Winning Bids
From GPWiki
Friday 03 of September, 2010
Winning That Bid!
You’re bursting with energy, you’ve got a lot riding on the solution/strategy you want to recommend to your client. The strategy is fine but getting it across and proving you are the one is now crucial. What price getting this wrong?
Maybe illustrating how it will become operational is the issue. Differentiating it from the competitors maybe, or just ensuring we get it all in the correct context and proving that we really do understand what the client really needs. The ‘big-picture’ is so important – where does everything connect, how does it all work, telling the story well is going to truly be the difference between success or failure. Valuable Outcomes... and Outcomes
We can’t afford to miss the mark by trying to get this all out there in a consultant style document. Power Point. Word Documents.
Getting really engaged and out there attracting, engaging and corralling the managers and the workforce could now be the big game - getting them truly bought in - on the bus. The Approach...
Making The Difference
Knowing this is one thing, doing something quite another. We know there is little or nothing wrong with our solution or our strategy, the ability to communicate and execute within the enterprise will now be the true test of success or failure.
Getting the message through and understood and then operational is the yardstick by which strategy should be measured. When strategy and culture are at odds strategy always wins. And an awful lot can get lost in the translation! Agreeing the Program Objectives
To win these days organizations need to get to grips with, visualise and then transform the ‘line of sight’ between how things look, how things need to work and how things are...
In most Bid Pursuits we need to mix depth and rigor with the strategy story, the future experience we need to create and imagination
Working, as we do with the technical and technological functions within the target client organization the objective is always engineering-like and full of technical rigor. The nature of the frameworks are logical, the questions are forensic and the outcome typically highly digital and polished. Most senior executives these days are extremely comfortable with the mix of mathematical and metrics based reasoning and visual and complete thinking.
Explaining an experience, a future and an intangible thing is always a difficult thing. It requires determination and expressive skill. In the context of a long term relationship there are other factors getting in the way. Familiarity and routine make it very difficult for new ideas and difference to emerge. A new idea to new people will seem an alien concept to most people unless they can reflect and let their minds work. A new idea to people who work together all of the time will often stand even less chance of an audience.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.” - Albert Einstein
In most Pursuits we mix depth and rigor with the strategy story, the future experience we need to create and imagination.
So What works!
We've been involved in billions of dollars of successful bids. In winning a bid we have seen and documented why they work. And why they don't.
NUMBER ONE - Committed Pursuit Leader!
Crucial and critical at so many levels. From creating the right expectations with the client to orchestrating the right resource availability at the right time during the development. From inspiring the team as we start to get buried in the detail and knowing how to do the same at Executive Summary and Vision level. From ensuring the right investment of time and resources early enough to get it right to understanding the power of the work after the win!
Discovering New Meaning
Discovery Asks what NEW meaning could we create? 4D™ Developing New Meaning
Development Discusses what NEW meaning should we create? 4D™
Deciding New Meaning
Decision Decides what NEW meaning will we create? 4D™ Deploying New Meaning
Deployment Ensures that the NEW meaning we created gets deployed 4D™ Go to: 4D™, The 'Pixar' Of Consulting, A Vision Model
We’ve seen the highly capable pursuit leader go from quiet and thoughtful and hungry to entertaining, confident and inspiring presenter and in the process take the client to heights that seemed unimaginable before.
There are countless other examples of the importance of this but we know without it a bid will fail.
NUMBER TWO - The Correct Environment!
Quite apart from technical specifications the need for conducive team working space seems so logical it doesn't bear mention. However we've seen many teams lose the will to live let alone work because of the restrictions placed on the technical ability of the environment to support the team and the scale of what's required.
We work at large scale and that’s deliberate. It wins bids. It means space large enough for a client to literally get inside the complexity of what the team proposes. When we say complexity we mean the technical detail in layered and measured 'reveal' not in deliberate pursuit of the complex.
NUMBER THREE - Preparation!
We all work at the optimal level when we know the full picture. When we all share the context and when we can be at full readiness. Getting out ahead but without forming fixed opinions is an art. We've used our approach to great effect as it builds a working, rigorous and valid hypothesis that tests current knowledge and is comfortable with missing information. This means that preparation can make a stunning job of what we know to be true and a spectacular job of shining light on what we now need to do.
In both team preparation and client engagement this has profound effects in delivering utility, excitement and value in highly measurable ways. We've seen clients move from distant to intimate and from disparaging to utterly engaged within minutes of seeing well formed and quality hypotheses - however unfinalized.
NUMBER FOUR - Engagement with Meaning!
We all talk a lot about collaboration these days. Collaboration without the co-creation of shared meaning is simply a meeting. What we need are practical and conscious outcomes. Outcomes that are truly meaningful, decisive and significant in their symbolism of new action.
Because between us and the pursuit team there are physical tools and techniques emerging we can build solutions to the basic pitfalls of pursuits.
- Death by Power Point! Ask NASA.
- Amnesia through Presentation Fatigue and ineptitude
- Indistinction through the absence of Innovation
- The Hell of ‘Me Too’
Add your own horror story.
NUMBER FIVE - Insight and Experience!
Because we've been involved in so many bids, many in deep technology and service environments, we've amassed a deep set of references and case studies. This ensures that we take absolutely nothing for granted. Every case is very different. There are many similar patterns at some levels but fundamentally this is about actively listening to every nuance and finding the real clues to what needs to be done.
We pay a lot of attention to language, definition, meaning, culture and values. Each client has the right to see us pay extra special attention to their context and not what is convenient for us about our solution. Balancing global leverage and proven solutions will survive only as long as we can show how that benefits the client and honors their unique requirements.
NUMBER SIX - The 'Pixar' of Consulting!
Today's bids require a high degree of theater. We understand that many formal procurement processes dictate the way things can be submitted but that is changing and we can be creative.
We bring new technology and thinking to the presentation platform. The best presentations are meaningful conversations. Even if the presenter can't manage to induce discussion directly we can create the effect of engagement. We can do this through interactive; more intuitive depth to aspects of the 'solution' being presented by the smart use of design and creative representation of our ideas. New dimensions and new perspectives that illustrate that we have thought about - and in a constructive way 'beyond' - the basics.
Modern conversations occur through new platforms at the digital device level. We all use these technologies in our daily lives and we are pioneering these technologies, devices and innovations within the pursuit of winning that bid!
NUMBER SEVEN - STRUCTURED VISUAL THINKING™
Structured Visual Thinking™ is a significant approach to the needs of the 21st CENTURY ORGANIZATION. It is a response to the dynamic and changing world of business and enables CREATIVITY and INNOVATION within the fields of THINKING and COMPLEX problem solving. It applies the ideas of VISUALIZATION and DESIGN THINKING to the important CONVERSATIONS of today.
NUMBER EIGHT - 4D™
4D™ answers The Critical Questions for the 21st CENTURY ORGANIZATION. Quite simply it is a sequence of 4 Frameworks that ensure a leadership team thinks deeply - and in the widest CONTEXT - about what COULD, SHOULD and WILL be done to ensure the future it wants. It then sustains the OUTCOME through TOOLS and TECHNIQUES right across the enterprise. It’s PROVEN and UNIQUE
Communicating Complexity
Creative Logic systems
The Platform for connectivity
Everywhere. Anywhere
Demonstrating Application
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Group Partners Formula:
The 4D™ Frameworks are a co-creative, collaborative and highly visual 'scenario-based' approach. Each scenario fits within the overall logic we call 4D™ It is a unique solution and provides a powerful method of building customer dialog from almost any start-point. It is based on directly linking all the components together in a single holistic view of your understanding of the customers requirements in whatever situation and across whatever sector.
We can build the scenarios in individual or small group sessions, or even in advance of these sessions from relevant source materials that you can provide us, and these can then be ratified in a broader group session subsequently.
Building The Story
Step One: We agree the exam question; the task and the deliverables required. We meet or teleconference to ask supplementary questions once we have analysed the content. We agree the outcomes: depiction of roadmaps, scenario’s or frameworks within which to tell the story. We agree the audience and agree required high level method for the sequence of the events.
We agree a project manager at the clients end, we will appoint an account director, facilitation team, contextual analyst, visual thinker; other background resources required. Preparation, framing and scoping.
Initial one-to-one briefing meetings or small group sessions to develop stimulus materials as required. Gather any current materials and assess the current reality and context as far as possible. Design stimulus materials and arrange and agree all/any logistics.
Work ahead to build stimulus scenarios for straw man hypothesis and to cause conversation. Output: hand-drawn and digital series of scenarios in a connected set, D1 or D2 plus all information capture together with a full interpretation of content provided (contextual analysis).
Step Two: One/two/three/more day session(s) with the senior bid team to ‘work’ the frameworks, build the approach, identify the value, spot the gaps in thinking and effectively ratify the scenarios together with associated content, build out further the scenarios from straw man set. The Storyboard
Output: definitive set of hand-drawn and digital scenarios plus detailed information capture to support the creation of a digital system. NB. We take all materials available for the program into consideration before the intervention stage.
Step Three: Optionally we might Design and Develop an Interactive Scenario tool See SVT Live™ for client presentation purposes. Output: Interactive Scenario Presentation Tool with full set of scenarios and modular copy builds. We engineer a full program together.
Group Partners - Partnering on Bid Winning
Group Partners single-minded aim is to create significant distinction and competitive advantage within bid programs. We only aim to win.
Background. Planning to win.
Clients need integrated strategies that are aligned and supportive of their business goals and vision.
4D™ and Structured Visual Thinking™ as an approach to winning a bid embraces our Clients interests together with that of your prospective clients. Everything is set against a clear framework and built through a shared and constructive approach which dictates everything from the current state, the business imperatives, the future state, to the action plan, the value proposition and the next steps together with an increase in the teams motivation to win.
It delivers an agreed language, shared understanding and forms our best plan and forces improved thinking in all respects. The approach starts an ongoing process of collaboration, common metrics and standard terms. With 4D™ everything we agree and learn is integrated into one framework, one approach. Any differences of opinion or semantic or subjective observations quickly and respectfully removed. Journeys, Scenarios and other images, icons or agreed artefacts readily available for incorporation in the outcomes. Go to the Q&A...
Contributions can be made, from disparate teams and at various times in a pre-agreed fashion and by permitted contributors. Journeys and scenarios are designed around common themes, customer insights, the clients enterprise-wide implications, impacts and dependencies for infrastructure process culture and systems, solutions and approaches to resolve the perspective we have pictured.
The journey or scenario within an integrated framework is a powerful metaphor and basis for telling many stories and with our pre built approach and systems we can overlay the many alternate viewpoints and points of view and underpin these with the implicated realities of complex systems or other requirements, capabilities, solutions or applications. In dialogue systems we deliberately use more suggestive or oblique ‘clues’ to ensure a more generic, less overtly preconceived approach.
