There’s an endless list of reasons why relying on
templates is highly inadvisable in high-value tenders
and proposals – and I’ve covered certain of these in
my columns to date.
However, the advisability of adopting an “anti-template”
policy is just as pertinent to bid strategy formulation, as it is
to the production of the end submission.
Here are just three reasons why what I call “templated
thinking” should be hotly avoided when formulating strategy:
1) Genericism vs Uniqueness: A Process that Doesn’t
Match the Required Mindset
Once the nature of a procurement or project is understood,
a bid team should endeavour to identify and place focus on
the characteristics of that procurement or project that are
unique to that specific project.
Thus, past the first few hours of a strategy development
session, trying to run it with the use of pre-formulated,
generic outlines is potentially counterproductive.
2) Strategy Development Should be Led By A Strategic
Thinker
The ability to run a group through a questions-based,
WINNING CONTRACTS
JORDAN KELLY is a bid strategist and consultant. She is author of
‘Think & Win Bids: Winning High-Value, High-Stakes Bids through
Superior Questioning, Listening and Thinking Skills’. WA Transport
Magazine readers can subscribe to her free newsletter – ‘The Bid
ABOUT
Strategist’ – at www.bidstrategist.com
the
AUTHOR
Three Reasons ‘Templating’ Is A
Bad Practice When Developing Your
Approach to A High-Value Bid
THE ABILITY TO RUN
A GROUP THROUGH
A QUESTIONS-BASED,
COLUMNISED TEMPLATE
– OR A SERIES OF THEM
– IS NOT THE APPROACH
A GENUINE STRATEGIST
WOULD TAKE
columnised template – or a series of them – is not the
approach a genuine strategist would take, Kelly says.
A true strategist will allow conversations to evolve
naturally, channelling the thinking and discussion along in
a lateral and flowing – albeit well-controlled – fashion, fully
developing all threads of input.
This is something a template simply can’t achieve.
3) A Template-Directed Discussion Will Hit An Early Wall
By its very nature, a template just can’t go deep enough in
the development of strategy.
At best, the conclusions resulting from a templated
approach will stop the discussion at a generically predetermined point – and quite possibly (well) short of the
best possible strategic decision.
Strategy formulation should be a fluid process.
I’ve seen, for example, workshop agendas that have tight
little windows of time for the discussion of competitive
intelligence. And another very precise window of time to
run the participants through some columnised series of
questions relating to inside knowledge on decision-makers.
What’s never considered or catered for, is the widely
varying extent to which these various aspects of
investigation need to vary from bid to bid, in terms of their
strategic contribution to the approach or proposition that it
ultimately tabled to the client or customer.
A tight and well-formulated strategy can result only from
a synthesis of moving parts. And I’ve never seen a template
with the required stretch, movement and overall flexibility to
allow bid strategy workshop participants to go adequately
deep and wide in their thinking. In short, it’s an art . . . a highly
developed skill that can’t – and shouldn’t – be reduced to a questionnaire-based activity.
