We are often asked, sometimes too late, if the incumbent program manager should be assigned as the Capture and/or Proposal Manager for the recompete.
I cannot emphasize my answer too strongly: No, No, No, and NO again. Capture Manager and Proposal Manager hats generally do not fit Program Managers and there are a few reasons for that.
Many times the incumbent Program Manager is the incumbent’s biggest liability. Often when we are hired by companies to do an independent 3rd Party Assessment of their performance as the incumbent contractor, we find that the Program Manager is not the stellar performer his boss thinks he is. He may have some management failings, not have a good relationship with the client, and/or be lacking the insight into client needs, wants, and biases that you would expect him to have. As a result, if he were the Capture or Proposal Manager he would be executing his responsibilities through distorted lenses.
This being said, even if the Program Manager were terrific, he still probably is a misfit for capture or proposal management. Here’s why.
Program Managers tend to be left brained. That is, they are analytic, directive, methodical, and extremely data driven. The best Program Managers sees things as a systems engineer. They put together pieces and get them to run together to achieve programmatic objectives. This is diametrically opposed to the prototypical Capture Manager, who is a strategist and an idea person. Capture Managers do not see “things”, they see “concepts” and are adept at molding these ideas into a strategy that is responsive to the needs, wants, and biases of the client decision makers and influencers.
Ok, then. So why would he be a poor choice to don the Proposal Manager’s hat. After all the description of a Program Manager in the previous paragraph sounds like the characteristics of a Proposal Manager. Shouldn’t a Proposal Manager be left brained? Methodical? Adept at putting together diverse parts to achieve a coherent whole? Focused on completion, compliance, and utility? Yes, of course it does. The mismatch here is not about personality, it is about process. The proposal process is a fickle beast. It must be followed and it must be respected. But more than that, it must be caressed. The best Proposal Managers know how to follow the process, but also know the art of making adjustments at the line of scrimmage when a cold dose of reality tells them that the proposal is at risk of going off the track if followed religiously. Only an experienced Proposal Manager knows how to do that – probably learned from a great mentor, or from painful experience – but a Program Manager would be a babe in the woods and might go down in flames.
Has your team ever used an incumbent program manager in the capture/ and or proposal manager role? What were the results?
Thank you for the strong “NO!” I always recommend to my clients that proposal management should be done by marketing staff, whose training is in the writing of proposals rather than project management. I only want the prospective project manager, whom I call the “technical champion” during proposal times, to be in charge of the technical sections (i.e. the project understanding and approach, schedule and fee proposal, if appropriate). And I definitely don’t need a firm principal doing all the administrative chores that make up so much of proposal management.
It’s been my experience that the incumbent program manager is simply too busy to fill the role of capture or proposal manager, regardless of how well-suited they may or may not be for the role. Being a proposal manager is a full-time job and the proposal struggles if the person managing it is too busy dealing with day-to-day issues of the contract, on top of a dozen other matters that always seem to arise during the proposal process.