I get great questions from webinars and emails that give me a chance to illustrate important points about grant writing (I’ve got a webinar happening this Saturday, sign up here).  I just got an email question that brought up an important issue:

Recently, I read a proposal written by a tenured faculty member who recently got her R01 funded. She has a record of getting grants, so, I expected to have my socks blown off by her proposal…. The proposal wasn’t exciting: it didn’t even explain why it was important (although there were TONS of technical details) … So my question is this: how much do other factors (like who writes your letters, what school you came from, whose lab you came from) play into the funding decision? 

My response:

Grants are very much like “marketing”.  You’re trying to “sell” your project to your reviewer and funder.  Given that context, we can analyze this from a marketing perspective.

There are two basic types of marketing: Brand Marketing and Direct Marketing.

Brand Marketing is what you see from big companies, like car companies, soda companies, shoe companies, etc.  Brand Marketing is there to establish a reputation, an image of quality, and a long term relationship.  A company might do this so that when you think “shoes” you think automatically think of a certain company starting with N and ending with E (for example).  That helps them have “perceived value” in what they do (which has to be backed up by real value, i.e. good products, or they’ll loose their brand image over time, despite the marketing).

Direct Marketing is what smaller business must rely upon to get a message out.  They don’t have the budget (or time) to rely on big, expensive, long-term brand building campaigns. A successful small business will go direct-to-consumer with a message, and make the most compelling case possible for the consumer to “buy” what they have to offer.  Over the long haul, they’ll build a “brand” up as well, but it takes a lot of time.

It’s the same (I’m not kidding!) in the grant world.  After someone has been around for a while, and done a good job of establishing their “brand” in a particular area, then they can do a sloppy job of the direct marketing and sometimes get away with it.  As long as their name is recognizable to reviewers, and as long as those reviewers like what they’ve seen, it is a HUGE accelerant.

However, for someone who isn’t an established “brand name”, the accelerant is missing (though there can be a bit of that from the institution you’re at and the mentors you’ve worked with).

In that case, you have only one thing to rely upon: your “direct marketing.” And that’s what your proposal is… a direct marketing piece.  You’re trying to sell a specific audience on a specific idea or project, at a specific point in time…

Since you don’t have a “brand” to back you up, you have to do a far better job of your direct marketing, i.e. writing a killer proposal and having a great project!

I think the senior colleague is relying upon her “brand” to get funded.  The danger is that could dry up at any time.  I’ve had plenty of senior people who come to me for help after 20+ years of regular grant funding, and now suddenly can’t get grants.  The brand just isn’t enough (by itself) anymore.  The proposal has to be fantastic too.

The ultimate combination is to do a fantastic job of the direct marketing, AND building your brand over time.  I’m doing just one more webinar on the how to write a great proposal (and how deal with rejection) – the direct marketing part- so you’ll need to sign up fast.  Then no more webinars on grant stuff for the rest of the Spring.  I’ve got some other fish to fry.

After a recent web seminar I hosted to help people write grants that are more likely to get funded, I got a note from a writer overseas that raised an interesting point about “fundability” and the progress of science (we’ll call him A to preserve anonymity).

He wrote:

THe major point I am raising though refers to the type of science. IN the western society model, incorporating science as one among other activities, the spiral has been closing down and down on the equation “potential applicative outcome=easy funding” Now I am not arguing against the need for new technology and new achievements, but basic science has been the foundation of every possible applicative science, while now the almost desperate need for immediate money leads the investors to neglect, or even worse, to design selection procedures that will specifically leave basic science out of most of the funding schemes.

If you have been working for a lifetime now (I am 53) in basic science and, very sadly, you are still strongly convinced of its value, it is very difficult to pretend to be a different type of scientist to adapt to the various funding strategies/topics.

BAsic science has never had “the brilliant idea that makes a project cool” at least not “a priori” though afterwards it gave us things such as DNA structure and fucntion or cyclin-cdk mechanism for cell cycel progression control, among others. Because it is felt as almost useless nowadays (as if we knew everything almost), it makes it really difficult to build a gap, a contrast, nothing.

Have you elaborated on this aspect? How would one get to the same strategy if the basical “why do we need it” is only very hardly fulfilled, especially considering the balance (money spent vs money income due to the results)?

On a recent webinar about State of Grants in 2012, I mentioned that the personal statement part of the NIH biosketch is a great opportunity to additionally “market” your project. In my experience, most people waste this opportunity by listing a very bland and generic statement.

The most common (ineffective) approach I’ve seen seems to be to just recapitulate the publications and achievements in a narrative format. But that’s not adding any new information, it’s just repeating what’s already in the biosketch.

Instead, you want to tell a story of how your own background intersects with the project at hand. Your narrative should cover key points such as:

- What is the big problem you’re trying to solve (long-term) and why? An example might be that you are interested in developing new diagnostics for cancer because someone you know was affected by it.

- How does your training put you into a great position to do the research at hand, specifically?

- What other strengths do you bring to the project that wouldn’t otherwise be apparent from your lists of positions and qualifications?

As with all good stories, it should begin with the “villain” (problem) that got you into this research, the central challenge of the research, how you came to be in a position to do the research, and the hoped-for outcome.

Some people have asked whether they should list reasons for extended absences or productivity lapses (e.g. maternity leave) or other challenges they’ve faced.

I generally suggest “no” on that. Regardless of whether the reason for the absence is legitimate (I DO think we should be understanding of those who want to raise a family), when it comes to competing for scarce resources, I believe some reviewers will see this as a “weakness” and almost none will see it as a strength. So, on balance the effect is neutral at best, and negative at worst.

The one exception is when the absence or lapse contributes in a clearly positive way to your present ability to do the research being proposed. For example, let’s say you did a sabbatical where you learned a whole new skill set that is relevant to the proposal at hand, but during that time you didn’t get any publications (because you were learning or experiments didn’t work out). I’d still recommend mentioning the absence, but only from the perspective of the strengths that it helps you bring to the table.

While the personal statement may not make a huge difference in your grant’s fundability, it could make the some difference if you’re close to the funding line and need just that extra bit to push you over into the black (that means funded) range.

If you want more advice for spending less time and stress on your grants, and getting better results in 2012, check out the upcoming webinar I’ll be doing for you.

The NIH has thrown a lot of us into disarray over the new, shorter R01 grant format.

I’m hearing reports of scores that are wildly variable and all over the map. I’ve also had quite a few questions from people about how to deal with the new format.

The theory behind the new format is that by shortening it re-labelling the sections, writers would be forced to focus less on minutiae of their experiments, and more on the “big picture” role of their proposed project.

Here are a few observations from the field:
1. Reviewers haven’t yet figured out how to consistently review for the new format. Scores seem to be distributed with much less consistency than in the old format.

2. Some reviewers are still looking for the level of detail that went into the old, longer-format R01′s, even though that is impossible to do in 1/2 the space.

3. Some reviewers are still focused on the “feasibility” aspect (that was the predominant paradigm with the old format), while some have bought into the notion that we should have more “innovation” (according to the NIH) and so are looking more at that. This may be the core source of inconsistency, hanging in the balance between these two issues.

4. Your credibility as an applicant is really important. Reviewers have less to go on in terms of “preliminary results.” However, younger investigators should not despair – I know plenty of senior investigators who are having challenges with funding now. And I know some young investigators who’ve received funding through the new format.

It seems that study sections haven’t yet settled on community standards for what makes a fundable vs non fundable project, but those are converging.

The bottom line is that you’ve got to keep doing what has always made a great proposal work:
1) Great project
2) Great team
3) Great job of “marketing” your project & team by being really clear about why the project is relevant, who it benefits, and keeping the reader’s attention.

Cheers!

Morgan

ps – There’s an upcoming webinar that will help you both with the new format and with the challenges in getting any grant funded in this environment. You can register here.

It would be hard not to notice that things are changing in the world of grants. Funding rates are at an all-time low (< 1 in 6 according to NIH data). People are demoralized. I talk to them everyday, and it can be painful at times.

I have some good ideas about why things are changing and what to do about it. Instead of trying to write this up in a (very long) blog post, I’ve decided to put together one of my (in)famous free webinars. The working title is “The state of Grants in 2012, and how to stay afloat” (or perhaps “Morgan’s $23M grant-getting scheme” – that sounds a bit more fun and evil, doesn’t it?)

To register, use this link.

The last one I did in June 2001, got rave reviews. But I’m going to one-up that one to give you by far my best free training to date. I strongly considered requiring people to sign an NDA (nondisclosure agreement) to keep my secrets secret, but in the end felt that that might scare some people off. So I’m going to try doing this one without requiring it to see how it goes.

If you want to see a person who looks like me (ok, that is me, I admit it!) describing the webinar in a short video, here it is:

If you decide that it’s time to tackle the evil, life-sucking grant demon in 2012, then here’s where you register for the webinar (web-based seminar).

A few years ago I gave a talk in the biochem department at UNC. Afterwards I went out for lunch with my mentor, and he berated me. (Did I mention that he can be an intimidating guy? But I listen to him, since he’s the one who helped me go from no grants to lots of grants…)

He berated me for several things, including using a difficult-to-read font, giving a software demo that took a bunch of time to get running, and, most of all, for not conveying “the point” of the talk.

I thought I’d conveyed the point clearly. I thought I’d shown how cool and nifty my new project was. But I was wrong. I hadn’t.

I was really bummed out because I used to let things like that affect me all too much.

I was soon coming up for tenure! I knew I’d have to give one or more “tenure talks” at which I had to really wow folks – including this mentor – before they’d vote me in (or out).

I figured that this was a sure sign I was going to fail. Here comes the unemployment line!

Only six months later, I gave a talk for my department, after which the same menotor came to me and said “that was a great talk.”

What changed?

After I got over my long bout with destructive self-pity, I had a few important realizations.

One of the most important of those was that I hadn’t been treating my audience with respect. I was doing the talk simply to build up my own ego and my own reputation, without paying attention to the “needs” or “wants” of the audience.

I see this all the time. I estimate that about 60-70% of all talks I see are coming from the same place. Maybe that’s why they’re often so tedious. The person is talking from a perspective of “hey, you should listen to me because I’m great and my research is great” – without any real engagement.

And here’s the one key thing I did to change it around. I discovered “love.”

Not romantic love… but love for my audience.

Around that time when I was preparing my tenure talk, I went to a friend’s wedding. There was a tremendous feeling of love at the wedding. It made me think about my talk, and I realized that I hadn’t been putting my talks together from a standpoint of caring about how my audience was feeling. And that was a big mistake.

Any human relationship that’s lacking a sense of caring or love is going to be dissatisfactory.

I applied that principle as I put my talk together. For each slide, each sentence, and each figure in the slides, I asked myself: does this help my audience to see or hear this? Or is it just another thing that I’m putting in here for selfish reasons (such as wanting to impress with how hard I’ve worked)?

In other words, I was constantly thinking to myself “I’m going to love my audience and treat them right!”

I haven’t done all of my talks that way. I’ve forgotten and then remembered this principle multiple times. But every time I do a talk or presentation based on this notion, it goes better – much better. That’s because I’m going outside of myself, thinking about the other people involved. I’m considering the time that they’re spending listening to me. I’m not just considering my own time or fame or fortune, I’m thinking about: how can I give them a great experience?

It works. It works really well. If you want to ramp up your results in front of an audience, this is the most potent way I’ve ever discovered. I hope you’ll use it!

ps – to summarize, whenever you’re preparing a talk, constantly ask yourself “am I treating my audience with love and respect?” It will ramp up your talks considerably.

pss – Do you want more tips and advice that will help you in your career? Grab your copy of the free report: “5 steps to a great science career”.

To take the stress out of writing, develop a good writing habit: part 2

Developing a real writing habit is essential for success.  Otherwise, you either:

1) Leave everything until the last minute, and then in a desperate, panicked effort throw together something subpar; or

2) You just don’t do the writing at all, instead postponing it and telling yourself you’ll get to it “as soon as I have time” (which is just about never).

Either way, you’re going to get suboptimal results!

Many of us know that we should “get started early this time” and spend time each day moving towards completion.

But knowing and doing are two completely different things.  Good intentions are quickly swept aside or trampled by the flood of emails, the people knocking on the door, and by our own procrastination (isn’t it more important to be reading the NY Times website right now, than working on this *&#( grant proposal??).

In order to really make headway, it is vital to make this the most important habit you do each and every work day.

Finding the time to write

Writing is not easy, even for people who enjoy it. It requires focus, clarity and energy. I think this is why it is so often put aside and procrastinated into oblivion.  Those 20 little emails and to-do’s on the list require far less focus and clarity than does the writing.  They are easier to get going on, and hence they are often the first to get done.  But they’re almost never the most important thing to get done, whereas, the writing is!

Setting aside an hour or two every day to focus only on writing helps you ignore those other things and to make some headway towards your goal.  But, it’s so hard to do.  Myself, and many of the people I help, regularly have the issue of putting off the writing, and struggling with the writing.  (Doesn’t it “make sense” that you’d put off something that you struggle with?  It is a negative self-reinforcing cycle.  Got to break it.)

Here are some ideas for how to start getting into a better writing cycle/habit:

1. Do your focussed writing in the morning, when you’re fresh, rather than waiting until the afternoon when hundreds of things have already taken your energy for the day.

2. DO NOT check email and rush into the fires that are waiting for you before you start your writing session. This is a hard habit to break, but rest assured, the fires will still be there in an hour when you resurface. However, you will be one hour ahead on your important work. If you can resist the temptation to check email first thing in the morning, and train others that you don’t do so, you will be light years ahead of everyone else.

3. When you start a writing session, find a comfortable, relaxed setting. Perhaps it is a different location than the rest of your work – a coffee shop or library. If you use your office, close your door and turn off your distractions. This means close your email program and silence your phone. You might even put a note on the closed door saying “Do not disturb until x time” (or perhaps “Dragon sleeping inside – anyone knocking will be eaten”).  Remember, all those phone calls, emails, and people needing assistance will be there later. There are very few things that can’t wait one hour.

4.  Strive for consistency and habit. Even if your first few sessions are not very productive, keep at it. With practice, your ability to focus for longer periods will increase. And making consistent progress each day will give positive feedback.

5. Stop when your designated writing time is up, even if you have more to write! You may be tempted to spend the whole day writing.  But making a little progress each day is better than in fits and starts. Keeping an “open loop” in your mind makes it easier to get started the next day.  And, if you put off all those little fires, then the next day they’ll become more urgent, and eventually you’ll feel like you have to deal with them.

6. Turn off the inner critic. You know the one. It’s stronger in some of us than others. Let the words flow onto the page and limit editing. Go back an edit a section after you’ve written the whole thing. Once you get into the flow, you might find it’s better than you thought.

And lastly, remember that a habit (any habit) takes about 3-4 weeks to settle in. The first few days are the easiest. The next 10 days are really hard. It gets easier after that. Keep this in mind after one week when things might seem to be falling apart. If you keep at it, it will get easier.

So, stick with it, even if it is very difficult.  Sooner than you know, you’ll bust through the difficulty!

And, go here if you want more grant writing stuff.

This stressed out dude will not bring clarity or focus to writing his grant.  Don’t be like him, it does not lead to success.

To take the stress out of writing, develop a good writing habit

Through my work with academics in grant writing, one of the most common concerns I hear is how to find the time to actually sit down and write. The days of an academic scientist (and most people, nowadays) are chock-full of an endless series of fires and tasks that need attention: hundreds of emails, questions from employees, administrative requests and paperwork, reviewing of papers, helping students, committee meetings, recruiting, and on and on.

It’s enough to make some folks want to sit in the Bahamas sipping margaritas for the rest of their natural lives.  Ok, I must admit, sipping margaritas in the Bahamas sounds appealing even without the excuse of being ridiculously overworked.  But anyway…

All of this comes on top of the bigger tasks of writing papers, writing and applying for grants, and actually doing some science! How to find the time for it all?

In many cases, the answer is this: never. I know plenty of people who work 80 hours a week, every weekend, and never take a break, and are still buried in all there is to do. (Yep, I know what that’s like – it used to be me.  But now I’m a reformed workaholic. Yay!)

Despite the brutal hours, the important work, the big work, gets put off and oft seems to never get done. When it does get done, it’s only at the very last moment, in a flurry of mad, frenetic activity to meet a pressing deadline.

I’m here to tell you (again, from experience), that isn’t a habit that is going to increase your likelihood of success (in grants or much of anything else).

Grants are kinda important (and, no, I don’t write grants using terminology like “kinda,” in case you’re worried about it).  Without grants, there is no funding, no employees, no research, and eventually no job. It must get done.

Yet we procrastinate until the last possible moment, until the deadline looms so large that we can’t ignore it anymore, much like a dump truck bearing down on us in the middle of a crosswalk.  Hurry! Get out of the way!  Write. Don’t sleep. Write. Don’t sleep.  Don’t talk to anyone.  Write. Stuff food down throat quickly. Write more!

Yep, and sometimes I’ve seen an entire grant completed in the week before the deadline (usually not good or successful grants, mind you….)

Besides being an ineffective way to write a grant, this is also incredibly stressful for everyone involved, and often results in poor writing and an unsuccessful proposal.

By contrast, the most successful proposals are usually the ones where the investigators have clarity, focus, and make regular and consistent progress towards the end goal. This goes for papers too.

The pre-requisite to focus

One of the major challenges you may find yourself facing, when presented with a complex task like writing, is simply being present, i.e. being HERE and NOW. No mentally hellish trips to the study section/review meeting. No rehashing of the argument with the collaborator yesterday.  None of that.  Just you and your word processor. Yep, it’s hard!

Presence is a pre-requisite to being an effective writer. You cannot be focussed on a complex task if you are thinking about 100 other things like how am I going to work those budget cuts into my project, Julie’s paper has been on my desk waiting for review for a week, I need to call back my colleague to discuss a potential collaboration, and by the way do we have any food in the house for dinner?

Those thoughts rob the mind of clarity, energy and focus because they put the mind somewhere else in the future or the past. I’ll say it again because it’s so gosh darn important: the mind must be present to the task at hand to be effective at writing.

Being present and focused, however, is not something we generally have been taught much about. Instead, we are usually taught the opposite – how to multi-task, how to plan, and how to analyze past events.

That means if you’re trying to implement this idea of being “focused”, you’re going to have challenges.  Your “focus muscle” is probably going to be pretty weak, much like a flabby bicep that needs a workout at the gym.

You might be surprised at how hard it is to maintain focus on one thing for an extended period of time. Or maybe you’re not surprised. I used to only be able to maintain focus for 5 minutes at a time, unless I had one of those dump-truck sized deadlines looming, that forced me into focus.

But just like the muscles in your arms or legs, regular use and practice will make them stronger. If you make a regular time to focus on writing, your muscle will get stronger until you can be far more efficient with your time (hey, how could I run a $1M/year lab this year, along with blogging, book writing, managing a business, and teaching grant writing workshops – and still have time for sleep and occasional vacations?)

I recently listened to an interview with best-selling fiction author Stuart Woods. He has written over 30 books, and regularly publishes 2 books a year. As a full-time author, you might think he spends all day writing, but you’d be wrong. Instead, he spends 2 hours a day. Every day, at the same time of the day, he sits down to do his work. He spends one hour reviewing and editing his work from the day before, and one hour writing a new chapter. The rest of the day he spends time thinking about plot lines and characters while he is doing other things, but he only spends 2 hours of concentrated work a day. He has developed a practice of being present and focused on his work every day. Because he does this every day, his focus muscle has gotten very strong and now he is very efficient during this time. Efficient enough to complete 2 novels a year, most of which go on to be best sellers!

I offer this example to illustrate 2 things.

1. You don’t have to spend a lot of time each day in order to make good progress. And
2. You do have to spend SOME time each day in order to make good progress.

Set aside a clear and designated “writing time” each day and spend this time working on your grants or papers and you’ll make more progress than you would have thought possible. Best of all, when that grant deadline comes along, you won’t have to pull all-nighters to get it done and you’ll have a clear and well thought-out proposal.

In the next post, I’ll talk about how to find the time and develop your habit of a Writing Hour each day.

p.s. get your free “backdoor to funding” report, and sign up for my upcoming webinar that shows you the three-step model underlying all successful grants, right here.

Many of you have probably heard of speed dating, a relatively new (well, 10 years old now) phenomenon where a large group of singles go to meet potential mates. You get 3-5 minutes with each potential person to decide if you like them and want to give them your phone number for a future date. Put yourself at one of these events for a minute. Since you have such a short amount of time, what would you look for to decide if you want to give your phone number to this person?

First, you’d probably go with the “vibe”. Does the person seem interesting, funny, energetic or happy? Or are they sketchy and weird? This first impression is likely to last, and if you don’t get over this hurdle you’re probably sunk, right? In fact, a 2006 poll at a speed dating event in Edinburgh, Scotland showed that 45% of women and 22% of men at a speed-dating event decided in the first 30 seconds if they would give the person a thumbs up or down. Wow! Talk about pressure…

However, this is actually not that different from your proposal. When someone is reading your proposal, the first thing they’re looking for is the answer to “why should I sit up and take notice of this proposal rather than the other 20 in my stack”. It’s the same as the speed dating event – you’ve got 20 women or men to choose from. Is this person in front of you going to make the first cut?

In the case of your proposal, the reviewer is looking for something interesting, innovative, exciting, and most importantly, relevant. If they don’t find something in the first 30 seconds that piques their interest, they’re probably not going to give you their proverbial phone number to pursue potential future funding.

Probably the most interesting thing someone can hear about is a solution to a problem they care about. Let’s break this statement down. First of all, there needs to be problem they care about. This is not just any problem. It’s a problem your audience is actively searching a solution for. You might be a few pounds overweight and know it’s a problem, but if it’s not that big of a problem compared to the rest of your problems, you’re probably not going to get all that excited about a solution. However, if your doctor tells you that you’re going to get diabetes in the next year if you don’t get your weight under control, well then it becomes a big problem you care about and will be actively looking for a solution for.

When writing a proposal you need to know

1. who is your audience that will review your grant, and

2. what problems are they actively looking for solutions for

If you don’t know these things, it’s going to be hard to engage their interest.

Once you have that figured out, you need to propose a solution to the problem they care about. Now, be careful here. Many people propose a solution by delving into the details of HOW they are going to do something, or describing in detail their underlying model and why it is better than the existing model, or building themselves up to establish why they’re the best person to provide the solution. These things are important, but remember, you only have a short time to create that spark. First, you must answer the question of “why should I read more”.

Take your proposal and distill it down to the most basic “what is this about” sentence you can. In 2 sentences or less, describe what the problem is you are proposing to solve and provide one new, interesting or innovative angle on that problem. Sounds simple, but this is something we, as scientists, often struggle with. We’re very used to providing detail, qualifying answers, questioning approaches and results. We’re generally not good at distilling and making bold predictions. Remember, the point of this speed date is not to get the bird in the bag. The point is to sufficiently engage the interest of the reader to put them in a positive frame of mind and keep reading your proposal. You can provide all those details later, but you must set the Vibe right at the beginning.

I wanted to find out: what is the most pressing challenge you’re currently facing in your science career, and how can I help?

I used good ol’ Survey Monkey, and got > 200 responses so far. Yay! The results were interesting and a bit surprising to me. They also caused me to go off on a bit of a rant about how to learn effective grant writing. Ok, not really a rant, but kind of a Morgan “being opinionated” kinda thing. Here’s the video:

Hope you find it informative, and if you do, please hit the Facebook Like button.

Cheers!

ps – if you want that link for the grant strategy session that I gave out in the video, it is here: http://grantfoundry.com/grantstrategy.html