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The Recipe for an Effective Proposal Print E-mail
Friday, 30 November 2007

Does management reject your ideas? A typical cause for rejection is a failure to frame the idea effectively. Frame your idea effectively and it becomes a proposal, which will demand consideration by management. What is the recipe and key ingredients for an effective proposal?

The key ingredients are X (the idea), Y (the benefits), and Z (the cost of doing nothing). The following shows the recipe that turns an idea into a proposal:

If you do X, you will get Y.

Otherwise (if you do nothing) it will cost you Z.

Do I have your approval to do X?

Is that exactly what you should say to management? No, of course not. I designed the recipe and ingredients to help you spot a missing ingredient or portion of the frame. For instance, uneducated proposers typically fail to explicitly ask management for approval to do X.

For instance, David believes his company should buy software to track trouble tickets and issues. David talks to Ruth, his manager, about his idea.

David: Ruth, I think we should buy the ABC software to track trouble tickets and issues.

Ruth: I don't have budget for that.

David: But we can't make sense of what we are hearing from our testers and clients.

Ruth: No, now is not the time.

David: @#!~

David has articulated X but he is missing Y and Z. And he hasn't asked Ruth to do anything. Using the simplest version of the recipe, the conversation could be transformed to:

David: Ruth, if you approved the purchase of the ABC software to track trouble tickets and issues, you could justify to Stan (Ruth's manager) the additional people you want to hire by giving him unequivocal information about our clients and testers opinions about problems with our product. If we continue to be unable to clearly articulate the problems with our product, we will continue ineffectively prioritizing the use of our people.

Ruth: We don't have the budget for it.

David: Do we have the budget for continuing to do business as usual?

Ruth: @#!~

David: Do I have your approval to buy the ABC software?

Ruth: Let me think about it.

David: When should I check back with you?

Ruth: Friday.

Did David get what he wanted? No. But he is much closer than the first conversation. If Ruth says "No," he can appeal to Stan. If he appeals, David will want to change Y (the benefits) so they resonate with Stan. As you move up the management chain, its often important to articulate the benefits in economic terms.

The same recipe and ingredients applies to making a proposal to anyone, such as a teammate or client. Focus the benefits (Y) so they resonate with the other person.

I lead a terrific workshop on this topic. Read Chris Kay's feedback about the workshop. Please This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it about brining the workshop to your organization.

©2007 Steven M Smith

 

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I approach this sort of thing in a different order of emphasis
written by Jason Yip , November 30, 2007

My conversations typically look like this...

Our situation is A. This causes problems B, C, and D. I propose we do E which means our situation will change to F.

Depending on the reaction, this might continue with, "if we could solve that issue, do you have any other objections to doing this" AND/OR "who do we need to talk to make this happen?"

Some situations also have multiple options to deal with the problem though I'll usually recommend a preferred one.



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