Laura's Winning Ideas

Proposal debrief the morning after a late-nighter:

There was one near-miss in production, and the proposal got delivered on time, but it was a bit tense at the end. The team realized that this near-miss needs attention now, so that the next time, the proposal is safely pushed away from the precipice of missed delivery.

We were training a new proposal team leader. He lamented that production problems were out of his control because he couldn’t change the process used in the print shop.

That was disappointing to hear because he’d overlooked the obvious problem the proposal team was presenting by disrupting the work flow in the print shop.

The proposal team needed to change so their proposals could flow in the existing process rather than whine that the print shop wouldn’t/couldn’t change for them.

The rest of the proposal team was experienced, and they discussed the critical path they’d used. Then, one of the secretaries suggested that they could rearrange three steps to send the document to the Print shop in a different order.

It took just 20 minutes to figure out how to flow the proposals to better match the process in the print shop. The result was that they got the final documents back 40 minutes sooner than usual (an important 40 minutes when the last FedEx drop is in 45 minutes).

Almost always: Fix problems downstream by changing your process. Don’t try to force others to accommodate your process. This is too risky. The less your proposal is dependent on others changing/accommodating you, the better.

There is a serious down-side to proposal teams sequestering themselves to focus on process improvement. My previous post was about avoiding drift of focus by avoiding agenda setting by executives outside the team.

On the other hand, proposal teams need a focus that is above their heads. Proposal teams who focus on “proof-reading” as opposed to improving the strategic message don’t improve the hit rate.

I worked with one proposal manager who brought me a proposal she was dismayed to say had been submitted before she was on-board to help. It was littered with grammatical errors, and a few mis-spellings.

“Did this proposal win?” I asked.
“Well, yes, but look at these problems. We need to prevent proposals like this from ever going out again. I’m going to have to stop this.”
“But did the proposal win?” I asked again.
“Well, it doesn’t matter. Our brand is being hurt by this kind of proposal and I need to stop it.” (Read on ...)

According to the Wall Street Journal Online, RIM is still out of commission and hopes to be back up soon.

My condolences to the Blackberry users out there.

In proposal debriefs, I am picky about who gets included the meeting.

In an organization with less than ideal hit rates, the proposal team needs to perfect their performance. However, they may need to do this work sequestered.

First, they need to focus energies on tools and process to improve the hit rate. Any other agendas will mute the focus and should not be entertained until the team’s performance is improved.

Second, outsiders with a poorer track record than the proposal team, but politically bigger than the proposal team, should not be guiding the process improvement initiative.

In other words, if you debrief with your team, and include a Program Manager or Subject Matter Expert who is higher on the org chart, they will naturally guide the meeting. Their agenda will be imposed on the group, even if unintended. (Read on ...)