Proposal Land

Better RFP Responses & Management
 
Proposal Land

War Is Hell; Proposals Shouldn’t Be

 

But the new brigades [comprised of novices] are dysfunctional—with uneven leadership, missing equipment and entire battalions of undertrained, ambivalently led new recruits who have a bad habit of abandoning their brigade at the first opportunity. – Forbes

Undertrained, ambivalently led, prone to going AWOL. Sounds good, eh? Not.

You can read the whole piece, here, about how Ukrainian politicians are a lot like politicians everywhere: going for the showy gesture over the prudent/proven approach. (The bit about executives overriding field commanders is also not new: think President Johnson’s micro-management of the Vietnam War.)

Here’s another lesson from the real world for executives or proposal managers who are assembling proposal teams: A team of newbies is a disaster waiting to happen, and not likely waiting very long. What to do instead? This:

  • Nurture newbies by assigning them to work at least under experienced managers; preferably, with established teams who can provide good mentors.
  • Increase your corporate capacity by adding at least one newbie to every team, thereby embedding proposal expertise in more people. Do this independent of workload – this is a training activity, not a production one.

Going When It’s Time to Go

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Seth wrote about orchestras today.

. . . if the performers wait for a leader in their section to go first,
every entrance and every attack will be muddled.
You need to go when it’s time to go,
not wait to follow closely behind.

I wrote about them a while back. They really do have lessons for proposal teams (as do most areas of joint human endeavour).

P.S. Just remember that the individual members of the orchestra and the proposal team aren’t deciding the timing on their own: They both look to the person serving as the conductor. Well, that’s the way it’s designed to work.

 

Really, Actually, But

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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

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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.