This is a guest post by Carl Dickson of CapturePlanning.com and PropLIBRARY. Even when they want to help out, the reality is that you can’t always depend on the people who contribute to your proposal, especially if this falls outside of their other job responsibilities.
In a two-part guest series, Carl is sharing 29 helpful tips for this situation. After presenting his techniques you can use at the proposal level in Part 1, here in Part 2 offers techniques for the organizational level.
Now let’s take a look at some organizational improvement techniques that can have a profound impact on how well people cooperate during a proposal:
15. Incentives, consequences, and rewards. Think beyond financial incentives for participating in a proposal. Think about intrinsic rewards. Growth is the source of all opportunity in an organization. Make sure people realize it. Make that realization personal.
16. Capacity planning. Of course there aren’t enough resources. But is there a light at the end of the tunnel? What is being done about it? Is it getting attention or being ignored?
17. Role modeling. Are the behaviors you need to maximize the organization’s win rate being demonstrated? Role modeling trumps lecturing. Every. Time.
18. Environmental support. Is the environment supportive? Does it facilitate cooperation? Or is there a lot of organizational friction that impedes people’s ability to get things done?
19. Resource allocation. Are resources allocated to maximize ROI? Is the proposal function being treated as a cost to be minimized or an investment to be cultivated?
20. Data driven decision making. Proposals are all about ROI. ROI discussions should be data driven and not opinion driven. Is the right data being tracked to support this?
21. Open dialog. Can these things be discussed? Will someone listen?
22. Interventions. This can include everything from clarification and priority resets to appraisals, coaching, and supervision.
23. Compensation. Think beyond the paycheck. How about a day off after working the weekend? Or covering meals when working late for a week straight? Meditate on what the word “compensate” means and a world of opportunities can open.
24. Culture. Is the reality of your corporate culture different from your aspirations? Are you building a winning culture, or is your company’s culture just happening?
25. Reengineering. Your staff can’t decide it’s time for a reset without you. They will only be as committed to it as you are.
26. Job and work design. How are positions defined? What are the expectations, risks, and rewards that go along with them? Is the way your staff see their positions in the organization getting in the way?
27. Staff and capability development. What capabilities do you need in your organization if you want to maximize your win rate? Are you growing them? How should that impact your proposal staffing and resource allocation decisions?
28. Competition. A little bit of the right kind of internal competition between people and business units can change how people cooperate. For better or worse. How does this impact your culture?
29. ROI. ROI. ROI. Is it worth it? Do the math. Every time we’ve worked through it with companies, we’ve found that small increases in win rate pay big returns. But what this article shows is that the investment of executive attention can also pay big returns.
How many of the items on the second half of this list can your staff address on their own?
And now for a little bit of good news
You may not need to do much to get people to cooperate beyond getting out of the way. Most organizations are full of cruft (that’s a technical term, look it up) that gets in the way of cooperation. Fix that and people will often naturally work together.
But while you’re changing things for the better, why not give them a little encouragement?
Just don’t do the same ol’ same ol’ that has never worked and isn’t going to this time
Training is everyone’s “go to” for improving things. We need to change, so we better start training people. We want to improve, so people need more training. People don’t cooperate, so let’s send them to training. But training fails to address the organizational issues.
Gilbert said, “If you hold a gun to a man’s head, and he can do what you ask, then he doesn’t need training.” Yet we go to training all the time because it’s far easier than almost any other intervention. Training informs people without changing all the organizational issues that get in the way of them cooperating. Just because you know how to do something or what needs to be done, doesn’t make doing it your highest priority.
Another popular technique is tools. Since we can’t hire and fire, let’s get some tools. But introducing tools into an organization with uncooperative staff and immature processes probably will not end well. Going back to the Gilbert reference above, think in terms of what’s needed for performance improvement. Tools can be a part of that, but wrap them with everything else needed to perform.
If your win rate depends on people cooperating during proposal development, you should start at the organizational level. It matters more. Your proposal manager may be an amazing hero. But the management during a proposal will not change the culture of the organization.
If you assume that the proposal manager will do what it takes to prepare the proposal, you are right. They will find a way to submit proposals using uncooperative people. Submitting is not the same as winning. Organizations that want to grow will do everything to ensure nothing gets in the way of people cooperating.
This article originally appeared at PropLIBRARY at https://proplibrary.com/proplibrary/item/739-29-techniques-for-dealing-with-uncooperative-proposal-contributors/ and was reprinted with permission.
Carl Dickson is the Founder and President of CapturePlanning.com and PropLIBRARY. The materials he has published have helped millions of people develop business and write better proposals. Carl is an expert at winning in writing. He is a prolific author, frequent speaker, trainer, and consultant.
