It was a scorching July Saturday in Fort Worth, Texas, when the business development and estimating teams from Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems (LMTAS) met to find a lower-cost solution for a must-win bid. With their business backlog shrinking rapidly and foreign fighter-jet competition getting tougher, this multibillion-dollar deal was not just a promise of future profits-it was a matter of life or death. 

While competing for the $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter contract, they had to make every F-16 sale they could just to keep the lights on. And yet, after hours of wrangling between some of the brightest and most seasoned managers in the company, the teams split up with no hope of viable solution.