The new year marks a significant chapter for Stan Sloane: It’s his third year as CEO of SRA International. In the spirit of 2010, ExecutiveBiz recently brought 10 questions to Sloane. In a candid exchange, Sloane offers his take on top industry challenges —  everything from insourcing to organizational conflict of interest — as well as leadership lessons he’s learned along the way. As for SRA? “The future is bright,” says Sloane. “Our strategy has been to focus on the fast moving streams. Positioning the company for that seems to be paying off.” Check out Sloane’s thoughts on insourcing in the video below:

ExecutiveBiz: This is your third year at SRA. Any surprises along the way?

Stan Sloane: A lot. One is the breadth and depth of capability at SRA is a lot more than I thought it would be coming in. Another is the environment here is almost like a family, which is a much different environment than I’m used to. It makes it a really nice place to work.

ExecutiveBiz: You spent much of 2009 weighing in on the cybersecurity challenge. Now, a cyber coordinator has been named, finally. What’s Howard Schmidt facing?

Stan Sloane: The magnitude of this problem can’t be addressed independently by industry or government alone. It’s a global problem; it requires collaboration among industry, government and international partners. Another big issue is intellectual property theft. The amount of [US] investment in developing everything from jet engines to microchips is huge. [Cybersecurity thieves] can get the benefit of that investment for free as well as a shortened development timeline.

ExecutiveBiz: How do you think insourcing will play out in 2010?

Stan Sloane: I agree there are things that should be done by government. An easy example is combat operations. Direct acquisition support is another. [However], a lot of the cost arguments are based on conjecture. It doesn’t make sense to insource anything other than what you absolutely have to. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s the sentiment right now; we’re probably going to see a period where the pendulum swings a little farther before it corrects. [In SRA’s case] we haven’t seen a big impact. Of course, we’ll have to see what happens. The Defense Department put out a memo [about] insourcing 30,000 jobs [over the next few years]. Those sorts of large-scale directives do have the potential to impact us.

ExecutiveBiz: Bid protests are up. Is this insanity or a logical course of action by industry?

Stan Sloane: It’s total insanity. The bid protest process is out of control. The growing number of protests creates a huge problem for the government and the country; for instance it delays fielding needed capabilities. Inevitably it forces government procurement officials to default to a safety mode … it tends to color the way they evaluate procurements. [Multiple award] IDIQs are a great example. If you’re a loser, all too frequently the action from government is simply to include everyone. That frustrates the competitive procurement process. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a lot of interest right now in trying to alter [the situation].

ExecutiveBiz: Organizational conflict of interest’s definition is in flux. What do you think is next?

Stan Sloane: In the old days you could mitigate with OCI mitigation plans. Now, if you look at both the [intelligence community] and the Air Force they’ve come to the point of view that if you have people who work for the same company — and are on the same incentive programs — you cannot mitigate the OCI problems. That’s a little different trend. I would suspect that’s going to continue — that OCI is going to get more and more rigid rather than the other way around.

ExecutiveBiz: What’s a typical week like for you?

Stan Sloane: I’m trying very hard to spend more time externally than internally. I like to talk to our key customers personally; I get insights and perspectives that I wouldn’t get otherwise. I spend a lot of time with analysts, investors and industry associations.  Another big chunk of my time goes to employees. I feel an obligation to reach out to as many of our [7,000] SRA employees as I can. I spend a lot of time traveling to our various locations.

ExecutiveBiz: If you could meet anyone, who would it be and why?

Stan Sloane: There would be a long list. Recently I’ve been reading about Virginia history and the Civil War. I’ve always thought that Robert E. Lee would be a fascinating person to meet. Just thinking about the turmoil . . . how he struggled through the critical decisions that he made.

ExecutiveBiz: What advice would you give up-and-coming leaders?

Stan Sloane: You can’t do everything yourself. You have to surround yourself with capable people. I’m a Navy guy so I always like the aircraft carrier analogy. If you want to be the skipper of the carrier you can’t be down in the engine room managing the boilers; you have to be on the bridge setting course for the ship. The other thing is you can’t progress career-wise without taking risks. You have to do that recognizing that there may be failures along the way.

ExecutiveBiz: How did you take-on challenges early in your career?

Stan Sloane: This actually goes back to my General Electric days. My boss called me in one Friday afternoon and said, “We have a challenging opportunity for you. It’s high risk, but you’ll learn a lot.”  I said, “I don’t know what it is but sign me up!” They explained the job. I asked where it was. He said, “Australia.”  I said, “Wow, that’s great. How long would I be gone?”  He said, “Probably a couple years.”  I said, “OK, when do I leave?”   He said, “Monday morning.” Monday morning I was on a plane to Australia. If you aspire to be a CEO of a company, work/life balance can’t be your primary concern; you have to be prepared to put 100 percent into what you’re doing.

ExecutiveBiz: What’s next for SRA?

Stan Sloane: I would say the future is bright. We’ve done a lot of things in the last couple years to position the company. We’re starting to see that now in terms of our growing pipeline. We do have issues — some of which we talked about — that we face as a government contractor.  Government budgets are likely to be flat and in some cases declining in the coming years. But underneath that are parts that are growing rapidly such as cyber security. Our strategy has been to focus on those fast moving streams. Positioning the company for those will pay off in the long term.

Interested in more videos?

Check out Stan Sloane’s advice to new leaders here.

Stan Sloane talks about an interesting challenge he faced early on in his career here.

Tags: SRA, Stan Sloane
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