Owning the risks
One of the most useful questions I like to pose in a kick-off meeting is:
What are the risks to submitting a successful proposal on time?
Now, I could write up a pretty comprehensive list myself and simply hand it out. But by asking individual participants to contribute their personal thoughts, it stops being a case of “Jon told us that…”.
Instead, it becomes a case of “We’ve worked out that…” As a result, they’re far more likely to accept that the risk exists, and take ownership of the solutions that we go on to identify together.
This article was written by Jon on 20 June, 2007 and filed under Processes & best practice. If you found it useful, you can with others. To receive automatic updates, subscribe to The Proposal Guys via 
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We will have done hours and hours of work for little gain.
Hi, Jeff, and thanks for the comment.
I wasn’t thinking so much the risks “of” submitting an unsuccessful proposal (where your comment is spot on). More, I’m suggesting that one tries to get the team to discuss what could stand in the way of submitting a successful proposal. This might unlock discussions about resource, sponsorship, people, customer understanding, process, timescales,….