Finding Efficiency by Not Bidding
If you are trying to reach sustainable, scalable, strategic growth, there are a lot of methods out there to push your growth strategies to the next level. Reaching a plateau is normal, but often companies think that they need to push harder to maintain that growth. This means pushing to pursue more funding opportunities and partnerships - often reaching into new technical areas.
I've seen it happen first hand. Organizations that bid on as many things as possible, scrambling to keep a pipeline bursting at the seams with as many opportunities as possible. I'm going to challenge that thinking.
What if instead of doing more in your next fiscal year you decided to do less?
Instead of bidding on a dozen opportunities, what would happen if your team decided that they were only going to bid on two? What two would those be? What resources would you throw at them? What would your metrics for success look like?
I can imagine that scenario. Instead of putting out fires left and right, I'd see your business development team becoming more strategic. I'd see them investing more time in capture planning. I'd see them building stronger technical teams with the right experts in place to win. I'd see them taking the time to find the right partners - not the partners you've always worked with, but really the best ones possible. I'd see them actually taking the time to facilitate strong reviews and design beautiful proposals.
And with all your resources being dedicated to fewer bids, I see pressure released from your BD team and from their technical counterparts. I see stronger program implementation and better documentation of results.
It's a big gamble to make, focusing only a few opportunities.
It would mean putting more of your eggs into fewer baskets and really banking on their success. It would mean understanding that you might have a drastically different win rate.
I'm curious what it would do to your thinking about what it means to be strategic and focused. I'm also curious what it would do to your brain space and capacity for creativity.
Who wants to take the challenge?