Laura’s Winning Ideas

An ancestor of mine, Matteo Ricci, is back in the news this week. A map commissioned by the Chinese royal house is on display in Washington DC at the Library of Congress. You can read the BBC article and see a picture here.

Matteo Ricci was the first missionary from the West who was welcome and became revered by the Chinese leadership. He arrived in 1583 with new knowledge from the West, but was open to discovering the sciences and inventiveness of the Chinese educated class. Contrary to the BBC article, he was not the first missionary sent to China, but the first who was allowed to stay.

His first work in China was a small book, On Friendship, which just became available in the US in english. The Chinese Prince who had commissioned the book was pleased, and the small book became very popular in China.

I’m going to try to get to Washington D.C. to see this before it leaves for Minnesota where it will have a permanent home with its new owner. It’s one thing to try to keep up with the Joneses, but just try to avoid being a slacker with ancestors like these!

If your firm works for government contractors, you may have heard complaints from the government about problems with contractors. Sometimes we presume those problems must be of personality or technical approach. But most of the time I suspect complaints stem from lack of understanding.

The Shoe is on the Other Foot

For instance, I hired a contractor to update my website to the latest version of software. The site is large, with over 200 pages. And I’m not technically competent with these CMS platforms (that’s why I hired them to do it for me!)
In the meantime, I’m busy with other work.

Problems Creep In

The contractor is quite competent at what they do. I’ve worked with them before, so I’m not worried that they aren’t doing the right stuff. However, they’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that this project is my main focus, and are treating it like the center of my universe as well as theirs. I’ve been on their side.

Who among us doesn’t feel the proposal in front of us is of paramount concern and should trump anything else on the desk of the Subject Matter Expert we are calling upon for a resume update?

This morning I check in to see what progress is being made and I get a message assigning me work! To complicate matters, the message is in a foreign language: “Additionally, be sure to use JCE advance link for the internal links so that all links will be the Joomla’s default, not the SEF ones as it will cause problems when turning off SEF.”

Take a Deep Breath

So, now I have new work I hadn’t anticipated (1st problem) and instructions that presume more knowledge than I have (2nd problem) and no alternative offered to solve either (3rd “opportunity”).

How to Make it Win Win

The beginning of the project is key to ending with a successful project.
Ever notice that some proposals go smoothly and others are knock down, drag out, battles? When I think back on these proposals, I usually find that we tried to skip or give short shrift to a methodical kick-off meeting, and/or new players joined in but were not given a full briefing before taking on tasks.

Problem 1 could have been solved if the contractor had gone over the process and explained in the beginning that there would be some work I would have to do to rename files once he got close to the end of the project. I would have been ready and willing.

How often do we get push back when we send a request for information or a write up we need to respond to a specific section of the RFP? Is it possible we could do a better job prepping folks so they know these types of needs will crop up and need to be responded to promptly? Were any examples offered so that they had a clear picture of what your requests might look like? Did you tell them a story about prior proposals so it was easy to remember and easy to imagine themselves in the role they have for your proposal?

Anatomy of a Winning Grant
from Jerry Buonanno of Executive Consulting Group

Stimulus funding has targeted industries and providers who aren’t the usual government contractors. In order to meet the objectives of the program, “shovel ready” projects are required, and DOE has targeted energy initiatives that will move the US away from foreign oil importation and develop new energy industries.

Our client was interested in the goings-on because they had been working on a new way to make a key ingredient for high technology batteries. BUT they weren’t accustomed to writing government proposals, and in fact didn’t know what they would have to do to manage a government project. And of course, only one person on the team had ever written a proposal. The rest had only seen one that was over 15 years old, and from a long-ago division that wasn’t even in existence any longer.

ECG was asked to provide some modest help, and Don Street flew in to help them set up the budgets and begin evaluating the changes needed to meet government accounting requirements. Once they saw the work required for the budgeting, they decided Don would have to stay with the project to the end.

As they began wrestling with the RFP, they again asked ECG to send in some help, and Laura Ricci was selected to work with them on the proposal. When she arrived, they had organized themselves and set a schedule, so they were doing pretty well. But some of the government language was cryptic and Laura translated the needs of DOE to maximize their score.

They had also set a figure for the request which they based on the available funding in the RFP, and were struggling to get internal support for a project that would require additional resources to meet the government schedule plus manage the risk of fast-tracking a large project.

Laura recommended they double their request and actually ask for the complete cost share amount needed rather than the amount they thought DOE would be willing to provide. “Their invention is critical to the mission of DOE.” said Laura Ricci. “If we could explain this clearly, I felt DOE would organize around funding this project.” and she continued, “The worst case would be the DOE offering a lower amount, but likely more than the “fair share” the client had estimated.”  This was a scary proposition since DOE was completely unaware of this ingredient before being briefed by the client a few weeks before the Stimulus package was released, and the RFP didn’t mention ingredients.

Announcements were just made and this client was happy to hear that they had been awarded the full amount requested and are off and running to meet an aggressive deadline in support of DOE objectives.

OMG. This technology is too cool to miss.

This is from GE Ecomagination group. That’s me, holding a hologram that moves as I move the frame. To create this 3D hologram, I’ve printed out a frame and then held it up to my webcam, push the button and magic is in my hands. The sun rotates as I move my paper “frame.”

Too Cool to Miss Technology

Do this yourself by clicking on the picture, or going to the website here.

Most proposal folks I know are fascinated by technology. After all, who else could do what we do, bringing science and technology to life under the constraints of a typical proposal RFP?

If you have a webcam, this is a cinch. Now, for the serious part.

Could your next proposal deliver a working model?

How can your firm use this technology to deliver demonstrations of your work? Would it help to send working models  with a proposal? In this screenshot, you can’t see the moving elements: sun, solar panels, birds, etc.

What will happen if your competition adopts this first?

Check out the website for information about the code required for this animation. Inspire someone at your firm to take a look at this and wonder about whether it can be used to help demonstrate a project in a sales call, or help decision-makers get comfortable with your recommendations.

The code for this hologram is open source. My favorite price, free. However, as Professor Dave Clark says, “That’s free as in free speech, not free beer.”