effectiveness – Sasha Dichter's Blog

Have a purpose.

State a purpose.

Execute on that purpose.

This means you know what success looks like for you, and you actually say it out loud to the person you’re meeting with. For example:

“I want to make sure we cover these three topics.”

“I wanted to connect because I really want to understand ________ from your perspective.”

“I’m hoping that by the end of this meeting we will finalize the partnership we’ve been discussing for the past six weeks, and that your company will commit to $1M of funding towards that partnership.”

I’m surprised how rare it is to hear people actually articulate their goals for a meeting. Especially fundraisers. Doing so doesn’t make you pushy, it makes you clear and effective.

Michelangelo would see a block of marble and say that all he had to do was cut away what was not needed to release the statue within.

Reaching your goals is just as much about what you DON’T do as what you do. You can convince yourself that you need to….check your personal email every 30 minutes; log onto the newspaper to scan headlines; watch an hour of TV every night to unwind.

The thing is, you don’t. And if you cut out all the little things that you’d convinced yourself you need to do, you’ll discover a lot more time to do the things you have to or want to do.

Here’s a clue: if you have a gap in the day, what do you do? Do you reflexively open up a browser, scan your email? Instead of that, why not tackle the list of things YOU (not someone else who emailed you) have decided is a priority?

Until I started blogging, I never would have imagined I had time to blog. Now I do. Something had to give to make that possible.

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