The last minute scramble to throw things together and get it out the door is nonsense. It will cost you contracts you should have won. I always say the most expensive proposal is one that didn’t win. But really, the most expensive proposal is one that didn’t win because it never got reviewed because it was late or non-compliant and was tossed out before the reviewers saw it. (How ’bout the time the RFP specified that every page be numbered, but someone’s 11×17 z-fold wasn’t, and it got tossed out by the compliance clerk?)

How do you get everyone’s cooperation to stay on schedule?

Tell a Story

Storytelling

Never let a teaching moment slip by. Broadcast stories about your near misses and heroic saves that were possible because the schedule was met by the technical staff.

• When a competitor’s proposal was not accepted because the team stepped off the elevator on the wrong floor with less than one minute to delivery deadline, we made sure everyone in the firm knew about it.
• When a FedEx truck broke down with a proposal inside, and we had to empty a PMs discretionary account to courier a backup copy on the last flight out (at 10 times the usual flight cost), we made sure everyone knew about it. And the story included how lucky we were that the proposal team followed our schedule so that we actually had a) backup copies ready and b) time to get on a plane with the proposal.
• When a proposal was due in a remote corner of West Virginia, and our production schedule includes a step to confirm at least two delivery paths, we found that FedEx doesn’t deliver to that town. Because the schedule was adjusted for this, we prepared for electronic delivery to a Kinko’s in that town, where they could print, bind and courier the proposal on our behalf. When the roads became impassable during a storm, 3 of our esteemed competitors failed to make delivery deadline, but we were on time.
• When a proposal was discovered to have a mistake that under-priced the fixed fee by 18%, which we found while running through our production checklist, we made sure everyone knew about our production checklist saving the day.
• When the client server went down the day before the proposal was due, and didn’t come back up for 3 days, but since you’d accounted for the possibility of their new system backing up, you’d delivered 2 days before deadline and then told everyone in the firm about it.

Don’t assume your technical staff has any idea what you guys do once they turn in their materials. They don’t know and don’t care.

But don’t think they aren’t interested in hearing a good story. They are.

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?

http://goo.gl/tjr4A

Here’s a great idea to make presentations more mobile.

In most meetings, folks are carrying smart phones,  iPads or laptops. Why not use that feature to expand your ability to present anywhere you meet?

Here’s how it works:

1) Post your presentation slides to SlideShare.net

2) Create a short URL for your presentation slides.

Search “short URL” for sites that convert long URLs to a tiny URL all free. If you use Google’s service, you can save yourself a step below.

3) Create a QR code that points to your slides on Slideshare.net

Search “QR code create” for sites that create a QR code from a URL. If you used Google’s service above, just add “.qr” to the end of your short URL and click to get your QR code.

4) provide the QR code and short URL to your meeting members.

If they are on a smart phone, they’ll scan the URL and be instantly looking at your slideshow. If they are on a laptop, they’ll type in your URL and be instantly looking at your slideshow. If they are on a tablet, they’ll do either, depending on whether they have a camera or browser.

You could print these on businesscards you hand out, you could offer the scan from your phone, you could email the short URL with QR code.

I didn’t think of this, but I wish I had. Todd Ogasawara at SocialTimes thought of this when he was asked to speak to a group, but they met in a restaurant without AV support. His commenters added the suggestion of having a URL alongside, so folks without cameras could also join in.

Proposals can use this idea: Think about building a set of pages with additional detail/illustrations/animation for which QR codes could be created and printed in your proposal. Do you honestly think a technical reviewer will pass by the opportunity to check out what is behind the QR code?

Is huddling around a big laptop to show a presentation more professional than allowing each person to see the presentation on their own device? I’ve seen folks lugging in laptops for meeting presentations, but that limits the audience to one person or maybe two if they are comfortable snuggling up to one another.

For confidential materials, you can get a short URL that is time limited. Search for “URL shortener temporary time limit” which allows you to reach pages you don’t want them seeing again after you are out of the room.

Would it help if you knew whether they were showing the materials to others? Many of the short URL sites provide tracking so you can see how many folks visit the link.

All the examples here are free services, so you have no excuse not to try it out and noodle about how it might help your organization.

I’ll stop here. Lot’s of interesting opportunity to expand your ability to reach prospects. Go get’em!

Gotta love the idea of engineering change by adding fun to the equation. What about your process could be changed positively by adding fun?

Lottery for resume updates? Video dance of Joy for on-time submissions?

• all their phone numbers (work, home, cell),
• all their email addresses (work, and  home) and
• street addresses (work, home, girlfriend) suitable for overnight delivery of documents.

Folks would tease that I kept a “little black yellow pages” with all the personal contact information for so many folks in the firm.

You never know when you’ll need to reach someone and proposals are too time sensitive to wait for the next business day.

< my excuse > I was brought in to help with a proposal underway and did not have the authority nor buyin to use my usual process.< /my excuse >

Sure enough, we go into our crunch weekend, and discover that no one has the home number for the keeper of the cost section. There was a problem, we’d called in a consultant to figure it out, but when he was ready, the cost person was AWOL. Friday night. No response to office voicemail messages nor emails. Great. That cost extra since the consultant had to work blind. With a 5 minute phone call, he’d have finished in minutes. But without his questions answered, he needed more time to work on his own, write out complete instructions, and discuss all possible answers to his questions. Luckily we had until Sunday morning to finish the cost section.

Saturday we meet, but the files are not available. Some of the firm’s servers are down and the internal team members can’t communicate. However, we don’t know this because we don’t have alternative email addresses that could be used to alert everyone. And we don’t have an alternative repository (I use Dropbox, so copies of everything would have been on all our hardrives in a case where the server had gone down.) so we waste time sending files to alternative home email accounts once we get together by phone.

Sunday, we need final approval and the signature of a principal of the firm. You guessed it, no one had the guy’s home phone number. The files couldn’t be emailed earlier because the servers were off line. He was carrying a blackberry so we could communicate with him, but he wasn’t close to a fax machine, and couldn’t open documents.

I abhor heroic efforts to do what should be effortless. I save the heroics for legitimate emergencies, and manage with a process designed to avoid details tripping up progress.

Example of a Legitimate Emergency:

True story: It’s final production on a proposal after hours, and the proposal person is packing proposals in a box. He looks out the window when he hears some commotion. A moose has ambled into the parking lot and walks over his car, smashing the roof in, and breaking all the windows. (Evidently moose aren’t too smart nor delicate.) This is a good reason to have home phone numbers in case you can’t get a taxi in time to get you to the last courier drop.

Here are my favorites and several of them have versions for Blackberry and Droid phones:

For File Management:

Dropbox provides In the cloud access to files, and being able to view them from my iPhone is an extra great feature. I use this with teams across networks, when we have subcontractors as well as insiders working on a proposal. It works across all computer platforms.

Time Management:

Timebridge. I wasted hours trading emails to set up meetings with multiple parties. Now I send one email and let Timebridge take it from there. The meeting shows up on my calendar as soon as everyone has replied. This works across all computer platforms, and having it also on my iPhone is a great extra feature.

All Hours by Halle Winkler/Politepix. Setting a time for a meeting across time zones often resulted in my noting the wrong time in my calendar. This allows me to see up to three locations at once, and when I’ve agreed to a meeting time, I’m one click from having it added to my calendar.

Proposal Delivery:

Drop It Off. Provides me with a map and directions to FedEx and/or UPS closest locations and sorts for things like “still open and still shipping today” and “latest drop off points within 5 miles or 25 miles.”

Delivery Status by Junecloud. Now I know exactly where a package is, whether a document on the way to a client, or supplies I need for a presentation. (This is Mac only)

What Apps do you have on your iPhone that make a difference?

Look at the Other Side of the Coin

However, I have an alternative viewpoint when my own copyright is violated. When folks “borrow” my materials, I am thrilled so long as they attribute the work to me and/or my website.

I was not born with this enlightened perspective.

Back in 1996, I was writing my training manual, The Magic of Winning Proposals. Friends were subcontracted to help me write and edit the manual. I threw all the pages up on the web, so everyone would have one source for the latest version of each page. I knew the search engine spiders would eventually find these pages, and made a note to myself to remove them as soon as possible. (This was before a small operator could easily firewall portions of their website, and FTP was too slow for our purposes.)

At the same time, I was new in my consulting practice. I was tracking my time carefully so I could figure out my split of of hours spent on billable, marketing, and administrative tasks. Because I was tracking my hours, I knew exactly how much time I spent responding to freeloaders. Freeloaders are the folks who called and snowed me as to their actual ability to pay for my advice. They would talk about hiring me, pick my brains, ask for a full blown proposal and then disappear. I knew I had to get better at screening freeloaders so I could spend my time in a fashion that would pay the mortgage.

After a few weeks work on my training manual, the search engines found my pages. I was surprised to see that these draft pages rose in the search engines over my carefully written home page and website pages. I was determined to wrap things up in the next 3 weeks and take those pages down.

However, I noticed something that didn’t make sense. The hours I spent on freeloaders dropped off to almost nothing. And, I’d started getting thank you notes from people who couldn’t afford to hire a consultant or trainer, but who needed some tidbit of information about my areas of expertise, Winning Proposals and Building Virtual Teams.

I’m a sociologist by training, and figured out what was happening. Some folks needing help couldn’t afford to hire me. They would find my website, and knew I had knowledge they needed but could not afford. When they were unsuccessful finding answers to their questions, they would begin to justify their “need” against my “fees.” Then, they would approach me to get the help they needed without paying me, and justified a dishonest approach because I was “withholding” from them.

Without realizing it, I’d created a negative vortex that was costing me hours of wasted effort, PLUS eliminating any positive impression that might result in work for me in the future. With this mindset, these people would never come back to hire me when their firm got bigger. With this mindset, they couldn’t regard me well. With this mindset, they wouldn’t remember me and call when they’d moved on to a larger firm where my services would be helpful.

This stopped when I “gave away” my training manual.

And I’ve been given contracts by people who found my manual, used it, and later were in a position to expand their expertise, and hired me to help them.

Funny thing is, I’ve never lost a contract because my manual is available on-line for free. Larger firms who can afford my services realize there are lots of books on my topic. They aren’t buying my manual, they are buying my expertise and ability to motivate their staff.

My competitors were sure I was nuts.They can’t believe I have my training manual on-line, though some of them are catching on to the profitability of “giving it away.”

My clients regularly get the pitch to cut costs by giving away data. One of my clients, a fortune 50 company, realized they’d wasted thousands on sales calls because they had a database they’d locked behind their firewall that non-customers needed to query. Once they unlocked the database and “leaked” the URL to the query page, they dropped a nice percent of sales calls (costing $5,000 each) and got thank you notes instead.

What valuable materials are you keeping locked away that are costing you money by witholding them from the wild?

Their idea was that technology was reaching a point at which democracy could be a reality. That is, that voters, if provided the information in a video feed, could decide for themselves what government should or should not do, rather than relying on representatives to make the decisions for them. They traipsed around putting all sorts of meetings on the campus television channel. It was radical stuff to roll in and broadcast a Board of Trustees meeting. This level of publicity was uncomfortable at the time. National Town Meeting dared to tape the Illinois State Legislature in session and were threatened with arrest.

Years later, CSpan was authorized and it became normal to tune in to local, state and federal governing sessions in action. Boring, but normal.

Today, we call this Transparency and consider it a virtue to be willing to lay bare the mechanics of governance.

President Elect Obama used the internet to communicate with his campaign volunteers and staff to an overwhelming extent.

During the transition they continued the practice. One example, was a “Seat at the Table.” This policy provides notes of all meetings with outsiders, and posts documents from those meetings on-line. The website is set up as a blog, with the opportunity to comment and make suggestions.

Websites for transparency of the spending on the stimulus package are already up at www.recovery.gov

I love hearing that government agencies are gearing up to get more on-line than ever before. GSA is leading the way with management of their site, www.USA.gov encouraging new uses for the site and assisting agencies.

Some state governments have already learned the economics of transparency. Here in Wisconsin, an amazing amount of state business can be conducted on-line, saving plenty of labor and time for both government and citizens. The expense of transitioning might be born by the stimulous bill, with savings that continue long after.

If your clients are government agencies, how can you help? Are there ideas you have about digitizing technical data for public access? What would streamline services if only you could . . .

Are you on-line to the extent suitable?

It is inexpensive to hire me to review a proposal for you. I can travel to review with your review panel, or work remotely on comments for your proposal team.

I also am available to come manage a review meeting, helping coax actionable, helpful, comments from your review team. In one instance, I was asked to moderate a review team of 20 executives from six firms, with a Senior Vice President with a reputation for gutting proposals at the last minute. The proposal team was worried about what reasonably could be done if the review became a drubbing of this large, important proposal.

In that case, we brought sucinct comments to the team, which could be implemented in the time remaining, and resulted in short-listing the team.

Call me to schedule a review of your proposal!

Question: Hi Laura,
I read your posts about Fun at Work and loved your ideas. I am an Admin Assistant for a satellite office of a large company. Our satellite office has roughly 14 people, but there are usually around 7-8 people in the office at a time since many employees can work from home or are traveling, and I am the only means of Administrative support physically in the office. I am finding it difficult to keep spirits up with the sagging economy and such a small office — many of our employees tend to complain no matter what I suggest. I have planned a few potluck lunches which we all enjoy and will probably institute a chili or salsa making contest as well.
With limited space, budget, and employee numbers, I would greatly appreciate some ideas to put smiles on some faces.

Tough crowds. I love ‘em.

Here are a few ideas. The first two are holiday events (tuck them away for next year) and the third is good anytime, with a few random suggestions to get your own creative juices flowing.

A) Mystery Gift Exchange

Create descriptions of each person that does not identify them. You are the perfect person to know some tidbits about each person that are not generally known by the rest of their colleagues.

For example:
I once played pool with a professional pool shark, as his ?bait man.? I would start the play, and be good enough to be a challenge, but not good enough to be overwhelming. Once we had an agreement to bet on the game, I’d set up the table for the professional, and then step aside while he cleared the table.

When I was fifteen, I bought my first car. It was a drag racer, and my buddies and I were going to soup it up for racing. My Dad went along to sign the papers and drive the car home since I was too young to drive on the streets. When he drove it, he realized the car was dangerous because it was already very fast off the start. He made me agree never to drive this thing on the streets because it was so dangerous. I guess it didn’t occur to him that drag racing might be dangerous as well.

My sister lives in Nicaragua as a missionary.

My mother worked on an assembly line for a munitions plant during WWII.

Pass out the descriptions to folks as their Xmas gift exchange. No fair sneaking around trying to figure out who you have. You have to buy a gift based only on the description you have.

You’ll be surprised at the gifts folks come up with. Much more interesting than the usual desk calendars you see at office gift exchanges. Participation is pretty good because no one knows who has the boss’ description.

B) Xmas Pixies

You draw names for your secret pixie, and no one tells anyone whose name they got. Between the drawing, and your holiday party, the pixies get to work.

Secret pixies can be good (leaving a few pieces of chocolate on their desk while they are away at lunch) or nasty (emptying their trash can on their chair while they are away at lunch). Folks who witness a pixie can’t let on that they know who the secret pixie is. Most pixies vacillate between being good and nasty. (Leave a bowl of fresh popped popcorn one afternoon, pour a cup of salt on their desk the next afternoon with a note ?Forgot the salt.?

C)   Kidnap your bosses stapler, favorite coffee mug, favorite pen.

The purloined item will be traveling a good deal, so get a sturdy container for shipping it back and forth. Take several pictures of yourself with the item, holding, using, scrubbing or having the item in the background. Print the pictures to send along with the instructions. Include these instructions in the shipping container with your pictures:

Tag! You are it! BOSS’SNAME will be looking for me soon, but I am anxious to get out of that stuffy office. Thanks for letting me visit.
Take a picture for my vacation album, add it to my box, and send me on my way to someone else from the office who I haven’t yet visited. OOPS! Don’t forget to cross your name and address off the list, or I’ll end up back again to visit soon!

By the time the item has made the rounds, it will likely be a topic around the group, by email and phone. Your boss may ask about the item, and that is always helpful.

This is a nice stunt for the month or two before Boss’s birthday. Helps to knit folks together. If you have a WIKI for your office, the pictures could be posted there, in an album you’ve tucked away on the site.

Good morale boosters are designed around your own office antics, and avoid ridicule. For example, we had a PM who mentioned that they hated yellow M&Ms. When a big project was won by that PM, we awarded them a jar of M&Ms with the yellow ones picked out.

When a fellow retired from full-time employment but continued on as a part-time consultant, we gave him a “gold office key” as a retirement gift, rather than a gold watch. (Took an office key out and had it gold plated)

Once you get the hang of noticing things peculiar to your teamates, it gets easier to knit folks together with morale boosting events. Practice makes perfect.

Have fun!
Laura Ricci

P.S. Congratulations to you for leading organizational change. I hope your boss appreciates your efforts or comes to recognize them before someone else recruits you to their firm.