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Green Team Reviews 139

Green Team Reviews: Some Final Thoughts

Proposal team leaders and members typically find themselves working against the
clock, unable to do all the things they want to do to prepare an outstanding pro-
posal. There is no shortage of actions the team would like to execute, but time is
almost always limited. So getting ready for a Green Team Review with colleagues,
some of whom may be in senior positions, could be perceived as threatening or
time-consuming: “The Green Team will highlight what we don’t know, what we
haven’t done. They’ll identify actions we should have taken. They’ll see that we
don’t have our act together.”
But consider this: Many, if not all, proposal teams lack complete information
and have a long list of potential actions they could have taken and haven’t, at least
not yet. Many don’t have their act together—yet. All this isn’t really surprising
to anyone who has seen how you work. There is never enough time; there are
seldom enough resources. Remember: As your potential client, I don’t ask you to
help me answer easy questions. This is the essential nature of the business.
The value of Green Team Reviews, if they are done early enough in the process,
is that broader, more experienced minds will help identify improvement actions
(and potential additional resources) that leverage not just a proposal team’s capa-
bility but also that of the entire organization. Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto;
even the sheriff had a posse. The collective knowledge in a Green Team Review
process helps overcome one of Murphy’s laws: Experience is something you don’t
get until just after you need it. While Green Team Reviews do not create addi-
tional time, they do focus efforts that can be instrumental to better utilize your
available time and resources, certainly for the select leads that you really want
to win.
The bottom line is this: Green Team Reviews can provide your firm’s man-
agement with the ability to understand and better support business-development
efforts. With the power of today’s information technology, your best people from
around the world can participate, making the proposal team aware of the knowl-
edge and experience of others in the firm, helping the team members learn what
they don’t know and what their firm knows. This collaboration, whether in per-
son or virtually, can certainly improve a team’s odds of winning, providing some
of the two to five points that make the difference between winning and placing
second.
By the way, can you think of a more effective professional-development oppor-
tunity for training new consultants? “Welcome to Paramount Consulting. . . .
We’d like you to watch (or even participate in) a Green Team Review for our lead
at ABC.”