Back in college, I broke the Army ROTC obstacle course record on my first run. Caused a ruckus, that did, because I'd saved about 20 seconds by sliding under the four sections the ROTC students "crawled" through. They howled that I cheated, but the colonel grinned and told them I'd followed the rules, which simply stated that a person had to "go through the low wooden structures."
Something the colonel said that day stuck with me. As the argument grew more heated, he let the protest go on, then quieted it with a soft-spoken, "The obstacle course isn't about comparing yourself to others: it's about improving yourself every time out."
Competing for grants has much in common with obstacle courses, in the sense that achieving the goal requires successful completion of a strict procedure bound by rules that often depend on proven performance. For many individuals and entities in Puerto Rico, it seems like the obstacle course is a barrier rather than a path. But the purpose of the obstacles is not to stop you: it is to challenge you in specific ways. Here's why running the course is vital to grant seeking success:
The obstacles prove your competence. Grant monies are not gifts: they are funds targeting a need and the best-qualified to serve that need should get the money. So rather than seeing the rules and stipulations as "barriers," think of them as chances to prove how good you are.
The obstacles only make you stronger. Like any skill or process, you can only improve through applied thought and action. Each challenge you face successfully paves the way to the next one, so tackle the "obstacles" with the confidence that what you haven't mastered yet is already in the process of getting better.
The obstacles teach as a group as much as they teach singly. Your strengths and weaknesses will be part of every run. You'll learn to identify what you need to work on and if you truly want to improve, you will find someone to help you transform weaknesses into strengths. You will probably never be good at everything, but the successful run is about playing to your strengths and figuring out how to improve your weaknesses.
The more times you run the course, the more you will improve. It's not that "practice makes perfect": it's conscious practice that makes perfect. Using focused attention and effort is the key to making fast and significant improvement.
Every obstacle course can be run as a team. Yes, some courses can be run alone, but the true test is when the team has to ensure that everyone gets to the finish line. Don't tackle a grant seeking effort alone: put a team together and what might seem like an impossible course can often become a fun challenge faced successfully.
One last thought: There's no one playing defense on an obstacle course. No individual or team is playing against you when you're on the course. The only thing that matters is what you do out there, challenging yourself to get better with every run. The same thing happens with grant programs, where you compete straight up with the requirements, aiming for success now and in the future. The highest level of mastery is reached when no matter how difficult and challenging that grant program RFP seems, you have reached the point where you and your team can tackle it with supreme confidence, and aim to set a record every time you give it a good run.
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