Proposal Land

Hire a bookie.
(Betting on shit seems to be galvanizing and brings a team together.)
Rhys Newman and Luke Johnson

As someone who used to play poker with a cheat sheet — you know, this one . . .

. . . I might be less than a credible source for this rule.  But betting is akin, I think, to other silly games that proposal teams play, taking their fun where they can find it.

Betting: Analogous to Humour?

One form of humour is “something dangerous from a safe source” – just ask any 6-month old, giggling while being lofted into the air by a parent.

Maybe betting  is analogous: something dangerous (competition) in a safe environment (insignificant amounts, unimportant outcomes).

How Does it Work?

By building trust?  By fostering a sense of common purpose?  Hey, what am I?  A psychologist?  Knowing why it works is less important than knowing that it does.

How to Execute?

So what would proposal teams bet on, in this day of Google access?  Pretty much anything, as long as it isn’t look-uppable and doesn’t really matter.

Future sporting events (their outcomes, interim scores, number of goals/points)?  Of course. The total lunch bill for a group, or the last number in it?  Why not?

But proposal teams also have some task-related things they can bet on:

• The number of questions that the RFP will provoke
• The number of RFP amendments the client will issue
• Whether there will be an extension and how long it will be

Anything that transforms the activity into a game is worth considering.

Still Skeptical?

Not buying it?  Maybe you’d like to lay a small wager.  What odds are you prepared to give me that this doesn’t work for your proposal team?

 

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 Proposals are schedule-driven projects that require a strict project management discipline. Right? Partly right. In proposal terminology, I’d call that answer incomplete.  Proposals are projects, for sure, but they’re also the output of teamwork. I’ve recently been learning how much the design business has in common with proposals.

This post is one of a series on proposal teamwork, inspired by a fabulous article on Medium on design teams:
“No Dickheads! A Guide to Building Happy, Healthy, and Creative Teams.”

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 teams, too, which are (whether they realize it or not) designing a solution for the client and the eventual users.

But why is it good for proposal teamwork?

General Rules of Teamwork

Most teams go through standard stages, neatly if somewhat cutely named as follows:

• Forming – coming together
• Storming – fighting for power and over differences of opinion, style, and values
• Norming – agreeing, at least implicitly, on how the team will function
• Performing – doing the work assigned

How It Works on Proposal Teams

Limited by the hard deadline, proposal teams must go straight from forming to performing – but conflict doesn’t disappear magically just because the team is on the clock.  Instead, it emerges in other ways:

• Interpersonal conflicts, as unacknowledged issues fuel snippiness
• Professional conflicts, as undoubted experts dig in their heels on their approach/solution

How It Can Work Better

An external focus – trying to see our proposed solution through the client’s/user’s eyes – fosters proposal teamwork in two ways:

• By fostering an overarching us/them mentality, increasing team cohesion and derailing the natural impulse to splinter into small, like-minded, and ultimately ineffective sub-groups
• By establishing an objective and blessedly impersonal norm for resolving disagreements; to wit, “How would the client/user see this?”

 

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Proposals are schedule-driven projects that require a strict project management discipline. Right? Partly right. In proposal terminology, I’d call that answer incomplete.  Proposals are projects, for sure, but they’re also the output of teamwork. I’ve recently been learning how much the design business has in common with proposals.

This post is one of a series on proposal teamwork, inspired by a fabulous article on Medium on design teams:
“No Dickheads! A Guide to Building Happy, Healthy, and Creative Teams.”

Everyone leads at some point.
Rhys Newman and Luke Johnson

Proposal teams need proposal managers: I’m goodwith that.  They also need leadership.  What’s the difference?  Stephen Covey’s distinction can help us here:

Effective leadership is putting first things first.
Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.

It’s also expressed as the distinction between “doing the right things” and “doing things right.” Both formulations work.

Proposal Managers: There Can be Only One

Proposal managers are busy folks, doing all those standard management tasks related to doing things right:

• Assembling resources, defining roles and responsibilities, supervising performance
• Liaising with executives, teaming partners, and in-house resources
• Overseeing requirements definition, solution development, proposal writing and review, and costing
• Managing schedule, schedule, and (yes, again) schedule

And, as in “The Highlander” movie, there can be only one proposal manager.

Proposal Leaders: There Should be Many

By contrast, there can be (and should be) many proposal leaders, both formal and informal,  supporting the team’s quest to do the right things by making invaluable contributions:

• Challenging assumptions
• Broadening perspectives
• Bringing focus
• Resolving conflicts
• Flagging priorities

Task-Focused and People-Focused Leadership

Like all work, proposals are about more than the task: They’re also about the people executing the task.  Depending on their skills and personalities, leaders can also help to maintain team morale and effectiveness:

• Listening more than talking in meetings
• Acknowledging contributions
• Bringing in a new joke every day
• Including everyone in social occasions

Staying on Track

Effective proposal managers create an open, respectful, and yet disciplined environment that fosters appropriate leadership from many sources, while never losing sight of their own management responsibilities — or the need to maintain schedule!

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 Proposals are schedule-driven projects that require a strict project management discipline. Right? Partly right. In proposal terminology, I’d call that answer incomplete.  Proposals are projects, for sure, but they’re also the output of teamwork. I’ve recently been learning how much the design business has in common with proposals.

This post is one of a series on proposal teamwork, inspired by a fabulous article on Medium on design teams:
“No Dickheads! A Guide to Building Happy, Healthy, and Creative Teams.”