A Smorgasbord of Amorphous Team

There's a series of interesting trials conducted recently pertaining to the idea of utilizing project-based knowledge workers in contributing to the completion of non-project based deliverables. The key motivation to this exercise is to discover whether the quality of these deliverables will improve and to gauge level of cooperations and teamworks in doing so. Chaos Theory actually popped out in my mind when I imagined about how this exercise will turn out. Specifically, take developing tender proposal as our example to shed some lights about this approach.

First, a RFP comes in. A variety of people are gathered to build response to this RFP including project manager, sales manager, functional fella and technical folks. These guys are from different project teams where some in R&D stage and others in project deployment or support phases. Then, assuming the existence of a proposal template and this template serves as the basis for segregating the sections out to different groups of people. Sound pretty straightforward I presumed? Lastly, works from these groups are collected and conciliated into a final proposal. Voila, we manage to submit before the deadline.

So? What's the big deal of meeting the submission date when the whole idea of submission is not about winning the deal. The words are pretty strong here but the truth is not all the participants have the same common objectives.

Let's do a quick analysis in this arrangement of structure. A direct KPI perspective reveals the obvious fact that these people are not working coherently, might even in contradicting interests. A fictional mindset of these people illustrated below:

Sales Manager - More Sales = More $$
Project Manager - More successful tenders = More works = Perhaps more $$
Functional experts - Project Performance is more important. Who's cares about tender?
Technical experts - What? Tender? Let me write some codes please.

The thing is if the person responsible to do some works don't just the sense of "If it failed, I will be screwed" accountability, you can just save your crossing-finger time. You are wasting them.

Of course, factors such as luck/randomness, weak competitions, pre-arranged deals and existence of heroism still might contribute to the chance of winning the tender, but SERIOUSLY, Are you going to let your corporation to solely rely on these?

Ya, you might argue that a truly professional would do whatever they are being assigned to in any best winning ways possible. Well, you might be right that such environments do exist but it might turn out to be a heroism-centric pit due to the frustration of these professionals dealing with "not-so-professional" and "not-professional" and deciding to turn over to others.

Tender is a crucial piece for getting more deals, Truly Qualified Lead per se.

Can you really afford to do such a trial-and-error experiment?
Not for me.

Do participants get motivated?
Yes and No, depends on your KPI.

Does the outcome have a shot in winning the project?
Possible, but hard to recur.

How to improve on this arrangement?
Incentive and Penalty. Carrot-and-Stick.

Do I recommend this arrangement?
No. A Tender Department is more suitable for larger organization.