Win more government and competitive contracts by using project management principles. Schedule proposal efforts and staff proposal teams for on-time delivery of compliant and high-scoring bids. Avoid version control problems and staff burnout.
Invert everything. (See the world through the client’s/user’s eyes.) Rhys Newman and Luke Johnson Seeing the world, or, at least, our service or product through the client’s/user’s eyes is obviously good for design, helping us give them what they want, not what we think they need. That applies to proposal …
Team leadership complements proposal management by harnessing contributions from all team members to do the right thing, both for the task at hand and for the people involved.
Use meetings in the open as the default to build team cohesion and to facilitate team alignment. Meet behind closed doors as the exception, and only when necessary to protect sensitive information, either for competitive position or for personnel confidentiality.
The language we use – including profanity – plays a role in whether our gaggle of colleagues will come together as an effective team.
One lesson from design teams is to design the process to fit the project. On RFP responses, this means tailoring the process to the scale of the response, providing communication and control tools tailored to that process, and setting appropriate standards.