Seeing it From the Other Side of the Desk

In any human enterprise, it is always be difficult to see things from the other person’s point of view, whatever that might be. There is a natural tendency to approach any interaction with a clear view of what you want and why the other person should be willing to give it to you; sometimes it will seem like this is the only rational course of action possible under the circumstances. Unfortunately, most of the time the other person will not have access to your internal logic, and will pursue their own choice based on their own rationale. This is one place where a lot of projects will fail before they begin.

When I teach grant writing or business plan writing, one of the things I always tell my students to do is try to see the issue from the other side of the desk – from the other person’s point of view. You already know that the non-profit venture you need funding to launch will change the lives of thousands of deserving people and make the community (and eventually the entire world) a better place; you may even know for a fact that your venture will help more people at lower cost than any similar project ever attempted. What the Program Officer you are applying to knows is that several thousand proposals hit his or her desk every year, and that every one of them purports to change the world for the better – and that 90% or more of them are nothing more than well-meaning nonsense.

The situation is exactly the same for a Loan Officer at a bank, or at a venture capital firm. Anyone who has money to invest will be deluged with requests for loans in order to start ventures described at “The Next Big Thing” by hoards of people, most of whom literally have no idea of what they are doing. As a business consultant working with start-up companies (and entrepreneurs who wanted to start up a company) I was constantly amazed by how many of them expected to be able to walk into a bank with no business plan, no multi-year projections, no budget, no idea at all of what they would spend the money on, and have some friendly banker extend them a low-interest loan because they were such swell folks.

My first question in both cases was usually to ask the client if they would extend a loan (or a grant) of their own money to someone on the basis of the information they had given me – and when they admitted they wouldn’t, to then ask why in Heaven’s name they expected anyone else to? The truth is, the person on the other side of that desk is probably not that different from you. Program officers at major grant-making organizations are generally just as committed to making the world a better place as you are, and most bankers and venture capitalists are every bit as fond of profit as the wildest wildcat entrepreneur. An argument that would not convince you will not convince them – but a proposal you might fund out of your own pocket just might work.

Of course, this same principle applies to many other aspects of management, including leading and motivating the workforce…

But that’s my next topic…