Don’t get me wrong, I am a dog person. But when it comes to business development and chasing down opportunities, I reckon cats have got it right.  Let me explain….

Across the construction and property industry – in fact across most industries and sectors – things are pretty tight at the moment. The combination of post-Covid austerity, global uncertainties, and a universal tightening of the belt have all added to the squeeze. Whether business opportunities or personal job-seeking, the result is that more people are chasing fewer opportunities – and it shows.

TEAM Projects operates at both ends of this particular spectrum – on one hand, we run procurement processes and tenders for our clients, and at the other end we are submitting our own proposals to secure future work. In both of these scenarios we are witnessing a significant increase in the number of respondents – which is not actually a good thing. When receiving tenders, it appears that everyone is bidding for everything – the approach seems to be, if the tender description vaguely fits, hey why not give it a nudge! Problem is, unless it looks to be a really good match to your skills… if you are trying to shoe-horn your experience into it to make it fit…someone else will be a better fit and better positioned, and the likely outcome is just a lot of disappointment and unnecessarily expended energy.

So how, pray tell, does this relate to dogs and cats?

Think about how your typical dog acts. It runs around wagging its tail, craving attention and demanding to be noticed and loved. The merest pat on the head just adds to its excitement and makes it think it is now your best friend. You throw a stick for it to fetch, and it dutifully runs off and brings it back to you, so you can throw it again and repeat the process until you get tired. And generally, you will get bored before the dog does.

A cat on the other hand …. A cat sits and observes. It chooses who it approaches, who is allowed to interact with it, and whose knee it sits on. It is selective, aloof, apathetic even. If it doesn’t get the attention it seeks, it will simply turn around and quietly seek it elsewhere.  No running around. No fetching sticks. And as often as not it leaves you chasing after the cat for affirmation. It is a very efficient system – you know exactly where you stand with a cat.

A dog chases anything that moves with equal gusto, but it’s noise, over-exuberance and lack of subtlety means it rarely catches anything. Whereas a cat chooses its targets carefully. It sees what it wants, and quietly moves itself into the best position to catch it. If it doesn’t succeed, it doesn’t run around barking to everyone about its failure, it sits back, licks it paws, surveys its surroundings and watches for the next one to come along…. which is normally quicker than may be expected.

So what do we learn from this extended and somewhat tortuous analogy?

Clients and employers – stop throwing so many sticks. A couple of short, well-directed throws is far more productive than tossing a tennis ball over the fence and watching every dog in the pound scrambling over each other to catch it.

Tenderers and job seekers – think more like a cat. Stop running around trying to please everyone. Conserve your time and energy so you can concentrate it into the real opportunities – the ones you really want to catch and the ones that are best suited to your experience and skills.

With a bit of careful consideration we can collectively reduce the volume of white noise and extraneous effort that is currently swamping our tender and job market.

Be like a cat.

If any of this strikes a chord with you, feel free to click “like”. Go on, like me. Please like me! Please!!

Woof woof!