A proposal lands from someone three years into the job and it needs almost nothing. The structure is right. The pricing is right. The tone is right. You send it.
Three weeks later, the client asks why the second site sits outside the scope.
She talks around it.
She can walk through the document line by line. She cannot tell you why that line is there.
That is the part worth paying attention to.
For a long time, a rough first draft did more than create review work. It gave someone senior a reason to explain why something was wrong.
Cross out this paragraph.
Move that clause.
This price only works if the second site is included.
The correction was also the lesson.
A clean draft does not give anyone that reason. The document may be fine. Confirming a clause is accurate is not the same act as explaining why it is there, and checking something is quick and explaining it is not. The explaining was often the expensive part. It also built the next reviewer.
For a while it reads as progress. Less to mark up, work going out faster, fewer questions coming back. The drafts did get better.
A common fix is to tighten the back end. Add an approval. Require someone to verify the output. It can catch a bad document. It cannot tell you whether the person who made it knows why it is right. If that only sits with you, you are the permanent reviewer.
Before the next client deliverable goes out, pick three decisions inside it and ask why.
Not “is this correct?”
Why this price. Why this clause. Why this option and not the obvious alternative.
If the answer is a rule, write the rule down. If the answer is judgment, make sure somebody is actually learning how to make it.
Clean output can save time. Just do not mistake that for judgment having transferred.
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About the author
Missy Ross
Missy Ross is the Founder and AI Architect of Vero Dawn, an AI architecture and solutions company that helps businesses see what could work better, determine the right solution, and bring it to life. Before founding Vero Dawn she spent 21 years in internal audit across banking and manufacturing, at Audit Director level.