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The story I'm about to tell you is true, so help me God, only the names
have been changed.
I was a contractor at a telecom company doing big-dollar proposals. If
you've ever been involved in creating 100mil/600 page response in three
weeks, you know that tempers can become stretched. However, at the same
time, proposals are the ultimate "Get it done, I don't care how"
environments.
Anyway, I was the writer for a proposal effort and one of the managers
involved was known to be a real micro-manager and his primary assistant
was a real nudge.
It's 4 days into a 3 week process and I'm asked to send out a draft for
review. A proposal might go through 3, 5, 10 reviews.
I send out the draft and as I'm prone to do at that time, the TOC is ALL
Levels deep, helps me see the document structure.
I get a call from this assistant "John...Mike would like to have the TOC
only 2 levels deep."
Without thinking, my response was "Tell Mike to kiss my butt and you're 2
days late getting me your input."
After much sputtering, he tells me that "You're not being responsive to
our needs". My response was that "You're not being responsive to MY needs
and my needs are to get this done on time."
To make a long story short, the proposal went out on time, it won, and the
next time he had a response, he asked for me, with the statement "I may
not like the way he works, but he does it right and I want it right
again."
The point? You have to know what battles you can win and how important you
are to the process. The more important, the more you can get away with.
--- Eric Ray <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com> wrote:
>
>
> "Brierley, Sean" wrote:
> > Isn't the answer to this the age-old "know your audience"? I mean,
=====
John Posada
jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com
john -at- tdandw -dot- com
732-291-7811
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Benjamin Franklin
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