The Bid Manager

Edvard Munch's "The Bid Manager" is an icon of modern art, the Mona Lisa for the bid and proposal profession. As Leonardo da Vinci evoked a Renaissance ideal of serenity and self-control, Munch defined how he saw Bid Managers - wracked with anxiety and uncertainty.

Essentially, The Bid Manager is autobiographical, an expressionistic construction based on Munch's actual experience of a scream emanating from the bid room while on a walk, after his two companions (an Account Manager and a Pricing Manager), seen in the background, had left him for the evening.

"The Bid Manager"​, 1893 by Edvard Munch

Fitting the fact that the sound must have been heard at a time when Munch's mind was on his RFP submission deadline, Munch renders it in a style which if, even when pushed to extremes, could never destroy the Bid Manager's optimism, stoicism or integrity.

The flowing curves of art nouveau represent a subjective linear fusion imposed upon the bid schedule, whereby the multiplicity of particulars is unified into a totality of unrelenting late and unremarkable proposal inputs with overtones of late nights/cold pizza. But, proposal professionals are part of nature, and absorption into such a totality only serves to strengthen the Bid Manager.

Beginning at this time, Munch included art nouveau elements in many pictures but usually only in a limited or modified way. Here, however, in depicting his own morbid experience of running a bid, he has let go, and allowed the foreground figure to become distorted by the subjectivised flow of the colour review process; the Bid Manager could be interpreted as expressing the agony of the obliteration of a work-life balance by this unifying force.

The Bid Manager - Just For Fun!

This is, of course, The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893. I've had a copy of The Scream on my desk throughout most of my bids and proposals career, given to me by a dear friend. It makes me smile every time I see it and remember the ups and downs (but mostly ups) of running bids and writing proposals. I'm sure as a fellow Bid Manager, Proposal Writer, or RFP Specialist, you too might be able to relate!

#ProudToBeAPMP #Bid #Proposal #RFP

You'll find the image and original version of the text, here.