The consulting business division of El Caro had a number of practices attached to it. It had a bid management 'function' whose purpose was to draft and submit proposals to customers. One of the significant problems in this consulting division was that it had no dedicated resources in this bid 'function'. The bids were done either by assigning someone who were 'on the bench' (which means they have nothing else to do but spending time in their workbenches - a popular jargon in the consulting industry) or by taking someone out of their consulting engagement.
As a result, the VP of the business consulting division, Steve, went out and looked for someone who could improve the process of putting a bunch of half-timers or part-timers on bids. Eventually, they found someone in the practice who could do this job 'part-time'. That person left in a couple of months later. Then, another person was found and, again, he took on the roles on 'part-time' as well. Guess what - that person left a couple of months' later as well.
Eventually, they established this role as a full-time role and hired Larry. Larry was so enthused with the tasks because he thought he was able to make a difference to this division. He worked very hard to fulfill his roles, which were laid out to him by the VP. He was told that he did not need to work directly on bids and his role was to increase the efficiency in allocation of 'part-time' bid resources and raise the quality of the bids.
We probably need to pause here to think strategically whether this will ever work...
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