Re-use, Re-hash, Re-cycle

June 28, 2011 Re-use, Re-hash, Re-cycle

We need to make an admission here. We’ve all done it, and we need to admit it. We’ve all seen that question, nestled in a labyrinthine Request For Something-or-other, asking us about our Alignment to the State Government Code Of Practice on the Application of Widgets, and thought to ourselves the horrible, dangerous and yes, downright evil thought:

“What did we write last time?”

Put your hands up, you in the back, I can see you.

We’ve hunted down that block of prose, we’ve changed a few words around, done a find and replace on the old client’s name and slammed it in, 47 hours before deadline at 11pm on a Tuesday and it kind of sort of maybe halfway answered the question and job’s right and good enough for government work.

Right?

Right?

Keep your hands up.

And then, then we LEAVE IT IN. Because it kind of sort of vaguely answers the question and we REALLY NEED TO TELL THEM about our exciting value add and our overarching client engagement words of power philosophy matrix. And we start to read past it, because it’s there and it looks like it’s the right length and our eyes are glazing and it’s 11pm on a Thursday and the General Manager of Applied Alchemical Astrolabes NEEDS to see a draft by start of business tomorrow.

And we stop reading it.

And it stays in.

And it’s the same as it was last time.

Only last time, you changed a few words and you did a find and replace on the client name, and you dropped it in because it fit and you stopped reading it.

And the time before that, only you changed a section about location and did a find and replace on South Australia.

And eventually what we end up with is a block of text that’s absolutely fine in every respect, that answers the question and fills in the gap and lets you tick that box on your tender response completion checklist.

As long as you don’t read it

But that’s exactly what the evaluator’s going to do.

The evaluator’s going to sit down, with 4, or 17 or 38 responses to the section on Alignment to the State Government Code Of Practice on the Application of Widgets. And 3 or 16 or 37 of them are going to be a block of text with a quick find and replace. And 3 or 16 or 37 of them are going to kind of sort of semi make sense. And those responses are going to get a passing score.

But one, just one, of your competitors, will have written their answer from scratch. They will have thought about the question, thought about the client, thought about WHY the client is asking that question and they will have written their response, in an order that makes sense, and with callbacks to their key win themes, and with specific reference to the client’s major problems.

And they are going to get a better score than you.

So next time you find yourself, at 9pm on a Wednesday, trawling through previous responses looking for something that’s vaguely analogous to what you’re being asked, with your fingers hovering over Ctrl-C, stop. Think.

By all means, grab your most recent response that comes close to the answer you’re going to provide, but then take the extra four minutes and rewrite the passage, word by word, line by line.

Your prose will be cleaner, your point will be clearer.

And you’ll be the one getting extra points on evaluation.

 

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