• Your org chart reflects your hiring history, not your strategy. Those are very different documents.

• The GovCon Value Chain already drew your org chart. Growth, Delivery, Supporting Activities. Three lanes. Full stop.

• Every role needs a definition and one Measurement of Effectiveness. One. Not five. One.

• Six people is the ceiling on your core team. Beyond that, you’re not leading… you’re moderating.

• The right person in the wrong seat isn’t a people problem. It’s a clarity problem you created.

What This Is

Most GovCon founders don’t have an org chart problem. They have a clarity problem. The chart itself is just the symptom of the real issue that nobody defined the seats before people started sitting in them.

This framework fixes that.

The Org Chart is a one-page tool built specifically for GovCon firms in the $25M to $250M range. It gives you a structured way to define who owns each domain in your business, what they’re responsible for, and how you’ll measure whether they’re actually succeeding.

It’s built on a simple principle: your org structure should reflect your business model… not your hiring history.

The GovCon Value Chain Has Three Lanes

Every GovCon business, regardless of size, contract vehicle, or service line, operates across three GovCon Value Chain fundamental areas: Growth, Delivery, and Supporting Activities.

That’s it.

If your org chart has more complexity than that at the top, you’ve likely been promoting to the problem rather than solving it.

Your core leadership team should map directly to those three areas:

• Growth leader: who owns client attraction, pipeline, capture, and proposals

• Delivery leader (or one per business unit): who owns performance and execution

• Business Operations leader: who keeps the engine running without bloating your G&A.

That’s four seats.

Six Is the Ceiling

We apply Dunbar’s Theory to leadership team design. Your core team should never exceed six people: five leaders and you. Once you cross that line, you’re not running a leadership team anymore, you’re running a meeting circuit. And meetings don’t win contracts.

How to Use the Framework

The one-page guide below walks you through three steps. First, identify who is doing the work in each domain. Second, define what success looks like in that role, no more than five things, or the role isn’t real yet. Third, assign one Measurement of Effectiveness per person. One. The number of things someone is ultimately accountable for should not require a spreadsheet.

Why This Is the Step Most Leaders Skip

Defining roles is uncomfortable because it requires telling people what their job actually is. Not what they think it is. Not what they negotiated for. What the business needs from that seat.

That conversation is hard. But the alternative, letting people drift into adjacent domains, doing jobs nobody assigned them, building fiefdoms out of ambiguity, is what turns a $50M firm into a waterfalling firm five years in a row.

Download the framework below. Twenty minutes of honest work here is worth more than most strategy offsites.

Download The Towrds Org Chart Guide

The questions that keep you up at 3am…

• Do I chase this GWAC or double down on what’s working?

• Is this teaming deal an opportunity or a politely dressed trap?

• Should I be acquiring or growing?

• Why does my EBITDA look so… BAD?

Those questions deserve better than a Google search and a prayer.

They deserve a Chief Strategy Officer who’s seen it all. Built for our GovCon world. Available right now.

So I built one.

Introducing the Towrds Strategic Advisor

This isn’t a chatbot that just regurgitates generic business advice wrapped in a GovCon costume. This is an AI-powered advisor trained specifically on the strategic realities facing GovCon executives like…

BD pipeline discipline, contract vehicle strategy, teaming decisions, M&A calculus, margin performance, and everything in between.

It thinks like a CSO. It talks like one too… It was built on the Towrds way!

Direct. No fluff. No motivational poster energy. Just the kind of honest, boardroom-ready counsel that helps you make better decisions faster.

Ask it the questions you’d normally need to schedule a meeting for:

• “We’re at $42M, mostly CPFF task orders. How do I build a more predictable pipeline?”

• “Someone just approached us about teaming on a $200M IDIQ. How do I evaluate whether this is worth it?”

• “We’re at $80M and feeling the ceiling. Organic growth or acquisition… where do I start?”

It won’t hedge. It won’t flatter you. It will give you a perspective and a next move.

It’s Free. One Click. No Catch.

No form. No sales call. No 45-minute discovery call disguised as a gift.

Just click, ask, and think differently about your next move.

Access the Towrds Strategic Advisor here

💡Tip: You must be signed into your google account to access the gem.

One last promise… This Thing Gets Smarter. Quarterly. On Purpose.

We’re not shipping this and walking away. The Towrds Strategic Advisor gets a deliberate upgrade every quarter with new knowledge, refined guidance, sharper frameworks, and built around the real questions GovCon executives are actually asking. Think of it less like software and more like a CSO who never stops learning the market.

Every version will be better than the last. That’s not a promise. That’s the standard we’re holding ourselves to.

The best strategic decisions aren’t made by the executives with the most information. They’re made by the ones willing to ask the uncomfortable question out loud.

Now you have somewhere to ask it. You’re Welcome!

-David

Want to learn more about scaling you GovCon business…

BLUF: The CEO’s Hard Truths

• The “Legacy Exit” is Your Entry: Primes like General Dynamics and Booz Allen are deliberately “amputating” legacy IT and civil agency work to migrate towards billion-dollar initiatives in “Strategic Deterrence” and productized AI. Aggressively capturing these abandoned opportunities represents the easiest high-margin work available.

• Operational Viscosity is the Prime’s Achilles’ Heel: RTX and General Dynamics are “choking” on record backlogs (e.g., RTX’s 1.56 book-to-bill), causing “operational viscosity” and massive delivery lags. Our pitch should be “we can actually deliver before 2029,” not just “we have better tech.”

• DOGE is a Scalpel, Not a Sledgehammer: The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is targeting “consultants who study problems” (Management & Advisory) and rewarding “firms that solve them” (Outcomes). Rebrand “support services” as “Operational Efficiency” or “Technical Debt Remediation” immediately to survive audits.

• Cash Velocity is the New Competitive Advantage: With Prime DSOs (Days Sales Outstanding) ballooning Palantir to nearly 70 days, maintaining a tight 30-45 day billing cycle is a strategic weapon to out-maneuver the bigs.

The Mid-Tier Manifesto: Why $25M–$500M is the Most Dangerous (and Profitable) Game in GovCon right now

The $25M–$500M range is often seen as a challenging size… too big to hide, too small to bully.

However, while the GovCon Bigs are trapped by their own “Surge Paradox,” GovCon mid-tiers are uniquely positioned for asymmetric growth. Winning is not about having a larger pipeline; it’s about exploiting the vacuum left by the bigs. If you play the same game as Lockheed or RTX, you’ve already lost.

The Synthesis: The Great Prime Retreat

The 2025-2026 quarterly report data shows a clear pattern: Primes are retreating into “Megaproject.” Northrop Grumman is focusing on “National Infrastructure” projects like the B-21 Raider and Sentinel, which, while massive, often carry low development margins and create “Technical Debt.” General Dynamics is pivoting hard to shipyard automation and “Strategic Deterrence,” explicitly deprioritizing legacy work across other departments and agencies.

The government is pushing for “Efficiency,” but is enacting “Consolidation.” They want “One Big Beautiful Bill” results, but the “Software-Defined Prime” (like Palantir) creates a massive “Last Mile” friction point. Palantir can identify a supply chain bottleneck quickly, but it cannot physically fix a submarine weld. This gap is the “Golden Opportunity.”

The Playbook: Unconventional Strategies for the Mid-tiers

1. The “Integration Clean-up” Specialists

Lockheed Martin and RTX are suffering from “Operational Viscosity” due to record backlogs, making their backlog a liability, not an asset. They report “process changes” and “manufacturing lags” that will take years to resolve.

• The Move: Position your firm as the “Technical Intervention Team.” Target the “tail-end” of underperforming Prime contracts. When a Prime is significantly late, don’t bid to replace the platform. Instead, bid to provide the “interim digital bridge” or “sustainment optimization” that keeps the mission operational while the bigs struggle to recover.

2. Mimic the “Digital Accelerator” (Without the $1B CAPEX Investments)

General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) won $7B in 2024 by “productizing” services into “Digital Accelerators,” selling “hardened solutions” instead of “hours.”

• The Move: Stop proposing “qualified personnel.” Propose “Guaranteed Outcomes.” Trademark your repeatable scripts, dashboards, or data models as a “Product Offering.” In a DOGE-mandated environment, a $2M software-enabled solution is favored over a $10M labor contract because it avoids the “headcount scrutiny” of efficiency auditors.

3. The “PEO Ally” Maneuver

Palantir’s CEO is openly dismissive of the “Program Offices”, claiming all innovation comes from the “Edge.” This has disenfranchised program managers and led to a loss of control over their data.

• The Move: Be the “PEO’s Best Friend.” While “Software Primes” try to steamroll agency regulations, position your firm as the partner that helps PEOs regain operational control and ensures compliance with agency-specific nuances. Use “Open-Ontology” development to ensure the agency owns its data structures, avoiding proprietary platform lock-in.

The Reality Check: Stop Playing “Not to Lose”

The most fatal mistake mid-tier CEOs make is “Hope-Based Capture,” chasing every Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) out of fear of being left out. This leads to becoming “Lockheed Lite,” inheriting their overhead without their scale.

Another critical error is ignoring the “DSO Gap.” Palantir and General Dynamics are seeing slower government payment velocity due to audit friction. If your billing system is antiquated, you’re subsidizing the government’s inefficiency with your own limited capital.

Your administrative agility is a vital asset; protect it from “Prime-level” bureaucracy.

The Disruptor’s Challenge

Tomorrow morning, do this:

Identify the top three “Legacy” or “Civilian” programs your closest BIG competitor has publicly labeled as a “transition” or “non-core” area in their latest earnings transcript.

Map out the displaced talent from those programs… Booz Allen alone is cutting thousands of employees from its “Reset.” Launch an aggressive recruitment campaign for the “Discarded Elite” and bid on the task orders the Prime finds “unproductive.”

The BIGS are pruning their trees to grow higher; it’s time for you to collect the fallen branches and build your own forest in the agencies they’ve abandoned.

Surge past $100M. Learn the one barrier your competitors are missing…

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In my 20+ years in GovCon, I’ve watched multiple $50M+ contractors spend two (2) years and millions of dollars crafting what consultants consider the “gold standard” CMMI Level 3 masterpiece. Meanwhile, their scrappy competitors, you know the ones that can barely spell “ISO certification”, snatched three major prime contracts totaling over $180M.

Same customer. Same technical requirements. Completely different understanding of ”what” actually wins…

Why Everyone Gets This Backwards

The GovCon consulting industrial complex has been selling us the same beautiful story for decades: Perfect your “industry standard” systems first, then scale. Get compliant, get certified, get in line behind everyone else.

This “follow the leader” mentality creates what I call compliance theater… companies that look gorgeous on audit day but move with all the nimbleness of the government procurement process. They spend 18+ months perfecting solutions to problems they don’t yet have, while their markets evolve, customers pivot, and opportunities pass them by. This is called the treadmill.

"The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do."

- Michael Porter

REALITY CHECK: Tell me the last time a customer called you saying, “We chose you because your CMMI documentation made us feel all warm inside.”

Oh wait, they didn’t.

Guess what? They choose you because you solve problems others can’t, deliver what others won’t attempt, or move with speed others would only dare to dream.

What if all this theater is actually a competitive disadvantage? Spoiler alert: that’s why it’s so hard to differentiate.

The Better Way: Systemize What Makes You Irreplaceable

Instead of cramming your company into an out of the box ERP-like processes, systemize what makes you irreplaceable first. Then let your actual reality dictate where compliance actually matters.

We (JoAnna & myself) developed a way called D.A.A.P.S. that flips this approach, and I use this daily, as an executive, to help guide my decision-making:

Discovery hunts down the real barriers blocking your growth explosion, not the theoretical problems some consultant thinks you should lose sleep over. Most GovCon leaders suffer from strategic ADD, this was me, and are hyperaware of compliance gaps but completely blind to revenue killers.

Awareness delivers the brutal clarity that separates signal from noise. This phase is where we stop confusing frantic activity with meaningful progress.

Acceptance is where most well-intentioned initiatives go to die a slow, bureaucratic death. You can discover the real problem and become aware of the solution, but without accepting that your current approach is fundamentally flawed… nothing will change your direction.

Progress transforms you from a passive victim into the change agent your company desperately needs. Not the sanitized, committee-approved version of change that non-essential consultants love to PowerPoint. This phase removes the obstacle, promotes impactful change, and accelerates growth.

Surge occurs when your systematic improvements compound into what looks like overnight success to envious observers. But you’ll know the truth: it was the result of fixing the right things right now, when it stops your growth.

With all this being said, the most dangerous words in GovCon aren’t “this might not be compliant”… they’re “this is how everyone else does it.”

But here’s what I haven’t told you about the real barrier to $100M+ growth…

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