Proposal Land

Better RFP Responses & Management
 
Proposal Land

Fire? Fire!

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Running into a burning building is heroic work.

Keeping buildings from burning down in the first place
is actually just as important.
And it scales more reliably.
– Seth’s Blog

I’ve worked with firefighters and with fire inspectors on proposals: literally and metaphorically. Unless the damn place/proposal is on fire, I much prefer the inspectors. Seth’s right: prevention scales more reliably than recovery.

But when things *are* on fire despite our maybe less-than-best efforts, asking “why” in that moment is not only not helpful, it makes it harder to do the work that needs to be done.

If someone can’t help with the effort to extinguish the flames, they should shut up and sit down.

There’ll be lots of time later to do the forensic analysis.

 

Better but not Perfect

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I’ve often wondered what it feels like to hook a ball out-of-bounds in front of a packed gallery, not to mention a few million TV viewers. Me, I never had that level of exposure, nor even a comparable level appropriate to my work environment. And yet, I still hated making mistakes. I hated even being mistake-adjacent.

In my first year in Proposal Land, we had been assigned a technical section based on the probable division of work assuming contract award. One response, however, was outside our area. As I gathered the responses from our own technical folks, I flagged this one question for completion by the prime contractor in another province:

XX’s input here.

When we faxed our pages to the prime (Yes, really. This was long before we even had files attached to emails. Shared online repositories were unimaginable.), I called the volume lead to tell him that we needed their input for that response. I didn’t think it was necessary, you understand, given the note in the document itself: I was just being thorough.

Typists in their organization retyped our pages into their word-processing software (I know, I know), and the whole proposal then went through a rigorous and meticulous review process with many stages. A few weeks after the submission date, we got a question from the reviewers.

What, exactly, does this mean:
“XX’s input here”?

Good lord. How many sets of eyes–typist, technical reviewers, executives–had missed that text? I was mortified but also furious.

A few years on, I understood Proposal Land a little better. By then, I had experienced more of the pressure inherent in a speed-&-feed environment. I had learned that the people scan a page more than they read it, and that an embedded note needs something (colour, font size, bolding, caps – SOMETHING!) to catch that scanning eye. I had developed better processes:

  • Submitting a complete document to a prime contractor, even if some of it had to come from the very people we were submitting it to
  • Reviewing documents against checklists

And so on. And yet, we still submitted imperfect documents. We still made mistakes. Not, perhaps, as silly or embarrassing as this one, but mistakes.

So? So read Seth’s Blog today.

Being careful is smart.
Being perfect is unattainable,
and seeking perfection is a trap.

 

 

Dancing in Proposal Land

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More good words from Seth’s Blog:

The art of project management includes the dance
between velocity and possibility.

If you’re even an occasional occupant of Proposal Land, first read Seth’s post. Then, in the spaces between proposals, explore possibilities for doing them better, even if no one asked you to. Some of those possibilities are on this website; some are in my manual; some will be your own bright ideas. Document proven ideas in your standard methodology, achieving the velocity of which Seth speaks.

If you’re an executive or senior manager with Proposal Land oversight responsibilities, first read Seth’s post. Make spaces between proposals for proposal workers to explore possibilities for doing better proposals in the spaces between them, and to document proven ideas in your company’s standard methodology.  Recognize both the effort and the result.

 

We’re All in This Together

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Remember I’m pullin’ for ya –
we’re all in this together.
– Red Green

A  long while back I stumbled on an article on fostering teamwork in design projects. I was tickled to find that many of the lessons cited there also applied in Proposal Land.

A little while back I stumbled on a blog by a (now retired but still blogging) evolutionary ecologist and entomologist at the University of New Brunswick. He writes on many things, including the art/discipline of writing, and although his field is not proposals, many of his observations apply to Proposal Land. Here’s this week’s example.

There’s never just one way to write a paper. Instead, there are choices – lots of them –
and while it’s the writer’s job to make those choices in a way that serves readers well,
there isn’t one choice that will be best for every possible reader.
Writing well is more complicated, and much more interesting, than that.

My specific point? Writing proposals is an ongoing effort to manage long-term risk (If you win the work based on this proposal, will it be the best outcome or the worst outcome? Will living with the result be a lovely or an ugly thing?) while achieving the short-term goal of first winning the work by writing a proposal that meets the needs of disparate evaluators, many/most of whom you don’t even know.

There isn’t one choice that will be best for every possible reader.

Indeed. Our task is to accept that truth, and find a way to be, if not best, then at least OK for all readers.

My broader point? Proposal Land is not sui generis: Although it’s distinctive, and perhaps distinctively difficult, it’s not “one of a kind.” Things learned elsewhere can help us:

  • Encourage your team members to ponder which lessons from their own field of expertise can be applied to help tame the proposal beast.
  • Go forth and read broadly, with this question at the back of your mind: Can this help me or my team on the next proposal?

You might be surprised at how often the answer is, “Yes!” I know I am.