|
Our Hands On Approach
The following summary profiles deep experience and a proven track record of success in solving complex problems, overcoming adversity, embracing innovation and, when necessary even driving transformational change to enhance customer satisfaction and create sustained strategic growth. Perhaps just as importantly, the leadership experience profiled below is complimented by a “hands-on” approach, an inclusive, engaging management style, good listening skills, and an ethical standard that always places integrity first, as the most important personal and organizational priority.
Business, Organizational and Transformational Leadership Experience
1. Created solutions that apply to multiple customers and platforms
2. Expanded addressable markets and moved up from products to systems
3. Improved financial, department and program performance across the business and the supply chain
4. Implemented effective business & process management and risk mitigation
5. Employed effective talent management and built enduring succession pipelines
6. Implemented structural changes and redeployed resources to optimize performance
7. Developed effective communications plans to motivate and enhance workforce performance
8. Developed joint-venture partnerships with companies that would otherwise be competitors to accelerate new market penetration and enhance growth
9. Generated acquisitive as well as organic growth, and integrated acquisitions seamlessly and effectively
10. Operated with integrity in an open and honest professional environment.
Product Expansion and Portfolio Diversification: Created an entire new business unit by winning a single launch program, and then developing a technology & product roadmap to expand that single product win into a diversified product portfolio that included derivative products for other US and international customers. This expansion included the US Army, the US Special Forces, a Prime Missile System Integrator, the US Air Force, Allied Air Forces, a Turkish Prime System Integrator and the UK Ministry of Defence. Thus, a single highly competitive US Army program win, with no prior incumbent position, was exploited to birth an entire business unit with a diversified product portfolio and >$80M sales per year serving multiple customers and platforms across the worldwide market.
Portfolio Diversification and Organizational Transformation: In a business with a very narrow product portfolio and rapidly declining sales – within the first 100 days, implemented immediate actions designed to dramatically broaden the business focus to offset an anticipated 20% annual decline of legacy product sales as wartime production contracts completed. Created multiple business area teams chartered to focus on specific, near term market opportunities and directed development of 3-year strategic plans and 1-year tactical operating plans to guide each of these new businesses area teams in the penetration of their respective new markets. Then established dedicated leadership teams for each of these new businesses – teams whose skills and expertise were specifically tailored for their individual business strategies, their competitive landscapes and unique market environments. Over the next several years, these actions successfully diversified the portfolio and transformed the business, successfully offsetting the decline in legacy sales & profit without increasing historical investment profiles, department budgets or employee headcount.
One of these new business areas specifically focused on the international market which had historically been only ~7% of sales. With the increased focus of a dedicated, experienced international leadership team, international growth exploded, including winning over 20 contracts in two middle-east countries in the first 30 months following the reorganization. These contract wins opened lucrative, long term, strategic international markets.
A second new business area utilized breakthrough technologies from two recent technology acquisitions as foundational building blocks to establish a new state-of-the-art ‘core technology’ that could be rapidly and affordably instantiated into individually tailored products to meet differing customer requirements. With this ‘core technology’ as the foundation, a technology & product roadmap was developed that rapidly and affordably established an entirely new family of products that outpaced the competition.
A third new business area moved up the food chain from products to systems/services by exploiting a quick turn development capability to rapidly ruggedize COTS technologies to meet harsh defense/aerospace requirements in order to address Urgent Operational Requirements and emerging wartime capability gaps much more effectively than traditionally minded competitors.
Acquisition Integration: Led the successful integration of a major acquisition with multiple sites and a diverse array of programs into the acquiring business unit. This was accomplished using a cross-functional team that systematically assessed, evaluated, merged, tailored and re-deployed the best practice of each company into a single business management process that was then institutionalized across the combined enterprise.
Business Development Re-Structuring: Restructured the worldwide business development, marketing and sales organization of a major aerospace and defense contractor with responsibility for over $2B new orders/year. Systematically re-organized and re-skilled the BD organization to align with emerging market trends, increased the focus on key pursuits, strengthened and institutionalized BD ‘best practice’, and reduced inefficiency. This enabled more efficient use of existing resources, strengthened and deepened customer relationships, enabled more effective new market penetration and sustained a new business capture rate to >70% while simultaneously reducing department costs by more than 20%.
Foreign Ownership, Control and Influence (FOCI): Established various FOCI mitigation agreements with the US DoD leading to the establishment of subsidiaries of foreign owned corporations that are considered US corporations eligible for facility security clearances. Have also managed subsidiaries operating under FOCI mitigation agreements, including establishing operating procedures and processes that resulted in substantial DoD market penetration, maximum transparency to the parent and successful DSS security audits.
Growth Management: Successfully managed a corporation’s growth from a small organization to a highly successful and CMMI Level 3/5 certified mid-sized, multi-site company through careful implementation of automation, metrics, processes and procedures. The resulting company maintained the culture and agility of a small company while adding hundreds of employees and substantially growing profitability.
Talent Management and Business Decision Process Improvement: Leadership development processes were established and robust succession planning was institutionalized across a major business unit. Within two years this increased focus on talent management resulted in five business area executives being promoted to leadership positions elsewhere in the corporate enterprise. Concurrently, management decision processes were strengthened and streamlined to enhance process discipline and institutionalize business-based decision-making across the enterprise. This improved the speed and efficiency of managing the business, improved competitiveness and allowed senior leadership to spend more time addressing strategic issues.
Partnering with a Competitor: Constructed several long term teaming, partnering and joint venture relationships designed to prosecute large programs or global markets with long term financial value over $1B. These partnering agreements followed extensive market analyses and competitive assessments, and included detailed market strategies that ultimately delivered significantly improved market positions and achieved the targeted market share objectives for all concerned. While each situation is unique, the keys to successfully constructing these complex partnering arrangements include the ability to identify the competitive advantages and financial value to each of the associated companies, the ability to create a win-win contractual arrangement and the ability to establish an enduring governance process to assure the arrangement is successfully executed with integrity.
Military Experience and Expertise: Experience in highly relevant military roles, including that as Chief of Staff, United States Army Communications-Electronics Command, responsible (with the Commanding General) for management of a complex, diverse, high technology global organization of >10,000 military and civilian personnel engaged in the research, development, acquisition, fielding, and sustainment of state-of-the-art and defense electronics (communications, command & control, computer, intelligence, electronic warfare, and sensor systems) for the US Army, joint services and coalition forces.
Technology, Lean/Six Sigma and Engineering Leadership Experience
1. Built teams that solved problems with creative and innovative solutions
2. Overcame technical roadblocks and adversity while mitigating risk
3. Created and expanded technology roadmaps that align with market opportunities
4. Created solutions that apply to multiple customers and platforms
5. Leveraged commercial technologies to reduce development cost and risk
6. Utilized lean and six sigma tools to optimize operational performance
7. Operated effectively in the US and internationally
8. Implemented restructuring and rationalization actions effectively, when needed
9. Enhanced existing customer and supplier relationships to grow the business
10. Operated with integrity in an open and honest professional environment.
Acquisition Integration and Operating Performance Improvement: Effectively addressed and resolved a high visibility program performance problem (development engineering and manufacturing) associated with a recently acquired Display Systems business on a major fighter aircraft program. Engaged directly with this important prime customer and led technical, manufacturing and supply chain activities to identify the driving issues, isolate root causes and correct the performance problems – keeping the prime customer informed every step of the way. Concurrently, engaged with factory personnel to focus resources, improve process efficiency and increase operational effectiveness across the operation. This successfully improved Customer Acceptance from 35% to 93% and On-Time Delivery from 77% to 97% within the first 12 months.
Exploitation of Commercial Technologies for Defense Applications: Led a team of strategic-minded technologists and engineers to identify and leverage the technology synergies of two recently merged companies, and then, exploited the synergy opportunities to address new markets. One example was harvesting the prototype commercial technology originally under development for the future US automobile – thereby leveraging a $50M commercial investment, and re-deploying the commercial technology to win a highly competitive, major US defense electronics contract. This significant ‘commercial off the shelf’ technology head start provided a decisive competitive advantage in terms of reduced development cost, reduced risk and accelerated ‘speed to market’.
Business Restructuring: As DoD wartime production surges ended, wartime supplemental funding ramped down and customer budgets shrank, led restructuring actions to merge two business units together across multiple locations. This dramatically improved resource utilization, captured technology synergies, realigned cost structures and reduced infrastructure and facility footprints to align with emerging DoD budget realities. Lean and six sigma techniques were used extensively across the business, creating annual productivity savings of ~12% per year and annual net material savings of ~4% per year as a percentage of sales, independent of business restructuring savings. Together these actions significantly improved overall business unit efficiency, reduced capital investment, improved cash flow and enhanced financial performance.
Technical and Engineering Leadership: Led the engineering efforts that achieved the NSA’s first type 1 security accreditation of a Multi-Level Security (MLS) Command, Control, Communications and Computers (C4) Type 1 secure system. This was a breakthrough achievement at the time.
Engineering Organizational Design: Following creation of a $1B/year Tactical Defense Electronics Systems Division stemming from the acquisition of more than five independent defense electronics companies, led development of a single strategic technology roadmap across the newly formed enterprise - effectively bringing together the technologies and IRAD strategies of the newly merged businesses. Non-geographically based centers of excellence were established, which drew upon the expert technical capabilities of the diversely located businesses. Best practice was identified, adapted and integrated together. These steps effectively merged together into a single team engineers that had recently been fierce competitors and was a significant innovation in organizational design at the time.
|
 |
