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Top 10 Rules for Successful Responses – Requests for Proposal (RFP) 101

RFP’s can be lengthy and sometimes confusing documents.

The following Top 10 Rules are intended to assist in understanding RFP fundamentals, so as to increase your probability to succeed, and, even more critically, avoid disqualification.

A Request for Proposal (RFP) is simply a formal document which fundamentally asks, “Explain to me how you will provide me with a good and/or service, and at what price”.

Typically, the RFP is seeking information from Respondents (those who provide proposals in response to an RFP, sometimes also called Proponents) which communicate the following:
(1)  I will meet the MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS  to provide the goods and/or services desired;

(2)  I am the BEST person/company to provide the goods/services for the BEST VALUE (Price),   (EVALUATE MY RESPONSE).

(3)  If you determine that I’ll meet the MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS, and I’m EVALUATED as the BEST respondent, I’m willing to enter into a CONTRACT with you, (most often to be substantially similar to the one attached to the RFP.)

Both the issuer of the RFP, and the Respondent, must follow a formal PROCESS, described in the RFP document, in order for the RFP response to be evaluated.
Organized into the 3 areas above, (MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS, EVALUATE, CONTRACT) plus the 4th, PROCESS, the following top 10 rules will substantially increase your probability of success. Let’s begin with PROCESS.

PROCESS

1. Read the PROCESS section(s) of the RFP FIRST and follow the process precisely. Sweat the Small Stuff: note and meet deadlines precisely, ask clarification questions by the indicated timelines, prepare your response in the format requested, answer all questions, and ensure authorized signatures are provided.

2. Part of the process often has a timeline for asking clarification questions: This is the time to in particular seek any clarification on “musts” or “mandatory requirements” – are these truly mandatory?

3. If there is a bidder’s meeting where questions are being asked, consider going to it to learn more about key issues and questions, and who your competitors might be. At a minimum, be sure to review Q’s and A’s from the meeting, which will more than likely be sent out to all respondents.

4. Once you have completed your response, check to see that your response is complete, and accurate.  It is not uncommon for responses to be disqualified because the response did not have an authorized signature, or because an Appendix (like the Price Table) was omitted when sending the response, or where other requested information was simply missing. If the response is being submitted electronically, follow up to ensure it was received.

MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS  – Can I meet the Mandatory Requirements?

5. Next, read the RFP and note all areas where the word must is indicated, and/or where the RFP states that there are mandatory requirements.  If you do not communicate back that you can meet all mandatory requirements and/or deliver on the musts, your submission will be disqualified – no matter how strong you think the rest of your response is.  Not sure if a requirement is really mandatory? See 2. above, be sure to ask before the clarification question deadline.

EVALUATE- How can I communicate that I’m BEST?

6. Do some research on the organization that prepared the RFP. What are their overall business problems/issues? What are the values/ethics of the organization? Who is on their Board of Directors? If possible, determine who will be evaluating the responses? What do you know about the incumbent supplier and their strengths and weaknesses?

7. Draft your proposal response:

• In the format requested;
• Answer all questions precisely;
• Be sure to address open ended questions, such as “your response should……”.

Your response should at the same time incorporate what you learned from step 6, above, and should be written so that it “hangs together “ –  as an overall proposal to address the “big picture” overall business needs.

8. How much should I write?

• Consider mark weighting carefully – you want to provide greater content length and breadth in areas where you can score the most marks, and taking into consideration 6. above;
• Be careful to include in your proposal the overall answer to the question, “how am I going to fulfill your needs”?
• Provide detail only in areas that are marked highest, and where detail is needed as evidence of a feature or capability. Consider using appendices for details.
• Focus on what’s important – you don’t want to put evaluators, who are reading multiple responses, asleep! Not helpful to include reams of general promotional material, for example, if it doesn’t relate to questions asked or to the overall product or service required.

9. Your Price bid should be:

• Competitive, based on your knowledge of the marketplace.
• Provide Value for Money and be realistic – consider the quality of your goods and services, and the weighting of Price in the RFP.
• Sustainable for you, based on your internal cost and margin characteristics;
• Firm, unless otherwise stated in the RFP, you likely will not be able to renegotiate it during contract finalization.

CONTRACT

10. Read the sample contract attached to the RFP and note any language stating “must” or “mandatory”, then refer back to 2. and 5. above to clarify. Overall, once this step is completed, you should be generally comfortable with negotiating a contract substantially similar to that attached to the RFP.

About the Author
Joseph Manner, now principal at JDManner Consulting, has over 15 years of experience in both drafting RFP’s,  and in evaluating RFP responses, from his experience as Director, Store Network Planning at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), and as the Manager, Alternative Service Delivery and Procurement, with the ServiceOntario Project, Government of Ontario. Joe can be reached at [email protected].

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7 Attributes of Extraordinary Coaches

By Jim Clemmer

If you buy a little goldfish and keep it in a small bowl it will remain no bigger than a few inches long. Move that same fish to a large aquarium and it will double or triple in size. Put the goldfish in a large pond and it can grow up to a foot long! The biggest factor that determines the size of the fish is the size of its environment. And so it is with people.

Many managers see people as they are and treat them according to what they see. A less effective manager would take a small goldfish and keep it in the little bowl because it would be inefficient and wasteful to put it in a larger environment.

Outstanding coaches, however, see people as they could be and work to grow that potential. Our research shows that extraordinary coaches share these attributes:

  • Caring deeply about the coachee’s progress
  • Believing people can grow, change, and improve
  • Focusing on the future
  • Showing interest beyond immediate job performance
  • Allowing solutions to come from the coachee
  • Having more frequent, shorter conversations
  • Supporting and encouraging

How many of these attributes describe your coaching or the coaches in your organization?

Click here Keys to Extraordinary Coaching for a two minute video clip of me presenting and explaining these points.

Have you ever experienced a leader who’s very strong at coaching and mentoring but doesn’t get results? People feel great working with him or her, but the job doesn’t get done. What’s the likelihood this leader would be rated in the top ten percent of leaders?

How about a leader who is very good at getting results — he or she really delivers — but not much of a coach? How likely is he or she to be rated in the top 10 percent of leaders?

Research based on over 250,000 360 assessments of roughly 25,000 leaders shows that either of the above combinations produces leaders in the 90th percentile less than 10% of the time. How often do you think a leader who is strong at both energizing people to achieve results and coaching and mentoring others is rated in the top 10% of leaders? Hint; it’s much higher than most people realize.

Click on The Impact of Coaching Effectiveness for a three minute video clip where I present the research behind this powerful combination and how dramatically these two competencies turbo-boost a leader to the very top. You can then see the dramatic impact of coaching skills on turnover, engagement, discretionary effort, and leader satisfaction.

No other leadership behavior is more correlated with increasing employee engagement than a leader’s coaching effectiveness. Outstanding coaching skills rocket leaders to top-tier effectiveness.

Many crazy-busy, frenetic managers believe it’s a trade-off: “Either I deliver results (often by micromanaging and pushing hard) or I coach and develop people. Which do you want me to do?”

Highly effective leaders get results through people. They understand that peak performance comes from empowering, energizing, focusing, and developing people to their highest potential to own and deliver outstanding outcomes.

Reprinted with the permission of Jim Clemmer. For over three decades Jim Clemmer’s keynote presentations, workshops, and management team retreats, and seven best-selling books translated into many languages, articles, blog, and newsletters have helped hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. The CLEMMER Group is Zenger Folkman’s Canadian Strategic Partner, an award-winning firm best known for its unique evidence-driven, strengths-based system for developing extraordinary leaders and demonstrating the performance impact they have on organizations. http://www.clemmergroup.com

 

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Municipal Procurement is More Than Just RFPs

Over the past few months we were out at a number of municipal conferences and events and it always surprises me to hear the number of folks who think municipalities are only able to procure goods or services via the RFP (Request for Proposal) process. They express their dislike for the process and they report the process discourages many small and medium enterprises from attempting to find work in municipalities.

No doubt, in the municipal sector procurement is a dynamic, sometimes complex process. However, what many are not aware of is that there is a variety of procurement methods available to municipalities to procure the goods and services they need.

The procurement of consulting and professional services still must be a competitive process but whether you’re a large company or a small or medium consultant or professional enterprise, it is still possible to acquire work in municipalities without ever needing to respond to a RFP.

In Ontario, Canada, municipalities must comply with the procurement requirements set out in the Municipal Act, 2001, S.O. 2001, Chapter 25, Section 270(1) 3. The legislation requires municipalities to develop policies to be adopted on the types of procurement processes that will be used, the goals of each, the circumstances under which each type will be used, and the circumstances where a tendering process is not required. 

Here are some of the procurement methods municipalities can employ to procure goods and services.

  1. Request for Proposal (RFP) – used to solicit solutions for the delivery of complex goods, services or construction for obtaining unique proposals designed to meet broad outcomes to a complex problem or need for which there is no clear or single solution.
  2. Request for Tender (RFT) – used to acquire goods and services based on stated terms and conditions and for obtaining competitive bids based on precisely defined requirements for which a clear or single solution exists.
  3. Request for Quotation (RFQ) – is where the municipality specifies the product or service and the criteria is based solely on price. The goals are the same as for Request for Tender, except that bid solicitation is done primarily on an invitational basis from a pre-determined bidders list – but may be supplemented with public advertising of the procurement opportunity.
  4. Request for Expression of Interest (RFEI) – is a procurement used to determine the interest of the market place to provide goods or service(s) which the agency is contemplating purchasing.
  5. Request for Information (RFI) – is a request used as a general market research tool to determine what goods and services are available that may meet business/operational requirements and acquisition strategies. 
  6. Request for Pre-Qualification (RFPQ) – is a procurement document used to solicit financial stability, technical information, product or service suitability from potential vendors and measured against stated evaluation criteria. Successful vendor(s) are pre-qualified or short listed to bid on specific categories of work or provide specific types of goods or services, or respond to a particular RFP or RFT
  7. Informal, Low Value Procurement – used to obtain competitive pricing for a one-time procurement in an expeditious and cost-effective manner through phone, fax, e-mail, other similar communication method, vendor advertisements or vendor catalogues.
  8. Non-Competitive Procurement/Invitational Competitive Procurement – in some circumstances, competitive procurements are not required. Municipalities can invite three or more qualified suppliers to submit written proposals to supply goods or services as specified by them. The goal is to allow for procurement in an efficient and timely manner without seeking competitive pricing.

Non-competitive procurement includes sole sourcing and single sourcing.

Sole sourcing is the procurement of goods or a service that is unique to a particular vendor and cannot be obtained from another source. Single sourcing is the procurement of goods or a service from a particular vendor rather than through solicitation of bids from other vendors who can also provide the same item.

Single sourcing may be the best course to take in some circumstances but it is important for the municipality to be transparent about what those circumstances will be.

Typically, non-competitive procurement is used in the following circumstances:

  • when there is a statutory- or market-based monopoly on the item
  • when no bids were received in a competitive process
  • when the required item is covered by an exclusive right such as a patent, copyright or exclusive license
  • when the purchase is already covered by a lease-purchase agreement where payments are partially or totally credited to the purchase
  • when it is necessary to ensure compatibility with existing products or to avoid violating warranty/guarantee requirements when service is required
  • when the required item is in short supply due to market conditions
  • when competitive sourcing for low value procurement would be uneconomical or would not attract bids
  • when competitive procurement may be found to be impractical for such items as meal expenses, incidental travel expenses (e.g. taxi service, phone calls), and training and education expenses
  • when an urgent procurement is necessary for fulfilling a statutory order issued by a federal or provincial authority, such as an environmental, public health, or workplace safety compliance order.

To procure consulting and professional services in particular for larger more complicated projects, municipalities will still tend to use the RFP method. But for the smaller projects municipalities can, and do employ other procurement methods, such as the informal low value and non-competitive methods when possible.

Often they have no choice but to use these two methods to procure professional services because they simply cannot find enough consulting and professional enterprises to acquire the number of quotes they need to satisfy the requirements in their procurement by-laws and policies.

So, if you’re a consultant and/or a professional who would like to find work in municipalities – don’t give up. There are opportunities for you that do not involve wasting endless hours filling out an RFP only to find that on the 99th page of the 100 page document, there is one requirement you can’t meet.

Helping municipalities and professionals connect is the best way I know of to enhance the municipal procurement process and connect the municipalities and professionals that are trying to find each other.

Simple right?

Note: “In-Procurement”, a procurement magazine in the United Kingdom, published Susan’s article in 2016.

Susan Shannon is the Owner/Principal of www.muniSERV.ca.  Her experiences as both a municipal Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) and as a municipal needs specialist prompted her to create muniSERV. Her passion continues to be to find ways to “Help Municipalities & Professionals Connect”. She can be reached at [email protected].

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Update on our Partnerships in Procurement – Bridging the Buyer/Vendor Gap Presentation

As some of our members know our partners, bids&tenders invited muniSERV.ca to speak at their users’ group meeting for public sector buyers on October 13th, 2016 – and we invited Keith Strachan, of SellToPublicSector.com to co-present with us.  We asked our members for some common bidder issues they’ve experienced when responding to RFPs – and we got some great ones from you – Thanks!  This is the update we promised to provide to you after the session.

The attendees included buyers from the municipal, healthcare and school sectors. The municipal buyers were from small, medium and large regional municipalities which provided a good cross-section of procurement perspectives.

We shared some of the common bidder issues we heard from you and then asked for feedback from the buyers in attendance. Here’s our presentation slides.

The attendees were very engaged and offered great feedback and solutions to the issues we raised on your behalf.  Here are just a couple of them:

Finding Public Sector Opportunities – A small consultant whose services are usually less than $20,000 may not find many opportunities on public tendering websites.  How do they spread the word and/or where do they post opportunities that fall below their RFP thresholds?

Buyers’ Response:  School boards and Hospitals have mandatory posting requirements for all projects and they all must be through a mandated competitive process.

Municipalities reported they have a difficult time addressing this because there is really no one place to post them. Some hold Vendor Days where they will invite vendors to come in and they will provide them with a list of all upcoming smaller projects.  Still others only circulate them to a list of their preferred vendors in order to save time.

Take Aways: 

muniSERV: We will be actively encouraging municipalities to post, not only their RFP documents, but now also any invitations to bid on these smaller projects, which typically are consulting and professional services.  

Consultants:  Check municipal websites for any upcoming Vendor Days and participate in them.  Also investigate how to become a preferred vendor in the municipalities in which you’re interested in finding work.

Complying with Requirements – Do you really need $5m insurance coverage?

We gave the example of a muniSERV professional who wanted to respond to an RFP for graphic design work but the RFP requested they have $5m insurance coverage, WSIB and a lot of requirements that didn’t seem to fit the small project.  They ended up not responding because they simply could not meet the requirements.

Buyers’ Response: Municipalities need to ensure they have all the bases covered so their legal and risk management teams will include the full standard requirements in the RFP document.  However, if the requirements appear unreasonable for the specific project, vendors just need to call the municipality and bring it to their attention.  The purchasers then will ask their legal and risk management teams to review the requirements and most often they will agree and reduce or eliminate the requirement all together if it’s not imperative or mandatory for the specific project.  If this happens they will then issue an addendum to the RFP to notify vendors of the reduced requirements.  

Take Aways:

muniSERV:  It is interesting to note vendors can make this kind of request and/or that buyers would alter their original requirements, if deemed appropriate. 

Consultants:  If some requirements seem unreasonable for a project you want to respond to don’t be afraid to ask the municipality to reconsider them. You may not need $5m insurance after all! 

Thanks again to all those who took the time to help us!  The presentation would not have gone as well as it did without your input!
 

Thanks too, to bids&tenders for the opportunity to present your bidder issues directly to the public sector buyers so we could learn from each other and continue to Bridge the Buyer/Vendor Gap!

 

Susan Shannon, Principal muniSERV.ca

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You’re Getting the Behavior You Designed

The evidence is clear and overwhelming. Centralized, hierarchial organizations work about as well as the old Soviet Union. Despite all the evidence, I am still appalled by the number of variations on the centralization themes I still keep smacking into. What makes things even worse is how senior managers in these dysfunctional organizations proclaim empowerment, participation, teams, leadership, trust, and the like. Then they take partial measures while expecting total success. They liberate parts of their organizations while limiting other parts. They push hard with one foot on the accelerator while also pushing hard with their other one on the brake. Their words say “you’re empowered”. Their actions say “you’re empowered as long as you get approval first”. These dysfunctional organizations end up trying to go in two opposing directions at once. I once halted an executive retreat and everybody went home after the group of seven division presidents and corporate staff vice presidents couldn’t agree on whether their values were centralization or decentralization. Trying to do both at once was ripping the organization apart. The CEO never could decide which direction he wanted to commit to. He was eventually fired as frustrations and infighting rose while organization performance fell.

Most centralists don’t set out to deceive anybody. In their heads they know that high degrees of involvement, participation, and autonomy are key elements in high organization performance. But in their hearts, they still crave orderliness, predictability, and control. That’s why they cling to such anachronisms as strategic planning. It’s part of their futile search for a master plan that can regulate and bring a sense of order to our haphazard, unpredictable, and rapidly changing world. Our equally outdated accounting systems give centralists plenty of reinforcement. For example, hard financial measures can clearly show that consolidating and centralizing support services and functions saves money and increases efficiency — at least on paper. What don’t show up are the alienation, helplessness, and lack of connections to customers or organizational purpose that mind-numbing bureaucracy brings. The energy-sapping and passion-destroying effects of efficiencies may save hundreds of thousands of dollars. But traditional accounting systems can’t show the hundreds of millions of dollars lost because of lackluster innovation, mediocre customer service, uninspired internal partners, and unformed external partnerships.

I am an extreme (some might argue dangerous) decentralist. Since I began my management career, I’ve given people high degrees of autonomy. I’ve run even small organizations to the point of such inefficient decentralization that people are running their own show. It works. Here are some of the reasons:

  • Everyone can see and manage their work as part of a whole, interconnected system, not as one in a bunch of parts and pieces.
  • People are trusted and treated as responsible, caring, and committed adults — which is how they then behave.
  • A collection of small, self-contained teams or business units are many times more flexible and responsive at meeting threats and capitalizing on opportunities.
  • Ownership, commitment, energy, and passion levels are much higher.
  • Everyone focuses on meeting customer/partner — not the internal bureaucracy’s — needs.
  • People have more control over their work. The vicious cycle of learned helplessness is replaced with a virtuous cycle of hopefulness and leadership.
  • Bureaucratic committees become entrepreneurial teams.
  • Feedback loops are much clearer, shorter, and closer to the customer and markets.

High-performing organizations that are thriving in today’s chaotic world are adapting and pioneering a wide variety of highly decentralized structures. They are giving up control of people so that people can control their own and the organization’s destiny. This is creating an explosion of organization structures and models with such names as network, shamrock, pulsating, jazz combos, adhocracy, horizontal, hollow spider’s web, flat, meritocracy, modular, cellular, cluster, inverted, starburst, federal, pancake, and virtual … to name a few.

The Shape of High Performance

The search for an ideal or perfect structure is about as futile as trying to find the ideal canned improvement process to drop on the organization (or yourself). It depends on the organization’s vision and values, goals and priorities, skill and experience levels, culture, team effectiveness and so on. Each is unique to any organization. We are also in the midst of a major transition from organization and management practices that began around the turn of the twentieth century. My cloudy crystal ball won’t allow me to see which organization structure or model will dominate the twenty-first century. Because we’re no longer in an age of mass production and standardization, I sure there won’t be just one type. Rather, we’ll see our top organizations grow and shed a variety of structures and models to suit the their changing circumstances.

However, the shape and characteristics of a high performing organization structure is coming clearly into view:

  • Intense Customer and Market Focus – systems, structures, processes, and innovations are all aimed at and flow from the voices of the market and customers. The organization is driven by field people and hands-on senior managers in daily contact with customers and partners.
  • Team-based – operational and improvement teams are used up, down, and across the organization. A multitude of operational teams manage whole systems or self-contained subsystems such as regions, branches, processes, and complete business units.
  • Highly autonomous and decentralized – dozens, hundreds, or thousands of mini-business units or businesses are created throughout a single company (I’ve split business units of twenty five people into smaller business units). Local teams adjust their company’s product and service mix to suit their market and conditions. They also reconfigure the existing products and services or develop new experimental prototypes to meet customer/partner needs.
  • Servant-Leadership –Senior managers provide strong vision, values, purpose, and strategic direction to guide and shape the organization. But very lean and keen head office management and staff also serve the needs of those people doing the work that the customers actually care about and are willing to pay for. Support systems are designed to serve the servers and producers, not management and the bureaucracy.
  • Networks, Partnerships, and Alliances – organizational and departmental boundaries blur as teams reach out, in, or across to get the expertise, materials, capital, or other support they need to meet customer needs and develop new markets. Learning how to partner with other teams or organizations is fast becoming a critical performance skill.
  • Fewer and More Focused Staff Professionals — accountants, human resource professionals, improvement specialists, purchasing managers, engineers and designers, and the like are either in the midst of operational action as a member of an operational team, or they sell their services to a number of teams. Many teams are also purchasing some of this expertise from outside as needed.
  • Few Management Levels – spans of control stretch into dozens and even hundreds of people (organized in self-managing teams) to one manager. Effective managers are highly skilled in leading, (creating energy and focus), directing (establishing goals and priorities), and developing (training and coaching).
  • One Customer Contact Point – although teams and team members will come and go as needed, continuity with the customer is maintained by an unchanging small group or individual. Internal service and support systems serve the needs of the person or team coordinating and managing the customer relationship.

Structure Shapes Behavior

If you’re not happy with the behavior of people on your team or in your organization, take a closer look at the system and structure they’re working in. If they behave like bureaucrats, they’re working in a bureaucracy. If they’re not customer focused, they’re using systems and working in structure that wasn’t designed to serve customers. If they’re not innovative, they’re working in a controlled and inflexible organization. If they resist change, they’re not working in a learning organization that values growth and development. If they’re not good team players, they’re working in an organization designed for individual performance. Good performers in a poorly designed structure will take on the shape of the structure.

Many organizations induce learned helplessness. People in them become victims of “the system”. This often comes from a sense of having little or no control over their work processes, policies and procedures, technology, support systems, and the like. “You can’t fight the system” they’ll say with a shrug as they give the clock another stare hoping to intimidate it into jumping ahead to quitting time. These feelings are amplified by a performance management system that arbitrarily punishes people for behaving like the system, structure, or process they’ve been forced into. “Empowering” helpless people without changing the processes, structure, or systems they work in is worse than useless. It increases helplessness and cynicism.

Structure is a very powerful shaper of behavior. It’s like the strange pumpkin I once saw at a county fair. It had been grown in a four-cornered Mason jar. The jar had since been broken and removed. The remaining pumpkin was shaped exactly like a small Mason jar. Beside it was a pumpkin from the same batch of seeds that was allowed to grow without constraints. It was about five times bigger. Organization structures and systems have the same effect on the people in them. They either limit or liberate their performance potential.

Reprinted with the permission of Jim Clemmer. For over three decades Jim Clemmer’s keynote presentations, workshops, and management team retreats, and seven best-selling books translated into many languages, articles, blog, and newsletters have helped hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. The CLEMMER Group is Zenger Folkman’s Canadian Strategic Partner, an award-winning firm best known for its unique evidence-driven, strengths-based system for developing extraordinary leaders and demonstrating the performance impact they have on organizations.

http://www.clemmergroup.com

 

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7 Top Common Bidder Issues – #2 – Who to Contact?

Who to Contact?

Simply put, “who to contact”, really depends on the size of the municipality and at what stage of the procurement process you’re wanting to contact someone.

While procurement itself is governed by statutes, municipalities have the authority to put the processes and people in place to administer and manage the purchasing of goods and services on behalf of their taxpayers. Therefore, the responsibility for municipal procurement varies with each municipality.

All municipalities are required to have procurement policies and/or purchasing by-laws. Larger municipalities have more formal centralized procurement processes. This means their procurement by-law will be much more detailed and it will usually set out the roles of municipal staff in the procurement process. Larger municipalities usually will have a procurement department with a head of procurement – most likely a Chief Procurement Officer.

Other municipal staff (CAO, Finance, Legal, IT, etc.) and Councils all play roles in the process. Generally once Council has passed the budget approving the procuring of the goods or services for the year, it then becomes the responsibility of staff to administer the procurement process in accordance with the statues and their own purchasing by-law.

The purchasing of goods and ensuring adherence to the awarded contracts will be the responsibility of the purchasing department with oversight by the CAO, Finance, Legal and Department Heads. Generally, if you need to contact someone in a large municipality about procurement you would contact the Purchasing Department.

Smaller municipalities practice more of a de-centralized procurement model. This means there is generally no dedicated purchasing department and therefore no one person in the municipality who is responsible for administering the municipality’s procurement for all departments. Generally, the CAO will have oversight of all procurement but there are still many municipalities who have a Clerk, not a CAO so the Treasurer may take on the procurement role. In certain cases, Council itself may have a further role even after the budget has been approved.

In the de-centralized procurement model typically found in smaller municipalities, each department head develops their budget and once approved by Council, they are then each responsible for the procurement of the approved goods or services outlined in their budgets. While this works in theory the difficulty is that procurement is complex and individual department heads may not have thorough knowledge of the municipality’s procurement policies, so compliance with them may be jeopardized, which can place the municipality at risk of legal challenges from unsuccessful bidders.

Who to contact in a smaller municipality is sometimes more difficult to determine. If you want information on the municipality’s procurement process it may be best to acquire a copy of their purchasing by-law off their website which should identify who is responsible for procurement. Alternatively, you could contact the department head in charge of procuring the goods or service for their department, or the Treasurer.

With respect to “who to contact” about a particular bid opportunity, regardless of whether it’s a large or smaller municipality, there will be a designated person on the bid documents and you should always address questions to the individual named within the period of time specified.

Susan Shannon, Principal

muniSERV.ca

[email protected]

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What does Bill 132 (Sexual Violence and Harassment Action Plan Act) mean to you and your workplace?

One in four women and one in ten men say they have experienced some form of sexual harassment in the workplace. Of the reported cases of workplace sexual harassment, 55% were committed by co-workers; 39% of which involved a supervisor or manager. 8% of those who are sexually harassed at work report the harassment.

Recently there have been some changes made to Bill 168 – Violence in the Workplace, which gives employers’ statutory obligations. Bill 132, Sexual Violence and Harassment Action Plan Act, which received royal assent on March 8, 2016, requires all employers to have policies and programs including an investigation procedure. The essential changes brought by Bill 132 include: an employer is required to create a workplace harassment program; the program must include reporting and investigating tools for incidents of workplace harassment and violence; the employers must ensure that all complaints are investigated, and investigations are completed in a timely fashion and a new power to the Ministry of Labour (MOL) to order an independent workplace harassment investigation at the employer’s expense.

September 8, 2016, now looms for companies as the date for compliance with Bill 132. The amendments stand to change dramatically how workplace harassment is addressed in Ontario. The new OHSA obligations and expectations have been set and are accompanied by expanded government oversight. Harassment in the workplace is already a challenging issue that could engage multiple forums, with complaints possibly being advanced through a grievance, civil claim, complaint under the Human Rights Code, and, depending on the severity of the conduct, the criminal justice system.

Also, and particularly, the Bill amends the OHSA to require an employer to conduct an investigation of a workplace harassment complaint that is “appropriate in the circumstances.” The phrase “appropriate in the circumstances” is not defined. Further, the Ministry of Labour has not published any guidance material to communicate what factors will be considered by inspectors when determining whether an investigation meets this standard. Assuming that the inspectors could be evaluating investigations against expected best practices which would include such things as an impartial investigator, a collection of all relevant information, and procedural fairness to the alleged harasser could create challenges for employers as the appropriateness of an investigation may be evaluated in hindsight.

Consequences of flawed investigations would impair or prejudice the employer’s ability to establish just cause for termination or discipline. There would also be an issue of due diligence under the OHSA and Human Rights Code. Consequences would include aggravated, punitive or Code damages; penalties from the Ministry of Labour under the OHSA and reinstatement in unionized workplaces. Some of the critical mistakes some employers are making include: failing to act at all; taking the complaint seriously; failure to train investigators; inability to plan, improper or inadequate files; and retention of evidence.

Many situations happening in the workplace may prompt the necessity for an investigation, such as allegations of discrimination or harassment, workplace bullying, inappropriate use of the internet or social media, policy breaches, or statutory violations. Often, employers attempt to resolve minor issues informally through discussions with the employees involved. When the allegations are more serious, employers may depend on managers to conduct internal investigations. However, in many situations, having an organization deal directly with the problem is not necessarily the best approach – informal discussions may rapidly collapse, and basic investigative steps may be overlooked by inexperienced managers, making matters worse. A vital skill for any employer is identifying when a formal investigation by an external investigator is appropriate.

Note: meeting the requirements of Bill 132 could lead to mistakes that can be costly to your organization.

Be prepared. Be proactive.

Contact Monika Jensen, Principal Aviary Group at [email protected]  or (905) 683-9953 if you need a complaint investigated or mediated.

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Embracing Civility for a More Satisfying WorkPlace

Complaints of harassment, discrimination, bullying and now violence and disrespectful workplaces have become a standard concern for managers and Human Resources specialist. As we cope with the many arising situations, I have found the word incivility is becoming frequently used. So what does incivility mean? To define it, let’s look at how the Institute of Civility describes it. Civility is about more than merely being polite. Civility requires a profound self-awareness being characterized by true respect for others. Civility involves the tremendous hard work of remaining present even with those with whom we have inherent and perhaps fierce differences. It is about continuously being open to hearing, to learning, to teaching and to changing. It pursues mutual ground as a start point for discussions when differences may occur, while at the same time be aware that differences are heartening. It is persistence, grace, and strength of character.

Recently research has expanded our practical understanding of incivility by identifying behaviours which employees have deemed disrespectful. The most frequently occurring forms include: neglecting to turn off cell phones; talking behind someone’s back; doubting someone’s judgement, using demeaning or disparaging language, gestures or behaviours; communicating with the intent to belittle or degrade, eye rolling, giving the silent treatment and using sarcasm; gossip and slander; paying no attention or ignoring someone; taking credit for someone else’s work or ideas; intimidation by intentionally using fear to manipulate others. It may also include yelling, invading personal space, throwing things, slamming things and losing one’s temper; and sabotaging by setting someone up to fail or intentionally creating a situation to make another person look foolish or incompetent. Also may include hate-ism by deliberately pointing at a victim based on age, gender, race or sexual orientation are instances of profiling because of an “ism.”

Many examples include blaming others rather than accepting responsibility; checking email or texting during a meeting; using email to send a difficult message to avoid facing the person, which may be misunderstood and misinterpreted; not saying “please” or “thank you”; not listening and talking over or down to someone.
The cost of incivility is high. It is not only about money! There is research to support impacts on performance through lost time and absenteeism, lack of creativity, less helpfulness and less likely to assist another employee. The impact of teams is on the level of energy, emotional engagement, and performance. The conduct reaches into our physical health; impacts our customers and commitment to the organization and willingness of employees to stay with their companies. All affecting the bottom line of productivity.
So how do we address these issues? I would like to explore some recommendations for your consideration. It starts with us as individuals. Managing ourselves. How? If you throw a ball at the wall…it comes back. It works with people too. If you are, mean…it comes back! People will be mean to you.

How can you be kind and patient all the time when life is so stressful—and just plain hard? You do it by embracing civility! Civility requires self-awareness.

With self-awareness you can:
 Control your attitude
 Manage your moods
 Choose behaviours that do not negatively impact your life or disrupt those around you

Can you…
 Feel and express annoyance, irritation or frustration without hurting others— and then let it go?
 Accept and even appreciate that other people have needs and opinions which are different from your own?
 Encourage and enjoy the successes of others?
 Recognize when someone else feels irritated, upset or frustrated and keep yourself from reacting impulsively in response?

As leaders, we need to model. The Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy wrote: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing themselves.” Employees look to leaders for guidance and someone to aspire too. What are they seeing? Watch your language and put away your smartphones when engaging with your staff. Be mindful of the perils of emails and other electronic communication. Pick up the phone or set up a face to face meeting instead. Take immediate and corrective action when warranted. Rude and disrespectful behaviours emerge quickly and sometimes without warning. As the leader, you need to respond at the moment. By delaying a reaction or action, it sends out mixed messages to the offender as well as the entire team. Take all complaints seriously, realizing that coming forward by the individual is difficult, and they need to know they are supported.

We attend seminars and workshop on harassment prevention, Creating Respectful Workplace and Violence in the Workplace. I have put together a workshop on “How Embracing Civility can Create More Satisfying Work Environments”. The agenda is:
• Why Civility Matters
• It Starts with You!
• Do What You Say and Say What You Mean
• Good Fences Make Great Neighbours
• Working in the Salad Bowl
• Eliminate Gossip and Bullying
• You Can’t Always Get What You Want
• Taking It to the Extreme
• Paving the Path to Civility

Contact Monika Jensen, Principal, Aviary Group, at [email protected]  if you are interested.

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You Can’t Build a Team or Organization Different from You

We can’t build a team or organization that’s different from us. Successful team or organization leadership begins with successful self-leadership. The first step in improving my team or organization is improving me.

 “The management of self is critical. Without it, leaders may do more harm than good. Like incompetent physicians, incompetent managers make people sicker and less vital.“

— Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, Leaders (in a chapter entitled “Leading Others, Managing Yourself”)

Too many managers who aspire to lead and develop others haven’t learned how to lead and develop themselves. They are trying to build organizations or provide services that are different than they are. These well-intentioned managers are trying to improve their teams or organizations without improving themselves. Many seem to be living along the lines of Mark Twain’s observation, “Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.”

Here are some examples of these all too common disconnects between organization and personal performance:

  • Pessimistic managers push their companies to be market and industry leaders while blaming external factors like the economy for their poor performance.
  • Managers with stunted personal growth set strategies to build a “Learning Organization.”
  • Managers produce team and organization vision, values, and mission statements without having clarified and aligned their own personal preferred future,      principles, and purpose.
  • A major program to improve customer service is initiated by managers who boss, direct, and control rather than serve their organization’s servers.
  • Managers with weak levels of continuous personal improvement implement change and improvement programs — for others.
  • Strict Techno managers (bureaucratic or technical experts) oversee rigid systems and processes while trying to encourage risk taking and innovation.
  • Management groups comprised of turf protecting departmental managers, fighting like three kids in the back seat on a long hot drive, try to get others to build stronger teams.
  • Disorganized managers with poor time management habits are setting goals, priorities, and disciplined processes for everyone else.
  • Although they have no personal improvement plan, process, or habits, managers develop extensive organization transformation and improvement plans.
  • While avoiding (and shooting messengers of) personal feedback, managers construct extensive performance appraisal systems and talk about the importance of accountability — for everyone else.

 

A Team or Organization Can’t Rise Above the Level of Its Leadership

“Organizational change begins with leaders who walk the talk by transforming themselves.“

— Stratford Sherman, “Leaders Learn to Heed the Voice Within”, Fortune

It just doesn’t work. We can’t build a team or organization that’s different from us. We can’t make them into something we’re not. But I’ve watched countless managers and management teams try. There are two major reasons that this disconnected approach doesn’t work. First, unless you’re a superb actor, you can’t be a split personality and teach or lead others to do something that’s out of basic alignment with your own habits, skills, and characteristics.

Second, everyone’s “phoniness radar” or “BS meters” are getting ever more sensitive (from overuse). We’re getting fed up with sanctimonious church leaders charged with sexual abuse, fat doctors telling us to get into shape, politicians giving retractable promises to get elected, executives drawing big salaries and bonuses while their company’s financial value declines, municipal transit managers who don’t take their own buses to work, training and consulting companies who don’t practice what they teach, and the like.

I once wrote a scathing note (which was never answered) and quit a speakers’ association because I kept hearing “the old pros” telling people who wanted to get on speaking platforms and tell others how to be successful to “fake ’til you make it.” (The personal and organization improvement field has its share of aspiring speakers and consultants who don’t practice what they preach). One of those speakers also asked me to provide a jacket quote endorsement for a “motivational book” he bragged he’d written “on a six hour airplane flight.” And that’s about how much research and thought the warmed-over platitudes, old jokes, and generalities he’d pieced together obviously had. I declined his invitation.

We loathe phoniness and crave genuineness in our leaders. If I aspire to be a leader, the authenticity (being the real thing) that stems from aligning who I am with where I am trying to take my team or organization will inspire trust, cooperation, and forgiveness in the people who’ll help take me there. Nobody expects us to be the perfect role model. But they do expect to see a close connection between who we are and the direction we’re pointing the team or organization toward.

Or they at least need to see that we recognize our shortcomings and we are working hard to improve ourselves so we can close the organization-personal performance gap. Otherwise they’ll shrug off all our team and organization improvement rhetoric and planning with a sense that this is just Kidney Stone Management — it will hurt for awhile, but this too shall pass. “Watch out, he/she has been off to another seminar (or read another book). If we lay low long enough, he/she will move on to the next fad”.

Successful team or organization leadership begins with successful self-leadership. The first step in improving my team or organization is improving me.

Reprinted with the permission of Jim Clemmer. For over three decades Jim Clemmer’s keynote presentations, workshops, and management team retreats, and seven best-selling books translated into many languages, articles, blog, and newsletters have helped hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. The CLEMMER Group is Zenger Folkman’s Canadian Strategic Partner, an award-winning firm best known for its unique evidence-driven, strengths-based system for developing extraordinary leaders and demonstrating the performance impact they have on organizations.

http://www.clemmergroup.com

 

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Celebrating Member Successes – Congratulations DocuPet!

Brockville backs online dog tags

(Photo – RONALD ZAJAC/The Recorder and Times)

DocuPet picture wdp

By Ronald Zajac, Recorder and Times

Wednesday, August 24, 2016 5:45:22 EDT PM

An online pet registration firm will try to convince wary or indifferent Brockville dog owners to register their pets.

City council on Tuesday backed its finance, administration and operations committee’s recommendation of a five-year deal with with DocuPet Inc. for Internet-based pet registration and identification services.

Councillors approved the deal after removing a clause in the motion, by councillor Jeff Earle, requiring DocuPet to put pet owners’ phone numbers on the tags.

Kingston-based DocuPet expects to take over the services in the fall. 

Brockville, like other municipalities, has a low compliance rate for dog licensing.

A staff report notes the city has sold some 700 to 1,000 dogs tags annually in recent years.

Planning director Maureen Pascoe Merkley told council she estimates Brockville’s pet license compliance rate at 12 to 15 per cent.

That’s in spite of a city bylaw providing for the licensing and registering of dogs and prohibiting their running at large; it requires dog owners to register their pets and get an annual license, or dog tag.

Dog tag costs vary depending on the animal’s circumstances, but the average is about $28.50 a year for the owner. 

DocuPet is proposing to boost compliance with its services. Pascoe Merkley said she hopes compliance will increase by 10 per cent a year. 

Advantages of the online outsourcing include increased license revenue, decreased operating costs and benefits to dog owners such as a “lost pet alert” service and a rewards program DocuPet would work on with local businesses.

The proposed deal with the city is to determine a “baseline” of current licensing compliance. The city gets to keep all revenue within that baseline, in effect keeping what it already makes, while DocuPet takes half of all new revenue above and beyond that baseline.

The tags DocuPet proposed to use include an alphanumeric code for use online, as well as the city’s phone number for people who do not use computers. 

Earle reiterated his point that using the numbers of the pet owners is a simpler way of dealing with errant animals and eliminates the middle man.

Offering that option to users would make the difference between pet licensing being a service to residents, as opposed to simply a tax, said Earle. “It’s up to us to get them the best value for that service,” added Earle. He held up examples of other dog tags that included the phone numbers of the owners. “This is a much more user-friendly system,” said Earle.

City and DocuPet officials have said such an approach is impractical because the tags become invalid if the owner moves.

City clerk Sandra MacDonald also confirmed municipal protection of privacy law would require the city to get special consent from pet owners to put their numbers on tags.

DocuPet’s plan is for a custom-made tag, whereas designing specific tags for each owner would be logistically difficult, said Pascoe Merkley.

Councillor Phil Deery said he sees the licensing process as a tax. “The purpose of the tax is to off-set the costs of animal control,” he added.

Earle, clearly in the minority with his argument, then added another reason for his objections. “I don’t see a reason the dogs are being taxed and not the cats,” he said.

The city has in the past explored the option of registering cats but found it too onerous.

As he did at last week’s committee meeting, councillor Jason Baker stepped out on a conflict of interest because his employer makes animal tags.

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