Read Seth today.
Waiting for trouble
means that you’re going to spend your days dealing with trouble.
That is all. (That is me, channeling the PA announcements in MASH, the movie.)
OK, not quite all. I knew a manager like this once: a person who let a project get to crisis mode before intervening. Hi, ho, to the rescue!
I’ve known processes like this, often.
We can do better. Truly.
The “YES” was me. The question was someone else.
Do we have to tell the truth?
The all-caps of that YES in print captures my tone. Back in the day, it didn’t seem like a question that should have to be asked in a business meeting on the strategy for a proposal. It still doesn’t. But some folks think all marketing communications is lying.
Just in case I hadn’t been clear, I went on.
Two reasons.
First, it’s not good to lie.
Second, they won’t be fooled.
And, indeed, customers–whether the corporate and government behemoths we were selling to, or the individuals that many companies are selling to–will not be fooled. That is, we might get away with it once, but we cannot lie our way to enduring success.
So think about the messages you might want to hear and know you could rely on.
Do we make mistakes?
We do.
And when it happens.
we work hard to make it right.
Here are three stories about that . . .
Or maybe this.
Do we offer the highest-quality widget
that you can buy?
No.
But we think it’s the best value
for these five reasons . . .
And so on.
And if your customers can’t handle the truth, then find new customers. I know, I know: easy to say, hard to do. But it’s nowhere near as hard as getting into a downward spiral with your customers. Proposals are not a con game, and we are not con artists.
But the new brigades [comprised of novices] are dysfunctional—with uneven leadership, missing equipment and entire battalions of undertrained, ambivalently led new recruits who have a bad habit of abandoning their brigade at the first opportunity. – Forbes
Undertrained, ambivalently led, prone to going AWOL. Sounds good, eh? Not.
You can read the whole piece, here, about how Ukrainian politicians are a lot like politicians everywhere: going for the showy gesture over the prudent/proven approach. (The bit about executives overriding field commanders is also not new: think President Johnson’s micro-management of the Vietnam War.)
Here’s another lesson from the real world for executives or proposal managers who are assembling proposal teams: A team of newbies is a disaster waiting to happen, and not likely waiting very long. What to do instead? This:
Seth wrote about orchestras today.
. . . if the performers wait for a leader in their section to go first,
every entrance and every attack will be muddled.
You need to go when it’s time to go,
not wait to follow closely behind.
I wrote about them a while back. They really do have lessons for proposal teams (as do most areas of joint human endeavour).
P.S. Just remember that the individual members of the orchestra and the proposal team aren’t deciding the timing on their own: They both look to the person serving as the conductor. Well, that’s the way it’s designed to work.
What does the customer really want?
What did they actually ask for?
These are different questions, so it’s not surprising that they generate different answers.
How do they really want us to respond?
What did they actually tell us to do?
These, too, are different questions, so again it’s not surprising that they generate different answers.