Let’s Talk! The Challenge of a Challenge

This is a story from a long time ago.

It felt like the perfect bid.

We were collaborative. We’d formed a team and a solution before the ITT. We had a relationship with the customer through proven delivery, we’d worked up a thorough PTW and the bid felt good. We believed we had hit the customer hot buttons, we had a compelling solution and, whilst we knew the competition was tough, we had done everything we could.

And then we got the letter no one wants to receive. It cut deep, because not only had we lost, but we had lost by 40%.

It didn’t feel right. How could we have got it so wrong? We reviewed the comments, and the customer had said that a critical document was incomplete. Without it, our scores were halved.

Upon investigation, one page had missed the scan. The one that had our organisation’s signature. Because of this, the customer deemed the whole document incomplete. It was a genuine error, and we were gutted.

We started to question the customer’s approach. Why didn’t they give us the opportunity to rectify human error? This goes against UK Government procurement rules. Then, we began to notice other inconsistencies in the marking.

We conducted an analysis and realised that, if they had counted the document as valid, we would have won. We felt we had a case for a challenge.

My organisation at the time was very ‘British’ and doesn’t like raising a formal challenge, deterred by the notion that it would impact the relationship with a key customer.

But we presented our findings of unjust practices, showing evidence without emotion, and managed to get lawyers involved to support us in raising a case against the decision.

Ultimately, the customer maintained their position. We conceded at that point, as it was clear that the winner had been able to shape and influence more than we had and that the customer wanted to award to them.

Should we have no-bid? Easy to say in hindsight. We knew the competitor was influential, but hadn’t realised quite how influential they were.

What we did achieve was an opportunity to change the perception of our business on raising a challenge. We are held as the team that didn’t give up and our determination was respected within the organisation. We also demonstrated true collaborative behaviours and psychological safety. We didn’t blame the person doing the scanning. Our focus was on resolution.

Lessons learned:

1. Things won’t always go right, and mistakes can happen. But it’s important to set the conditions early on that we raise issues early and work to a solution than try to blame or cover up. Collective problem resolution has a way of bringing people closer together. We demonstrated true collaborative behaviours when working on the challenge, and this instilled more trust.

1. When considering a challenge, take out the emotion and focus on the evidence. Take that moment to pause and reflect: is there a case for challenge or are you just hurt? Let the numbers do the talking. Treat it like a business case when trying to present the need to raise a challenge to the leadership team.
2. Sometimes, it’s worth challenging. We managed to have a dialogue with the customer that set our position that we don’t want to be involved in a competition to simply make up the numbers. This enabled more honest engagements with the customer on what is the right opportunity for us.

The team still keeps in touch today. And, whilst it seems strange to say, one of my favourite bids to work on, was not a win.