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.
Even when we see these distinctions, and even when everyone is working to answer just one question from each pair, we might still come up with different answers. We’d kinda like to have the right answer, but time spent second-guessing or, worse, arguing endlessly, is time we hardly have and really don’t have to waste. To get done in time, to meet, ahem, schedule, Proposal Land requires us to charge hard every day, confident in our rightness.
But. But but but. We might, you know, be–even if not exactly wrong–then not entirely right. What if the other guys are right? Today Seth invites us to dance with this question. He’s talking, I think, about broader project-management questions than getting a proposal out the door, but the point holds for us too.
What if they’re right?
How would that play out?
If they’re right, what could I do with that insight?
In Proposal Land, we really want to be right about what the customer wants, and about how they want us to respond. We want that so badly that we hire experts and do a bunch of internal review (that is often annoying to said experts) and schedule two reviews with executives (that are often annoying to everyone, including the executives). Two reviews, one for each question where we might seriously diverge:
- What the customer wants
- How we should respond
But. But but but. That might not be enough. When you see that someone has a different answer than the one you’re running with and they *really* think *they’re* right, take 5 minutes to *actually* consider it, instead of dismissing it or arguing about it. Hell, take an hour.
If [their answer is] helpful, run with it.
We can always go back to being right tomorrow.
Finish on time. Be right. Finding the way to do both? That’s the dance we signed up for.