RFP: Request For Procrastination

By Gonzalo López Martí    Creative director, etc. / lmmiami.com/

• It happens again and again.
• Regardless of the number of weeks or months an agency is given to prepare a presentation for a pitch or RFP, the last stretch will involve sleepless nights, lost weekends, exhaustion and nervous breakdowns.
• Even if the entire payroll of said agency is assigned to the project with ample time to react, the outcome will be the same.
• The very definition of a paradox: the more staff one adds to complete a certain task, the longer it takes to be fulfilled.
• Pathological procrastination?
• Indecisiveness?
• Lack of leadership?
• Sheer folly?
• Why does it always have to be this stressful?
• Are we masochists condemned to suffer for our art?
• Is it a conspiracy by C-Suite sadists to keep the lower levels of the totem pole continually on edge, off balance, on the tip of their toes, unable to discern the urgent from the important?
• By the way, the phenomenon is not new and has been analyzed.
• If it serves as some sort of fool’s consolation, it is not privy to the ad business either.
• There even is a law describing it.
• The so-called Parkinson’s Law: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”
• The concept was created during the mid 50s in the UK, when a gentleman by the name of Cyril Northcote Parkinson, himself a writer and naval historian, noticed that, despite the fact that the British Empire was shrinking year after year, the payroll of the pompously named Colonial Office kept growing.
• Exponentially.
• The first formulation of the law came in the form of a satirical magazine article.
• As is the case with many new ideas and insights, it was initially concocted in jest.
• Yet it proved to be empirically and factually true.
• There’s more where that came from.
• Noticing that he had struck a chord, the author later wrote a book elaborating on various aspects of bureaucracies and their tendency to metastasize.
• Mr. Parkinson coined another law: the law of triviality.
• Large organizations will squander an inordinate amount of time and critical resources addressing trivial issues.
• Rings a bell?
• Sure does.
• I’d say every single pitch or RFP I’ve partaken of fits this description.
• Which is great if you are a free-lancer on the clock collecting three figures per hour.
• 90% of the time bickering over minutiae.
• 10% of the time -when there barely is any time left- to finally select and mock up a sellable idea.
• A dysfunctional clash of egos, neuroses, agendas, busywork, disparate skills and misplaced survival instincts.
• Especially the latter.
• Sure enough, Mr. Parkinson might have been a humorist but he had a keen eye to dig up behavioral insights.
• In addition to describing the problem he identified its two main drivers:
• -Managers make work for each other to justify their salaries.
• -Managers want to multiply subordinates, not rivals.
• A very human attempt at self-preservation.