Proposal Land

Better RFP Responses & Management
 
Proposal Land

How to Foster Teamwork: Rule #3

 

 “Good studios build good walls.”
Rhys Newman and Luke Johnson

At first glance, this rule for fostering teamwork is perversely reminiscent of one of the more famous quotes of a former Poet Laureate of the United States.  You know the one I mean.

“Good fences make good neighbours.”
Robert Frost

But this is not about building walls between people.  Instead, it’s about using walls to connect them.

What are Walls in Proposal Land?

Walls – whether actual or virtual – are places where the big points about an RFP response are posted, in a format big enough and simple enough to be seen and taken in at a glance:

  • The response schedule
  • The selling themes
  • The control sheet that identifies the status of each of 37 sections in the final multi-stage process of review, revision, editing, revision, proofing, revision, printing, proofing, revision . . .

Walls as Passive Information Radiators

As you’ll see from the external links below, “passive information radiators” are important for all teams – indeed, for all organizations.  For proposal teams, they’re especially important:

  • Saving time, an obvious bonus in this deadline-driven activity
  • Improving communication both within the team and with executives
  • Limiting disruptions to team members who already have more work than time
  • Keeping the team focused on what matters, and helping to ensure that they know the same things about what matters
  • Reducing anxiety, especially on ad hoc teams where members don’t know who they can trust to meet their commitments, and who they have to keep an eye on

It’s easy to get swamped by the detail.  Using a wall makes the big pieces visible, a crucial first step to managing them.

External Links

Information Radiators – Agile Tools

Information Radiators – Element #2 of the Personal Kanban

 

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.”

Term: Compliance Matrix

 

A table submitted with the proposal that does one or more of the following:

  • Acknowledges and agrees to all mandatory requirements
  • Identifies where in the proposal to find content showing that the requirement has been met (for example, documentary evidence for a submission mandatory; proposal-text evidence for a technical mandatory)
  • Acknowledges and agrees to all draft contract articles

Is It Required?

That depends:

  • It’s occasionally required by the client in the submission instructions.
  • More often, it’s insisted upon by proposal team members who have seen it done elsewhere and think it must, therefore, be a best practice.
  • It’s never (no, never) required unless it’s explicitly required.

Should You Do One?

Well, it’s never wrong, except when it is extended to apply to all RFP paragraphs, which shows a fundamental misunderstanding of its purpose and of the import of the various parts of the RFP. This lack of understanding is not a good thing to expose to the client at the bidding stage.

Be warned, however, that it’s exceedingly time consuming to create one for large, complex proposals.

Related Posts

Submission mandatory

Compliance

Compliance checklist

Draft contract

Term: Compliance Checklist

 

A form provided by the client in the RFP that lists all submission mandatories.

What Do You Do with It?

Sometimes intended or required to be completed and submitted with the bid.

Sometimes intended to be used by evaluators during the first stage of evaluation and offered to bidders only as a convenience.

Never to be trusted to be complete (i.e. including all mandatories) until it has been confirmed against the list of submission mandatories identified by the proposal team.

Related Posts

Submission mandatory

Handling mandatories

Compliance

Compliance matrix

Handling compliance

How to Foster Teamwork: Rule #2

 

“Be optimistic, embrace failure, and laugh more.”
Rhys Newman and Luke Johnson

Be Optimistic

No one actually likes losing, but people who work on RFP responses really hate it.  Proposal people tend to be competitive, task-oriented, and hard workers, so losing really bites. Given their personalities and the time pressure they’re under, team members can easily go negative:

  • Impatient with delays
  • Accusatory about the deficiencies of others’ contributions
  • Defensive about their own contributions

Being optimistic is key to preventing these dysfunctional responses and to getting the best out of the team.

Embrace Failure

There just isn’t time for anyone to perfect their own work on a proposal.  Success requires using joint reviews before anyone is truly ready to expose their work to others,  and improving the solution, the written document, and the costing through successive iterations.

“Fail fast.”
Various attributions

Embracing failure may seem counter-productive, but it’s failure in the sense of getting on with figuring out what will work.

Laugh More

Laughter defuses tension in an environment with altogether too much tension.

Laughter connects people in an environment where they can easily feel isolated.

Laughter reminds us that there is more to life than work, and more to work than misery.

Encouraging laughter fosters teamwork.

 

 

RFP responses are schedule-driven projects that require a strict project management discipline. Right? Partly right. In proposal terminology, I’d call that answer incomplete. RFP responses are projects, sure, but they’re also team efforts. I’ve recently been learning how much design teams are like proposal teams.

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.”