Throw Your Vendor an RFI Curveball

Ask them how they'd solve for your objectives

Inspired by David Raab and his recent newsletter Don’t Misuse Proof of Concept in System Selection since he referenced use cases in the manner of Clayton Christensen’s “Job to be Done.” I took it a step further a few years back and used Strategyn’s Outcome-Driven Innovation method in a similar situation.

A number of years ago I was continually dropped into strategy projects that needed someone who had experience on both the business side, and the technology side. The challenge was that these projects had already run through half their budget because the strategy team was a) trying to use up as much utilization as possible, and b) thought they could fake IT knowledge.

In these situations, I didn’t have the luxury of rescheduling stakeholder meetings in order to pull out the information I needed from them. I was usually given a file dump, and would certainly have a chance to lead some of the discussions going forward. Unfortunately, I had to tread lightly in order to avoid friction with t…