A series of insights from Principal Tender Specialist, Tania Field

#3 Good leadership and accountability will beat chaos in a bid team

Problem: 

What happens when we have lots of busy people with lots of initiative but not enough leadership? Bananas!

Not knowing what the strategy is, your deliverables, or who the decision makers are leads to:

• Differing perspectives - on priorities or even the overall tender solution

• Delay in progress of the submission response

• Reframing and rewriting of returnable schedules

• Lost time, investment and resources

• Unresolved conflicts and a disengaged team.

Further, the biggest risk of all is that you are so disorganised you either miss the deadline OR lodge a non-strategic bid leading to a lot of sunk costs and bad news.

Quick fix: 

Get in a room and sort out the team structure in one meeting. Start with the person accountable for the deal and the person responsible for getting the deal done. And, communicate this decision to the team.

Identify some simple workstreams and put people in charge of directing the development of returnable schedules.

Long-term fix:

Proper planning is a must prior to and at the start of the tender - the amount of structure you require will be dependent on the size of the tender and team in place. At a minimum, I’d suggest using these tools to support the process:

• Tender Management Plan – identifies returnable schedules, leader/s, content writers, reviewers and approvers.

• Bid Team Chart (org chart) OR a RACI – similar to the above but goes one step further to identify who in the team is required to consult on a matter or to be informed. 

Nothing worse than individuals chewing up their time attending meetings they don’t need to. Your time is precious, use it wisely.

These tools also have the added benefit of helping you see where you have an overlap or dual leaders in place – be wary of this practice and what issues it may cause.

Happy bidding!