Proposal Land

Better RFP Responses & Management
 
Proposal Land

Just Like Families

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From the definition:

Proposal team: the group of people assigned to produce a proposal in response to a specific RFP.

Always overworked; often overwhelmed; frequently underappreciated.

Hahaha. True, but missing a few salient points. Here’s one.

Proposal teams are just like families:
They’re all dysfunctional.

Proposal teams are usually (always, in my experience) ad hoc teams of people lacking established group norms and accepted reporting/supervisory structures. By any reasonable measure, the work of the response is more than can be accomplished in the time available: Creating a functional team is way more than a bridge too far.

As a result, the behaviour that emerges is either the natural behaviour of the individuals or the corporate culture of smaller sub-groups on the team. Is the team task- or status-focused? Welcoming or hostile to new people? Cooperative or snippy? Open to new ways of doing things or entrenched in previous processes? Interested in new approaches or dismissive thereof? Good communicators or idiots?

Oh, sorry, that last was my outside voice.

As a manager, it’s worth some time (preferably between proposals) to identify what dysfunctions your teams are exhibiting and how to minimize their impact. Training? Coaching? Supervision? Threats? Reassignments? Firings?

As a proposal conscript, it’s worth some time (preferably at the start of a proposal) to think about what behaviours you want to model, what contribution you can make and want to make to a happy, healthy, and effective team.

Good teamwork doesn’t fall from Heaven: It’s built, bit by bit, from the ground up. And many hands make light work.

 

Term: War Room

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The room in which the proposal team works or has its big meetings.

Often used as a command centre, with schedules and other control tools posted on the wall.

Less used now as more proposal teams work in distributed mode, with no central location.

Keep an Eye on that Outbox

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A few decades ago I read an article about productivity research in an office setting. If it’s on the www, it is not evident to me, but this is what I remember.

In a big open office of administrative workers, work was delivered to each desk’s inbox throughout the day. Completed work was retrieved from the outbox. The question being researched was, would productivity be affected by how often completed work was picked up? Put another way, would people get more done if their completed work was whisked away as fast as they did it, or if they could see the pile growing through the day?

You there, put your hand down: We all know the answer. It was Door #2 – people worked harder when they could see the results of their labours.

There are many possible reasons for that result, from peer pressure to job satisfaction. OK, there are at least two.

What does this have to do with Proposal Land?

Proposals often feel like shovelling water with a fork. Every stage brings new tasks (work without end) and every review uncovers new things to fix. Perversely, in an environment where people work miracles, making decent technical sales documents out of formerly blank pages, it is really hard to get a sense of how far you’ve come. Of how big the pile in your outbox is.

So, it’s worth considering how to visualize the progress. Charts that show an estimate of completion against final will work for some. For me, the ever-useful control sheet not only tracks the work done and to-be-done, it also gives me a sense of accomplishment as it gradually fills with checkmarks or green squares. And while it seems there are always new columns being added as new tasks are identified (work without end), it retains a record of the work already done.

Herewith, a radically simplified sample. Find what works for you and your team.

 

Term: Security Requirements Check List

 

A Government of Canada form used to specify the security requirements in the contract to be issued to the contractor.

Usually annexed to the RFP, it allows bidders to cost and schedule any actions required to meet the security requirements that will apply at contract award (for example, security screening of personnel, establishment of secure zones in offices for document safeguarding).

Acronymized as SRCL; pronounced by saying each letter in turn: ess-arr-see-ell.

Tips for editors:

Add SCRL to your punchlist: for some reason, this particular scrambling of the acronym is common and easy to read through. Maybe it’s because the “SC” evokes the “security” part and we forget we need the “C” for “check.”

Pretend you don’t know that checklist is usually one word these days. Why this term violates the usual preference for TLAs is beyond me, but it does.

 

Value versus Cost

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Better to pay a little more than you should
and get something you can use
than pay too little and end up with nothing at all.

Ah, Seth. He must have been watching when 14-year-old me bought those cute shoes in the discount basement of the department store. Or when 64-year-old me bought those cute tops in the discount store. Neither shoes nor tops stood up to being worn or being washed, which was pretty much their only job.

I’ve never been seriously tempted by the other end of the spectrum — overpaying for style — but I take the theoretical point.

Better as well to avoid paying a ridiculous amount
for something that never satisfies–
better to live without until you learn to see the curve.

What curve? Well, you’ll have to check out the post to see it, but I’m sure you already get the idea. Whereas some things really are too cheap to be good, some things are seriously more expensive than they’re worth.

Learning to see the curve–
that’s the benefit of deliberate experience, well earned.

What does this have to do with Proposal Land? Three things.

First, especially but not exclusively in sole-sourced contracts, it’s up to procurement officials to prevent over-specification of the requirement, the natural impulse of end-user types for several reasons. They just want what they want, you know? And then there’s the self-protection thing. You know?

“…the gold-plated RFP that comes from deep within the bureaucracy
is designed to avoid finger-pointing and blame,
not to actually buy something that gets us a return…”

Second, in competitive contracts, it’s up to procurement processes to prevent a bidder from “buying” a contract: deliberately underbidding to win the contract and counting on making up the shortfall through sneaky change orders (aka get-well amendments). (The competitive part of competitive contracting rules out someone adding cost for show, or winning if they do.) It’s hard to assess risk objectively, but scoring mechanisms that exclude any bids that are a pre-determined amount lower than the next-lowest compliant bid can push back on this nasty bidding trick.

Third, on the bidding side, it’s up to proposal management to set a reasonable target for proposal quality: detail, thoroughness, graphics impact, marketing whiz-bang, and what everyone today calls the Wow Factor. At some point, and sooner than most executives think, the proposal hits Good Enough. That’s the flat part of Seth’s curve. Spending more time, effort, and money is just spending more: It’s not getting any more that matters in an evaluation.

Where are we on the value/cost curve?

No matter where you reside in Proposal Land, it’s a good question to ask.