So, you are the Fundraising Director or Head of a Department.  Tomorrow is your monthly one to one with your boss.  Time to do a quick search through your notebook for the actions you agreed to and either do them or at least get a few balls rolling.  And then there is the 10-minute preparation:

• Email your team to check on the latest numbers, how are we doing against target?
• Gently massage the pipeline probabilities (weightings) just enough to stop the “let’s discuss the hell out of this, but don’t expect any help or insight, it’s a rant only from me (I have a lot of people to blame), please for the love of God get the money in somehow” conversation. Ironically, when you started this job you moaned like hell about your predecessor’s “fantasy pipeline”, it all looked so much better than the reality you discovered.  Now you’ve walked in their shoes, you wish you were not so quick to judge….
• Print out your...