My life changed abruptly this week. Not as abruptly as it did for the riders on the Big Thunder Railway- at Disneyland out in California. That was a pretty good ride, as I recall riding it with my sons a few years back. It was as close an experience to jinking around in a little jet as I have ever seen. I’m glad I didn’t know it could derail at the time. They lost one adult and injured ten others. Makes you wonder how long they waiting in the line (“Average wait from this point is 45 Minutes!”) to get on board. I got out of the line and got onboard something else on Tuesday. At the tick of midnight on Monday the Department of the Navy transferred me to the retired list and the long national nightmare was over. I slept through the moment, of course, got up around two to do something or other, not thinking about it. It was not until I was putting on my tie and getting ready to head out to Tyson’s Corner, to the Enterprise Building, that I realized it was really over and there was something entirely new to deal with this week.

This is not whining. I am a lucky guy and I am being compensated handsomely. But that is what makes me nervous. I am the new guy walking around Ballston Common with the big “C” on his forehead for clueless.

The Holiday had everyone screwed up, a little out of sorts with being at the office again. A three-day holiday is tough on organizational effectiveness. Imagine if everyone got a three or four week vacation at the same time and then all came back together having forgotten exactly why it was they were all there and tried to make things work? The results would be horrible. It would be like France after August at the shore.

The Corporation harvested the holiday from us new fish, but were gracious in allowing us to count the “New Employee” indoctrination as hours-for-pay, on “overhead” that whole day, clocked in fifteen minute increments. The badging process didn’t really count as work. It was just sitting around waiting for someone to do something to you, just like government service or the military. There were a lot of rules to follow, and an ethics briefing. One of the key points was not to hit porn sites on the Internet while working for the Customer or the Corporation. They were very stern on this point, saying it was cause for immediate termination. So there must be a lot of it going around. There was a mandatory ethics briefing, too, about the sanctity of the time card and who you were billing your hours to. They were so concerned about the ethics part that I realized there was going to be a lot of temptation.

I made a mental note of the policy and it wasn’t until the next day when I was surfing the net, looking for pictures of fireman and police for a pitch I have to do next week that I entered the terms “police” and “picture” on the Google search engine.

What came back was a list of pretty astonishing things. I mean I had no idea that people had such hang-ups about people in uniform. I hit the “back” arrow on the computer as quickly as I could. Who would have thought that “Badge Fetish” had its own website? I didn’t open any of the highlighted URLs, but my palms got clammy anyway. Could the corporate Internet police sweep down on my desk? Would I be stripped of my badge and abruptly shown to the elevator? I am now in terra incognita, a stranger in a corporate land.

I have become what is known here as a Beltway Bandit. We prefer to be known as Parkway Patriots, or I suppose we would if I had talked to anyone about it. We are highly skilled, highly qualified veterans of government service. There are hundreds of years of experience in the office where I now work. We actually are the Government, in all but name. Perhaps you had noticed. I did, while I was still working for Uncle Sugar. The long years of downsizing had slashed the Federal workforce to those who were impossible to fire and those who had the Big Picture. That is an oversimplification, of course. There are a lot of good and dedicated people in the Government and I like to think I was one of them. But I had a Secretary one time who was a nice as the day was long but thought nothing of sending me a note on my Blackberry wireless passing me a hotel confirmation number without the name of the hotel. It became easier to just do everything myself, which was, of course, part of the strategy.

The Big Picture folks don’t do the work-they are too busy having meetings about how to solve the Big Problems. They direct the ones they couldn’t fire to do things and, predictably, nothing happens. Accordingly, the Big Picture people have developed a new class of Government Worker, the Contractor. The Federal workforce got spread so thin that less than half the people were doing all the work and they were on the verge of nervous breakdowns, what with the ones you couldn’t fire on coffee break or talking about the Redskins. Which led the Big Picture folks to increasingly rely on talented people they could hire using established contract vehicles on the General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule to just come in and do the job. Sometimes I would be in meetings and look around and see nothing but contractors making decisions for the Government. It all made me a little queasy, but there are ethics to protect us, after all.

The advantage to Contractors is that they produce results and make things happen. Moreover, if they don’t, a manager can actually fire them, and some of the Big Picture people like to do it, since you can’t get rid of the people they would really like to. Contractors are great. They have to absorb the risk and live on the tightrope of securing the contracts with not guarantee whatsoever that they will be renewed. This being a closed circuit little town of zero-sum resources, the people available to execute the contracts are people who are either brand new, and can be ruthlessly exploited, or they are people like me. Old enough to know better but not rich enough to get away from Washington. The skill sets available from the Government are applicable mostly to the things that Government does. Closed loop, self generating and self-fulfilling.

There are several corporate business models in town. Some of the Companies are constructed just like the Government they serve. Very regimented, very crisp, very proper. Very organized and structured. The primary opposition to these few buttoned-down Goliaths are equally large but antithetical organizations like the one I am working for. My corporation is a little like AmWay, with buccaneers. Our business model is one that promotes growth. When somebody finds a line of work, they set up a new business center around that individual called a Group. The Group exploits that line of work as ruthlessly as it can. The Groups have names that describe what they do but nobody uses them. Instead, they are named after the individual just like ancient Fiefdoms. I knew that I would never figure it out when I heard a couple old-timers who had been with the company a few years talking about the delicate maneuver they had to make to deconflict a proposal with The Smith Group, another organization in the Jones Sector. Clueless, I am. I had no idea of the nuance involved.

This is all the same Corporation, but there have to be pacts as Byzantine as the Versailles Treaty to prevent outright bloodshed. Or worse, having two or three Groups from the same Corporation show up to pitch The Customer. Which is to say that in our Corporation everyone is in Business Development, which is scouring the Federal Register and working the rolodex to see what opportunities can be exploited to eventually become the seeds of our own Groups or Sectors.

I see it clearly: The Socotra Group. Filled by dozens, no hundreds! of bright young people and wily veterans developing business and satisfying the Customer. Just like AmWay, which would be a Ponzi Scheme except for the fact that the laundry powder really does work, sort of.

The anarchy makes this all pretty entertaining, but adds to the overhead. So while we are quite capable of doing anything, we are expesnive. Not that the Customer really cares; after all it is just a pass-through from what Congress appropriated, after all. But that opens up a lot of opportunities for little fly-up companies run by bold entreprenuers who are literally selling their own bodies, cutting things to the very margin to get work. There are others that take advantage of special niches, using minority-or-female-owned status to get a slight advantage. Which then causes the big boys to team and subcontract with them, leading to bizarre situations of multi-billion dollar outfits working for somebody who set up a Limited Liability Company in his spare bedroom.

But after all, this is Government work. Which is still an oxymoron.

In the line of work my Corporation does, we tend to win contracts in things that were exactly what we were doing before we retired. Strange thing, that. The first project I have out of the box is to help another old military guy make a proposal on filling a watch slot in one of the Operations Centers in town devoted to managing crisis situations. Goodness we have enough of those. We manufacture them here, and I could draw up a proposal for you to provide as many as you want. Part of the selling point is the considerable experience available for the Corporation to “reach back” to in case it is needed. If our alert or crisis level went up, the request for proposal indicates there would be a “surge” requirement for additional personnel. Which, in order to keep costs down on the proposal, would be me.

So there it is, 27 years of active military service and fifteen minutes as a senior Administration Official and I am back on the Watch.

I’d write some more but I have to go develop some business. Got a vehicle on the GSA Schedule?

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra