January 2015: How Many Teammates Is Too Many ?
As I'm sure you'll agree, teaming should be for, among other strategic reasons, increasing Pwin by having:
Specialty/niche skills
Incumbency/legacy
Cost benefits
Breadth/ depth of staff
Customer recognition/like
Longer term partnering
Fulfillment of small business goals
Is it possible to have too many teammates ? The short answer is "yes." I've seen this happen in situations where a capture strategy changes over a period of time and teammates are added near the end of the pursuit for good reason, but some early teammates no longer make sense. This realization often coincides with teammate apathy because they feel/are diluted to just a few FTEs or a very small piece of the pie....after all, what's in it for them ? Symptoms of too many teammates may include:
Teammates respond to data calls at "half-fast" speed if at all
Teammates don't bother to, or infrequently, call in to standups or other telecons
Subcontracts personnel are stretched too thin during pursuit (notwithstanding the additional cost to manage the many teammates during execution)
So how to address ? Put at least one "trigger" provision in the Teaming Agreement which permits the prime to dissolve if teaming is no longer beneficial...and/or the downside outweighs the upside. This provision may be as simple as a failure to respond to a data call for resumes within xx days, or even at the sole discretion of the prime. This innovative process and Proposal Navigator® tool efficiencies add productive work days to your constrained proposal development timelines. Contact us for your capture/proposal support needs or to arrange your Proposal Navigator® system capability demonstration. 2015 pricing is $25,000 annual subscription (unlimited use) per proposal center site.
The Proposal Team's Mission
Synthesize and package the capture team’s vision into a compliant, convincing and compelling offering whose selection can be successfully defended ... without breaking the pursuit budget “bank”...