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Back in December of 2011, I received a call from my CEO, mentor and friend Jeff Olivet. Jeff informed me during that call that our company had been invited to present our proposal for IDIQ (indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity) status after their review teams had scoped our written proposal.
Jeff wanted to know whether I was interested in being a part of the presentation team and frankly, if Jeff invites you to present with him and the senior staff of our organization, it's pretty much a no-brainer, yer gonna say yes.
So several weeks later, I found myself wandering Washington DC with my Domain 4 team, prepping for perhaps one of the most important presentations I'd be making for a very long time. This is because while in most presentations I do, if I screw it up or it goes over badly, I get the bad review, but the company doesn't get a black eye, since anyone can have a bad day and we're pretty good at damage control that supports the customer rather than to cover our own butts, and most likely we'd refund the money spent for the session and probably even offer them another training with different trainers, gratis.
But the IDIQ presentation was different. Screw up here and you could cost the company a 5 year opportunity at applying for grants under a system that limits the competition to those who have IDIQ status. Suddenly, the livelihoods of 40+ peeps become a responsibility on your shoulders and the thought of hurting my colleagues through a poor performance would be something I'd find very hard to deal with. I'm sure I'd get through it, but it is NOT something I'd like to have to deal with in the first place. This is where the unique pressure of the presentation arose, and the best thing for this kind of worry and pressure is to be prepared.
So that's what we all did. And we then prepared some more. And still more. When we were all done, we prepared again. Then someone said we should prepare, so we did again.
And again.
By the time we walked into the building where these oral presentations were happening, I think we could've recited each other's slides and lines while unconscious.
But it paid off and we have now obtained IDIQ status with the Feds. Hard to say what this will eventually translate into for the company, but that we're now able to bid on IDIQ contracts means that we can go in as the Prime and control the contract the way we want to, choose the partners we'd like to work with, and do the work at a level of quality we demand.
It's all about the substance and the rigor, and we have just one person to thank for ensuring these remain our top priorities, our founder and owner, the amazing Dr. Ellen Bassuk.
I'd read Ellen's work as I was an up-n-coming outreach worker some years ago now, and knew that she came at the issues from a perspective of "doing something about it" rather than just talking about it. I've had tremendous respect for her since my early introduction via her published work, but working for her has provided me with some insight that one can only get when one works closely with another.
A week or two ago, Ellen was on a call I was participating in and we were grappling with an issue around stigma. We were all collectively traveling along some thought-road on the topic when Ellen stopped us dead in our tracks with an analysis that turned us 180 degrees and helped us see the issue in a different light. I have to tell you though, when Ellen framed the subject in terms of the impact on the individual, her statement, which I won't even attempt to capture here - was so moving and powerful, so important to me and resonated so deeply with me - I cried, because she'd just described how I'd felt for many many years. I jokingly told the group that I'd just fallen in love with Ellen for her input, but what really happened was that I knew in that instant, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Ellen "got it" in a way few do. It forever changed my perception and feelings for her, and while I was already one of her strong supporters, I knew she understood me, us, the agony of our suffering, and she cared. She deeply cared. It was a transformative moment for me and forever changed how I viewed C4 and the people working to help fulfill Ellen's commitment to superior service delivery that had as an overarching goal the ultimate end of the need for our services at all.
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