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Ask For What You Want And Need To Do A Good Job

Written by: James Chan

Article Overview: How Ralf Graves asked for what she wanted and got it.

Ask For What You Want And Need To Do A Good Job

Entrepreneurs are frequently worried about where the next piece of business is coming from. As a result, we sometimes accept circumstances~{!*~}such as very tight deadlines or difficult working conditions~{!*~}that jeopardize our chances of delivering a top-quality product.

Confidence resides in being sure of what we can do. That implies that we also know what we can~{!/~}t do. While it~{!/~}s exciting to stretch our capabilities and master new fields, the confident entrepreneur knows better than to promise the impossible. She tries instead to create circumstances that allow her to provide a high-quality result.

Ralf Graves learned this lesson almost by accident. At age 39, she was newly married, living in the UK, hanging around the house, and bored. For a dozen years, she had run her own interior design firm. She no longer liked the work, but she did like being in business for herself.

~{!0~}I don~{!/~}t do housewife,~{!1~} she says. ~{!0~}Being a wife isn~{!/~}t bad, but being a housewife is not good.~{!1~}
She didn~{!/~}t know what to do, so she went to a temp agency to see what was available. She presented them with a formidable set of credentials: degrees in communication and education, experience running projects, ability to read construction documents. The agency found her a job with one of the contractors that was building the Channel Tunnel between the UK and France.

Ralf became involved in training some of the staff who would be working in the tunnel on the use of safety equipment. She had observed that the training being offered was adequate for making workers generally familiar with the equipment. She feared, however, that if the workers were actually called on to use the emergency equipment in a high-stress situation in the pitch-dark tunnel, they probably wouldn~{!/~}t survive.
Ralf was allowed to revamp the safety training completely, a job that she found extremely satisfying. Her problem was a boss who drove her crazy and expected her to clean up after his mistakes. When her contract was up, she left the job.

A short time later, she got a call from the contractor, who wanted her back. She didn~{!/~}t want to return to work for the contractor or the temp firm, she told them. Fine, came the reply, she could be an independent subcontractor. She didn~{!/~}t want to have to work with the bad boss, she added. No problem, came the response, he has already been fired. Then she asked for a large pay increase and a shorter work week, and all were accepted.

~{!0~}I ran out of impossible demands,~{!1~} she said, so she took the work. It was her first independent project doing more or less what she had dreamed of doing when she was in college 20 years earlier. Moreover, it was a highly responsible position in one of the greatest construction projects ever.

~{!0~}I worked so hard and enjoyed my work so much, I actually feel as if I dug some of the tunnel myself,~{!1~} Ralf says. That project gave her credibility to clients and, just as important, it gave her the confidence to put her foot down to make sure that the client gives her the time and resources to do an effective job.
Ralf is now based in the US, where she frequently works with internationally oriented professional organizations. Not long ago, a funding organization asked her to submit a proposal to train three female lawyers from Croatia. The goal was to have them come to the US to learn the logistics of human rights advocacy: how to run a non-profit organization, raise funds, do public relations, and lobby politicians.
Ralf was enthusiastic about the project, but as months passed with no response to her proposal, she became concerned. She also wanted to maintain a good relationship with the funder, with whom she would very likely be dealing again.

But the program she had proposed would take a lot of time to prepare, and it was already becoming too late to accomplish all she needed to do. She decided that it would be professional suicide to try to deliver a program without enough time to do it properly. She wrote the funding organization a polite, businesslike letter saying that she no longer wanted to be a candidate for this project. There was no longer enough time, she wrote, to do an excellent job. She was certain that if the funder went to anyone else to do the impossible, the competitor would inevitably turn in a poor performance. That might induce the funder both to manage their projects more efficiently, and to hire Ralf to carry them out.

~{!0~}It~{!/~}s important to pull the plug sometimes,~{!1~} Ralf says. You need to be confident, however, that the time and money you demand for the project are fair and competitive. ~{!0~}You must make sure you~{!/~}re not bluffing,~{!1~} she adds.

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Article Tags: channel tunnel, construction documents, dark tunnel, education experience, emergency equipment, entrepreneur, housewife, interior design firm, living in the uk, product confidence, quality product, quality result, ralf, safety equipment, safety training, set of credentials, temp agency, tight deadlines, top quality, working conditions



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