Winner's Problems
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One of my favorite phrases in govcon is "that's a winner's problem."
You have another proposal out there with the same proposed key personnel but not sure if you’ll win either of them let alone both of them? Winner’s problem!
You’re putting together a proposal, and you’re not 100% sure what you’re proposing will actually work. But it might could? Winner's problem!
The reason this phrase is so surprisingly useful in govcon is that most govcon companies have clear boundaries between growth and delivery teams. If you're writing the proposal and something goes sideways during delivery, it's probably literally not your problem but theirs.[1] If you’re not careful in your proposal, though, a winner’s problems can be a protest problem and, therefore, still your problem.
I know this sounds wild, but hear me out: as a recent GAO protest decision in emissary LLC demonstrates, what you say in proposals actually matters! Even before you’ve won!
By way of background, emissary LLC[2] was the incumbent on a DOD contract. During recompete, emissary protested twice, alleging that the awardee (Gemini Industries), had organizational conflicts of interest from its other government work. After an investigation, the government agreed and required Gemini to create an organizational conflict of interest (OCI) mitigation plan.
Now, OCI issues are particularly fertile ground for a winner’s problem! You need to persuade the government that your company is going to do X, Y, or Z to prevent OCI risks. Do you have X, Y, and Z in place when you write the proposal? Maybe? Most likely not? But if you win, you sure as heck will! So the incentive is to develop a particularly robust OCI mitigation plan. If that makes delivery harder? Well, that’s a winner’s problem, right?
Predictably, then, Gemini developed an outstanding mitigation plan, on paper. They promised to create a firewall within their company, by establishing a separate division within the company walled off from the division that was doing the potentially conflicting work.
Clean separation. Different reporting chains. Information firewalls. No access to corporate resources. A perfect solution…. on paper.
Except the rest of Gemini's proposal described a different management structure. You know, like, the actual management structure: the program manager reports to a contract manager, who reports directly to the CEO. The proposal also emphasized that the contract manager would leverage personnel and resources throughout Gemini.
By solving the OCI problem in their proposal, they created a new problem: their mitigation plan fundamentally changed their technical approach. The very thing they promised to avoid a winner's problem became their problem. They solved the OCI issue… on paper. But now their proposal was internally inconsistent.
I almost worked! As part of their evaluation, the agency failed to analyze whether Gemini's OCI mitigation measures were consistent with the technical approach. But in the end, GAO sustained the protest concluding:
Although Gemini informed the agency of its intention to firewall… employees from the rest of the company and revamp reporting chains accordingly, there is nothing in the record to show that the evaluators meaningfully considered the impact of Gemini's mitigation strategy on its technical approach. Instead, the agency considered the OCI mitigation plan in isolation.
Protest sustained. Them’s the breaks.
That’s the thing about a winner’s problems: you actually have to win!
And if your proposal creates a winner’s problem, you need to actually recognize it as a winner’s problem. Because if you don’t, I have good news and bad news. Good news: you won’t have a winner’s problem. Bad news: it’ll be because you lost.
[1] Lest we go too far down the road of govcon exceptionalism, let's remember that this problem rhymes with "that's a product problem," which shows up in all kinds of sales orgs.
[2] Let’s take a moment to admire the firm’s use of lowercase—“emissary LLC”—and the fact that I had to turn to the Chicago Manual of Style to help me know whether to capitalize at the beginning of a sentence only to discover that there’s a divide between the Chicago Manual of Style and the NY Times about respecting preferences when it comes to capitalization. It brings me some joy to know that GAO apparently follows the Chicago style.