An augmented you, not an artificial you.
Javier Escartin
?? Figuring out AI in proposals so you don't have to. I believe we, the proposal professionals, have to lead this revolution so AI works for (and not against) us. Grab your free tools and insights below ??
This is a recap of the most valuable ideas we talked about in August 2023.
For the busy pros, it starts with:
Then, for the geeky pros, I've included a compilation of the rest of the topics.
The Proposals Tech Highlight of the Month
I was wrong.
Although that's not news.
I mean, it's not something I do every day, but I mess up a lot more than I'd like to.
As many times, this one was with language.
I've been talking about this hyped topic for years and got the defensive reaction of many peers over and over.
I never thought about it deeply until last week, when I realized that the more truthful way to present this tech is:
? Instead of artificial intelligence in bidding—which sounds like something that can replace people with a silicon-based alternative
? It is much more accurate to talk about augmented intelligence because that's indeed the case—professionals enhance their capabilities by working on more important stuff, writing better proposals faster and winning more.
I wonder what would be the adoption of this technology by now if the whole industry had used this term from the beginning.
Yes, some of these AI tools can do some of the stuff you do today, yet the whole point is so you can focus on something more important, the stuff that still needs a carbon-based brain with plenty of human nuances.
An augmented you. Not an artificial you.
The Proposals Tip of the Month
I can't afford to panic.
And you can't either.
It's summer season, and I woke up thinking about Florida, so let me honor my aerospace background once again.
Do you know in what skill NASA trained the first astronauts more than in any other?
In the ability of not panicking.
Why?
Because when you're in a can smaller than a mini cooper orbiting Earth at 25,020 mph (40,270 km/h), panicking means you die.
Being in proposals, chances are your stress sources are less drastic—probably nobody will die no matter what happens with that RFP deadline—yet panicking often leads to losing contracts.
You know how it goes: last-minute changes, IT systems crashing, delivery going to strike, client issues "a minor amendment" that breaks your technical approach three days before the deadline, and so on.
A problem arises. People panic. They ignore the plan. They make mistakes.
Stuff to panic about is so typical in our profession that I even started a series in this newsletter called "horror stories from the proposal trenches"—click reply if you want to get it.
In these situations, the art of not panicking is what differentiates a top proposal pro from amateurs.
I've found, as NASA did, that panic has to be trained out. You need to plan for it. You need time for it.
The problem, once again? Proposal pros don't have spare time because of the trivia stuff RFPs require.
The stuff that you have to do to be compliant yet adds nothing to your winning chances.
You know that's my fight.
The fight to free your time so you can work on what makes you win—like planning and training not to panic.
The Proposals Billboard of the Month
Facts in #Proposals?#Bids?#Tenders
The Short Video of the Month
Proposals fact!
DeepRFP's proposals joke of the month
I often ask DeepRFP to write proposals jokes.
(I'm so glad it's much better at managing and writing proposals! ??)
Here's the best one of the month:
You know what's funny about proposal teams? We're just like that one friend who won't quit the gym membership they haven't used in months because they paid for a year in advance!
We have these outdated tools and processes that haven't worked since, I don't know, the dial-up internet era. But do we let them go? No! We paid good money for them, or spent hours learning them, and we're going to stick with them, come hell or high water!
It's the sunk-cost bias in all its glory. We're sailing this ship even if it's the Titanic and the iceberg is right there! "Iceberg, right ahead? Pfft, just a bit of ice, keep going!"
But hey, who needs efficiency and success when you can take pride in riding your costly, time-consuming errors right to the bottom of the ocean? I mean, at least we're committed, right?
Before the rest of the recap, 15 seconds
As promised, below is the rest of the month's recap, but if you're reading this, you must be in proposals, so give me 15 seconds because being on this list interests you.
Every week, I send two emails to the pros on this list ???jescartin.com, one on how to do better at proposals and one about proposals technology.
The coolest thing on this list is the emails, yet the hundreds of proposals pros on it also get exclusive access to top proposals stuff for free.
Like what?
Like these:
???Top Jobs in Proposals—fully remote positions with salaries disclosed at companies with excellent ratings—featured in the emails.
?? Exclusive access to?The AI in Proposals one-pager—a 5-minute read about the status of artificial intelligence in bidding that I keep up to date.
?? Exclusive access to the?GPT use cases in Proposals?compilation—the most practical AI uses that proposal pros and businesses can implement today.
?? Exclusive?DeepRFP trials.
One-click on, one-click off.
Easy, because we already have hard jobs.
Check it out! ???jescartin.com
The rest of the recap, below:
A nature fact pros don't like
When you study the impact of uncertainty on scheduling—I mean studying in deep, mathematically—you reach an uncomfortable conclusion.
At least uncomfortable for most of the bidding professionals I know.
? In most complex scenarios—as proposals—clairvoyance is a burden.
Optimal scheduling is often extremely difficult or impossible when you have all the relevant information beforehand. Even for supercomputers.
If you want to geek about it, click reply, and I share what book I'm reading about this. Be aware it's pretty geek.
The good news is that once you realize this fact, suboptimal plans and guesses feel amazing because of two things:
? They allow you to actually start working
? The hypothetical alternative, knowing everything (the six W's) in advance, would make it much harder.
Ok, Javi, what's the takeaway?
Be ready, be flexible, and don't hesitate to start with just a to-do list.
Familiar agony
If you're part of a team that got some proposal tech in the last decade, you're familiar with this.
All of the bidding software solutions back then—and most still today—had two pillars:
Collaboration and planning features, which they shamelessly copied from all the open-ended project management apps—by the way, everything you can do in these "bidding tools" can be achieved with Click-up, Asana, Notion, Basecamp, Trello and the like for one-tenth of the cost.
Content matching, often not very smart, for which a well-maintained content library was needed.
Many teams realized that what they were saving with the tool now had to invest in someone to manage the library. Bummer.
And all of them met "the agony of maintenance", which in less drastic terms means that scale hurts sorting and editing processes. A lot.
Once your content library gets big, sorting and maintaining it becomes an exponential burden.
Fortunately, this is a problem of the past because now, computers can make the content library concept obsolete.
Why would you spend time sorting and maintaining content when you can just ask your tool and get it up-to-date and relevant to the RFP context?
Yes, that's already possible and being implemented at the enterprise level.
Aristotle in swimsuit
It's August.
You must be OOO, taking it lightly, or rushing for a poorly placed damned deadline.
Just in case you wonder: I'm working full engine because this is THE YEAR to put AI to work in bidding. But I'm not here to talk about that.
Let's talk about easy-mode Aristotle.
领英推荐
The guy did a lot of stuff. Sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, arts,... you name it.
And approached every one of these areas with a mindset that has reached the most innovative people nowadays.
Thinking from first principles.
Basically, he understood that, when trying to solve something, we all begin from beliefs that are known to us but must work backward to find the underlying truths those beliefs are built on.
Some summer light examples.
# Top chefs vs. amateurs: understand each ingredient's fundamental role in a recipe and then experiment with variations to create a new dish instead of strictly following pre-existing recipes.
# Fashion designer vs. tailor: understand the basic purposes of clothing and fundamental design elements to, instead of following existing trends, create innovative styles that fulfill these fundamental needs and utilize design elements in new ways.
# Top proposal professional vs. admin clerk: understand the fundamental purpose of bidding and how RFPs are won to, instead of following existing processes mindlessly, work on what really makes you win.
You get the idea even if you're reading this after a few too many margaritas.
Ask "why" a couple of times until you reach the fundamentals. Then work on what makes you win.
For everything else, the silly time-eating activities, here's my tiny bit:
A Pitch to Remember
1970.
The King of Rock 'n' Roll is back at the top of the music charts.
He's also worried about the counterculture's influence on American youth and the rise in drug abuse.
He has an idea and asks the White House for a meeting with Nixon...on an airline napkin.
WTF Elvis!?
To the surprise of White House aides, Nixon agreeds, and Elvis makes a legendary pitch to become an undercover federal agent combatting the drug epidemic. Or maybe it's just to get a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge. There's contradictory info here.
Nixon agrees.
WTF Nixon!?
Proposals lesson: when crafting a proposal, don't just think about what you're offering, but why you're offering it.
Genuine passion can open even the most formidable doors.
For the rest of it—the summaries, the editing, the matrices, the drafts, the boring time-eating stuff—I have built something for you.
Damaging bias
Let me honor my aerospace background and tell you a story.
Don't worry; it's not geeky.
In the story of technological innovations, there have been many striking engineering achievements that weren't financially viable.
Think the Segway, Google Glasses, Microsoft Zune (yes, that was a thing), or the Amazon Fire Phone.
Top of their game technically. Money-sucking blackholes.
It happens all the time. Some expensive projects fail. You shut them down and move on.
In aviation, however, there was a different case. A project that ended in extraordinary technical achievements and a financial failure, but that was kept alive for more than four decades.
That project was the Concorde Jet, the fastest passenger plane we have ever had, able to fly from London to New York in around three hours.
Conventional planes take between 7h30' - 8h30' depending on which way you're going (explaining that would be too geek ??).
Each time the project exceeded budget, the Frenchs and Brits poured more money even if they knew the ROI wasn't there.
Why would intelligent, capable officials continue investing in a losing project for so long?
One of the reasons is very well known and studied.
Sunk-cost bias.
The inclination to keep pouring resources, such as time or money, into a doomed project just because we've already committed some irreversible costs to it.
The more you invest in something, the harder it is to let go.
The Concorde sunk costs ended up summing $2.8 billion—the initial development estimate was $130 million! Ouch!
Ok, Javi, what about proposals?
Lately, I've been talking with teams stuck in this sunk-cost bias with both tools and processes.
We have already invested years in developing this content library that's hell to manage and failing to deliver.
We have just renewed Observable String for three years, but nobody really likes it (or uses it)
We have already trained our full team in this Shipoopio methodology. It isn't working, but we're going to renew the license and purchase the updated program.
You know what I mean.
Be aware of your sunk-cost bias!
By the way, starting with AI in proposals with just a few bucks sunk is only possible here:
Write better proposals faster for a ridiculously low cost that won't sink
It seemed crazy
yet that class changed her life.
Samin Nosrat is an Iranian-American chef that you probably know because of her New York Times best-seller Salt Fat Acid Heat, which also became a Netflix docu-series.
In the mid-2000s, Samin was running a restaurant, clocking in 15-hour days and being as busy as you can imagine. Yet, she made the time to attend a class at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley with Michael Pollan—another best-selling machine.
She has confirmed in several interviews that, at the time, it seemed a crazy thing to do. Once you're on top of a growing business, sitting in a how-to-write classroom for three hours (plus all the homework), seems like a silly thing to do with your time.
But something inside her thought it was a good idea. And it indeed was.
Paraphrasing her "that class changed my life, taught me important lessons, and brought me into a community that supported me along this path".
I talk with many bidding professionals every week, and I get a similar feeling when talking about augmented intelligence proposal tools.
Learning how to use these tools seems a crazy thing to do when you're swamped with RFP work, managing unreliable SMEs and rushing to meet deadlines.
Yet doing so—especially now and not in two years—can change your professional life.
The opportunity in this window is so huge that even I feel vertigo.
Yet, that's what life is about, isn't it? ??
By the way, I'm doing everything I can so the learning curve is as smooth as possible and peers get back the time invested almost immediately.
Unlike Samin's class, this technology gives you back free time once you master it!
By the way, a funny fact about Samin: she loves American cheese. I like her more now that I know it ??
Learned helplessness
I've been re-reading one of my favorite practical books—if you want book recommendations, you'll have to click that reply button ??—so here's a story that got my attention.
There was an experiment where dogs were placed in a box divided into two sections by a low barrier.
Some dogs could escape a pesky electric shock by hopping the barrier. Other dogs, got the shock no matter what they did.
Next, all the dogs were given the chance to escape the shock by jumping the barrier. The dogs who'd escaped before were like "no problem" and jumped right over. But the dogs who'd been zapped no matter what before just sat there and took it.
?? Conclusion: unavoidable bad stuff can lead to a "why bother" attitude, something they called learned helplessness.
If this was only dogs, it'd be just another funny data, but it's not only dogs.
The same state of passive resignation is seen in people and organizations—the same book includes a few examples; in case you're THAT interested, click reply ??
And I've seen it an awful lot in our field, bidding and proposals.
Learned helplessness about bad processes, poor management, inexistent tools, and unreasonable clients, partners and SMEs.
Many pros burn out. Many others forget their ability to choose, learning to be helpless and endure things that could be avoided by working smartly.
The good news is that there's a way out:
?? recognize you have the power to choose and embrace it. Otherwise, someone else will choose for you.
I can't control your processes, bosses, clients, partner and SMEs.
However, I can control what tools we make available and that's my tiny bit for you all.
? Tools that put AI to work for you so that you can be a little bit less helpless.
And so you can jump that barrier as easily as our dogs, we offer these tools with extremely low barriers:
Affordable subscriptions - Billed monthly - Cancel anytime.
I mean...
Thanks!
And this is it for this edition of this?newsletter.
I you don't want to wait a month to know what's going on in proposals and tech, join us on the hottest list in the space.
Let's talk proposals and tech! ???jescartin.com
Besides the valuable updates, tips and ideas, you'll get access to top proposals stuff such as:
???Top Jobs in Proposals—fully remote positions with salaries disclosed at companies with excellent ratings—featured in the emails.
?? Exclusive access to?The AI in Proposals one-pager—a 5-minute read about the status of artificial intelligence in bidding that I keep up to date.
?? Exclusive access to the?GPT use cases in Proposals?compilation—the most practical AI uses that proposal pros and businesses can implement today.
?? Exclusive access to?DeepRFP?trials.
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1 年Agreed, Javier. Artificial is a turn off. Augmented conveys value.
?Saving time and boosting bottom line??for proposal writers | President RFPSchoolwatch | Increase efficiency in your bid winning process with daily customized bid alerts
1 年Great article Javier Escartin