Proposal Land

Better RFP Responses & Management
 
Proposal Land

Really, Actually, But

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.

Continue reading“Really, Actually, But”

Make Your Writing Better

What Seth said, here.

In Proposal Land, put separate ideas in separate sentences or in an adjacent textbox. That includes anything beyond the main point you’re making:

  • exceptions
  • regulations
  • criteria
  • standards
  • caveats

Make embedded lists of stuff into bullets.

Use that period. Some of your ancestors didn’t have it.

LLMs in Proposal Land

Being off the field, I don’t know if anyone is using large language models (LLMs) to train so-called artificial-intelligence (AI) software on their own proposal portfolio/library, for the purpose of getting first drafts. It would seem like an obvious thing to try.

For how you might use an LLM to train writers or even (Gasp!) editors, here are three great ideas from someone who teaches scientific writing.

Don’t Drown

Look! Here’s Seth, writing about management reserve.

No, wait, that’s what we call it in Proposal Land. He calls it a ledge: one that will keep you from drowning. It’s a compelling metaphor.

The ledge is a combination of time and money.
It’s the buffer between here and disaster.
The ledge is a foundation, a place we can find our footing as we think about the next steps.
And the ledge offers perspective, because we can realize that even if this moment feels momentous, it might not be.

Stop, now, and go read the whole thing.

And on your next proposal, make sure you have a ledge. Heck, on your next project of any sort, make sure you have a ledge.

Do Nothing Much

We’ve seen how other disciplines can help us in Proposal Land:

  • with lessons on fostering teamwork, drawing on a superb article on managing design teams (start here)
  • with lessons on writing better, riffing on a-man-walks-into-a-bar variants (start here) and adapting instructions for writing haiku (see here)
  • with meeting the schedule, leveraging winter-driving instructions (see here)

Now it’s time to learn something from a botanical garden that had stagnated for lack of big funding to fund its ambitious vision.

So because we couldn’t take
the big step we wanted to,
we didn’t take any step at all.

Here’s the short version of how a team of people unstuck that garden–but the whole post by Scientist Sees Squirrel is well worth reading, and the blog (Tagline: Seldom original. Often wrong. Occasionally interesting.) is well worth your time if you have even a passing interest in the life sciences.

My friends and I decided we’d rather do something small than be stagnant. So we started to develop a new Garden bed each year, but one that we could do for $5,000 with volunteer labour. We didn’t ask anyone . . . for $100,000, because we figured first we should be able to show that we could execute a $5,000 project successfully. And guess what? After 5 years, the Garden looked fresh, new people were coming and stalwarts were returning, and we were able to think a little bigger. Now after 10 years, we’ve quadrupled our staffing and budget, our City government sees the Garden as a major asset they want to invest in, and people are flooding through. All this because we weren’t afraid to do nothing much. (emphasis added)

Two key things here:

  • They had a small group of people, able to work as a team.
  • They had an ambitious vision, but they weren’t afraid to start small: “to do nothing much.”

When our proposals are a hot mess (as they often seem to be), fixing all those interlocking processes can feel overwhelming. So don’t try. Get a small group of like-minded individuals together and fix something smaller, instead:

And so on.

Don’t be afraid to do nothing much. Day after day, week after week, year after year, “nothing much” adds up to “quite something.”


PS The suggestions for improvement that don’t have links here are all addressed in The Manual. Just sayin.’