The Long-Term Value of Investing in Workforce Newbies

I’ve taken for granted how incredibly lucky I was when I was a Contracting intern and brand new Unlimited Contracting Officer as a GS 12 with barely 4 years’ experience.  Eons ago.  Back when dirt was new and fire was an emerging technology. I’m stopping to think about it only now when I’ve left the career field and can take the time to breathe and see how it influenced my “renegade” mindset and how I trained the next generation.

The experiences and education that leaders and managers early in my career gave me weren’t really unusual--then.   The same Contracting bosses did the same things for my peers who were interns and brand-spanking-new Contracting Officers.  I think a lot now about how those things shaped me early in my career and how important it is to NOT ignore our newest members of the workforce because we’re so busy and under-resourced or think we have plenty of time later to challenge them.

Back around 2009, my Contracting Director, Emily Jay, looked at how many of her workforce would be eligible to retire in 5 years.  Mad respect for her--she was visionary enough and always workforce-proactive that she brought in something like 60 interns.  I got the privilege (truly) to train a bunch of them, and my intern tiger teams made fast work of things while I fire-hosed them with resume-builders.  Some of my peers complained though, because they saw training interns as extra work that wouldn’t pay off for at least 6 months instead of thinking long-term or valuing initiative over experience.

I didn’t have time back then to think much about it, but my own long-ago experience as an intern and then the way my bosses backed me up as a new Contracting Officer in my 20’s and just turned me loose to get things done?  All of it built a certain mindset into me from a young age in my career, and I’ve carried it forward. Those were all quiet moments, too. Quick, quiet moments that changed everything.

-          That time when Steve Crot, my RDT&E branch chief, told me as a GS-5 not to worry so much about mistakes because everything can be fixed except funding, safety, and security.  (Side note: that advice has always been the foundation for how I’ve handled my job.)

-          That time when I’d been buying medical supplies 2 months into my career and Capt. Ben Jurgens defended me to a Major who complained that she had to fix 5 admin errors I’d made. She wanted another new intern and me transferred out for not “pacing” ourselves. Instead of telling me to slow down, he told her, “Five actions with problems?  So what? Lorna is knocking out 50 actions a DAY.

-          That time when Colleen Preston’s office wanted me to testify before Congress about the importance of not losing 10 USC 2373 (now 4023) authority, and my Contracting Director, Jerry Fowler, said, “You’re a fairly new GS-12, so before you go, we’ll walk you through what to expect.”  Ultimately, I wasn’t needed, but holy crap, I can’t imagine my bosses in 2017 who didn’t want me on social media because I might “say something wrong” being okay with that!)

-          That time when I was a GS-12, and my engineer and I flew to the UK to negotiate an international agreement because our bosses trusted us to get it right and call them if we needed help.  He and I looked at each other afterward, and we said, “Can you believe they let us do that?  At our level?”

All of these events and more set the stage for what I knew was possible.  Many of the people who granted me so much freedom have long since passed, retired, or both, but their mindset lived on in the work I did in my career, and hopefully what I’ve passed along from them or from my own experiences will live on in the careers of the next generation. 

What I do know is this:  setting that foundation of what’s possible is a must for those who are new to our workforce.

#contracting #procurement #acquisition #leadership