You own 100% of the growth number but control none of the people who decide it

I recently sat in on a meeting with a chief growth officer and a chief operating officer.

The CGO's ask was three things. Defend the recompetes. Capture the on-contract growth, and share critical intel, especially when a program manager hears about a budget realignment, a new stakeholder, competitor intel, or friction in the program office.

The COO agreed in principle. Then he said, "I'm not sending my PMs into customer meetings to fish for intel. If our PMs start sounding like a sales rep, we lose customer trust."

The CGO wasn't asking PMs to carry a quota or sell anything. She got a nod from the COO as he left the meeting, same as last quarter, but that was all.

Here's the part nobody says out loud. Three-quarters of what your company pursues this year will likely be recompetes or on-contract growth, and these contracts will be decided in program offices where a PM, not business development, owns the customer relationship. The CGO carries the entire revenue number but has direct authority over only the people responsible for about a quarter of it. The rest report to the COO or a general manager, and the CGO's dotted-line relationship gives her the right to ask. Nothing more.

What Your Delivery Team Hears

A contract officer representative mentions that funding will move to a different PEO next year. A government lead complains about a competitor missing another deadline. A new deputy asks why the current architecture was chosen.

Your delivery team hears every word of it but often doesn't recognize its value. Ask them why they didn't follow up, and the answers are always the same.

"Not my job. I've got a program to run."

"I didn't want them to think I was fishing for intel."

"I didn't want the customer to stop trusting me."

Not excuses. Nothing in their annual review mentions sharing growth intel, and their own leadership told them not to risk the customer relationship. So, they don't ask, and worse, they don't share, so what they heard stays in the room.

Three months later, your capture manager builds the gate review from a market research company and a call plan, and Pwin comes in high. The one factor that would have cut it in half was heard by an analyst on site who had nowhere to route it. Capture bids, loses, and owns the miss.

The Structure Is Doing Its Job

This isn't a COO problem. Nobody set out to block growth. Look at how success is defined in each role, and the gap explains itself.

For your COO, success is CPARS, book-to-bill, and margin. For your CGO, success is pipeline, win rate, and backlog.

Recompete retention and on-contract growth coming out of delivery sit on neither scorecard. The two lowest-cost sources of revenue in the company fall outside both sets of incentives, and the only executive accountable for the number doesn't control the teams who sit with the customer every week.

Here's what it costs. Recompete win rates average 57% across the industry, while new bid win rates average 44%, according to Deltek's 2024 Clarity study. Lose a program you already hold because your delivery team missed the early signals, and you're bidding it at 13% worse odds, with B&P money you never planned to spend. The loss shows up on the growth forecast. Operations close out the contract with satisfactory CPARS and moves on.

So, the CGO launches an initiative. PMs attend out of professional courtesy, nod, and go back to delivery. She escalates. She buys training, because training is the only thing a leader is allowed to buy for people who don't report to her. None of it sticks. The PMs are doing exactly what they are held accountable for.

The Method Operations Will Sign Off On

The COO's fear of losing customer trust is well-founded when the engagement method is wrong. Send technical PMs to conventional BD training, and the strong ones refuse, while the compliant ones sound scripted and quickly irritate the customer.

The alternative is recognition. Teach PMs what intel to listen for in the meetings they already attend, then give them one follow-up question that the customer experiences as support rather than extraction.

The COR mentions that his funding is being moved. The untrained PM nods and moves to the next agenda item. The trained PM asks, "What changes for you next year?" and hears about a consolidation reshaping the recompete. Same meeting. Different focus. The PM never sells anything, and pursuit strategy stays with capture.

None of this adds more meetings or headcount, and the payoff is often seen on the COO's scorecard first. CPARS rates Management and Business Relations on how problems are identified, escalated, and communicated, and Exceptional goes to contractors who document proactive risk identification during performance. The PM who asks the question and logs the answer builds the CPARS evidence file and the recompete intel file in the same conversation.

Move the Accountability

The method removes the COO's objection. It does not close the accountability gap, and no CGO closes it alone.

So, stop asking operations to participate in a growth program. Take three things to your CEO instead.

First, put recompete retention and on-contract growth on the operations scorecard, next to CPARS and margin. Delivery owns the number for the customers it sits with every week.

Second, make intel recognition and sharing part of the monthly program review. The COO defines it, in operational language, as part of the job. Growth supplies the method, the filters, and the routing, so a PM who hears something knows where it goes.

Third, hold both executives to the same recompete number. Shared accountability ends the quarterly nod.

Do this, and your delivery team earns better CPARS from meetings they already attend, your capture managers stop bidding blind, and your forecast starts reflecting what your company already knows.

Leave it as it is, and your competitors keep training their PMs to catch what yours are filing as noise.

Nic Coppings is senior partner at Hi-Q Group, where he helps government contractors transform customer engagement into competitive advantage. With more than 20 years of experience in federal contracting, Nic has worked with thousands of contractors to develop the human intelligence capabilities that drive on-contract growth, win recompetes, and identify adjacencies competitors never see.