BuiltEnvironment

Presentations, actors, masks and honesty

It doesn't matter whether the audience is 3 or 30,000. Some people just have difficulty standing up in front of a group. Some use a crutch, a "mask" to hide behind. That way, the person facing the audience is not them, but the character created for that purpose.

It doesn't matter whether the mask is serious or funny, whether it's made of fabric or papier mâché, or just a new surface created with make-up. A mask allows an actor to step onto the stage as someone else, maybe someone terrible, maybe someone crazy, but someone else.

So here's today's big idea:

Every presentation is a performance.

Yes! When you step onto the stage, or to the front of the room, you give a performance. You may not be singing, dancing, or reciting a dramatic monologue, but you WILL be performing.

This didn't scare you when you were young. At six, you could take on a character with no preparation, making up dialogue along the way—pure improvisation, no script, not even a plot line. Neither you nor your friends worried about where the scene went.

As a business presenter, however, you need a way to put aside the fear, until the fear reduces to 5 minutes of nerves that you can control.

At this point in my various careers, I have spent more than 15,000 hours on stage as an actor and cabaret singer, and given more than 100 presentations to professional and other groups.

As a cabaret singer, my largest audience has probably been around 200. I have no fear of singing for any audience as long as my words are memorized.

As an actor, my largest audience has been more than 3,200. I still get nervous for a few minutes before I step on stage. But once my first line is said, I'm fine.

As a business presenter, my largest audience has been around 125. Since I now only present on topics I know, I am more likely to get nervous after the presentation as we go into the Q&A portion, because I have no idea what will be asked; I may have to address something about which I've written extensively or something about which I have given no thought.

The key in business presentations is to be honest. In my early years, when I got more than just nervous, I created a persona that was exactly like me (keeping it honest) but who was comfortable in front of a group. That one small change allowed me to get up and speak. It could easily work for you, too.

Make a list of the characteristics that define you. Then duplicate the list. At the bottom of the first, add the bullet, "uncomfortable in front of an audience." At the bottom of the second, add the bullet, "comfortable in front of an audience." Then throw the first list in the trash and post the second where you will see it every day. And make sure to look at it when you're preparing a presentation.

Because every presentation is a performance, I prepare as I would for an acting job. I find a relatively private place and do a quick physical warm-up, focusing on my ankles and knees so my movements are smooth and I'm balanced on my feet. And I greet people as the enter to warm up my voice and establish a personal link with some audience members before I start.

If you have a team that needs coaching for an upcoming presentation, or you want to give your frequent presenters some general help and encouragement, please give me a call at 559-901-9596 and let's talk about how I can help.

Individuals, teams, and success

 

A few days ago, in a post titled, "Recognizing the 'I' in 'TEAM'," I wrote about how each individual brings something different to the team. I said, "a good team is composed of multiple individuals, each of whom brings a unique combination of talents, training, skills, experience, and perspective to the effort."

 

Then I remembered this quote by Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest football coaches of the 20th century, who said:

 

"Individual commitment to a group effort— that's what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." 

 

Understand that I am not a big football fan—and I never have been—so I have no idea where I actually ran across this quotation. But it aligns so completely with my own beliefs about how teams are built and how they function, and the fact that different individuals bring different contributions to the team effort, that I copied the quote into a file I keep of interesting quotes.

 

(Validation is a great thing, and the source from which it arises doesn't matter.)

Did you ever watch a movie and then read or listen to a review, and wonder if you and the critic saw the same movie? That's because every individual takes in information through a different set of filters based on experience, age, gender, education, priorities, and a host of other criteria. And all our (outgoing) actions are ultimately based on how we process, store, and use this (incoming) information.

 

No two people are exactly the same—studies have shown that even "identical" twins will respond differently to the same stimulus, will absorb and catalog information differently, and will even differ in how they value and prioritize specific information. So it should be no surprise that different people bring different personal value propositions to a team.

 

In fact, a good team leader selects team his/her members based on those personal value propositions and how they align with the needs of the project on which the team is working, or in the case of A/E marketers, the project for which the team is competing.

 

Think of it this way: If your firm wanted to create a proposal to manage a major planning, design, and construction effort for a large municipal water system, would you want a proposal team consisting solely of water pipeline engineers? or would you also want your proposal team to include people with expertise in water treatment, utility system operations, city planning, utility construction, GRAPHIC DESIGN AND MARKETING?

 

Every individual selected for every one of those technical specialties will have a personal value proposition that is based on training, skills, experience, and perspective unique to that person—a collection of value propositions required for the creation of a winning proposal.

The ultimate success of the team is measured by how all those individual combinations are able to mesh—to work together, to support each other, to fill in the blanks in other team members' combinations—to achieve the goal of developing a winning value proposition for the team and a winning proposal based on that value proposition.

Recognizing the "I" in "TEAM"

People are always saying "there's no 'I' in team!" But I beg to differ.

While I agree that there is no letter "I" in the word "team," there are as many I's in a team as there are team members!

A good team is composed of multiple Individuals, each of whom brings a unique combination of talents, training, skills, experience, and perspective to the effort. This combination makes up the individual's personal "value proposition."

Understanding each individual's value proposition enables a team leader to match the skills of various individuals to the assignment's specific requirements; to assemble all the talents, training, skills, experience and perspectives required to complete the project successfully; and to ensure that the team can respond quickly to any surprise the project might deliver.

To be the most effective team member one can be, an A/E marketer must do the following:

• Identify the components of his/her value proposition;
• Identify the additional components he/she wants to acquire to enhance his/her value proposition, and how to acquire them;
• Identify ways and opportunities to communicate his/her value proposition to potential team leaders in order to secure desirable team assignments; and
• Identify ways to leverage this new, broader value proposition and the assignments it enables for the ultimate enhancement of his/her career in the A/E industry.

Growing up in a Jewish household, my father often counseled me to find a good "rabbi" in any job situation. What he meant was that I should identify a rising firm leader and "hitch my wagon to their star." In other words, if I allied myself with the right mentor or sponsor, my career would rise as theirs did.

I give the same advice to young A/E marketers today. But I tell them to look for multiple stars on whose teams they want to be, and then develop the right value proposition and "sell" that proposition to these stars to get the teaming assignments that will advance their careers.

I tell them that understanding their own value proposition could help them avoid team assignments where they are likely to be less than effective, assignments that would reflect negatively on their value proposition.

When an ambitious A/E marketer reaches the point where there are no more opportunities to grow, to stretch, in their current position it is time to do one of three things:

• try to grow their current position into one where new challenges will enable them to find new enhancements to their value proposition; or
• look for, or create, a new position in their current company that provides the challenges they seek; or
• look for a position in another company that will give them new challenges to enhance their value proposition.

In my 37 years in the A/E industry, I have never met an A/E marketer who was lazy. Every A/E marketer I know is always looking for new challenges to keep him/her succeeding in and enjoying their professional situation, wherever those challenges can be found.

I have been very lucky in my A/E career. With one exception, I have worked for people who would allow me to try new things if I could demonstrate a benefit to the company. When I succeeded, the new activity became part of my ongoing job description, and part of my new value proposition.

When agencies use RFQs/RFPs as boilerplate

Some years ago, I attended a US Army Corps of Engineers seminar on a new initiative called FAR 12. The overall goal of the initiative was to get government agencies to do business the way businesses do business.

For example, if a purchasing agent wanted to buy toilet paper for a military base, his/her first call should not be to Kimberly Clark or Scott Paper, but to someone who buys toilet paper for some other large institution, like a major university, and find out how THEY buy toilet paper.

It was thought that this would help reduce government expenses (i.e. no more $400 toilet seats) and make it easier for private sector firms to work with government agencies.

It was also hoped that this initiative would encourage purchasing and procurement staff to write their own RFQs and RFPs instead of "borrowing" similar ones and using them verbatim. The instructor used this example:

An agency had to purchase a piece of equipment (with maintenance), and had determined that Motorola made exactly the equipment needed. The purchasing agent borrowed an RFP, added specifications for his current need, published the RFP and waited for bids. The due date came and went, with no Motorola bid. After selecting another supplier, the procurement officer called his Motorola contact and asked why they had not bid. Motorola's responses was:

This equipment requires recalibration every 30 days, but your RFP stipulated weekly recalibration. Those three additional calibrations every month would eliminate our profit. So we decided to pass. By the way, why did you specify weekly recalibration?

The procurement person was at a loss to answer; he could think of no reason for this specification. He asked the technical person, who said he had only added the specifications for this equipment. Apparently, nobody read the rest of the RFP to see what was there from previous uses. The weekly recalibration had been a "leftover."

Unfortunately, this happens all too often. Procurement officers use an existing RFQ or RFP rather than creating a new one, without looking at what's already in the document.

Regardless of why it happens, too many RFQs and RFP are "borrowed" rather than created, and pre-existing text is rarely reread, so a "new" solicitation can squeak through with multiple requirements leftover from previous usages.

Many of these situations ultimately get corrected through the official procedure for questions and answers, and I guess many procurement officers think that an addendum, or multiple addenda, will be cheaper than making the effort to get it right the first time. But there is a cost to such an attitude, a cost that must be paid by the agencies, the A/E industry or both. I have experienced a few RFPs with more than 10 addenda each, many of those addenda requiring changes in the team's firm composition, or the addition or elimination of technical staff.

Here are some questions I've never seen tracked in the A/E industry:

• How many A/E firms have to make significant firm teaming or staffing changes as these addenda appear, with all the costs of doing so?
• How many A/E firms have to make significant content (text, tables, graphics) changes as these addenda appear, with all the costs of doing so?
• Rather than make these changes and suffer the costs they incur, how many A/E firms simply remove such agencies from their "watch" lists because they view the agencies as "careless" due to the number of addenda their RFQs or RFPs generally go through?

It seems to me that public agencies who borrow RFQs/RFPs without checking to see what's already included do themselves a great disservice by discouraging many fine firms from competing for that agency's work. And that's in addition to the cost of the extra staff time it takes to correct and republish the solicitation.

Perhaps they need a more than gentle reminder that if they haven't got time to do it right the first time, the certainly don't have the time to do it a second time, or a third, or . . .

RFQ/RFP Confusion — Words make a difference!

One of my best design clients recently asked me to prepare a response to a public agency's Request for Proposals. The project involved extending sewer service to a small area not currently served, where the lots were too small to allow the permitting of septic tank systems. The project seemed simple enough. And the RFP was simple and straightforward.

On the second page of the RFP, the first bullet item in the Scope of Work was the preparation of the bid packet. I assumed that this meant design and preparation of plans, specifications and cost estimates (PS&E) for the project.

However, on the next page, the three items in the Project Summary were "Summarize the problem to be addressed," "Identify the location of each activity," and "Identify the actions to resolve the problems." Under this last item, it said "Construction shall consist of the installation of..." and it proceeded to enumerate the number of linear feet of pipe and the pipeline diameter, the number of manholes, etc.

There was no mention of any design activities in Item 3. This made me wonder if the design phase was already complete and the project just involved the installation and testing of pipe. I emailed the agency's purchasing agent yesterday and have not received a response so far, even though the submittal is due in one week.

In a related "pet peeve," I have close to 60 public sector agency websites that I check once or twice each week. These include cities, counties, transit and miscellaneous agencies, as well as fedbizopps (fbo.gov). At a number of these sites, when you click the RFP or RFQ link, you get to see requests for proposals to study, to design, AND to construct. And the construction project links can also be accessed through the "Bids" link. You have to click to open the individual document to discover whether the project is a design or construction assignment.

Looking for potential project leads takes more time than it would had the pursuit titles included more than just the name of the facility. For example, I'd like to see:

• RFP for Traffic Studies for Main Street
• RFQ/RFP for Design of Improvements to Main Street

or

• IFB for Construction of Main Street Improvements

This would make things much easier for those of us looking for potential projects, whether we are in-house marketing or business development staff or outside consultants who look for leads to bring their A/E/C clients.

Unfortunately, many who see their job responsibilities as other than communication don't seem to understand the importance of choosing the correct word. And not using any words at all can be as inefficient—for both the owner/agency and the A/E/C firm—as using the wrong words (calling something an RFP when it is actually an invitation to bid on a construction project.

Somehow, I suspect that, as long as purchasing/procurement staff borrow existing RFQs and RFPs rather than writing them from scratch, we will always have solicitations that don't quite say what they need to, or that will require the development and submittal of information that actually has no relevance to the project or product at hand.