Posted by Jon and BJ on 21 December, 2009 under Proposal Guys news, Proposal Panda, Word play & writing | 
You know, it’s a very small step from “Impossible” to “I’m possible“. Here’s wishing you every happiness for the festive season, and hoping that you achieve every “possible” success in 2010.
We’ll be taking a seasonal break from posting for the next couple of weeks. See you back here at the very start of the new decade…
With very best wishes to all of our many readers
Jon and BJ – and Proposal Panda!
Posted by Proposal Panda on 18 December, 2009 under Proposal Panda |
When the Proposal Panda arrived in our Chicago headquarters, he was ready to work, but after a long, successful year of completing more than 500 proposal requests, our proposal team was looking for a little downtime to work on special projects that had put on the “back burner” all year long. The Proposal Panda debated that we must stay focused and find ways to learn from our experiences and conduct proposal debriefs during this time. We asked the Proposal Panda to pick a proposal so we could follow his lead. As you can see, he had a lot to choose from, and these are only the proposals that requested a hard copy binder!
After we conducted our proposal debrief, we could tell that the Proposal Panda was a bit tired and needed a break. One of the advantages of visiting this time of year is that Proposal staff can actually step away from their desk and have lunch! While determining where to head out for a bite to eat, Proposal Panda rested and enjoyed or magnificent views of the Chicago skyline.
While taking in the sites from up high, Proposal Panda immediately became intrigued by the “bean-like” sculpture in Millennium Park. Proposal staff quickly shared some history that the sculpture is really called the “Cloud Gate” and was created by British artist Anish Kapoor. The Proposal Panda was so excited and was ready to take a break and start seeing what the City of Chicago was all about!
The Proposal Panda showed his strength by getting a little crazy and lifted the 110-ton elliptical sculpture forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city’s famous skyline and the clouds above. Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high; however, the weight and size is no match for the power of the Panda!
After we left the Millennium Park, the Proposal Panda was interested in seeing more architecture and sites of the City. We headed over to the Richard J. Daley Center which is Chicago’s premier civic center and features a massive sculpture by Pablo Picasso. Known by locals simply as “The Picasso,” this renowned sculpture was one of the first of many public art installations throughout Chicago.
During the holidays, the Daley Center features the Christkindlemarket. It is a popular exhibit and many Chicagoans will tell you they could not imagine the holidays in the city without it. The market features a unique shopping experience that includes German food and drinks and holiday entertainment.
The Panda’s favorite part of the market was the Christmas tree. In the past, the tree was made from 100 trees compiled together to make one massive tree. This year, a family in Palos Park, a suburb of Chicago, donated a tree from their backyard. The Proposal Panda was amazed by its size and magnitude. He got a little too excited and tried to pull some ornaments, but you can see the rope that is holding it up…primarily tied to the tree to avoid it from falling over from the Panda’s antics!
Proposal Panda reported that he thoroughly enjoyed his trip to Chicago and looks forward to visiting again when the weather is a bit warmer and he could maybe take in a Cubs game.
Proposal Panda travels the world visiting proposal professionals. Click here for more details. If you’d like Panda to visit you, just email us at panda@theproposalguys.com
Posted by BJ on 16 December, 2009 under Word play & writing |
Or more precisely, this book is narrated by a dog, and a very philosophical dog at that.*
The book I’m referring to is, The Art of Racing in the Rain (author – Garth Stein) and I give it my highest recommendation (something I reserve for a rare few books, such as Water for Elephants, another brilliant read and one I also recommend.)
I suspect leading with the fact that the story is told by a dog might cause some people to be reluctant to read this wonderful book. In fact, I’m sure it is. If I wasn’t confident that the majority of readers of this blog trust me to provide recommendations they ultimately agree with (for the most part), I might have presented this book differently (it’s about knowing your audience, right?). I could have said, “This is a beautifully told and written story of family, love, devotion, caring, loss and ultimate triumph.”
You are forewarned; do not read the first page unless you have several hours of reading time available. :-)
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* See, as a dog lover I am biased. And several people to whom I’ve recommended this book and who have subsequently read it have found it to be a great read.
Posted by Jon on 14 December, 2009 under Processes & best practice |
I read an article recently on ‘Design thinking’, the methodology that top designers IDEO deploy to come up with creative, excellent solutions to problems. It has five stages:
1) Immersion – ‘designers research the problem by plunging themselves into it’
2) Synthesis – where they ‘gather together their findings and look for patterns’
3) Ideation – brainstorming possible solutions
4) Prototyping – making mock-ups of solutions to try out against the problem, giving equal weight to each option
5) … and then moving on to build the product itself.
As the article explains, the process “takes the cliche of the lone creative mind being struck with genius, and replaces it with a process that a whole team can follow. Creativity, therefore, isn’t a thing that magically appears, but a process you work through.”
There are huge parallels here to the ways we approach helping an organisation to improve its proposal capabilities – immersing ourselves in “how it’s done now”; assessing what works well and where the challenges and barriers may be, using our benchmarking model; identifying improvement options and testing the viability (and affordability) of different implementation approaches; building and agreeing a clear plan and helping with implementation as required.
The concept of a team is key, too. Certainly, BJ or I can and do work successfully alone on this type of exercise (as do the other quite excellent directors in our team). But the really high-energy, high-impact projects come when we have the chance to work together: comparing notes, sparking creative thoughts, challenging each other’s thinking, building on each other’s ideas.
Where there’s perhaps a different emphasis on the projects we deliver, compared to IDEO’s tack, is at their ‘prototyping’ stage. Most project sponsors (typically CEOs, COOs, Sales VPs, heads of sales ops) are so impatient to improve their proposals once they’ve engaged us that they tend to want to leap straight to conclusions and the plan. The article’s a welcome reminder – and useful proof point – of the need to hold back from ’solutioning’, if only for a short while, and to test various options carefully with the sponsors.
Posted by BJ on 10 December, 2009 under Processes & best practice |
One of the proposal managers with whom I’ve been working, one who is relatively new to the job, has been reluctant to embrace planning of proposal efforts other than in the most casual way. He is comfortable just providing a due date to the SMEs and writers and leaving it at that.
Recently, the workload has picked up a bit. And the near future holds a veritable wave of incoming efforts. This prompted me to be coaching him regarding the need to do some real planning as I knew he would quickly be overwhelmed and things would be out of control without some more formal plans in place.
As I told him, “Planning is about ‘keeping your ducks in a row.’ Up until now, you’ve only had one or two ducks and it’s been fairly easy to keep them in a row. You’re going to need plans in place when these other ducks show up and you need to keep them in line.”
Posted by Jon on 8 December, 2009 under Musings, Processes & best practice, Proposal training |
A fascinating example recently of the need to cut one’s losses and walk away from a deal, even after being selected as the preferred supplier.
The client in question wanted us to run a series of training courses in a far-flung land. Pricing was agreed, terms and conditions discussed, dates provisionally scheduled in diaries. And then… And then: just a few ‘minor’ tweaks to the Ts and Cs were proposed by our client contact. A few highlights might raise your eyebrows as much as they caused us to raise ours.
We’d obviously be happy to provide them with electronic copies of all our materials, and grant them unlimited permission to reproduce and reuse these at no cost. Those travel expenses they’d offered, all along, to pay? Actually, we’d need to cover them after all.
Cancellation terms? See, they’d been thinking about those – and we’d need to take the risk: fly our team half way around the world at our own cost, and the client could cancel the event up to the night before it was due to start, with no penalty.
It raised a couple of issues for us, as a business. We always aim to be open, honest, fair and trustworthy in our dealings. In this case, the potential client didn’t seem to uphold the same honourable standards. How could we trust them? And could we do business – no matter how lucrative the potential contract – on an entirely unreasonable commercial basis?
Sadly, dear reader, the project’s not going ahead. There reaches a point when enough has to be enough. And our little escapade illustrates the dangers of measuring proposal centres on win rates alone, when the negotiation phase can cause even a sole bidder to walk away from the table.
Posted by BJ on 4 December, 2009 under Musings |
I’m currently reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, “What the Dog Saw” (Gladwell is the author of Blink, Tipping Point, Outliers).
As has been the case with his previous books, I am finding many of the chapters within the book to have lessons, tips, concepts and ideas that relate to the work we do. One such chapter is “The Ketchup Conundrum”, wherein Gladwell explores the advent of multiple types of Mustards (once upon a time there was only one!). The way in which it was discovered that the world was ready for a variety of mustards directly relates to the need for client specific strategic positioning.
Another chapter I found to be highly relevant to proposal work is the, “The Pitchman”. In this chapter, Gladwell explores some of the reasons Ron Popeil, he of “Just set it, and ….” (Come on, you know the words.) fame, was so successful. This chapter highlights how Ron was able to persuade and convince a great many people to purchase his products (including having once sold more than $1,000,000 worth of product, at about $89 a piece, in under an hour!
As I have done with Gladwell’s other books, I highly recommend this as one of the books every proposal person should read and have in their library of proposal books.
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* As Gladwell explains early on in his book, the title is derived from his attempt to see things from a different perspective, citing as an example, rather than viewing dog training from the trainer’s viewpoint, attempting to see, “what the dog saw”.
