody.
7. Fake Apologies
This is what people do when they feel socially obligated to apologize but they aren't really sorry. Common example: "I'm sorry if anybody was offended." Such "apologies" add the insult of blaming the other person for being offended to the injury of the original offense.
Fix: Real apologies are like: "I apologize for doing Y. I wasn't thinking clearly and I won't do Y again." They come from the heart. If you can't apologize from the heart, don't bother, because you're not really apologizing.
8. Spray and Pray
This consists of blurting out a stream of facts or observations before finding out which ones (if any) might actually be of interest to the listener. Probably 95 percent of all presentations fall into this category but when it happens in conversation it makes you look like a blathering fool.
Fix: Always think "conversation" rather than "sales pitch." Ask questions, respond to comments, figure out what's needed, and only then trot out facts and observations that are immediately relevant.
Pre-order my new book and get an exclusive bonus chapter (for you and a friend) and a signed bookplate.
Last updated: Feb 19, 2014
How to Use Introversion for Career and Personal Success
- View Original
- February 13th, 2013
Introversion isn't a flaw. In fact, introverts are powerful players in work and home life. Here, psychologist Alice Boyes shares how to use your natural personality traits towards success.
Develop a Positive Overall View of Your Temperament and Personality
Until I read Susan Cain's book Quiet I never consciously realized I was ashamed of being an introvert. It was one of life's "aha" moments. I personally don't need to believe introversion is a virtue but no longer seeing it as a flaw has been extremely helpful. Learn to acknowledge things you find difficult without piling on the self-criticism.
Be Prepared to Pitch
Some of my biggest professional successes have come from pitching something I have to offer.
I feel most comfortable pitching when I'm offering something win-win, and when the other party will benefit from accepting the offer more than I will. The more experiences I've had of successfully pitching, the more comfortable I've become with it. Once you accumulate some experiences of pitching and achieving good results from it, it'll get easier.
I feel most comfortable pitching when I'm offering something win-win, and when the other party will benefit from accepting the offer more than I will. The more experiences I've had of successfully pitching, the more comfortable I've become with it. Once you accumulate some experiences of pitching and achieving good results from it, it'll get easier.
Understand Your Variety of Introversion
Introverts come in different stripes. The most fundamental aspect of introversion is being recharged by alone time (or sometimes one-on-one time with someone you're very close to). Another fundamental aspect is often that your natural tendency is to want to digest information before responding back. For example, an extrovert might read a blog article and want to leave a comment straight away, whereas an introvert likely wants to go away and ponder. Since every introvert is different, you can cherry pick advice you find helpful and ignore anything you don't relate to.
Distinguish Between Introversion and Lack of Confidence
Confident people are confident in both:
1. their abilities
and
2. that they will generally be liked by others
If you're missing one of these types of confidence, you might benefit from working on it.
Understand What Particularly Overstimulates You
Examples: being interrupted and asked to make decisions while you're concentrating, noisy environments, turning on and off from being in social mode, group socializing or group meetings, and replying to people on social media. Minimize and find workarounds for whatever particularly overstimulates you.
If you have a sense of being very easily overstimulated, you might benefit from reading Elaine Aron's book The Highly Sensitive Person. Learnphysiological self-regulation strategies that will help you recover quickly after you've been overestimulated.
Adopt a "Growth Mindset"
A "growth mindset" is a belief you can get better at stuff rather than abilities being fixed. For example, the belief "I can get better at networking." There is lots of research showing that people with a growth mindset experience more success.
Recognize that you often don't need to be outstanding at everything. Improving can still be very beneficial. Perfection is typically not required.
Find Ways of Interacting with the World That Don't Feel Like "Acting Extroverted"
Find ways to collaborate with others that don't overstimulate you. Take time to digest and reflect, and understand your tendency to mull things over for a long time before taking action.Develop self-awareness of when it's good to go with your natural tendency vs. when you need to override it. For example, when it's advantageous to push the button on something you've been thinking about for awhile, rather than do more thinking.
Learn to autocorrect for any tendencies you have to overfocus on potential negative outcomes of taking action and underfocus on potential positive outcomes. Get to know your Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS). Notice if you feel nervous about professional success not just because it brings performance pressure, but also because it tends to bring increased social demands and requests for your time. Self-awareness is key to understanding these types of things without them negatively impacting you.
7 Success Tips for Introverts | Psychology Today
Dr. Alice Boyes' PhD research was published in the world's most prestigious social psychology journal—Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. She is originally from New Zealand but is now a digital nomad. She writes about social, clinical, positive, and relationships psychology topics for various outlets including Psychology Today, Women's Health, and on her own blog. Follow her on Twitter@DrAliceBoyes and at Google+ here.
Image remixed from ollyy (Shutterstock).
Want to see your work on Lifehacker? Email Tessa.
How to Write a Winning Proposal BY Geoffrey James
- View Original
- February 26th, 2014
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Last month I was fortunate enough to spend some time talking with Tom Sant, world's top expert on proposal writing. This post contains his update on proposal-writing trends, along with other guidance he's given me in the past.
1. Understand the concept
A proposal is a sales tool not an information packet. The purpose of the proposal is to make a persuasive case that leads to a sale. To win the business, your proposal must overcome the following hurdles:
- Do I know who this is? If this is the first time the customer has heard of you, your proposal will be thrown out.
- Is this proposal compliant? If the customer provided a template for the proposal, proposals that don't follow that template will be thrown out.
- Does this proposal make sense? If the executive summary does not define the problem correctly or propose a reasonable solution, the proposal will be thrown out.
- Does the solution provide value? Of the proposals that met the minimum as defined above, the one that wins will be the one that provides the most value.
The remaining steps provide a method for creating a proposal that overcomes all four hurdles.
2. Research the customer.
The proposal will not win if you fail to uncover the customer's true decision criteria and decision-makers. These may be quite different from the criteria and decision-makers defined in a Request For Proposal (RFP).
You must therefore research the customer--preferably be interviewing people in the various groups involved in the decision--to understand what's really going on.
Please note that different groups will likely have different "takes" on what's needed and will use different terms to describe the situation. If your proposal will be evaluated by both engineers and accountants, for instance, you'll need to understand both, and be able to communicate with both.
3. Lay the appropriate groundwork.
Your proposal will be thrown out unless you've done marketing and sales activities that establish recognition in the mind of the decision-maker. There are two ways to do this:
Create a public presence. This consists of advertising, social networking, public relations, sponsoring conferences, sending speakers to conferences, publishing newsletters, and so forth.
Create a personal presence. This consists of establishing recognition through sales calls, customer meetings, emails, notes, texts, and phone calls.
4. Brainstorm your approach.
Now that you've done your research and laid the groundwork, brainstormthe client's situation and your own approach to helping them. Use these questions to get the discussion started:
- What is the customer's problem or issue?
- Why is this problem important to them?
- What parts of the business are affected by this problem?
- What corporate goals are not being achieved due to this problem?
- How will the customer measure the success of the solution?
- Of these success measures, which is most important to them?
- What, precisely, will we propose?
- How will we do this work?
- What proof can we offer that we are qualified and competent?
- What quantitative promise (value proposition) are we willing to make?
- How can we demonstrate that the value we propose to offer is credible?
5. Write the executive summary.
Contrary to popular belief, the executive summary is NOT a summary of the contents of the proposal. It is a summary of the basic issues, the proposed solution, and the promised results. Effective executive summaries are structured like this:
- Problem, need, or goal.
- Expected outcome.
- Solution overview.
- Call to action.
Read more: How to Write an Executive Summary
6. Write the body of the proposal.
The body contains detailed explanations of how you will do the work, the people involved, your prior successful experience you have in this area, previous customers you've help on similar projects, and evidence of your core competency and financial stability.
In many cases, the customer will have already defined the structure of the proposal or provided a template. If so, follow that structure exactly. According to Sant, decisions are usually made based on the executive summary, but failing to follow a template automatically disqualifies you, regardless.
7. Mercilessly edit the whole thing.
Appearance is as important as content. There should be no obvious grammatical errors and an absolute minimum of typographical errors. If boilerplate (standardized material from other proposals) is included, it must be carefully customized to match the customer's own situation.
Be extremely careful to edit any passages that might contain the names of other companies for which the boilerplate was used in the past. Many proposals have been thrown out simply because the proposal-writer left the name of one of the customer's competitors in a paragraph lifted from an old proposal.
If you're serious about a proposal, I highly recommend that, in addition to doing your own in-house editing, you hire an independent copyeditor to go over the entire proposal. I use Pure-Text, but I'm sure there are other services that are almost as good.
Pre-order my new book and get an exclusive bonus chapter (for you and a friend) and a signed bookplate.
Last updated: Feb 26, 2014
Boeing's Bird of Prey: A Prototype Jet Worthy of the Klingon Empire
- View Original
- February 27th, 2014
From the U-2 Dragon Lady and A-12 Oxcart, to the SR-71 Blackbird and D-12 Ramjet Drone, there's been no shortage of exotic aircraft (and UFO sightings) in the skies over Nevada's Area 51. But among the most extreme examples of bleeding-edge avionic design tested was the otherworldly Boeing Bird of Prey.
One of the most intriguing products of the Phantom Works that really was a denizen of Area 51 on George Muellner's watch was the Bird of Prey. Visually, this aircraft possessed the strange, but sleek design characteristics that are appreciated by those in the world of extraterrestrial buffs. It was even named after an alien spaceship. According to James Wallace, writing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer of October 18, 2002, it is named for a class of Klingon starships first seen in the 1984 motion picture Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
The Bird of Prey project began at the Phantom Works in 1992, and the aircraft made its first flight eight months earlier than the X-36 on September 11, 1996. Unlike the publicly acknowledged NASA X-36, the Bird of Prey was a classified program, funded by the contractor but apparently managed by the US Air Force. Like Tacit Blue, it was successfully obscured from public view until its flight test program concluded in April 1999 after forty successful flights.
The Bird of Prey program, like many of the projects that have come out of the Phantom Works, utilized rapid prototyping techniques to cut both costs and development time. According to the company, the program "pioneered breakthrough low-observable technologies and revolutionized aircraft design, development and production." The Bird of Prey was also one of the first aircraft programs to "initiate the use of large, single-piece composite structures; low-cost, disposable tooling; and 3D virtual reality design and assembly processes to ensure the aircraft was affordable to build as well as high-performing."
The aircraft was not, however, one to push the edge of the performance envelope. The Bird of Prey had a reported cruising speed of 300 mph and a modest service ceiling of 20,000 feet. The aircraft was 47 feet long and had a wingspan of about 23 feet. It weighed about 7,400 pounds and was powered by an off-the-shelf Pratt & Whitney JT15D-5C turbofan engine.
The man who is considered to have been the "father of the Bird of Prey" was Alan Wiechman, the director of signature design and applications for the Phantom Works whose career in LO design had begun at the Lockheed Skunk Works where he worked on Have Blue and the F-117 program, as well as the Sea Shadow, Lockheed's stealth warship.
In April 2002, six months before the Bird of Prey was officially declassified, Wiechman received the 2001 Technical Achievement Award from the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) for his work in LO aircraft design. The
NDIA called him "a giant whose work to date has given the United States a legacy of improved survivability and influenced an entire generation of combat vehicles," adding that "because of Wiechman's work, the United States gained a 15-year lead over potential adversaries that it has not relinquished, and the effectiveness of his designs and products has been thoroughly proven in combat operations."
On October 18, 2002, the Bird of Prey was made public. According to Boeing, the reason was that "the technologies and capabilities developed [in the program] have become industry standards, and it is no longer necessary to conceal the aircraft's existence."
Jim Albaugh, president of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, proudly bragged that with the Bird of Prey, the Phantom Works "changed the rules on how to design and build an aircraft."
George Muellner, a man with two decades of experience in black world airplanes and now an executive with Integrated Defense Systems, added that the Bird of Prey program "is one of many that we are using to define the future of aerospace."
The fact that Boeing itself funded the project to the tune of $67 million hints that "the future of aerospace" involves secrets more intriguing than the Bird of Prey that have been in the sky over Area 51 since before 2002.
They may be revealed tomorrow, or they may remain mysteries indefinitely.
Area 51 - Black Jets: A History of the Aircraft Developed at Groom Lake, America's Secret Aviation Base by Bill Yenne is available from Amazon.
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