I am a planner and a visual thinker, so the traditional approach to proposal development was naturally attractive to me: bulleted outlines of key facts and messages for each section, planning sheets that lay out the space for graphics, tables and prose for each page, and finally first draft text. In this model, the first draft text can almost be written by any technical writer as the main points and facts are already captured on the page. What is not to love about this clearly marked road to the finish line? 

No matter how much I love this approach, most of my team members, with the exception of other proposal managers, have universally hated it. At times they let themselves be dragged along through “story board” sessions, theme discussions and yes, even planning sheets, just to let out a big sigh of relief at the end. Not because they had now a clear plan for their work on a tight deadline, but because I had stopped wasting their time. Finally the real work could begin. Teams have so often ignored or simply thrown away the fruits of all this planning that I stopped trying to make them do it. You can lead a horse to water… 

Several years into tilting at those windmills have shown me that my structured, standard approach works for me in the environment of large-scale proposals where I first encountered it. However, it does not work well in the environment I find myself today. Most of my colleagues have honed their skills on small R&D proposals where a couple of dozen pages are considered long. They never had to deliver technical or cost volumes several thousand pages long. It was like we were raised in different proposal countries, with different languages and very different ways of getting to the goal. 

I would love to be able to say that this all has taught me to stop worrying and to love the chaos. But deep inside I am still a planner, so it was very reassuring to me when I came across a quote by Lindsey Collins in Ed Catmull‘s book “Creativity, Inc.”  Ed Catmull is a computer scientist and co-founder of Pixar. Lindsey Collins is a producer at Pixar and her film credits include “A Bug’s Life,” “Toy Story 2,” “Finding Nemo,” and “Ratatouille.” So here is someone who really knows story boarding and surely, with as much money at stake as with a major animation movie, things must run like clock work from planning to completion. Right?

Here is what Lindsey has to say about this: “I’m a strong believer in the chaotic nature of the creative process needing to be chaotic. If we put too much structure on it, we will kill it. So there is a fine balance between providing some structure and safety – financial and emotional – but also letting it get messy and stay messy for a while. To do that, you need to assess each situation to see what’s called for. And then you need to become what’s called for.”

If someone like Lindsey Colins commits to “becoming what’s called for,” perhaps you and I too can let go of our own ideas of how to climb the mountain. Perhaps we can remember that there are many trails that lead to the top and that it is way more important that we do get there than how we get there. So if you encounter a group that is most comfortable starting with prose and seeing where the story wants to go. Let them go, for a while. Probably for a lot longer than you are comfortable with. Then assess whether the team is making progress even if it is by a very different path than you would have taken. Try to meet them where they are because that is the only place where they can start to see what you have to offer. If you can do that, results will follow.