Laura's Winning Ideas

You are working on section A of the proposal, when you realize you need to pick up bread on the way home so you can make sandwiches for lunch tomorrow. How will you remember this as you leave the office late tonight?

Move an object into an odd but obvious position. For example, move your coffee mug to the floor in the middle of your office, or rest a kleenex box on your coat hook.

When you leave the office, you’ll notice the object again and remember to pick up bread on the way home.

What kind of parlor game is this? Others recommend this same trick. It works. Folks try it and find it works as they drop off to sleep at night.

This is NLP “anchoring.” This technique engages the subconscious by connecting a thought with a perception. You think about buying bread, and you perceive the coffee cup on the floor. The perception then triggers the thought later, when you perceive the coffee cup and remember you need to buy bread.

I studied to become certified as an NLP Practitioner when oral presentations became more important and I needed some better tools. If you’ve tried this and wonder how it might help your firm win at presentations, contact me.

Imperturbability: inner peace that doesn’t leave when circumstances change. It’s a peace that is greater than the problems of life, built on assurance that the tempest will finally pass, that we will survive the storm, that we may grow stronger because of it. It’s the result of a peace that passes understanding. For serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm. from www.LifeSupportSystem.com

One trait needed by proposal team leaders and change agents is imperturbability.

Some organizations have a process in place that works, and then the proposal team members can focus on unleashing creativity and translating the great ideas into winning proposals.

Many proposal leaders are not there…yet.

If you are required to perform as a change agent and get a process installed, you’ll find it challenging. Nurture imperturbability.

If you manage a process that is demanding, nurture imperturbability.

Sometimes new proposal team leaders get a accused of being control freaks. Funny, how all the successful proposal team leaders have the same profile as turn-around specialists: They first work to batten down the slippery, haphazard methods of getting the work done, and then get criticized for being “control freaks.”

Then they analyze the process (or lack thereof) and implement new controls. In the best scenario, the controls are criticized as “busy work,” in the worst cases the proposal team leader or turn around specialist are personally demonized and despised. It is not pretty work.

Once controls have been implemented, folks don’t remember how the work was done before a process was put in place. Similar to the phenomena that women often don’t remember the pain of childbirth.

In every case I know, once a robust process is put in place, the team’s ability to respond improves. They can respond to new challenges because the process has given them some space and time to enhance, customize or adapt to new customer requirements. They don’t respond so well to the few renegades who want to ignor the process and do things their own way

The funny thing is, that insiders often don’t notice the new responsiveness. They are accustomed to the proposal process being fast, energetic and tense. The atmosphere remains the same. It continues to be fast, and energetic. The tension that was created by inventing solutions to common problems is shifted to responding to new challenges. So, to the folks working with a proposal team, things look the same.

But under the hood, everything is different.

Before, everyone was relieved when the proposal got delivered on time. All the energy and time was used to get a response out the door…in most cases, just barely. They are spent. They feel they’ve done their best.

But once a process is in place, everyone is relieved to get the proposal delivered with the extra responsiveness they know will make the difference between being in the pack and leading the pack of competitors. They are spent. They feel they’ve done their best.

If you have the challenge of creating a process from chaos, it helps to remember that everyone wants the end result, very few want to witness the birthing. The results are worthwhile.

XML will be a vehicle for document and proposal delivery soon, if not already in some corners of the world.

One reason may be the cool navigation features you can implement.

On this blog, I use two of my favorites: Categories and a Tag Cloud.

Categories allow me to help readers find just the posts of interest to them. (If there are different categories you would like, please let me know!) They are easy to create, and then each post is prompted to check of the appropriate categories. This navigation takes a bit of thought, but when I’m in the midst of writing the post, it is easy to know which categories to use.

Tag clouds are even easier. They automatically note word usage and then display it graphically. See my tag cloud under “Words in This Blog.” The version I use allows me to unselect some words that might otherwise appear, and has a good dictionary so common words (such as ‘appear’) don’t get counted.

Shadowbox Studios has more information about Tag Clouds and other blogging tools here.