Tool Box
Issue No. 11 - June/July 2003
Collaboration: More than a Chicken Dance
Eight Basic Elements of Collaboration to Prepare a Consortium Bid
by Adrian de Brenni
“Let’s meet to discuss putting in a joint bid” can be the start of the chicken dance. People from two organisations then get together and what often happens is that they spend the time posturing, talking in generalities, revealing little, trying to subtly position themselves as being superior and generally ‘dancing’ around subjects of any real substance. You need to get past this ritual and get on to real collaboration.
Collaboration is the joint efforts of a number of parties who share an objective or objectives. For bids and proposals, collaboration is often referred to as ‘teaming’, an alliance, a joint venture, a partnership or a similar term. These terms can describe the relationships as they exist in the formative stages of a consortium and also can be used as part of more rigorous legal agreements and documents.
Why collaborate? Collaboration can achieve a better offer for a customer than would be possible from individual efforts. It increases the probability of the bid being selected and provides benefits to all partners. Most organisations realise that they need to find new ways of working to be able to provide better ways of delivering services, generating revenue, cutting costs and reaching new markets – and this is for the organisation itself as well as for its customers.
Organisations can show leadership to their customers and partners by implementing new relationships based on collaboration and sharing benefits. This means that for large projects involving many different elements a consortium of specialists for each element can provide an offer superior to a single organisation – as long as the consortium can integrate and manage the elements effectively.
Small and large companies are collaborating more and more. The large companies are more generalists and require the specialisation that small niche companies can provide. The combination is powerful for both parties with the large company b...
