Laura’s Winning Ideas

Dennis McDonald discussed research to enhance cognitive performance (your brain on steroids) and wonders whether collaboration might be a faster way to reach new discoveries here.

If you work for government clients, you may find RFPs suggesting collaboration. Here’s where they are going with this request:

Since the 1990’s the National Science Foundation (NSF – most government research grants come from this agency) and the National Institute of Health (NIH – most government health research grants come from this agency) both began encouraging collaboration and backing it up with serious money.

They realized that continuing to award grants to researchers who shared the same specialty was not achieving break-through discoveries. When you attack a problem in the same way each time, repetitive attacks yield little ground. But when a completely different approach is tried, some amazing discoveries can happen.

So, NIH began requiring that research teams be cross pollinated with other academic specialties. NSF made special awards for “collaborative” teams. Academic researchers were not previously rewarded for mixing with folks outside their realm, and so the transition will be a hard one for academia. In fact, most academic researchers struggle to achieve tenure unless they closet themselves with a very small circle of researchers in their specialty.

However, inventive solution providers in the private sector have more incentive to try out new approaches and no repercussions from colluding with different specialists. Therefore, it is no surprise that many of the most surprising solutions are coming from the private sector, even though we spend oodles on publicly funded research.

How will this help you win work?

By now, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – most defense research grants come from this agency) has informed the DoD agencies of the need for collaboration when faced with projects requiring strong problem solving skills. This will show up in RFP requirements that might read a bit mystically. What they are after is a demonstration that you understand how to collaborate and know the specific benefits of collaboration.

This will trickle down to Transportation and other procuring agencies, if it hasn’t already.

What can you do now to be ready?

In your project summary database, watch for examples of collaboration and highlight them on major projects. Find examples of collaboration among educational specialties. Don’t make the mistake of thinking they are looking for “diversity” of demography. 

If you maintain a storytelling database, add “collaboration” to the list of stories you seek.

Mark Vickers of the Institute for Corporate Productivity has a white paper out which outlines the state of management in the virtual realm. Click here to take a look.

My experience backs up his research: Corporations think good managers are able to manage virtually, as well as site-based, but unfortunately this isn’t true.

In my experience and research, superb virtual managers differ from superb site-based managers in several ways. I found by tracking manager’s profit performance that there is a distinct difference between the managers who were successful with virtual projects, and the managers who were successful site managers. Virtual skills might be taught, but the skills aren’t intuitive to successful site-based managers.

Organizations with an advantage in the next decade:

• Train managers in Virtual Skills
• Watch for new managers whose natural talents give them an advantage in virtual realms, and make sure these folks are promoted to best advantage
• Evaluate managers to match the skill set to the specific challenge.

Read about the results we found by clicking here. 

Things to do now:

• How are the virtual management skills in your team? Proposal teams need these skills to manage proposals across offices and with subcontractors. Do you struggle to communicate action needed? Have you built rapport with those you’ve never met?
• Second, how are the virtual management skills of your project managers? Can you document capabilities in this area? Now would be a good time to dig up statistical evidence of your firm’s virtual management expertise. This will be a real deal maker for capable firms who can prove their virtual management expertise.

And of course, if I can help, please call me! I’ve worked with several large organizations to train and help identify upcoming virtual managers. Lately, I’m training managers of one branch of the U.S. military.

Phred Dvorak of the Wall Street Journal wrote an article this week about Ram Charan, management guru to the fortune 500,and his new book, What the Customer Wants You to Know: How Everybody Needs to Think Differently About Sales .

Mr. Charan generally writes on management issues, and a book on sales was a surprise for some of his readers.

But many very large companies approach sales in a traditional way that horrified Charan, and this book is intended to help them get on track.  He calls his approach value creation selling and encourages firms to focus on knowing their customer and their needs, developing proposals to improve results for the customer, and expanding the sales approach to a team of contacts rather than relying on a single Rambo-style sales assault on major opportunities.

The concept isn’t new* but having a well-respected expert join forces to promote a customer-centric approach is the news and helpful.

Successful professional service firms and government contractors partner with their customers and design solutions to meet the needs of a variety of stakeholders. But many large firms in other industries are still using a dedicated sales force designed to “sell” rather than a team designed to uncover the breadth of stakeholder needs required to be successful.

If your organization is seeing these symptoms, you can help by directing executives to thought provoking material such as this book.

* See The Magic of Winning Proposals, and see What Changed Your Sales Cycle and Why? a white paper of mine from 2005.