How to balance bid management priorities to avoid burnout and ensure quality.
Balancing the demands of multiple bids
Resource coordination is a critical challenge in bid management, where managers must juggle conflicting priorities and finite resources. The ability to balance the demands of multiple bids, each with its own set of tasks and deadlines, is essential for ensuring that each proposal receives the attention it deserves. And by the way… if you can't give it the right level of attention – guess what – don't push it. No bid it.
Burnout and decline in output
The risk of poor resource coordination is significant. Without a strategic approach to managing resources, teams can become overextended, leading to burnout and a decline in the quality of proposals. This can result in missed opportunities and a negative impact on your organisation's reputation.
Meeting the challenge
To navigate this challenge, bid managers must prioritise tasks based on strategic importance and deadlines. This requires a comprehensive understanding of your organisation's goals and the ability to align resources accordingly. Questioning whether the opportunity fits within the objectives of the organisation helps qualification but also prioritisation. Implementing resource modelling and allocation tools can provide a clear view of what level of effort is required to deliver a bid, as well as a visual representation of workloads. These tools can help managers make informed decisions about where to focus efforts. Working closely with colleagues in sales, business and account management is key to getting a picture of what's coming and when. Start by looking at existing contracts and working backwards from the contract end date.
Creating an open environment
Fostering open communication about capacity and workload is also crucial. It ensures that team members are not overburdened and that any conflicts in priorities are addressed proactively. Bid and proposal managers can be over optimistic, and perhaps even enjoy the pressure of workload, but these admirable traits are not long term solutions. So, encouraging team members to speak up about their workload can lead to a more equitable distribution of tasks and a healthier work environment.
Defining support levels to support resourcing decisions
Defining internal levels of service for bid functions is crucial for managing the effort expended on each opportunity. Our proven managed, facilitated, and enabled model serves to delineate when a bid warrants the full end-to-end managed treatment, and when the bid team simply provides the necessary tools to enable others to develop their own proposals.
By establishing clear levels of service, bid managers can streamline workload prioritisation and ensure that resources are allocated efficiently. This approach not only prevents overextension but also ensures that high-priority bids receive the comprehensive attention they require, while lower-priority opportunities are supported adequately without draining the team's capacity. Implementing this model fosters a balanced workload, promotes strategic resource management, and ultimately enhances the quality and success rate of proposals.
For bid and proposal leaders seeking to master resource coordination, Strategic Proposals offers consulting, modelling tools, training and coaching services that focus on balancing conflicting priorities. Our programs provide practical strategies and tools to help you manage resources effectively, ensuring that your team can deliver high-quality proposals without compromising well-being.
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