COMMENTARY: The critical role feedback can play in better defense acquisitions

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Debriefings are the key to improving the quality of contractors that pursue defense contracts as well as improving the quality of solutions, writes Valid Eval CEO Adam Rentschler.

For acquisition executives and program managers, there’s often little upside to being the one who spearheads innovation, and a disproportionate amount of downside to taking the risk of failure, which is necessary to innovate.

These executives thread a delicate needle to secure overmatch in defense of the country while ensuring they avoid the myriad unfair traps that can tank a career.

How can they simultaneously protect themselves while bringing their programs into the future and strengthening the defense innovation base for better outcomes?

Despite the unending supply of hot takes and long-form pieces on how defense acquisition reform is needed now, we can respect the system meant to prevent waste and abuse while addressing the need for speed.

We have proof.

The defense industrial base and the military work hard to anticipate threats, exceed the technological advances of our adversaries, reliably supply the warfighter for absolute overmatch and ensure our forces are strong, trained and capable.

When the benefits of maintaining the status quo imperils strident motion toward something new and better, the first sacrifice is transparency. We become preoccupied with the implications of transparent processes which hinders our ability to focus on the mission.

This is a symptom of a system of antiquated incentives that lead to slow-rolling change and shunning transparency.

One way to fight back against outdated performance metrics is to bring industry feedback on how to better serve the military. Currently, the DoD unevenly gives industry feedback on failed proposals. This is antithetical to continuous improvement and rapid innovation.

Private companies electing to serve the DoD do so with a sense of mission. In our system of governance, where that is a choice, the investment should be met with real, useful feedback for continued improvement.

A small business invests time and capital to learn the bidding process, write proposals, gain certifications, follow regulations, and spend an average of nearly two years before their business starts to see a return on that investment if they are lucky enough to win.

Proposing to the government is a costly proposition, and government program managers need to provide value to each and every person that participates. This is true for the smallest procurement to the largest platform acquisition.

If we care about growing the DIB so that it is robust, innovative, agile and cost-effective, it follows that we need more companies to engage at the top of the funnel. If we succeed, we will have more non-selects than we do today. That’s a good thing because it improves our national security posture.

The only way to sustain robust top-of-the-funnel participation is by ensuring the majority of participants get value out of their participation. Nonselects must receive actual and perceived value to continue investing in bringing their goods, ideas and services to the fight.

As businesses, they are motivated by ROI. If a company spends 90 hours on their first proposal to the government and receives nothing more than a generic, two-paragraph rejection email, their return on that 90 hours is $0 in value. Where is their incentive to try again? What do we miss out on when these companies don’t come back?

Program offices can provide the specific factors that contributed to the program’s decision whether it was a win or loss for the company.

Sharing the program’s decision and rationale informs the entirety of the ecosystem to bring about even better bids and results the next time. Everyone receives the decision today, but the real value is in providing comments.

As a business leader, I want to know where I placed, if I did well, if I should apply again in the future, if I came in last and why.

Traditional debriefs, which happen months after the program decision was made, offer limited value and come at a high cost to the government.  SMEs have to be tracked down and somehow remember the finer details of reading multiple companies’ bids from 90 days prior.

This is unfair to all parties. At this point, it is difficult for the innovator to remember what it is she wrote or what she was thinking when she did. The act of authorship is now stale. Worse still, this delay allows sour-grapes feelings to take root.

We have seen pockets of DoD begin to address this issue, realizing that when you pull feedback to the left, democratize it, and automate its delivery, all parties involved gain so much more out of the process.

Program managers and SMEs save time as their assessment is generating feedback in real time and the data is then designed for learning and improvement for the dual-use innovator.

The business receives timely feedback that is more reliable and increases the chances that they will come back stronger, ready to contribute to the mission. The government saves time while fulfilling its duty to provide that feedback to industry.

Here’s the best part: you can actually quantify the value in providing better, more transparent feedback.

The feedback provided to these companies is not available anywhere else for any amount of money. It comes from experts who are otherwise impossible for a private sector entrepreneur to reach, and their time isn’t for sale in the first place.

Government employees have an important mission and it’s to select the very best solution for the issue at hand, not consult with industry. By making it a standard to solicit and collect quantitative feedback data, we can easily improve innovation outcomes for defense.


Adam Rentschler is the CEO and co-founder of Valid Eval. He is a serial entrepreneur who has spent his 26-year career running, fund-raising for, investing in, coaching and mentoring startup companies. Valid Eval was born of Adam's frustration with poor learning outcomes for companies competing for grants, prizes and acceptance into accelerator programs.