Get the strategy right,
then implement small changes,
repeated with persistence and generosity.
On proposal teams, I never had the chance to determine the strategy of the pursuit: Which business lines? Which opportunities? Which partners? Which pricing strategy?
Did I always think the strategy was right? Hell, no.
But, à la Seth’s blog: Small Adjustments, I did have the chance to make the proposal process right-er by implementing small changes:
- Designing a fail-safe protocol for handling submission mandatories while respecting the proposal manager’s prerogatives
- Putting the schedule on a wall where we could all see it
- Habituating executives to early briefings on the operations concept and to a risk-management focus in reviews
- Recording outcomes of otherwise free-form meetings
- Using a variant of the Kanban board to track progress, especially in the latter stages
And so on.
And every other team member had the same chance to implement small changes. And so do you. (I’ve got the persistence covered. Can you look after the generosity?)