Strategy Horizon Consultants

11/01/2021

Proposal Managers and Writers have it rough - a hard job, and often no respect from others in the organization. Turns out there's a reason for that, and this article takes a humorous look at that.

Proposal Managers know the relationship between confidence and competence. With APMP certification you'll earn both.

09/28/2021

Here's an incredible commentary from my friend Orlene Grant - a successful executive who went on to start her own woman and minority-owned small business (The Grant Group) and then started a not-for-profit organization to honor her highly accomplished mother, Juanita C. Grant.

“What are/is the preeminent award(s) for businesses that excel in Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI), particularly for the over 50 crowd?”. A former colleague asked me this question and I had to stop and think about it.

09/14/2021

Thanks to the Greater Midwest & Rhythm and Harmony Chapters of APMP for their Virtual Summit, happening today and tomorrow, for this chance to present!

Unlock your future. Want to open the door to a better future? Diversity leads to innovation, creating unique client value. Learn more...

04/23/2021

Think diversity is not the most important thing your business needs to plan for?

Think again.

Companies can achieve greater success with an inclusive and diverse workforce. Diversity is key to business strategy.

12/31/2020

We're not there yet, but the future is in sight.

12/22/2020

Glad to see the future is in sight. Everyone, be safe, wear your mask, and see you next year.

10/08/2020

How is your business doing in the pandemic? Are you one of thousands that had to shut down, and are now waiting to re-open and/or re-open to larger capacity?

If so - encourage your customers to wear a mask, keep their distance from others, and wash their hands!

My clients pride themselves on compliance with state and federal regulations that govern their contracts - and rightly so. They are companies that excel in service.

We can, too. By excelling at compliance with public health recommendations, we can keep COVID-19 from overwhelming our hospitals, infecting healthcare personnel, and causing the death of people we love.

Wear a mask. Keep your distance. Wash your hands.

Oh, yeah. Vote like your life depends on it. Because it does.

07/20/2017

About half-way to a new website! New logo in place, brand guidelines, site map all done. Now comes the fun part - working on populating the site.

04/18/2017

Wow. I don't get here as often as I should! Too much going on with new RFPs/RFQs/RFIs happening every day.

This year is readability year. I'm getting several posts and blogs ready that investigate what it means that your proposal is readable, and how you might measure it:

1) Stats - Grade level, Flesch-Kincaid readability score
2) Style - No passive voice, avoid adverbs (they're incredibly annoying)
3) Format - composition of the page, including styles, fonts, graphics, white space
4) Time to read - How long should it take to read a page?

I attended an interesting webinar last year that discussed style from the perspective of sentence/paragraph construction. Sentences should have about 14 words, not much more, and about 4 sentences in a paragraph.

Once we get those metrics buckets and methods out there, we can then start to talk about how to make your proposal more readable.

A hint: text is not always your friend.

01/30/2017

Heading to the Medicaid Innovations Forum this week - see you there! Having spent most of my career with organizations that work for Medicaid agencies, I have seen first hand the benefits of ensuring that children and aged/disabled adults receive appropriate care - better health status, greater quality of life, and prevention of higher expenses for individuals treated in emergency rooms or worse - not treated at all.

Send a note to your Congressional representatives and let them know you don't want to pay the cost of denying healthcare to US.

04/06/2016

Here's something to applaud at the same time as we cringe from the reason for it - abysmally poor access to care for poor children in Florida, especially dental care, at long last resolved at least in theory.

"Florida health officials, in a settlement announced Tuesday, agreed to improve access to health care for poor children, ending a long-running class-action lawsuit that had accused the state of shortchanging doctors and leaving low-income families to trek long distances to visit specialists. The state reimbursed doctors so little for Medicaid services that many doctors refused to treat the patients, lawyers argued in a suit filed in 2005 by pediatric doctors on behalf of nine plaintiffs. Hundreds of thousands of children who were on Medicaid never received checkups, and for years, 80 percent of the children never saw a dentist, the worst rate in the nation." (Robles, 4/5)

A long-running class action lawsuit had accused the state of shortchanging doctors and leaving low-income families to trek long distances to visit specialists.