Klariti

Something I've noticed recently is how expressions of interest (EOIs) often become generic cover letters. Companies copy-paste from past submissions, change the company name, and hope for the best. But in competitive bidding, generic doesn't win—you need to show you understand the opportunity and bring unique value.

A colleague in business development shared their EOI success story. They were bidding for a government contract against 20 competitors. Instead of a standard response, they included specific insights about the agency's challenges and tailored solutions. "We didn't have the lowest price," they said, "but we showed we understood their world. We won."

The problem? EOIs are treated as administrative hurdles instead of strategic positioning.

The project kicked off on a Tuesday. Everyone left the kickoff meeting feeling good — the timeline looked reasonable, the budget had been approved, and the vendor seemed sharp. Six weeks later, the client was furious. The vendor had delivered exactly what the SOW said. And that was the problem.

The SOW described outputs. It said nothing about outcomes. The vendor built the thing. They just didn't build the right thing.

I looked at a marketing plan recently that was beautifully written but completely disconnected from reality. It promised to "go viral" without any budget for paid promotion. It projected 50% market penetration for a brand with zero awareness. When I asked how they'd measure success, they said "we'll know it when we see it."

A marketing director told me about a similar plan: "We spent weeks designing a brilliant campaign, then got 2% of the response we projected. Turns out we'd made a lot of assumptions about customer behavior that weren't based on anything real. We weren't measuring what mattered."

That's what happens when marketing becomes creative fiction instead of strategy.

Something I've noticed in conversations with operations teams is that maintenance often happens reactively, not proactively. A system grinds down until it breaks, then they scramble to fix it. Meanwhile, three other systems are silently degrading, waiting their turn to fail.

A facilities manager shared her frustration: "We have equipment that's supposed to be maintained monthly, but maintenance gets deprioritized for urgent fires. Then the equipment breaks down at the worst possible time, and we're looking at $200K in emergency repairs that would have cost $5K if we'd maintained it properly."

That's the real cost of skipping maintenance planning.

I watched a company spend months integrating two systems that should have taken weeks. The problem? The two teams had different versions of what "send order data" meant. One sent XML, the other expected JSON. One included timestamps, the other didn't. One sent partial data because they thought the other system would look it up.

A systems architect told me about a painful integration project: "We had the best developers on both sides, but they made opposite assumptions about what the API should do. By the time we discovered the mismatch, we were six weeks in. We had to rewrite one entire system."

That's what happens when interfaces aren't specified clearly.

I heard about an installation disaster recently. A company deployed new software during business hours without a rollback plan. When it failed, they had no way to recover and lost customer transactions for hours. The installation plan existed—but it was incomplete.

A systems administrator told me about their worst experience: "We installed new hardware onto our main server without actually testing the procedure first. Halfway through, we discovered the drivers needed updating. The entire system went down, and we were scrambling for hours trying to get it back online. A proper installation plan would have caught this."

That's the cost of skipping thorough planning.

Something I've observed recently is the gap between a great strategic plan and the actual implementation. I watched a company spend months developing a brilliant operational strategy, then weeks later realized nobody knew how to actually execute it.

A program manager told me about her experience: "We had a beautiful strategy document with timelines and budgets. But when we started implementing, we discovered the timeline was unrealistic, some tasks were dependent on other tasks in ways we hadn't accounted for, and half the team thought they had different priorities than the plan specified."

That's what happens when you skip the implementation reality-check.

I worked with a nonprofit recently that had two funding proposals. One was rejected. One was funded, at 150% of the requested amount. The difference? The successful one spent most of its pages explaining why the funder's priorities mattered, not why the nonprofit's idea was brilliant.

A grant writer friend told me about her discovery: "When I stopped writing about our organization and started writing about the community problem we solve, our funding improved dramatically. Funders don't give money for your idea—they give money to fix problems they care about."

That's the real lesson about grant writing.

I spoke with a development team last month about their biggest regrets. The recurring theme? They built features based on vague requirements, then had to rebuild them twice when the actual needs became clear. Each rebuild cost time and money.

Something a product manager shared stuck with me: "Our developers asked what a feature should do, and we said 'make it flexible.' Six months later, the feature was overbuilt, confusing, and nobody used it. We should have been specific about what it needed to do."

That's the cost of unclear requirements.

I watched a company spend three months building a product that turned out to be technically impossible with their infrastructure. No feasibility study. Just enthusiasm and optimism. The project got canceled, and three months of work evaporated.

A project manager friend told me something similar happened to her team: "We said yes to a customer request without actually checking if it was feasible. Then halfway through development, we discovered legal restrictions that made it impossible. The customer was furious, and we lost the deal."

This is what happens when you skip the feasibility assessment.