Laura's Winning Ideas

Scary news today about a security breach by a contractor handling sensitive information for a client.

The SAIC employee’s car, a 2003 Honda Civic, was parked in a garage that housed many luxury cars, “yet the thief or thieves, who went to great effort to avoid security, did not break into any of the luxury cars in the garage, targeting instead the relatively inexpensive car containing the confidential data.”

Industrial espionage is a real threat, and proposal teams are in the cross hairs because they handle time-sensitve and critical mission-sensitive information every day. Don’t get casual about the confidential nature of your information.

These incidents should be used by proposal managers to tune up everyone’s awareness of the importance of security for all your proposal information.

Have a brainstorming session to discuss what might be a security breach for your group, and talk about how to tighten it up a bit.

Here’s a few ideas to consider:

1) Back in the dark ages, proposal teams had to create their own backups and decide how and where to store them. Today, you can count on your IT department automatically doing this for you. However you should ask about your backup procedure. In one firm, I discovered that the IT department had the members of the proposal team on a lower priority backup schedule. Once a week is not nearly often enough for a proposal team.

Since the team wasn’t considered executive staff, their computers weren’t flagged as being more mission critical than the Marketing VP. I’m prejudice, but everyone handling a proposal due in 30 days, for serious money, are more critical than someone handling the color of the new logo.

2) Laptops. How do you manage these?

What is your property policy? How and where can they be used? Does everyone know how to distinguish a secure internet connection from an insecure internet connection? Invite IT in for a brown bag session, and buy their lunch to show you how to stay safe on-line.

3) Fax machines. I hate ‘em because they are almost completely insecure. A seven year old can set up an intercept on a fax machine undetected. If you must use one, make sure it is the busiest machine you can find, so someone would have to pull out your information from all the minuetae being transmitted. Better yet, don’t use them. I only use them for lunch orders.

4) Print shop. Most of the current printers keep a file of every page copied in memory. When I use an outside print shop, I bring some work and sit there during production.  Any misprints I take with me for destruction, rather than let them sit in their trash bins. When we are finished, I stand next to the operator and watch as they delete all our files.

Check your own copy machines and printers and ask IT to help you create a procedure to purge the memory on them if they don’t automatically delete. My printer deletes only when it shuts down, but not otherwise, so during proposal production, it gets rebooted everyday.

5) Email lists. Some of us use emails lists to communicate during proposals. Have you checked these lists lately? Sometimes we fail to notice that someone has left the company, or is no longer in the same department and in a “need to know” status. Clean up your lists, or better yet, make it a policy to delete mailing lists after each proposal and recreate at proposal start.

One of my proposal team members was responsible for the daily backup to tape (I’m REALLY old!) and we talked about the safest place to keep the backup tape. My policy was that the most recent tape had to leave the building each night. He jiggered a cassette tape from a local band, so his backup tape would travel with him undetected. The two greatest talents of proposal professionals are that we are all ingenious and fun. Use it!

Follow your data and you’ll come up with more potential leaks you can address before a problem arises. Stay Safe out there!

Archetypes were described by the ancient Greeks, and used in Jungian psychology to analyze family dynamics. Today they are used to guide marketing for corporations.

If you are a manufacturer of consumer goods and will need millions of buyers to grasp the value of your brand of gizmo, a discussion about archetypes will help you design a message that is more compelling than BUY OUR GIZMO!

If you are a soap manufacturer, you spend time and serious money on just the right inflection to communicate your special features, to the masses of potential soap buyers. But no matter what color, size or variety of advertising, you are just selling soap. (and dreams)

But for my clients, this approach is not the best, and often is a complete waste of time and energy:

1. We are not mass manufacturers. We are more similar to bespoke(1) Tailors. Each client seeks professional help to create/solve/construct a one-off project. Trying to attract them to your firm by noodling over a mass market message won’t work, and is more likely to make you look silly.

2. We provide the solutions required in the moment. And that means we solve problems differently depending on the issues of critical importance to that client for this project. So an archetype that applies today, will not apply to the next project we do, and will change again with the following project. It’s a rabbit not worth chasing.

However, it is important to always be honing your skills and finding new ways to extract the precious stories that qualify your firm for great projects. Archetypes can inspire you and give you questions to help your technical staff remember stories and tidbits about their work and solving client issues. These you weave into stories about why you are a valuable asset to future clients.

TRUE STORY

Our client was a micro-manager. He liked to be at the table every time a meeting was held about their project. The lead PM had learned to include him as a member of the team to a degree way beyond most client’s desires. We’d won work regularly with this client and knew what he wanted and we gave it to him. (Damsel, Guide, Great Mother archetypes)

But now we had a new project RFP. The building was similar to others we’d done for them, but in our meeting to discuss the opportunity (GO/NOGO meeting) I asked what was changed from the last time we proposed to them. “Well, one of his kids has leukemia. They just found out a few weeks ago. She’s starting treatment at the Children’s Cancer Hospital. Very sad.”

Would our usual approach work when he would need time for his family? Should we offer a different approach? Wouldn’t a turn-key project be better for him under the circumstances? We took a chance.

“You know us, and how we make decisions. You can trust us to include you when necessary. And this project is similar enough to projects X,Y and Z that we know how you’d like most of the details handled. This time, we propose a turn-key project that minimizes the hours needed for your involvement and provides you sufficient access to know we are meeting your expectations.” (Networker, Mentor, Engineer archetypes)

We won, and his daughter finished treatment by the time ground was broken.

In our industries, focus on a firm-wide archetype misses the greater value our clients seek in us. They want to be heard, and their problems solved. The successful firms deliver bespoke solutions with grace and passion. It is challenging and interesting work we do.

If we were tailors, we’d think it fun to make a Red Zoot Suit for one customer, a tuxedo for the next, and a military uniform for the next, and an “ordinary” looking suit for a lawyer needing to connect with a jury.

We ain’t selling soap.

(1) bespoke describes a high degree of “customization”, and involvement of the end-user, in the production of the goods. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bespoke Retrieved 2011-10-11.

This week I’m noticing some great marketing. If your firm is in one of the industries affected by the downturn (who isn’t?) keeping a positive attitude can be hard, but very worthwhile:

Just got a robo call from the local Theatre. Now, I appreciate that sales are down and the Fine Arts are struggling. I’ve been called regularly by the Symphony the Ballet and almost every theatre to which I’ve ever purchased a ticket. This call was different.

After a blessedly quick intro, Scrooge came on the line, to tell me very quickly about a sale on tickets to the upcoming Christmas Carol that coin squeezers like us would appreciate. The sale is on Monday of next week, buy tickets online or by phone. Now, Get back to work! he barked, and the call was ended.

Perfect. I wouldn’t have otherwise gone to this performance, but I might now buy tickets just to support great marketing like this.

Here’s the other I noticed this week. Border’s Books closed in one of the nicest buildings downtown. We have our share of vacant space downtown, and most of it looks sad. Here’s some of the signs in the windows of this place:

First Lease sign to capture my imagination

Lease sign in storefront Milwaukee

Lease sign in retail window

Here's the Building being Leased. It fronts on the Milwaukee River and two major Downtown Streets.

And the typical Lease sign. Boring. Sad.

If you are looking for space, who are you going to call?

If you are a reviewer of proposals, which one are you going to pick up first? Which team do you want to work with?

Photo from druzifer.livejournal.com. Druzifer's Journal

This weekend was another turning point for Social Media.

In Texas, months of drought set them up for wildfires throughout the central part of the state. In the end a few lives were lost, hundreds of homes were lost, and we don’t know yet how many pets and livestock perished or were lost.

It was hard to find information yesterday, chaotic earlier today, and now, things seem to be settling into a routine to manage news, evacuations, animals and begin figuring out where to go from here.

Television was worthless. I knew more about what was going on than friends who are social media illiterates in the areas threatened by the wildfires. They were glued to television, and I live in Milwaukee Wisconsin.

A few gals I know (Ruth, Bonnie and Betsy) in Texas  kept the posts flowing on Facebook until pages could get organized to coordinate news of evacuations and the large animal folks could get organized. Others were also posting, re-posting and tweeting to connect information to folks who needed/wanted to know what was going on. I stayed glued to the screen for the last two days.

Hopefully the local authorities were doing a great job on the ground and every person got the information they needed to evacuate or not.

I’m just a rubber-necker, eavesdropping on the crisis, but it seemed obvious that the large animals were overlooked in planning for such an emergency. The wildfires charred acres of ranch land where 70% of the horses in the US live, central Texas. However, evacuation of livestock wasn’t part of the game plan for the strapped emergency responders.

The evacuation of horses and large animals required some innovation which turned out to be self-organized on Facebook and Twitter. It was fascinating to watch, and should be lessons learned for every business uncertain whether they should be on social media and anyone who might be faced with a crisis that requires timely information in order to react appropriately.

What started out as limited options, slowly became organized evacuation.

Traditionally, horses are let loose to fend for themselves in a wildfire. It’s a nasty option. You are uncertain you’ll ever see your horse again, and certain the sensitive creatures will never be the same again. But getting horses into a trailer takes time you can’t afford. And they can out-run cars and trucks, so traditionally it has been the only possible option when fire was headed your direction.

One friend was out of town when her husband got the call to evacuate. He had no choice and let the horses out to fend for themselves. Luckily, by 2AM he got an opportunity for another run home, and he had the chance to catch and trailer out his wife’s favorite horse. By morning, he got another chance to return and corral and trailer out the others.

However, there were at least 12 hours of no options for folks with livestock in the path of the wildfires. But by the end of just 12 hours, folks with ranch land, water, food or trailers were organizing to fetch horses and other livestock in harm’s way. Everything took place in plain view on Facebook and Twitter.

A zoo was evacuated in just a few hours when things started to look dicey.

The right (or maybe “good enough”) equipment arrived and new safe havens were arranged so exotic animals could be moved. Cell phones were helpful, but overwhelmed as the emergency spread. However, a single call was amplified when posted to Facebook looking for “enclosed heavy metal trailers of at least X’ x X’ and able to travel at least XX miles to deliver drugged lion and two drugged tigers. Three additional enclosed trailers able to carry at least XXXX lbs. each for transport of exotic animals in heavy cages.etc. ” (paraphrased from my own memory of the post)

Veterinarians running low on supplies put out the word for replenishment so they could stay in place while volunteers picked up and delivered.

When the wind shifted, a safe haven for 43 evacuated horses faced fires coming their way. In less than 3 hours the horses were on their way again. If you’ve ever watched horses being loaded to trailers in a calm setting, you know loading this many horses in an emergency is a miracle.

I especially loved seeing University of California at Davis Veterinary School piping in. They offered suggestions. “If you must release horses into the wild when evacuation can’t be arranged spray paint your phone number on their side.” I sent this suggestion along to one of my social media illiterates with my insistence that they sign up for Facebook immediately since this ain’t the last of the wildfires in Texas this season.

There were a few moments of levity. Everyone tuned in to one of the several sites serving up radar with fire postings. By using radar, they showed the smoke plumes so folks with respiratory problems could plan their response. Around dusk on Monday, a new large plume showed up on the radar. For a few minutes panicky posts came over asking whether this new area was yet evacuated. Turns out the colonies of free-tail bats come out in swarms each evening. They mass so tightly and in such great numbers, that radar picks them up and they look like a smoke cloud.

Don’t let the lesson be lost. Make sure your company hears about how Social Media got information flowing so people didn’t have to panic, working without enough information. How might this be used by your clients/firm?