How are they different?
You meet the first one;
you manage the second.
Giving up on perfection was a tough lesson for me to learn, but here’s Seth concurring that it’s necessary. And OK, besides.
. . . meeting spec means we’re not settling.
It’s just what you promised.
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:
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.
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.
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:
You might be surprised at how often the answer is, “Yes!” I know I am.
Taste is individual preference, not absolute truth.
– Seth’s Blog
Hah! Try telling that to an executive reviewer insisting on a different font or colour palette. Try telling that to the proposal manager making a late-night request for title case within every cell in every table because it looks better to them: a preference not disclosed when it might have been accommodated. Try telling that to the team member, recently part of the client’s organization, who conflates their own taste and the client’s.
Deep breath.
First, most people are trying to help. And they believe their input *is* helping. They strongly believe this.
Second, most intense behaviour comes from a place of fear: In this case, fear that we don’t know what “perfect” looks like to the evaluators and yet, somehow, everything must be perfect. Did I mention that we don’t actually know what “perfect” looks like to the evaluators? Did you understand that everything must still be perfect, somehow?
Deep breath.
In the mess that is Proposal Land, what can we do about these fights over taste?
“What’s possible” depends on staff/team continuity and how many proposals a company does and how formalized/documented its proposal process is and how, um, idiosyncratic the internal reviewers are. Try these steps:
If it blows up in your face, it will be at the last minute.
Deep breath.
Remember, you’re dealing with fear: Don’t add your own to the mix. Drawing on the gaming work you did, respond calmly even if people are being insanely insistent. Give them the facts about timelines and performance consequences in other areas.
And then? Comply if you must. Not everything is a hill to die for.