What does honesty have to do with proposals?

When it comes to proposals, there is a lot more to honesty than just knowing where the line is that turns stretching the truth into lying. In fact, you’ll encounter far more issues related to honesty everywhere else! 

1. Honesty in assessing win probability. How many times have you heard people tell the lie, “We should bid this because we can do the work and we could win?” How many reports incentivize showing a high win probability? How often is a pWin percentage given with a straight face when both the giver and the receiver know that the percentage is pure fiction? Even if it’s unintentional, it’s still a lie. How many pWin “algorithms” provide that percentage so that no one is personally to blame for telling the lie, and no one questions the accuracy of the algorithm or compares it to their bid history? They are all just guesses. Personally, I prefer an honest guess over an obfuscated, incentivized lie. 
2. Honesty in assessing level of effort. Assessing the amount of time required to write something for a proposal is similar to assessing win probability. Writers are incentivized to pad their estimates, while managers are incentivized to lowball the estimates, usually to conserve budgets. The difference between estimates for writing and win probability, is that writing will scale to the time given. Give someone a day and you’ll get a day’s worth of writing. Give them three days, and assuming they don’t have competing priorities and don’t procrastinate, they’ll put more effort into it. Managing this is more of an art than a science. One page can take all day. Or it can take 20 minutes. It depends on what you are writing and how well you know the subject matter.
3. Honesty in managing expectations. I will be honest about what I expect from you during the proposal. Will you be honest with me? I expect there will be differences in expectations, especially those due to priority conflicts. We can work together to untangle them. What I want to avoid is being told what you think I want to hear, leaving me with a false expectation. We both need to be completely honest if we are going to avoid false expectations.
4. Honesty with accepting assignments. The scope of an assignment and the schedule for completing it are both negotiations. I can negotiate with someone who’s being honest with me. But an assignment accepted by someone who is not being honest is not only worthless, it’s a risk to proposal success.
5. Honesty in issue reporting. Often proposals are nothing but problem solving. Successful problem solving depends on people being honest about the nature of the problem and the options for resolving it. Issues are best surfaced early, while there is time to address them. Hiding issues is a form of dishonesty, even if it is well intentioned. However, if you miss your deadline without letting anyone know you were running late, you weren’t being honest about your status and you negatively impacted the proposal by running out the deadline clock. Issues tend to come up in areas where estimates are really guesses about things that can’t be quantified, like how long it will take to write something.  The more honesty there is in surfacing, discussing, and resolving issues, the better things will turn out. 
6. Honesty with your customers. How much of what companies say about cost, price, schedule, availability, capability, and recommendations are known to be not true when spoken? Isn’t that the same as a lie? Customers also lie. They ask for things, tell you things, and say they will do things they know aren’t true. All of these things can affect your proposals. The more honest you are in this dynamic, the more credible and reliable you will be. Risk-conscious customers appreciate credibility and reliability.
7. Honesty with teammates and subcontractors. Is the subcontractor scheming to take over as the prime contractor at the next recompete? Is the prime contractor scheming to keep more of the best work for themselves? Why is it that subcontractors tend to be late with their proposal assignments and then they don’t deliver in full? Is this honesty? What does it say about the future relationship?
8. Honesty when reporting capability. This is an issue at both the company and individual levels. Companies tell customers they have capabilities they don’t really have, maybe because they think they can just hire the staff that will give them those capabilities. Or maybe because they think they can rise to the occasion, somehow. All this can make knowing what to write about a company’s capabilities a lesson in how far you are willing to stretch your honesty. Individuals sometimes claim expertise they do not have and sometimes deny expertise they do have in order to avoid assignments. Sometimes people claim knowledge or expertise until they see what is actually required. These failures result in time being wasted against the deadline. 

Here’s how these things impact your proposals

Saying you can deliver something in two days that you know will take longer disrupts the review process and reduces the time for recovery. Not surfacing problems you are aware of, or even just suspect, makes them worse. Ignoring other people’s expectations when you know you won’t meet them runs out the deadline clock. So does having expectations of people that you know they can’t meet. So does turning in an ordinary proposal section that doesn’t reflect what it will take to win, but you hope will slide past the reviewers. 

Honesty is not just about whether a statement is true or false. In proposal development, honesty is mostly about reliability and coordination. If you are less reliable or your efforts are less coordinated because you were less honest, you are working against winning the proposal. The entire company, its management, and its culture can contribute to this. You won’t improve honesty by focusing on one event at a time, or by evangelizing on the importance of honesty. It will improve when people respect it and lose their fear of it. 

Creating a culture of honesty doesn’t mean enforcing honesty. It means nurturing it and rewarding it so that people aren’t incentivized to stretch the truth.