Washington is making decisions now that could reshape competition and investment across government

0:00Print servers and federal environments create risk and unnecessary complexity. Every new printer, location, or policy adds strain to infrastructure that was never built for today's demands. FedRAMP High authorized printer logic eliminates print servers with a secure cloud native, zero-trust solution designed for federal IT. With advanced security, centralized control, and simplified management, agencies can modernize print without added burden. See what secure serverless printing looks like. Visit VAsian.com to learn more. Federal Drive is presented by GEHA, Government Employees Health Association, proudly providing health and dental benefits to federal employees and their families. Visit GEHA.com. Contractors are tracking several policy decisions that could affect how they compete for work and plan for the year ahead. From small business eligibility rules to counter drone authorities and the budget outlook. Jim Carroll, CEO of the Professional Services Council, joins me now to explain what's getting the industry's attention. Jim, great to have you. Thanks for joining me today. Thank you, Terry, for having us on.

1:00Rulemaking is keeping a lot of people busy these days. And the comment period just closed on a counter-UAS rule that would implement the SaferSky's Act provisions. I know PSC was actively engaged in that. What did you all tell government regulators? What a great question, Terry. We've certainly heard from so many of our member companies. I will say it's interesting how services have evolved over the years and how professional services council has evolved along with it. And the services that not just involve people in seats and includes technology. And certainly the drones and especially the counter drones is in that category. And that's why we had so many member companies who were interested in this topic. Certainly everyone understands the idea of SaferSky's. It is an absolutely appropriate way to think about this issue. And it's certainly one of the ways that the government seems like we have to be able to respond

2:02and protect the skies, protect people on the ground, major sporting events, as well as just major everyday occurrences with the federal government. One of the concerns that companies raised was about how the proposed regulation on SaferSky's would negatively impact the ability to do testing the R&E side of this and being out in the field. And some of the prohibitions we think were unintended consequences of the research. And sometimes the proposed regulations, as Terry you and all of our listeners know, sometimes proposed regulations don't really propose something that is either workable or that they understand the net impact. We think that was part of it with this one. They didn't mean to knock out research and engineering, testing capabilities and down that line. And so we really wanted to explain that to them that we needed to be able to aggressively test,

3:05that would get it to market faster, more economical and really be able to do some amazing things. And Terry I know you've seen and I'm sure many of your millions of listeners have seen some of the technology and the counter space that is just remarkable that these companies and I think we'll talk about this but regardless of size they are able to do some pretty amazing things. Well let's switch to that size question because another rule making that's drawing a lot of attention involves SBA's proposal to redefine who's considered a small business. So as it's considering changes there from your perspective what do you think they're trying to accomplish with these changes? You know that's a really that's the million dollar question and there's been a push for many years to help the middle market, the emerging companies, the companies that are graduating from the small category in the next code to you know that medium size market. There's an opportunity

4:06to address that here and like we think a desire to do that. The issue that we're looking at or hearing from our members is what is the actual impact of this just like some of the safer skies. There are some negative parts to this and we're hearing from a variety of members the good and the bad. And so you know there's as you a lot of the large companies don't have strong feelings one way or another and you know with 400 member companies of PS council you know some of the large companies do not have as a significant view on this as a middle or small company and then for the middle we like to say emerging because of professional services council we try to make our smalls emerging and our emerging large and the large extra large it's the opposite of the RFK diet. And the so what we're you know hearing from some of those companies or the mid size is that this would either allow them to stay in the small category or if they've graduated to come back in

5:09and but then we're hearing from some of the small companies that this would really damage if not completely threatened their ability to compete in the space. And so we're collecting comments now and you know it's interesting we've had you know we've participated in several meetings up on the hill we've been talking to the administration. We had a member only call of our 400 companies we had 200 plus members on the call with us and we are submitting comments based on our membership but I think there's an impact here that we'd be interested in hearing the perspectives of other companies and it'd be interesting for us to get if anyone your listeners and any of the companies out there are not members of PSC we're curious as to how they think it impacts their business and I invite them to send us an email at policy at ps council dot org that's ps co un cil dot org the I really think this would be interesting to

6:17sort of hear what everyone has to say. Jim Carol is the CEO of the Professional Services Council Jim before we leave this topic it's interesting to me that the large businesses who said don't have a big concern here because it seems like the changes in the size could impact competition and teaming relationships do you see that on the agenda here? Yeah I didn't mean to paint with the broad brush we're hearing from some big companies that are absolutely interested and but across all three sizes the small emerging and large there are some who are happy about it and like this and so it really is a big group and I also think it depends within the companies that do business with the federal government it depends if you're primarily a defense company if you're primarily an international services company it I think really sort of colors their perspective on the significance of this issue and it's just it's just fascinating that this reg was dropped without a

7:21lot of notice we knew a size standard evaluation was coming but it appears from everything we've gathered that the Hill did not get a lot of notice the White House did not get a lot of notice is really originated within the SBA and again going back to some of what I said at the beginning of our conversation did the SBA really mean to do this did the understand the impact and what are they trying to get from this and we want to work with the SBA and you know the rest of the administration to implement this in a way that is fair for all involved well as industry is commenting on these long-term policy changes it's also watching Congress makes them immediate decisions about funding and for the first time in a while we have a continuing resolution that will cross fiscal years before we actually get to the fiscal year from your members perspective what's the practical significance of having that I'll use my air quotes here funding certainty yeah funding certainty until there isn't certainty so we have three months of a CR and

8:26everybody chose is a bipartisan recognition that elections are coming up and that shutting the government down is bad for everyone regardless of politics it's an awful look to have a dysfunctional a dysfunctional DC I'll say I don't want to limit it just to one of the sectors in DC and so I think everyone recognized they wanted to kick this past the elections but try to handle this you know before a new Congress comes in in January I think everyone's all this coming there's no surprise that we've got a CR the last minute and in order to do this but it means that there is a limited window of certainty at existing levels and I think the outcome of the election will have a great deal of impact on you know what actually gets implemented in December before you know January comes and we have that new Congress so I hate to be the pessimist Terry but I'm worried that we're not going to have a white Christmas that it's going to be

9:30drudgery to either not have the government working or you know not have some certainty for these companies to know exactly you know what the opportunities are to provide services and what kind of decisions does that mean your companies will continue to defer a lot of it will be in the R&D which is critical we talked about that at the beginning again with the counter drones and the other technology is that they are not going to push they won't have the ability with the responsibility of the large companies to the shareholders to the companies that are PE backed the authority to really sink a lot of money into a future work and to future capabilities until there's some certainty that we know the direction you know that the budget is going to take and it'll be interesting to see what OMB does and it's interesting to sort of see how some industries and some government administrations might be getting more funding than they even have asked for and so it'll be a very interesting December maybe January you know I think we're in for

10:37if there's no question labor day is over Terry Jim Carroll is the CEO of the Professional Services Council Jim thanks so much for joining me thank you great to be with you we'll post this interview at federal news network dot com slash federal drive subscribe to the federal drive for ever you get your podcasts what does it take to drive transformational change in large mission driven organizations in this episode of lessons in leadership former treasury fiscal assistant secretary David Lebrick sits down with WAPA CEO Shane Canfield to explore the answer to that question drawing on nearly four decades of public service Lebrick shares insights on how to maintain employee trust and accountability while striving for strategic leadership and operational excellence he discusses his biggest lessons learned from modernizing major government systems and how he worked to break down silos and build high performing teams all while staying rooted in character and integrity hello and welcome to the lessons in leadership podcast I'm your host Shane Canfield CEO

11:37of WAPA today I'm joined by David Lebrick former fiscal assistant secretary of the treasury the department's most senior career position where he spent nearly four decades help oversee and modernize the federal governments financial infrastructure including payments collecting debt financing and cash management David welcome and thank you for being here so real pleasure to be here so let's jump right in what does it actually take to drive transformational change inside the federal government and related treasury is obviously a huge organization what did that teach you about leadership as you drove these changes sure I think one of the things that you look that you realize as time is that change and transformational change is very difficult but it is doable and I think sometimes we don't think that you know we can do big things in government and yet we can I think over the course of my career I was enormously fortunate to do work with some of the really really

12:40wonderful people some of the most preeminent people in government over the course the last 35 years and from them you learn a lot of really important lessons about leadership I think early in my career what I would tell you is is that I was very much new my interacted with political appointees as a civil servant that you're really an advisor and I've had some really wonderful experiences advising some of really great people my second job at treasury for example was as a special assistant to J. Powell I knew I was not going to be the most the most the smartest person in the room or the expert on many things that were going on but what I did know is is that I had a very good understanding about what it meant to navigate in government also what it meant to to advise and provide options and analysis to decision makers as you move up in your career and you actually take on more operational responsibility you find out that you are a decision maker and when you are a decision maker you know I had a very good framework that I used throughout my career which is you as a well-ed

13:44organization the leadership had to think about three very distinct things one was thinking strategically about where the organization was going not just about where it was going tomorrow and the next day but actually into the future the second area was that you really had to be able to deliver in the operational excellence so if you're responsible for providing a service or a product you can do that well and you need to think very purposefully about that and the third area is really about people and about how you attract good people how you retain good people how you incent good people and how you really treat people and so throughout my career I had an opportunity to see people be very effective in all three of those areas so when it came time to do transformational change that model worked very well and would also say that what you learn very early on is that regardless is that you as an individual it takes it takes the ability to work collectively and collaboratively with a lot of people and so some of the things that I did for example which were cross government

14:47you realize that you really didn't have authority over many of the people that you were asking to do something different but if you had character and competence you could actually have trust and so I think when people looked and said this is someone who has capability and they have character they will actually go and reduce the friction and actually making change and so those collaborative relationships that those that ability to sort of lead with purpose I think was very important with respect to really driving transformational change yeah that's that's an amazing perspective I just had a chance to listen in a small room to the CEO and the chairman of the board for Marriott Corporation and they're celebrating their 100th birthday next year and many most US companies don't make it to 100 and so it was it was fascinating both of them were asked

15:49to what do you attribute this and they said both of them with energy it was about their people they focused on their people and everything came back to the employees the people that worked there the people that they have to motivate do you find something similar in government I do I actually take a you know oftentimes you hear people say people the most important asset in an organization and there's an element of truth to that but I also think that leadership is probably the most important aspect attribute an organization because if you have the right leaders and you're using a framework like I mentioned you're going to be really focused on getting good people in the organization and those people will thrive I think the thing that you find certainly in government is that federal employees are very mission driven and they are committed and they you know there's a lot of discussion about you know what really motivates people intrinsic versus extrinsic you know motivators and I really do believe that you know when you really get a high performing organization

16:51regardless of his private sector or public sector it's going to be those intrinsic things which are going to actually drive employees to do great things and so setting up those right working conditions to remind people how important they are to actually invest in their development to actually give them good feedback you know one of the things that is really important in an organization is if you really care about an employee and you really want to see them develop you have to tell them not only good things you have to tell them things they have to work on and I think you need to set up an environment and we add a saying which is feedback is a gift and and and assume noble intent intent so that when someone gives you feedback your first reaction shouldn't be defensive it should be let me let me make sure I can really understand why I'm getting feedback and what I can do about that you know I think of a story from a from a book called Radical Candor in which the author had gone out and spent a lot of time recruiting a new

17:53executive in the organization and thought they had a perfect match they got to six months and the executive was struggling and they ultimately fired the executive and at the Exinterview the she had turned to the executive and he said well I really was someone who had told me earlier on what I wasn't doing well and I tell that story because I think it sort of says that if you're not giving good feedback to people you've spent all this money on recruiting someone all this time and we know it takes a lot of time to bring people on board and if you're not giving them the benefit of that you're not giving regular feedback to someone about what they can do better then you potentially have a failure and now you have another vacancy that you have to fill which is very costly and expensive so I think you need to have an idea there's another element of that which is in a high performing organization if people are comfortable raising their hand when something's not going right and in in my world large scale operations and what we did every day something doesn't go right it's just inevitable and the issue within a well performing

18:55high performing organization is that people will raise their hand and say we have a problem and we need to fix it and the leadership is receptive to that and says okay what do we need to do and then after the problem is solved you have an obligation to go back and do lessons learned do action learning to see hey what could we have done differently how could we have avoided that problem so that you have a learning organization it's not just that you're comfortable communicating and have trust in the organization that you can communicate openly but also that you're learning as you go along every day to improve your operations the very first podcast we had was cutler Dawson who was Admiral and the Navy charge of the enterprise carrier and the fleet in the beginning of desert storm and then he went on to run Navy federal the world's largest credit union and was fascinating to hear you because he talked he used an example of a problem they had on deck

19:58on air with airplanes on the carrier and it was pretty serious accident that happened his culture was exactly what you said you've got to talk whether you're at fault or not whether you're partly at fault it doesn't matter we have to have an honest conversation about this and that doesn't mean there weren't consequences but at the same time that honesty has to be front and center it really is true and I think that I think that you raised an interesting point which I think sometimes the word accountability has a negative connotation you're going to be held accountable but also but but I would have it in a different way which is we're accountable for high performance and we're accountable to each other right to make sure that we can deliver on our mission and that's a positive attribute along the way and I think when when organizations take that seriously the collaboration the team work the openness the feedback but they also have a culture of accountability that says we do things well we're going to actually be successful of what we do and we all have a commitment to doing that I think you're really a high performing

21:00organization. You've been listening to a preview edition of Lessons in Leadership to hear the rest of this conversation and all past episodes subscribe to Lessons in Leadership wherever you get your podcasts.