Worlds apart? The similarities and differences of bid writing and Grand Strategy – (the view from a newbie)
Over a year ago I finished my degree in War Studies at King’s College London, in which I focused heavily on grand strategy. When I got the call from 50 Degrees several months later telling me that they wanted to offer me a position working with them in London I was thrilled, but I must admit that at the back of my mind there were worries that maybe the skills and knowledge I had acquired from university may not serve me well in the world of outsourcing consulting. Having now started working with 50 Degrees, I was surprised at how similarly the worlds of bid writing and grand strategy, from what I have learnt so far, appear to work.
In March of 2021, the government published its new Integrated Review, a document essentially outlining Britain’s grand strategy for the next decade. Having begun to dip my toe into the ocean of new information that is bid writing, the processes behind writing the Integrated Review and the processes involved in bid writing appear remarkably similar. The formulation of grand strategy involves an immense amount of research, collaboration between experts, the development of winning ideas/themes and, just as importantly (but often overlooked), the analysis of the practicality of their implementation. Hopefully, to those who work in the world of bid writing, this sounds very familiar.
The similarities do not end there either. The environments that grand strategy and bid writing operate in feature shared characteristics. They are both constantly evolving and those who work in them must keep pace with these changes, continuing to innovate solutions and develop new best practice. The same solutions that worked for a successful grand strategy or a successful bid in a particular sector a decade ago will not work as successfully today.
The final point of comparison is that both worlds are immensely complex. Luckily for me, when I started my university degree, I had large pool of friendly experts to draw upon to help guide me through the world of grand strategy. Several years later as I begin to enter a new world, there are new friendly experts at 50 Degrees to help guide me once more (even if one, shockingly, believes that a sausage roll is a superior snack to a Jammie Dodger, but that is a story for a different time).
William Freer