Seth has a nice post on the point of maximum leverage, where he argues that we often put time and attention on things that don’t give us the best bang for our buck.
We can’t fix this problem until we see it,
and then we need to be clear with ourselves
and with our colleagues about where that leverage point is.
In Proposal Land, this happens all the time. Doing the high-return, maximum-leverage work is hard, you know? So we drift into doing what we can: Something easier. No one is immune, not even executives.
I agree — there are better things for a high-priced group to be discussing. BUT… there’s always an equally opinionated (and ill-informed) person on the receiving end, who will look at your proposal and say, “Arrrgh! They used Helvetica as their font! Don’t they know it’s unsuitable for running text? If they’re that clueless about type fonts, how can we trust the rest of their proposal?”
Jim T
Jim – I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen in government procurement of technical services or big honking equipment, but wouldn’t rule it out in bids for text/document layout services.