Disrupting Leadership

Most of us in Acquisition know that queasy feeling when a new boss is coming onboard and we aren’t sure how our future will change.  Will the job change the person or will the person change the job? And of course, will we flourish under new leadership? I’ve found two truths in the case of every transition in leadership, whether at a lower level team lead or the highest in the land.  I have seldom seen much territory between these two polarities. 1.      The position changes the person.   In effect, it’s the hardened structure of the position, perhaps the bureaucracy of it, that changes the Read More


SBIR Hell, Urban Fantasy, & Baking Your Proposals

“SBIR Hell,” we used to call it. There’s a way for small firms to avoid it if you know how to bake your proposals. SBIR Hell: Contracting Officer POV From a seasoned Contracting Officer’s point of view, SBIR hell started the moment the PR (purchase request) packages finally hit my desk, often days or weeks after Congress said I was supposed to have the contracts awarded and there I was, looking at the proposals, funding, and everything in between for the first time, and spending my yearly bonus on Ibuprofen for the impending headache. Weird, but even though I needed Read More


Using Tension to Create Change

Would we as Acquisition innovators be as innovative without the tension of losing ground to Russia and China? Without our fight against bureaucracy or clumsy dinosaur we’ve-always-done-it-that-way processes? Without tension in other areas of our lives, would we become content personally? Professionally? Would we stagnate? Would we find that fine line between contentment and stagnation because if we are not moving forward or we are only standing still, are we then really moving backward as surely as though we were standing in place on a 5 mph treadmill? And what spurs us to keep taking steps onward if not the Read More


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