Page 60 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

Aligning the Baseline Logic 51

not currently enjoy and thus eliminate or certainly delay the need for additional
capacity.
In short, this might be a classic insight and planning study. Like many such
combination studies, this one could involve phasing, a possible “go/no go” deci-
sion point at the end of the insight piece. That is, the first phase of the study might
supply ABC with the insight it needs to determine whether it indeed requires
additional capacity as soon as it believes it does (and, if so, how much by when).
On the other hand, you don’t believe that you could sell an insight and plan-
ning study to ABC or that ABC senses a decision point. All the buyers seem to
believe that additional capacity is necessary, although the amount and timing are
uncertain. More specifically, Collins would certainly object to an insight study
and, depending on her influence, so might others. So you decide to characterize
this opportunity as a planning study. It will certainly have an insight element, in
the form of a deliverable validating Collins’s forecast, but it will have only one
objective: to develop a plan. Therefore, because there will be no decision point
after validating the forecast, you decide to call the project what in your mind ABC
believes it to be: a study to develop a plan for increasing production capacity. You
do, however, assign a red flag indicating a potential disagreement between how
you and ABC view the kind of study this should be. Because of this uncertainty,
you also need to red flag Cell 4 (Figure 3.23), since in your mind, the study could
very well have both an insight and a planning question.
Because you have now circled “Planning” in Cell 3, you know that you will use
the Planning column in Cells 4, 5, and 6. That is, you are continuing to complete
the cells from ABC’s point of view, red flagging whenever your point of view dif-
fers. From ABC’s point of view, this is a planning study. Consequently, you will use
the Planning (rather than the Insight or Implementation) column to enter informa-
tion related to the overriding question, desired result, deliverables, and benefits.

The Logics Worksheet: Cell 5 (See Figure 3.24.)
This cell asks you to specify the desired result or results to be produced by your
project and the deliverables that, taken together, will produce them. The desired
result, you know, should be a simple rephrasing of the overriding question, and
it should express your project’s objective, which, in this case, would be to develop
a plan to increase capacity to meet the market forecast. Because the overriding
question is flagged, the desired result also must be flagged.
You know that the deliverables are outcomes produced during the project.
They are the key outputs that will move ABC from its current situation to its
desired result. Although you are comfortable with most of the deliverables you
have identified, you are concerned about two matters. First, all the deliverables
should be, by definition, red flagged since the desired result also is flagged. If the