Why Good Programs Get Cut From Budget

 It comes as no surprise to me that cuts made by the Trump administration are upsetting many people on the left and the right. Why is it that some programs get cut from a budget and others do not? Why would a wonderful program which goes to such a great cause get defunded? How heartless can people be?

There are many programs out there and when it comes time to make the cut, nobody wants their group of people to suffer. So, let us assume that every single program is a good program, or else why in the world would it have ever gotten a green light to proceed, correct? But if we can agree that we need cuts, let's not decide based on who has the most heartwarming cause or helps the most likable people.

I don't want to throw money in a jar for a program that promises to feed the hungry year after year with literally no established results. So, if we can agree on this, let's look at why a great program might get cut before another program that doesn't sound AS great!

When program cuts are made, the first thing to look at are the goals and objectives of the program. Have they been met? Why make cuts in some programs and not in others? Because programs funded by the people (taxpayers) must perform toward their original promised goals and objectives and prove to be effective based on measurable data. To see what that looks like, note the following example:


Goal

The goal is a universal and idealistic vision. It is a promise to whomever is funding the campaign/project/journey (taxpayers), that it will increase or decrease X by some factor.

Our program goal is to increase productivity in the classroom by 25%. We will do this by implementing a regimented nutrition program in public schools. 

This means that showing a correlation between a regimented nutrition program and an increase in productivity is prudent, right? Fair enough.


Objectives

Objectives are those completed tasks which will impact, in a positive way, the goal. The objectives, once measured, will show the increase or decrease in X, which was the goal.

1. Establish a baseline classroom productivity scale. Word.
2. Make public schools decrease the amount of fatty foods served in their lunch programs. Nobody will complain about this one.
3. Public schools will remove vending machines from cafeterias. Meh, okay.
4. Provide public schools with wheat grass supplemental snacks during recess. OMG, please! But okay, let's see what you got.
5. Conduct an annual classroom productivity survey to measure against the established baseline. Duh!

Measurement of Success

Believe it or not, success doesn't just happen. Accomplishing goals and objectives isn't as straight forward as winning the Superbowl. It's not as concrete as winning a spelling bee.

When there are objectives to meet, those objectives must be measured to show success. Measurable data can either prove or disprove that the objectives had an impact on the goal. So, it is important to collect this data to determine the success of a program.

Are we able to produce the results that will show our program has been a success?

Oh, I'm sorry. Were we supposed to be measuring data somewhere?

CUT!

Don't blame Trump. Blame the program administrators for not producing measurable results!

Please read the following language pulled from the actual Trump budget cuts proposal:

Economic Development Administration ($221 million): The Trump budget says it has "limited measurable impacts and duplicates other federal programs."

Minority Business Development Agency ($32 million): The White House says this minority business incubator program is "duplicative" of other programs in the Small Business Administration.

McGovern-Dole International Food for Education program ($202 million): Trump's budget says the program — a sort of Third World school lunch project — "lacks evidence that it is being effectively implemented to reduce food insecurity."

21st Century Community Learning Centers program ($1.2 billion): The formula grants to states support before- and after-school and summer programs. "The programs lacks strong evidence of meeting its objectives, such as improving student achievement," the budget says.

Community Development Block Grant program ($3 billion): CDBG has been a bread-and-butter funding source for local communities for 42 years, totaling more than $150 billion in grants over its history. "The program is not well-targeted to the poorest populations and has not demonstrated results," Trump's budget says.

What cut programs have you puzzled and/or fuming?


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A Movement Mainstream Media is Ignoring - Part 3

I checked the media online to try and get some crowd numbers and see if the momentum is still going for the Trump rallies after the WikiLeaks and mainstream media October surprises. Apparently, the people are starting to realize the one-sidedness of the media because the ground game seems to tell a different story.

The first three photos are of the live speech in Ocala, Florida. Ocala is a small town of roughly 57,000 people. At the live event, there were approximately 15,000 people. That means 26% of the Ocala residents showed up to watch the Donald in 85 degree weather!

Just watch the numbers jump on the bottom
right of the screen...

See that jump? Watch for the next one.

These are people watching at work!

26% of Ocala residents showed up at Trump rally.

However, let's look at Orlando, Florida, where the population is roughly 255,000 people. Hillary Clinton held a rally there in December of 2015. A bigger pool of people wouldn't you say? 

You can pack a room tight, but it's not going to
make the crowd bigger!

Look at them, packed in like sardines! 

This is another shot of the Ocala rally for Trump.
The other two thirds are to the right and not in the photo.

This is Mike Pence, and he's only the Vice Presidential
GOP nominee.

This is the Mike Pence crowd at Liberty University. 

The two photos below are other Hillary Clinton rallies with poor turn outs. I'm sorry, but it was really hard to find photos of Clinton's full audiences. 

Granted, she's not speaking yet, but look how
they have it roped off.

That's it, pack em all into a small room so that
we look crowded.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't like how the media tries to influence the public. Aren't they supposed to be unbiased and just report the numbers? Instead, we have to rely on these photographs to tell us what the ground game looks like. 

The polls that come out in the mainstream media show that Hillary Clinton is winning. With the exception of a poll that I took this afternoon. It was the first poll I took that I had to confirm my email address before I could see the results. I know, you're ready to see those results, right? They're at the bottom of this post. But first, some more Trump crowds.

This is what a winning ground game SHOULD look like. 

I know he's unrehearsed and a bit crude, but he's
for sure got a following.

This is a crowd of people who are fed up with the status quo.
Out with the politicians and let's rebuild America!

And now the latest poll results of those folks with confirmed email addresses (real people).

The Movement, Part I

The Movement, Part II

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A Movement Mainstream Media is Ignoring - Part 2

For those who enjoyed this first post on the #movement, I'm adding the crowds of both candidates from their respective rallies in Toledo, Ohio. Hillary Clinton chooses small buildings because she needs to fill to capacity to make a decent crowd. Likewise, Donald Trump must accommodate his larger crowds, so he opts for stadiums, auditoriums, airplane hangars, and runways. This is how the mainstream media keeps the candidates equal. But we know the truth, right? ;)

Trump's crowds are "yuge", believe me.

Don't let the size of the photo fool you. Small crowd.

Likewise, this small photo means nothing. Look at the crowd!!

Please share using the share buttons at the bottom of this post. Thank you all!

The Movement, part III.

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A Movement Mainstream Media is Ignoring

I'm inspired by the 2016 presidential election process between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. What's most fascinating to me is how the media responds to America's obvious desire for content they are not getting, and all for political reasons.

I logged into Youtube yesterday to check out the live streaming of both candidates at their respective September rallies. To be fair, I didn't want to rely on the polls and mainstream media to report any movement in popular America. I wanted to see for myself. And, in light of all that I know about trends, the media spin, and influence, I thought it might be fun to put together this picture story. It speaks for itself.

Like and share this blog post when you see the implication. :)

Polls can be skewed, but an audience and their reactions speak volumes.

A small online showing. Look at the likes vs. dislikes.

A much larger online audience with opposite reactions.

This is a much different picture than what the mainstream media is reporting. I don't understand how to explain the media's indifference to the obvious movement of the American people. Please share this and let's hope this goes viral!

If you enjoy this movement, look at part II. The Movement, part III.



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Staff Training Survey - Help Improve Your Organization

I need respondents for my anonymous survey. It is short, it is fun, and it will help my Survey Design grade if I can get 200 respondents or more.

Training Survey: Please help with my Masters in Communication course - take this short survey and SHARE the link to this post via the share buttons below. THANK YOU!!

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Making Progress with Strategic Communication

My first discussion post for Strategic Communication class asked how we viewed communications in the past and to reflect upon the materials provided by our instructor. Which perspective did we find most helpful to our understanding of strategic communication? You all know me. I can't resist using personal experience in any challenge. This is about progress, so why not?

When Hatch (2013) mentions Malinowski’s photograph of the anthropologist observed by the natives (p. 39) it struck me as funny and reminded me of another photograph I had found years ago. In my photo, one guy is digging a hole. Joe, according to his name tag, is surrounded by several folks with similar name tags, only each of the observers has a title rather than a name, with “manager” on the end of their titles or “lead” at the front: Operations Manager, Lead Technician, Total Quality Manager, Facilities Manager, Heavy Equipment Manager, Lead Gopher, etc. all surrounding, watching, and pointing at Joe, the hole digger. Ironic? How many managers does it take to dig a hole? Zero. Just hire Joe.

This guy has no name.

I think I’ve been kicked around over the years with having a boss clearly focused on the modern organization theory and driven by the contingency theory in organizing teams, to having a new boss who might be a fan of the postmodern perspective. I’ll explain:

My old boss owned a software company and when he put me to work on a project team, I always found myself faced with clients having insatiable appetites for sabotaging my work. Though failures on my part, each project was a successful outcome for my boss, because he had predicted my failure. He would swim in terms such as risks and constraints, assumptions, deliverables, and return on investments, all things measurable.



In my blind desire to be successful, I didn't realize my boss had not placed these same criteria for success on other analysts, so I quit playing his game and played like the others, refusing to provide him with time-wasting flowcharts, timelines, and graphs. Soon enough, I was taking on projects, reaching out to clients, and making successes (completing goals and objectives I had set for myself).

The old boss has since retired, taking with him his mask of the grand narrative. I can relate with the postmodern perspective much more because of my painful experiences dictated by the tyrant.

There is no right way to do things and by the time you’ve grown accustomed to your comfort zone, someone comes along using new terminology for the same things you’ve been working on for years, but now you’ve become seated in your ways and management isn't happy. They want change. The newly employed use fancy words explaining the same symbols of the past and management is in awe.

The emerging discourse, through hidden meetings where veteran employees are excluded and new employees become heroes, plays out until someone at the top realizes there is a communication problem which if left alone could likely embarrass the organization as a whole.

It came at a meeting and was announced that our CEO made this perfectly clear. The word “dashboard” is not to be used in any context when introducing our new portal to members. He insisted there is a public profile and a personal profile. Why not the new flashy “dashboard” terminology the new guy used the other day? Because we are not implementing a DASHBOARD, it’s a personal profile page!

How much does communication or lack thereof play a part in your successes and/or failures?



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Social Analytics and Your Story

Have you ever wondered what your impact is as a start up author or publisher, especially if you don't have big business behind you? Stephen King and Dean Koontz don't have to ponder such things because someone else is doing that grunt work. This leads to a very popular question among new authors and publishers in today's digital world, because "sales numbers" are not as important as influence. At least, not at first! We're trying to establish a base and haven't even considered sales. How do we gain traction from the beginning?

We are coming into an age where information is freely available and people out there are proving that this data is more important in gaining power and influence than are sales numbers. Information is freely provided because it is acquired at less cost than past methods. As with drug addiction, if you peddle the product for free and if it's good stuff, they'll come back in droves!

You save money and effort while using today's freely acceptable modes of pushing your data. Facebook is free, Twitter is free. You have all these avenues of marketing potential. But, what do you sacrifice by navigating in the dark with no direction? Your time! And, with little feedback.

What's missing? Analysis and decision making are lacking. All this data means nothing when the other guy is using theirs to make decisions which beat you out in the market place. They know what the data means and they know how to produce more content via reviews and conversational feedback, which in turn allows them to target in a way to maximize on the knowledge they gained by analyzing the mined data they have accumulated. Say what?

Simple terms. What do they have that you don't? Direction and a budget, sustained by years of branding and accumulating that base you're trying to establish.

Here are the questions you need to ask yourself when promoting your product.

Brand: What is your message?

Stephen King: I can produce horrific stories that will make you lose sleep at night.

Mission: What goals have you established which will live up to your brand?

Stephen King: I will write 3 novels that will creep you out!

Scope: How will you reach your goals without diluting your brand?

Stephen King: I will write from my heart and not listen to all these folks who give feedback saying that I should do something other than write 3 novels that will creep you out.

Feedback: What feedback will you utilize to reinforce dedication to your brand?

Stephen King: I will not wait for feedback in the form of fan mail and gratuitous visits to my estate. I will go out into bookstores and institutions who invite me to speak and I will listen to my consumers, the readers of my books. If they're not happy, it's time to change my brand or the execution of my message.

What is your message to your audience?


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