Government contracting is going through a refresh cycle. That means we all see a lot of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. History buffs may recognize this as “VUCA” (pronounced voo-ka) from the US Army War College in the late 80s. Anyway, there is much change in the air. Our role as GovCon professionals is to adapt, regardless of the shifting landscape. During times of change, I find it more helpful to focus on what won’t change, and get better at that, than to chase what could/would/may change.
Be a thermostat, not a thermometer.
Thermostats set the temperature.
Thermometers react to the temperature.
Our mission at Skyway remains: Bring Context to Both Sides of GovCon so we all Do GovCon Well. That’s our thermostat. By setting our thermostat we are ready to adapt, to support, and serve our clients on both sides of GovCon. Remember that our team is here to help you navigate this round of VUCA days. Reach out to us at [email protected] or (877) 884-5280.
In the meantime, here’s what’s New and what’s Next as we continue to evolve and adapt through 2025.
What’s new?
Contracting Officer Podcast episodes
New Contracting Officer Podcast episodes this month: listen on our website or see details here on how listen on your podcast app). New Episodes include: 496: The Other Costs of Proposals, 497: The GovCon Weight Class (Contractors), 498: What is an A-76 competition?, 499: Working with the FAR we have… (with Shelley Hall), and 500: The Quincentenary (the 500th).
What’s Next?
The Contracting Officer Mentorship Program (the COMP)
A general sense of uncertainty permeates GovCon (hence my VUCA reference). Agencies depend on contracting and acquisition teams to meet their missions, despite the VUCA environment. Contracting and acquisition teams on both sides of GovCon are being spread thinner than ever. However, online portals, web-based training, and on-demand courses are not enough. Just adding more content is not better. It’s just, more. They don’t need more content, they need more help – as in, human-to-human engagement to help them apply all the available training.
In other words, they need mentoring.
They need frictionless access to mentors to help them keep up with the demand to support their mission while they also continue to grow. Access to mentoring accelerates their capability, capacity and confidence – which lead to more effectively meeting the mission despite the VUCA environment. Over the decades, many (or most) of the experienced, hardened, and battle-tested contracting officers have retired, transitioned out of government or more recently been encouraged to leave. As a result, most government acquisition professionals have less time to learn the role and fewer years of experience before they take on high levels of responsibility.
The Contracting Officer Mentorship Program (COMP) helps GovCon Professionals by giving them a human-to-human support so they have someone to learn from, run ideas past, leverage lessons learned with, collaborate with, and lean on as they face new challenges, puzzles, and opportunities. The COMP is now live and we are already starting to see engagement and interest in it. To talk to our team about how the COMP will help your organization, contact us at [email protected].
As always, thank you for being a Skyway client. Without clients, I don’t get to actually help people to #DoGovConWell.
- Kevin
