The Challenge

This project was unlike anything USC has ever undertaken.

The beginning of the engagement, in true USC fashion, started with the “brown paper” exercise USC is famous for. That is, everyone gets into a room, brown paper goes up on the walls and the group outlines the client’s processes, everyone’s roles and responsibilities, and a preliminary view of the gaps and opportunities that exist in the organization. The idea was to create a roadmap to guide the process forward. However, the USC team encountered a few unique challenges along the way. Some specific challenges included:

Shared decision-making approach within the department. The client approaches leadership in a shared manner within a fairly flat organizational structure so as not to stifle innovation. Leadership pools replace singular, hierarchical decision-makers. When the buck doesn’t stop with anyone, it’s difficult to move forward if there’s no consensus … and there is rarely an easy consensus. This approach made it difficult for them to turn theoretical process concepts into the action it would take to fix it.

Budget allocation made interaction difficult. Because of the nature of how projects were funded, the client team members’ hours were attributed to specific programs they were working on. Without labeling USC’s work as a funded program, only a limited number of key contacts had time to spare for USC. The project pace slowed significantly as a result.

Internal politics created a roadblock. Consultants of all stripes can come up against resistance from people in the companies we’re brought in to help. That’s nothing new. In one of the processes USC was engaged to help improve, a resident “expert” was extremely threatened by USC’s presence and spent months attempting to undermine the work USC was conducting. This person was largely unsuccessful to that end but caused USC to spend a great deal of time repairing the reputation and internal relationships developed over those months.

The facility had restricted access. Because of the classified nature of the projects, the USC team did not have the clearance necessary to have free reign of the facility as they usually do to engage employees throughout the areas of work. The team required escorts everywhere they went or had them come to the non-classified part of the building to meet. Combined with nervousness around COVID, many of the interactions took place with people online (even though they might be in the next room).

Competition emerging as a burning platform. Because there is a guarantee for the client not to have to compete in its industry, it became hard to create the sense of urgency that spurs the desire for change. Eventually the USC team highlighted the fact that China and Russia were big competitors of this lab because of the presumption they can make the same components quicker and cheaper than we can in the U.S. Also, the private sector continues to emerge as a big competitor as well. USC’s challenge was in swaying the client’s team to be willing to acknowledge these growing competitors, thus creating the “burning platform” for improving their processes and implementing a number of changes in their operation.

The target kept moving. As consultants the daily work of avoiding scope creep is ever-existent. In this case the client team was composed of highly intelligent people who were relied upon to be creative and innovative. This led to thoughts running in several directions at once. When a target area was identified, there was a lot of: “What about this? Or that? Or the other thing?” instead of focusing on one thing and checking it off the list before moving to another.