Keeping your cool when the bid is going wrong
Over my bidding and tendering career, I have had a few disasters. Some of them I have been able to recover from and a few have even resulted in the loss of a winning bid. Of course, the ones which have gone badly wrong can be difficult to bounce back from. Especially when there is no let-up in the number of new bids coming through.
What is more, it does not matter if it was not you that caused the disaster. You are the Bid Manager or the Bid Lead and you are responsible. So how do you keep going with this level of stress, knowing that whilst the pain of the last problem is still raw you still have yet another bid to get out? And someone is going to let you down somewhere along the line of that bid too (they always do!). And then you will still forget something, or the client or some senior person will change something at the last minute with no understanding of what the real consequences will be on everyone else.
So how do you keep your air of confidence? How do you stop being dragged down by waves of depression and then decide the only thing you can do is resign? And how do you keep your motivation up whilst everything around you looks like yet another impending disaster?
I am not a mental health expert and I don’t have all the answers. However, I can share with you some of the things which have kept me sane whilst trying to navigate through the pressure-cooker environment of the heaviest of bids.
Keeping Your Cool
When it all seems to be going wrong, it can be very difficult to keep things in perspective. When the “fires” are starting to look out of control, it is all too easy to lose yourself in getting more and more bogged down in dealing with them. So, my first strategy in dealing with the stress is to tell myself two things, both of which are in my bidding experience entirely true:
- Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it appears at first sight.
- In 6 months, this event will seem to be so trivial that you will not remember why you were so worried at the time.
Number 1 keeps me going in the direst of circumstances. Usually, after 24 hours you will have a solution or the problem will have been diminished in importance. “Sleeping on it” usually helps too. So, when you find that the person uploading the bid has put all the final pricing in in dollars instead of sterling, take a deep breath and don’t lose your perspective. After all, this is only one transitory incident in the ongoing cycle of the bid and once it is fixed, no doubt, there will be another problem turning up. And you will fix that one as well!
Number 2 is a great one to keep me grounded. As an example, can you remember the biggest bid problem you had exactly 6 months ago? I can’t even remember what I was doing 6 months ago without a lot of effort and I certainly cannot recall the problems! So, keep repeating 1 and 2 to yourself and then deal with the problems, one at a time, in a methodical way.
Take a Break
As the pressure builds, some people respond well and become more focussed. Anything not truly important gets ditched by them and the issues are overcome effectively. However, no one can keep this up for very long. After a while their decisions start becoming more reactive and mistakes start to happen. If you keep going, you will probably spend more time in correcting your own mistakes than moving the bid forward, and this helps no one.
My test is to be aware of when I start to make trivial mistakes: spelling or grammatical errors, dialling the wrong telephone number or something similar. When this happens, my internal alarm starts to sound and I know it is time for me to take a break.
Taking a break means getting away from the bid, the computer and the desk. It means not having a meeting about the bid. It means going somewhere and having a nap (preferably) or going to the canteen with a cup of tea and the daily paper for 20 minutes. It means clearing the mind of the immediate bid issues and recharging the metaphorical batteries.
When you get back, you will feel the increase in effectiveness. Your work rate will go back to where it was and your decision making will be better. This is one of my personal small investments which brings back a huge return.
Keep up the Humour
When the pressure is really on and the whole team is struggling to meet a critical deadline, the whole bid environment can become emotionally charged. One simple error or mistake from anyone in the team can trigger a disproportionate backlash from the others. Then the atmosphere gets worse and work rates decrease. Everyone hates the bid, the bid manager, the senior management team, the client and anyone else they can have a go at. Everyone just wants to get the bid over with and to go home. This is not the environment which will generally lead to a quality bid being produced.
My solution is to break the tense atmosphere with some humour, generally “black” humour. However, if you do this you must be very careful. You cannot make a joke at someone else’s expense unless everyone in the team gets it and the person who is being teased is liked and respected by everyone else (and gets it too!). Teasing the boss, whilst the boss is within earshot, can work well if you have the right sort of boss. Making self-deprecating jokes is also fine. However, the attempt at humour must be clearly that; snide remarks or “jokes” that will hurt someone will not help.
The stronger the team gets, the more this sort of humour helps. The humour cements the team when the going gets tough, so long as it is entirely inclusive to all members of the team. The humour seems to discharge some of the emotional pressure which can so easily build up. It lightens the atmosphere for everyone and improves productivity and bid quality.
If you are not a natural joker, try smiling broadly when you make your joke. Everyone will know it to be meant as funny. Then, if necessary, make sure you thank someone for something they have done as well. That way the joke will be seen clearly as a joke and you may start to see some other humour emerge elsewhere as the stress diminishes across the entire team.
Have a Clear Objective
As a bid manager, I am aware of the one overriding objective of the bid activity: get a winning bid out on time! However, half way through the bid that can seem to be an impossible task. People are not delivering what they promised and key decisions are not being made. Black clouds start to form over your head and a jump from a high building starts to look attractive.
My secret for this is “chunking”. I break down what has got to be done into manageable chunks and order them in the way I need to get them done. By this cunning method, I end up with my own action plan and critical path. Moreover, I don’t have to worry about hitting the end objective; if I stick to managing my chunks, the bid will be ready on time.
Of course, this is my plan for my activity. You will normally need a proper plan for the rest of the team too. However, creating the team plan is normally one of my first chunks.
So, keeping a clear objective for me is made up of having mini objectives that get me to the main objective when it needs to be reached. And, if I run into problems along the way, I just do a bit more chunking.
Don’t Waste Time
When the pressure is on, it is too easy to do something else to avoid doing the difficult bits you know you have to do but you just don’t want to do. So, you decide to fix the computer or unjam the printer instead. You tell yourself that these things have to be done and you justify to yourself that you are still “working on the bid”. However, then you find as the bid deadline approaches, you really do not have time to do some of the things that would lift the quality of the bid that last little bit.
Now, this diversionary activity is not the same as taking a break. Taking a break is needed to recharge the batteries. Wasting time does not do this as you are still working on something; it is just not something that helps you or the bid.
My technique for this is to watch myself and be critical about anything which I know to be a diversion. You need to encourage the little voice inside your head to nag you with “Do you really need to do this now?” In addition, once you tackle that important job you have been putting off by doing other things, your stress load goes down and the remaining jobs become, somehow, more manageable.
So Now You Know
I remain convinced that it takes a very special person to be a bid professional. Being an expert, a leader, an achiever and the person who sees the big picture is not enough. You have got to be resilient to all the issues that fall on you from the moment the bid starts running. More important, you have got to keep going whilst others around you have had enough.
If you are in this position, please try my cunning methods that I have found successful in keeping me going through the most difficult of times. And then use the euphoria which you feel after your “good” bid is delivered to the client to set you up to take on the next one.
