Culture of Opportunity

Eleven months after finishing my graduate degree at the University of Maryland and one month after getting married, I was introduced to Larry Gallagher. Larry was part-owner and President of a small federal contractor in Alexandria, VA. The company had about 120 employees and had less than $10M in annual revenues. The company was struggling to make payroll and needed accounting help. The job paid $35,000 per year and oh, and by the way, since I was indirect I would have to start at $17,500 because the position was not billable. I took the job anyway.

Fast-forward 15 years. By the time I left Stanley Inc. last year as a senior VP and CFO, I had helped take the company public in 2006 on the NYSE (SXE), and put them on growth path toward over $400 million in revenues. Prior to the public offering the company was entirely employee owned with all full-time employees covered by an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). Because I took a chance on what I’ll call Stanley’s “culture of opportunity,” and they on me, I was able to grow professionally with the company in a way that most employers in our segment simply aren’t able to match. In short, at Stanley, the associated financial rewards only tell part of the larger story.

I was attracted to Altron for many of the same reasons. In fact, one of my primary, longer-term goals in my new post there is to tap into some of the dynamics from Stanley to try to replicate that environment. As at Stanley, our own culture of opportunity will not only reward top performers, although that is certainly a key element. More importantly, I hope to foster a willingness among our employees to take certain calculated risks on behalf of both Altron and themselves. Without this ongoing individual commitment to identifying and taking full advantage of innovative ways to improve their performance, a job just becomes a way-station en route to something else, usually with someone else.

With a far-flung workforce in places across the country like Charleston, Laguna Niguel, and Portsmouth, I’ve seen already that not everyone is a ready believer in this concept, but we’re working to change that mindset. I think it’s human nature to have a healthy skepticism and I think most are more willing to believe bad new rumors than good news rumors. We’re going to continue to provide more opportunities and more employee focused programs – we’ll re-visit this concept next year – I confident we’ll have all A’s on our report card!

If we accomplish our goal at Altron, we’ll create a culture of opportunity that rewards those who are truly committed to continuous performance improvement, helping them to grow as we grow. We want both our business partners and our government customers to see the true difference in our employees.

Mike Zaramba
Strategic Communications Group, on behalf of Altron