1. There is No Such Thing as the Perfect Time
When it comes to RFPs, waiting for an opportune moment is futile. Postponing tasks until certain conditions align ensures their perpetual delay. Adhering to the principle, “If it matters, find a way; if not, find an excuse,” is essential to ensuring no progress is made, as relying on excuses can only put a stop on success.
There is never a perfect time – waiting until the dust settles or until the next big RFP is out the door or until another writer is hired and trained to work on creating automation or implementing process improvements, will only ensure one thing: that they will never get done.
Now is the time to make a commitment to start working toward improving your processes and increasing your efficiency regularly. For you this could mean:
- Learning a new Excel function to replace a task that was previously done manually
- Setting up a new style in Word to eliminate manually formatting your work in the future
- Sending out some content for verification weekly to enable downstream automation
2. Small Changes Add Up
Don’t underestimate the value of the small changes, they add up. James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, calls habits the compound interest of self-improvement. Good habits are also the compound interest of process improvement. If individuals discover a method to enhance their processes by 1% each week, assuming they are in the office for 50 weeks annually and persistently integrate weekly improvements, they can achieve nearly a 64% enhancement by the year’s end.
However, many professionals may fall into the trap of perceiving it as insufficient, leading them to abstain from improvement actions. In such instances, progress stagnates, hindering the advancement of individuals and their processes.
3. Get off the Fence
At some point in our careers and our lives we have all the information that we are ever going to have to make a decision. We may feel like we still want more information or that we want to know for certain how things will turn out once we decide. The truth is that there is no way to know for certain other than to make the decision and find out. At the end of the day, there are no right or wrong decisions, there are just choices we make.
Many of us sit on the fence, in hopes that a decision will just come to us. Often, we decide with our indecision by waiting for the point of complete certainty which never comes, allowing opportunities to pass us by without acting.
4. Lean in to the Hard Stuff
Throughout their careers, individuals often find themselves navigating the office, engaging in various tasks, and expressing a lack of time for substantial, impactful projects that could significantly enhance their team’s efficiency.
Over time, they realize that they were immersing themselves in constant busyness as a means of avoiding challenges. By maintaining a constant state of activity, they could justify their presence without confronting the substantial endeavors that would propel them beyond their comfort zone.
In the words of Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In: “Your life’s course will not be determined by doing the things that you are certain you can do. Those are the easy things. It will be determined by whether you try the things that are hard.”
But how do you overcome this mental hurdle? You must embrace the concept of being comfortable with discomfort, which is essential for growth. Understand that whenever you are about to embark on something transformative, your brain might conjure up a list of safe, meaningless tasks to divert your attention—like managing your inbox or organizing your sock drawer! Recognize these thoughts as a defense mechanism designed to shield you from the possibility of failure. Instead, take them as a signal to lean into the challenging tasks.
5. Don’t Sacrifice Progress at the Altar of Perfection
A common mistake observed among clients and colleagues is their reluctance to start a task unless they feel they have perfect knowledge to execute it flawlessly. This often occurs when building an RFP database. People become paralyzed by the perceived enormity of the project, delaying action due to a lack of complete knowledge. As a result, they keep postponing the task and fail to build the database perfectly.
Try breaking the big task into smaller, more achievable tasks, where you can see progress right away. This leads to encouragement to tackle the next small task, and so on.
The reality is that you know your business, and with time and effort, you can achieve at least 80% accuracy. This will be significantly better than having no database at all, improving the quality of responses, compliance, and efficiency. From there, minor refinements can be easily made to perfect the database structure. The bottom line is to avoid analysis paralysis. The feeling of overwhelm cannot withstand action, so stop searching for the perfect next step and start working.
6. You Don’t Have to Personally Make Every Mistake
Learning this particular subject can be quite challenging for individuals. At the onset of their careers, it is crucial to commit to experiencing every mistake at least once to ensure a firm understanding of the lessons. Oddly enough, some people tend to dismiss the option of learning from the experiences of others.
Consider a shift in thinking, exploring alternative approaches. Recognize the abundance of resources available, such as books, white papers, podcasts, colleagues, and Google searches. Understand that professional and life endeavors have likely been undertaken before, providing an opportunity to draw from others’ experiences. Crafting a unique and effective approach is achievable by incorporating these diverse resources.
One could utilize the multitude of available resources like an à la carte menu to craft personalized strategies through trial and error. Keep what works and discard what doesn’t until arriving at an approach perfectly suited for oneself, and the same applies to others.
7. Learn to Love Your Mistakes
Learning from the wisdom and experience of others serves as a valuable foundation, but continuing to make personal mistakes is inevitable for making progress. Mistakes often lead to discomfort, prompting the inclination to forget about them and start anew the next day. However, this approach contradicts the desired path, as it hinders the benefits of learning and growing from mistakes.
An alternative, albeit, a flawed one, is to thoroughly examine what happened, focusing on identifying errors and engaging in self-criticism until a sufficient level of discomfort is felt. Unfortunately, this approach creates an environment that discourages risk-taking and new endeavors, impeding personal growth.
Instead, still analyze each mistake, but instead consider alternative actions and acknowledge successful aspects to point to going forward. It is crucial to approach this assessment as an unbiased evaluation rather than a punitive measure. Commit to self-assessments in all areas of life, avoiding self-criticism, which can hinder learning from experiences.
8. Write it Down
Even on slow days, the mind processes about 6,000 thoughts, according to a 2020 study. Understanding this realization led to the recognition that simply planning out tasks and projects based on the previous day’s work was insufficient. Distractions were common, and the findings from yesterday would often be lost amid the multitude of other thoughts.
The recommendation is to start each day with a hand-written assessment of the previous day, transforming the approach to focusing on self-improvement. This method provides a clear record of the events from the day before, viewed from a perspective of keep, start, stop. It involves identifying things to:
- Keep (activities one is proud of and wishes to continue)
- Start (new actions to initiate for personal advancement)
- Stop (activities hindering progress toward goals)
This includes documenting everything from minor details, like the choice of lunch and its impact on energy levels, to more significant occurrences, such as successfully engaging a typically non-responsive subject matter expert (SME).
By recording both successes and failures, patterns and trends can be identified, offering insights into thoughts or actions that may limit growth in various life areas. Despite having a daily record, the act of hand-writing thoughts makes them more noticeable, reducing the need to frequently reference the record due to the distinct nature of the process.
9. Honor Your Own Agenda
Arriving at the office with a well-thought-out list of tasks to advance one’s agenda, only to find none completed by the day’s end, is a common challenge.
Imagine this: it’s a Friday with just one critical task on the to-do list, anticipating a breezy day. However, a phone call quickly leads to extensive research, uncovering a system error, followed by meetings and further research. Despite being busy all day, no progress was made toward the initial goals.
This scenario can occur regularly, particularly for those inclined to please others. Prioritizing colleagues’ goals over personal ones may feel comfortable, yet it hinders accomplishing hired tasks and justifying one’s existence.
Recognizing the need for change includes:
- Avoiding meetings without clear value addition.
- Closing out email and messenger apps when focusing on important tasks.
- Ceasing routinely prioritizing others’ needs over personal priorities.
- Pushing back on deadlines, setting realistic expectations for task turnaround.
- Encouraging specificity in requests to provide accurate results in one go, avoiding prolonged email exchanges and unmet expectations.
While truly urgent requests may arise, the realization that, as a financial institution, businesses don’t generally save lives, allows for a balanced approach. Balancing personal goals with assisting others becomes achievable in this context.
10. Build Relationships
Accomplishing goals requires collaboration and relationship building, especially in the realm of RFPs where collaboration with colleagues across the organization is common.
Historically, the prevailing belief was that success hinged solely on business activities, and the importance of relationships was dismissed. The focus was exclusively on tasks, with relationship building seen as a distraction. The firm notion held that advancement would be driven by knowledge rather than connections.
However, over time, it became evident that interpersonal relationships naturally develop, whether actively pursued or not. The realization dawned that progress could be achieved more efficiently with established trust and relationships among colleagues.
Understanding each other’s working styles and trusting intentions, facilitated quicker and smoother accomplishments. Taking time to inquire about colleagues’ lives and engage in casual conversations not only increased productivity but also enhanced job satisfaction.
11. Give Trust Blindly Until There is a Reason Not To
There are generally two types of people:
(1) those who trust nobody, and
(2) those that trust everybody.
Those who fall into the first group, assuming the entire world is out to get them, poses challenges in the early stages of a career. Trusting others to assist even with simple tasks is difficult, fearing potential letdowns and missed deadlines. The inclination is to avoid delegation, justifying it with the belief that thorough reviews would be necessary, taking more time than doing the work independently.
Even when forced to let others help, the tendency of these people is to secretly perform the delegated work as a precaution against potential disappointment. Over time, letting go of the belief that one’s way was always the best, can open up collaboration and trusting colleagues. Initially challenging, this new approach brings about positive transformations.
In business today, the opposite approach is valued, offering trust until proven otherwise. This shift has resulted in numerous learning opportunities, most surprisingly, that giving trust rarely leads to disappointment, and the end results can exceed expectations, surpassing what could have been achieved alone.
12. Communication (and Even Overcommunication) is Key
In the roles of an RFP writer and content manager, pursuing subject matter experts (SMEs) for content reviews and responses is a daily task, constituting a significant part of the workday. The apparent lack of responsiveness from colleagues is perplexing, given the importance of these activities to the firm’s success.
As relationships develop, it becomes evident that many SMEs lack an understanding of the content management process, despite their years of participation. They receive extensive content verification packets, but the perceived lack of value in the review process leads them to consistently prioritize this task at the bottom of their to-do lists, causing frustration.
Recognizing the crucial role of communication in the content curation process, a strategy of overcommunication is employed. Steps include:
- Providing a detailed explanation to each SMEof what will happen to the content after their review.
- Offering metrics on how many Q&As are answered directly from the database, highlighting the resulting time savings.
- Sharing the number of unused records archived quarterly and the associated time savings.
This elevated level of communication significantly improves SME buy-in, leading to the realization that more can be done. The next phase of the overcommunication plan involves listening more closely to subject matter experts, which includes:
- Seeking feedback on individual question review frequencies within compliance guidelines.
- Inquiring about optimal times for conducting reviews during the quarter, month, or year.
- Establishing monthly Lunch and Learns for writers to enhance their knowledge of subject areas covered in RFPs and effectively use existing content.
- Soliciting general feedback on the process and implementing suggestions for process improvements whenever possible.
These changes transform the dynamics. SMEs no longer feel their content reviews disappear into a void only to resurface the following year. They no longer perceive themselves as participants in a process they have no role in shaping. Quantifying the efficiencies of content verification, genuinely hearing their feedback, and demonstrating respect for their time, make a significant difference in SME willingness to collaborate. Regular communication, even if it feels like overcommunication at times, is encouraged for everyone working with subject matter experts.
13. Be Unapologetically Committed to Learning
In the role of RFP writers, it may not always come naturally to focus on asking questions and taking the time to look up information. The pressure to meet deadlines and produce questionnaires can make these actions seem like a luxury within our production cycle.
It’s crucial to recognize that being a first line of defense expert on the topics covered in RFPs is an integral part of the role. Instead of simply cutting and pasting responses from SMEs, start to read and learn from them. Striving to become an expert in the content not only improves the quality of your RFPs but also enhances efficiency in analyzing database responses for more effective utilization.
Becoming informed about your knowledgebase’s content facilitates crafting responses with greater precision, reducing email traffic, and fosters SME trust in handling one-off questions. Understanding the knowledgebase’s content proves to be a necessity rather than a luxury, allowing for an improvement in the quality and volume of output while streamlining the RFP process.
14. Take Care of Yourself
To achieve great results, prioritizing self-care is essential. Just like the oxygen mask analogy suggests, attending to your well-being is interconnected with overall success. Whether it’s engaging in physical activity or daily meditation, establishing a self-care routine and treating commitments to oneself with the same seriousness as commitments to others is crucial.
In times of stress, leaning into established self-care routines becomes even more important. Despite the temptation to deviate from healthy habits, especially during hectic periods or tight deadlines, it’s essential to persist in prioritizing self-care. While perfection may not always be achievable, making a continuous effort to practice self-care during challenging moments is key.
A significant aspect of self-care involves taking breaks to clear the mind, contributing to increased productivity and focus. This practice allows for stepping back and gaining a broader perspective on ongoing projects. Walking away from the details helps assess the overall strategy, make necessary adjustments, and prevent getting stuck in unproductive tasks. Numerous instances showcase how taking an hour for self-care has prevented delving too deeply into counterproductive work and prompted a reevaluation of projects.
Recognizing that self-care enhances results, transforms it from a perceived luxury to a necessary practice. Whether it’s a walk, yoga class, or listening to an audiobook, finding personal self-care methods and committing to them daily is crucial. Neglecting sleep and relying on stimulants can eventually impact results. Prioritizing self-care is not selfish; it’s a vital component of sustaining success in the long run.
15. Don’t Recreate the Wheel
You don’t need us to emphasize the value of a top-notch content management tool. However, the principle extends to various aspects of our work. We advise each of you to identify your strengths and areas where you provide the most value to your firm. Focus your efforts there and explore ways to streamline other tasks, such as:
- Training junior team members for ongoing task delegation.
- Utilizing relink functionality to expedite recurring requests.
- Exploring partnerships, like with RocketDocs, to revamp your RFP process or manage content.
