The Experience of Service vs. Servitude and Proposal Writing

The experience of service versus servitude is at the core of innovation in professional services. That also applies to proposal writing. Some might ask how can there be innovation in government proposal writing. Don’t they spell out in a hundred pages exactly what they want, even to the font and margin sizes? How can you innovate in such limiting parameters? My answer is a question. How is it possible to have new ideas in the game of chess, where the way each piece moves is strictly defined, and everything happens on sixty-four squares? And what about all the varieties of music we’ve created from just twelve tones?

I think this puzzle is related to a previous article I wrote about flies being trapped, not by the glass in the window, but by the concept of glass. If the flies understood the concept of glass, they would go around rather than trying to go through it. We humans are also like that sometimes. We can be limited and trapped by our own misconceptions, which we cling to even in the face of facts to the contrary. Sometimes the more experienced we are, the more we are trapped by that legacy, and unable find new perspectives; but lack of experience also has its own limitations.

It’s now common to think of any organization as consisting of people, ways of doing work (business processes) and technology, which supports the first two factors. We expect computers and business processes to be mechanically consistent; to produce the same output repeatedly and rapidly. On the other hand, while we require some degree of consistency from people, our greatest value is the ability to respond to a situation and another person with presence and humanity (creativity, compassion, humor, flexibility), as well as proficiency.

With proposals for professional and technical services, we are typically dealing with a combination of the three factors described above. An example that we’ve all had experience with is customer service; called service desk or help desk in the industry. In this field, every competitor has access to the same technology. The business processes are also commonly known, but there can be some innovation in how their components are combined and implemented.

We can and should focus on the performance metrics in service desk. But how do we create an environment where the customer service or technical support staff actual experience satisfaction and even joy from being of service? We have all hopefully had at least one experience of that as a customer; and we have certainly (and probably frequently) experienced the opposite. I think a real experience of service is most likely to happen when the service staff person is competent and well supported by the systems and other staff. But competence is not sufficient by itself to produce it. We’re all familiar with the competent but aloof (or even condescending) customer service rep.

The satisfaction in service includes the feeling that it is by our choice that we are doing the work; whereas we feel we’re in servitude when we experience it as being against our will. Most of us who need to or want to earn money have the challenge of achieving the mindset of service, and overcoming the feeling that we are working against our will; wage slaves to put it bluntly.

Much has been researched and written about employee engagement, or the lack of it in the workplace. I think the core of employee engagement is the experience of service. Real service is a breakthrough in which our compassion for another person and our joy in the work itself overpowers our sense of being bound by the constraints of the job or our social and economic situation. This is true not just for workers, but also for business owners and executives, who have their own pressures and constraints. They too can be so caught up in the stress of their work that they lose the feeling of joy in the work itself; and work can then become more like an addiction.

The experience of service puts us fully in the moment; and that’s where creativity and the sense of possibilities rather than of limitations live. That includes the experience of the customer service staff person, the proposal writer describing that work, and the executive or business owner offering that service. Any of them can experience their own work as servitude or as service.

The experience of service is tied to a sense of purpose and meaning in the work activity and in our lives. For the individual, it can be part of our journey into personal growth and spiritual self-discipline. Part of that is to find our calling; the work that best fits our interests and talents, where experiencing the genuine sense of service is more readily accessible. It also means starting from wherever we are, and finding in ourselves and in the work we’re doing now opportunities to experience service rather than servitude.

In an organization, we can encourage more frequent experience of genuine service by creating an environment where work is experienced as meaningful; whether that job is customer service, proposal writing or CEO. The tone is set by the leaders who own or control the organization. They provide the vision and policies, and commit resources to bring them into reality. Then within that environment, each member can make the choice of helping to promote the experience of servitude or that of service.

The Author:

Bernard Brookes, PhD, MBA, PMP is an effective writer and conceptualizer of organizational and technical solutions; an organizational and performance improvement consultant, lean six sigma black belt, business architect and strategist; a PMO, governance and project management expert; and a proposal and capture manager and proposal writer. He has Over 20 years’ hands-on experience in government contracting, including capture, business development and proposal management, healthcare, and program and project management. Email: [email protected] Phone: 240-246-6161 www.sopphia.com