Must. Be. AWESOME!!!

Mentally, physically, emotionally, and gubernatorially EXHAUSTED from the AWESOMENESS of this week. TWTRCON, the Corporate Social Media Summit, and #140conference DC have strung me out. On the road soon for a relaxing weekend in Charlottesville. Hope you have AWESOME plans for the weekend as well.

In the interim, I’d like to leave you with a meditation on AWESOME from Laura Fitton, creator of http://oneforty.com (a bank for Twitter apps). Laura spoke at TWTRCON NYC this week and rocked it with a really fun Twitter 101 preso. In this preso, she mashes that 101 course up with a challenge for all of us to be more AWESOME.

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I’m a little behind with commentary on the tweet-storms and blog-bangs about the Twitter Gov Liaison job. Lots of interesting discussion punctuated by occasional drumbeats of douchebaggery. I’ll try to get caught up with my writing on the train to New York Sunday as I depart DC for TWTRCON NYC!

I had a great time at TWTRCON DC last year, so this outing should be superfly TNT, especially with the last minute addition of BPTerry (he of the hilarious BPGlobalPR Twitter satire). I’ll also be attending the Corporate Media Summit on Tuesday and Wednesday on behalf of The Rendon Group. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, shoot me a holla so we can connect.

On a completely unrelated note, I leave you with this unreleased piece of AWESOME from my favorite (and sadly defunct) band, Oasis.

This is Must. Be. AWESOME!!! Dot com.

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I figured after all of yesterday’s conversations about the Twitter Gov Liaison position, I figured I owed everybody a “statement of purpose” of some kind for my candidacy. What happened instead, however, involved a broken camera, a bout of nausea, and two very angry cats.

So instead, here’s some “good enough” footage from my FlipCam where I talk about some of my thoughts on the job, the federal government, state and local government, citizens engagement, and a bunch of other stuff.

Thanks for watching.

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I mentioned in a prior post that Andrew Wilson had taken the first meaty stab at a list of requirements for the new Twitter Government Liaison. I want to spend time directly addressing his thoughts, because they are true AWESOME gold.

Andrew rightly calls for people to submit and discuss ideas about the Gov Liaison’s duties. His overarching theme though is that those duties are non-political. This seems to fly in the face of Twitter’s original requirements in the job listing, but in actuality, Andrew is trying focus people on the more important issues of connecting citizens to their representatives in DC and at the state and local levels through discussions of open government. Tools are just tools, as Andrew says, and it’s up to us to responsibly figure out how to employ them to the best benefit of everyone.

On to Andrew’s list. (Warning: this will be a longer post than usual.)

1. Please engage, in a transparent manner as possible, with the federal, state and local employees that are using these tools to get their input, ideas and concerns. This is a community with no end to thoughtful, innovative leaders… and listening to them will benefit everyone.

I can’t stress the importance of this enough. Twitter fosters engagement, so the Gov Liaison should be blowing it up with AWESOME, connecting with folks like the ones Andrew mentions, the Gov 2.0 crowd, and anybody who has some insanely great ideas. You can bet your ass I’ll make this happen if I get the job. This is a great community to be a part of, and I would demand that level of engagement from Twitter.

2. Please use your position to help raise awareness about section 508 (accessiblity for people with disabilities) so that EVERYONE can access Twitter. This includes having Twitter throw its weight around, when possible, to get 3rd party services to develop compliant and accessible services and add-ons.

I actually need to get a lot smarter about 508 and really get an understanding for how this affects government leaders and workers in the workplace. I do think there’s something to be said for Twitter using its throw-weight to push policy and legislative change where needed. This is something I’ve found way too many companies in DC unwilling to do.

3. Please make sure to devote enough attention to state and local government concerns. Some of the best and most innovative uses of social media are at the local level and I firmly believe that social media is most powerful when it reinforces and enhances existing (in real life) connections.

This would be a hallmark of my work if I got this job. I got jazzed seeing all the cool hyperlocal innovations from state and local folks at the Gov 2.0 Expo a couple weeks ago. But I think the federal government could act as a change agent to help more communities adopt Twitter for innovative local use. We’ve just got to educate some people and get some others voted out of office.

4. Please make (or work with the Library of Congress to make) an archiving and access tool that would be truly useful for government employees and, in particular, policy makers.

Done. I too want to see quick and easy access to all of Twitter’s data when anyone wants it, anytime. I’ve participated in some research projects in the past where my team designed analytics to run on captured tweets, and the hardest thing was just capturing the tweets in the first place. We need to figure out how to make that data access easy and available.

5. Please help establish a quick and transparent process to get “Verified” on government accounts.

This is a must and a quick fix, in my opinion. Especially if the Gov Liaison duties are getting govvies on Twitter in the first place, we should be able to verify very fast.

6. Please create a public directory (perhaps with some associated metrics) of federal, state and local accounts

Does this already exist somewhere? I know I’ve seen sites like Govloop and GovTwit try to list tweeting govvies, but I’m not sure it’s comprehensive (especially at the state and local levels). I bet we could police that up pretty easy with verfied govvie accounts and develop lists. This may even help folks understand the Byzantine organization of our government.

7. Please develop some more robust off-the-shelf metrics to help measure engagement. Facebook Insights would be one model for this and perhaps access could be tied to verified government accounts.

I’m guessing Andrew wants to measure the engagement stats on govvies? That’s a pretty interesting method for accountability. Having spent some time helping develop algorithms to measure influence on Twitter, and now seeing easy-to-use, free measurement tools hit the web (like Edelman’s TweetLevel), I think it’s important that we use commonly available and individually modifiable tools versus sinking money into colossal objective systems. The latter way leads to government pork like Future Combat Systems. What Twitter could do is start organizing the creators of some of these tools and promoting specific accountability measures tailored to the agency or politician of choice.

8. Please be available when emergencies occur to help government use Twitter in the most effective manner possible. AND publicly post lessons learned, best practices, a related archive of tweets and possibly links to any relevant research on the issue.

I think the Gov Liaison should be more than just available. I think he should be the point man for such issues. There are tons of lessons to be learned from the State Department’s engagement with Twitter, lessons that Twitter itself could take a leadership role in collecting and publicizing.

9. Please expand your government cases studies beyond the USGS to highlight best practices by school districts, local governments and state agencies, as well as federal agencies.

Totally agree. Like I mentioned above, there are tons of case studies to be made from State’s AWESOME work, San Antonio’s traffic and transportation program, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s bus notification systems, and many others. It would have been great had I this job at the Gov 2.0 Expo, because I feel like there so many cool stories of local governments using Twitter to solve communication problems with their citizenry. Those stories would have made good captures, but it’s not too late!

10. Please partner with the Open311 standard to increase visibility of inter-governmental efforts to create a universal API for access to non-emergency services, and work with law enforcement and emergency services agencies on use of geo-location capabilities for emergency reporting and response.

Getting back to open government, this is definitely a partnership worth pursuing. Twitter’s value as an emergency response tool is, I believe, so far untapped despite being so promising. I have not read much about Open311, but I’ll start getting smarter on it ASAP.

There are some additional thoughtful ideas from some of Andrew’s commenters as well, like standardizing hashtags for specific gov agencies, engaging better with African American constituents on Twitter, and a wiki for best Twitter practices in government. Suffice to say, I don’t think any of these things are impossible. In fact, I think most of them are pretty easy to do if we can catalyze the right communities. I just hope I get selected as that catalyzer.

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One of the coolest personal experiences I’ve had of late involved meeting and hanging with a bunch of cats from Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley-based company that rocks a pretty cool data analysis tool. I’ve known about their software for some time, and I’ve heard good things about their products and services from some of their clients in the Intel Community and DOD. What I had not experienced, however, was Palantir’s AWESOME corporate culture.

I met Palantir’s Drew and Jon at the Gov 2.0 Expo in DC, where Palantir had spared no expense in setting up the biggest and baddest-ass booth in the entire expo hall. Instead of developing the same old tired convention booth marketing concept, Palantir had designed a cool little area in which to simply hang out and get to know their people. Drew described it as their “mullet booth: business in front, party in back.” While they flaunted the customary multiple widescreens on which to demo the Palantir system, the real draw of the booth was the pleather couches and full-on Wii gaming setup they had going on behind it. Oh yeah, and they were serving their visitors complementary beer. Motherfucker, JAM.

What Drew &  Jon showed me was a corporate culture that valued their people’s AWESOME way more than their products and sales of their products. As I learned, Palantir is all about its people. They let their teams self-organize to solve problems, and they provide tons of on-site perks that enable a creative, fun atmosphere. I got the chance to see this culture of AWESOME in action when I got invited to Palantir Night Live at Palantir’s Tysons Corner office last night.

Pro setup at Williams Sonoma? Nope. Just Palantir's AWESOME kitchen, complete with daily catering menu for its peeps.

Every month, Palantir Night Live features a rad speaker in the national security, intelligence, tech, or other related community that Palantir touches. Last night it was Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security and Skeletor lookalike. The event is a social one and underlies a key facet of Palantir’s people-based marketing strategy. The draw of this event has little if anything to do with the company’s products and everything to do with its culture. Palantir peeps are young, hip folks who enjoy socially building their business. So that means they value facilitating knowledge exchange (via AWESOME catering and bar service) amongst a variety of people in their social business circle. You saw govvies rubbing shoulders with bloggers at Palantir Night Live.

I would be greatly interested in seeing the sales leads generated from events like these, if those are even metrics Palantir tracks for the success of its marketing events. As a social business, I see Palantir experimenting a lot more in non-traditional selling, i.e. allowing its community of interest (customers, personnel, etc) to recommend the company within existing trust networks.

Skeletor-- er, Chertoff, draws the hotness of DC blogger "K Street Kate."

How well this works for the company’s business development strategy remains to be seen, but I can attest to the AWESOMEness of the culture. Their focus on people really underscores the value of a social business. Palantir doesn’t even use a whole lot of social media marketing because their in-person social marketing works so well.

I should also mention that a couple of my former Detica colleagues got picked up by Palantir when that company was unceremoniously acquired and assfucked. One whose work I respect a great deal told me how much he loves his new job and how he feels great working for Palantir. It’s people like this guy whose trust is based more on social culture than the old work-reward hierarchy that tells me there is something imminently special about Palantir. I would LOVE to work with these cats if given the chance.

For more on Palantir Night Live, check out the Twitter hash #pnldc and @palantirtech.

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I am a huge proponent of the concept of social business design, or the calibration of a business according to social objectives (as opposed to profit objectives). The thinking in this area, oft spearheaded by people from The Dachis Group, addresses the social imperatives inherent in any use of social media or social networking technology.

Last week, I got the chance to participate in Social Business Edge, an event organized by blogger and thinker Stowe Boyd, that explored the furthest envelopes of thinking about social business design. The overarching theme of this event involved the very act of being social and how humans, as social creatures, must begin to structure their businesses to accommodate that fact. Social networking technology has enabled such enterprises of the future that industrial era business is slowly becoming more ineffective, unpopular, and unprofitable.

The ever-awesome Deanna Zandt and host Stowe Boyd talking about something rad.

Social business will necessitate a fundamental redefinition of “work.” People, for example, will trade productivity for connectedness every time… but this leads to previously unseen new levels of productivity.

Another common theme involved how business 1.0 used war as a metaphor. Social business, some argued, should be considered “village building” instead of “army raising.” The traditional business goal of achieving maximum profit margins was shunned in favor of collective dialogue between everyone in a business ecosystem: executive, employee, customer, and so on.

Baratunde Thurston, one of the chief minds behind The Onion, argued that creativity and humor sit at the center of social interactions. He used several examples on Twitter of how one can use humor on Twitter to galvanize community building. (Check out @baratunde‘s Twitter lists. One example is a “twitcom” where users came together to create an on-the-fly Twitter sitcom using many obvious sitcom stereotypes.)

I really responded to Baratunde’s in-your-face presentation. Here’s a guy who makes his living “not giving a shit and outright hating” his audience (his words!). He’s one more AWESOME influencer I can point to who catalyzes us to do our own thing… even when that thing is terribly foul. Despite the naysayers and the language police, Baratunde’s work on The Onion and elsewhere continues to bring in the clicks.

Baratunde Thurston telling people to get their fuck-off on.

The event featured several other amazing presenters including John Hagel III (who brainfucked me with his AWESOME talk about the future of knowledge in social networks); Venessa Miemis, a Twitter acquaintance who is harnessing the collective power of her connections (and their connections, thereby socially steamrolling) into a video chat-based Junto; and Lee Bryant, CEO of Headshift (a social business company that Dachis recently acquired). I think Lee’s preso best exemplified the themes and takeaways of the day, and he graciously made it available for embed below. Lee talked at length about why businesses should be social and how to recognize the individuals within an organization that will advocate social business change.

I had a great time in New York meeting and hanging out with the Social Business Edge presenters and attendees. This was a group of thinkers and doers whose influence challenges me to think in different ways about social business. I think one of the hallmarks of the social business age is an inherent ability to lean forward into one’s network and not absorb the knowledge that network transfers but act upon it and improve it. As a social animal myself, I already picked up conversations with many of these folks on Twitter (which seems to be the popular social media tool of choice for conversation-replicant dialogue). I can’t wait to “do some business” with these peeps in the near future.

Check out the hashtag #sbenyc for more livetweets from Social Business Edge. I have also embedded Lee Bryant’s video preso below. Below that, I’ve added a number of additional observations about the event that I collated in a trip report for The Rendon Group.

Additional insights from the event:

• Social business is not about closing deals; it’s about collectively enhancing your group’s social capital and expand the resulting relationships.
• Social businesses will attain social capital (and eventually profit from that) by opening their systems and processes to their communities and demystifying themselves.
• Customers will tell you how to sell to them if you treat them socially, as members of a greater community or ecosystem… and NOT as faceless masses.
• New business models are warranted: command-and-control structures create massive costs versus open and distributed models.
• Passion is equally proportional to connectedness. However, passion does not equal happiness. Some of the most passionate people in organizations are the most frustrated because they see what is possible and are unable to move the organization to attain those possibilities.
• Debi Klein of Communispace briefed a company case study on how she creates closed, researchable online communities to conduct market intelligence. For teenage boys, they do this for brands like Axe & Gilette by starting a private online community for boys to talk about getting girls. This listening technique is a valuable source of business intelligence.
• Unanswered question: How do you resource social business? Many of the techniques involved require lots of overhead and pre-investment. There was no discussion of how current businesses budget for such transformation.

Updated to include video of John Hagel III’s AWESOME talk. Pay attention to what he says about knowledge flows (versus stocks) and change driven by vision (versus threats):

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Phew! Lots of conferences, workshops, and summits lately. Given that I love connecting and networking with people, I find that even the least relevant of conferences can yield super positive experiences.

Still, time is a commodity, and it’s sometimes hard to determine what’s worth your while. I used to work for a government program manager who used to tell me that meetings and conferences were a waste of time; that you spend more time trying to determine if the event is worthwhile than actually working. We always butted heads about this because my view was that even at the most time-wasting event, you can still find value if you know where to look and you have an objective.

I’m getting ready to board a train to New York for the Social Business Edge conference put on by Stowe Boyd. Despite missing all of The Dachis Group‘s Social Business Summits this year, I’m still convinced that social business is the new big concept for strategic thinkers and planners. Since this is a path on which I intend to take @Du4.llc, I’m willing to “waste” a little time and money connecting with this community, integrating some of their skills into my business offerings, and, hopefully, booking some work.

Here are a couple places you can catch me over the next couple months. Feel free to holler at me if you want to connect in person in and around any of these events:

• New York, April 18-20 (Social Business Edge)
• Los Angeles, May 2-4 (super secret squirrel engagements!)
• Washington, DC, May 10-14 (reporting on and conducting workshop seminars linked to InfoWarCon 2010)
• Washington, DC, May 25-27 (presenting at Gov 2.o Expo)
• New York, June 2-5 (tentatively attending Personal Democracy Forum 2010)
• New York, June 13-14 (TWTRCON 2010)
• New York, June 15-16 (Corporate Media Summit)
• Albuquerque, July 28-31 (Sister Cities International Annual Conference… where I hope to be elected to the board of directors!)

Thanks for reading and participating. This is Must. Be. AWESOME!!! Dot com.

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A friend of mine with whom I’m doing business coined an AWESOME term around the same time as we were discussing how to get my business, @Du4.llc, off the ground. I wanted to share that with you, O Faithful Consumers of AWESOME, and elucidate on the concept of Weaponizing Oneself.

Jon Iadonisi (or the more nefarious “Jonny I,” as I like to call him), with whom I’ve worked in a variety of irregular roles, once told me this:

“Du4, what you’ve got is unique, innovative and creative. The idea of Du4 is made up of all those things that people get access to when they ask you for your opinion on a white paper or your help ironing out a contract. You need to find a way to weaponize Du4: to take all those unique things do and put ‘em into a delivery mechanism that’ll get you PAID.”

I’ve never forgotten those words, and I’ve been thinking on them a lot since launching my own business. The idea of “weaponizing” oneself, I believe, emerges from an entrepreneurial spirit that galvanizes ones to capitalize on what’s most AWESOME about themselves.

Businesses or organizations may not want to hire you as a full time consultant, whether because of how much you cost or other reasons. But they still want what you got. So they’re willing to plop down something to take you out to the firing range, fire off a few shots, and see how you perform. They may want to buy a limited deployment of YOU and drop you into a project or business scenario to see what kind of damage your particular weaponized payload may deliver.

The bottom line is that you should start figuring out what it takes to weaponize yourself too. Find the unique mechanism that allows you to deliver AWESOME on the timeline and scale that YOU want. I can tell you this: it has been fuckin’ FUN figuring out how to deliver precision strikes of Du4 upon unsuspecting populations in Meagerville and Bullshitberg. No matter your trade, passion, or profession, I guarantee you’ll never regret it.

Here are a couple questions to ask yourself to help you pursue your own personal weaponization strategy:

• Who are you? Answer this question first. Really figure out who the hell you are and what you’re all about. Tyler Durden says you’re not your fuckin’ khakis. I say you’ve got some AWESOME in there somewhere.
• Who enables your AWESOME? Communities will always rise around subjects of interest. Who’s in your social circle that engages you about your passions? Find those people and spend more time with ‘em. Ask questions. They can help.
• Where do you want to go? Weapons have to be deployed, so identify the places you want to drop your Fuckbombs of AWESOME. Best thing I ever did was scrape together enough money to go to TWTRCON DC in 2009 and speak in the Open Mic Contest.
• What are you offering? When you launch your AWESOME Missile, you gotta have a payload already loaded. Is it consulting services? What kind? Are you writing papers, blog entries? Are you delivering physical items on Etsy? Figure it out.

One last piece of advice, at the risk of pissing off the gun control crowd: BE BOLD. Jonny I didn’t use the armaments metaphor to be cute… he did it to show me that I’M A FUCKING WEAPON OF AWESOME and MY BULLETS ARE LIFE CHANGERS. Weapons are loud and leave large swathes of damage, so don’t be afraid to kick over some enemy emplacements on your way to the arsenal. There will be a lot of naysayers and a TON of adversary fire coming at you. You’ll have to take a couple head shots and keep returning fire.

Only YOU knows how rad YOU are, and you’ve gotta make BIG SPLASHES sometimes to show people that your particular brand of machine gun rocks the house.

{Jonny I is only one-half the creative powerhouse of the White Canvas Group. I am also indebted to Tim Newberry for his guidance, mentorship, and partnership in the arts of creatively blowing your mind.}

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In a week full of big announcements, I have another for you, faithful AWESOME-ites. Get ready…

This week I started work for a company called The Rendon Group (TRG) as their Director of Strategic Marketing.

I can hear the crow caws and the cat calls already. Not to mention the sounds of quite a few people going, “HUH?!”

For those of you who don’t know, TRG is a global strategic communications firm that has provided a number of services to the U.S. government and other clients for well over thirty years. John Rendon has long maintained a pedigree of excellence in all the communication disciplines. Whatever you want to call it – strategic communication, PSYOP, IO, public relations, public diplomacy, perception management – at its core, Rendon has always understood the deep power of information and how it can be used for influence. I have been an admirer of their work ever since I first encountered their name upon coming to DC as part of the IED Task Force.

I have worked with The Rendon Group (or TRG as we say around the office) before in a past career, and I can testify that despite what anyone may have heard about them, they always bring their A Game. I have learned a lot from their work, and I respect the company’s people immensely. That said, I also walk into this new role fully cognizant of some of the bad press, ill will, and general myopia directed against Rendon. Part of why I’m coming on board TRG is to address some of this criticism head on. I believe that the creative and good things TRG does far outweighs any bad juju people may have heard about in the past. There are some amazing things happening at this company. Things I can’t wait to share with you.

So in that vein, I encourage people to talk to me about The Rendon Group. What do you think about us? Why? Have you worked with us before? What are your experiences? In the coming months, you’ll start to see TRG move into a number of new conversation channels where we can all talk openly about our shared experiences, needs, and solutions in our chosen field of strategic communication. Feel free to leave a comment below or email me directly with your thoughts. I’d love to hear them.

You might be wondering what the hell I’m thinking with this career move. “Didn’t you just squawk loud about starting your own business the other day?” I did indeed. And @Du4.llc is still growing strong. One of the great things I admire about The Rendon Group is their flexibility in allowing me to continue pursuing my personal passions through a business venture of my own. The crew is extremely supportive to me in this way, which engenders even more trust between us as we move forward. For that level of trust between the gang at TRG and myself, I had to give this work a shot.

I’ll be working in a number of capacities for TRG, from sales to social business consulting (a field I am excited to immerse myself in). I’m excited about the opportunity to create new methods for the company to build relationships with people: between the company’s folks, their consumers, and the many others who participate in conversations about us. I fully expect some AWESOME stuff to fall out of these interactions in the near future.

So it’s full speed ahead over here at Must.Be.AWESOME!!! central, and I hope you stick around for the ride. I expect to be blogging about my Rendon Group experience in the near future, so stay tuned for more. But for what it’s worth, Must.Be.AWESOME!!! will continue to rock your world with badass shizznit that’ll sizzle your shizzle. As always, feel free to holler at me if you want to talk more, online or offline.

HOWF!

Within my community of business owners, contract wranglers, and salespeople in DC, I’ve seen a lot of long faces lately. Since the economy crashed and the new administration took office, business development people have had a harder and harder time selling their wares to federal clients and closing new contracts. Most of what the government does award these days often looks a lot like continuation rollovers, wherein some asshole COTR (that’s contracting officer’s technical representative for you neophytes) finds it easier to perform minimal competition compliance just to ensure he or she doesn’t have to deal with the added headache of transitioning between incumbent contractors and new winners.

Despite the reasons for the recent slowdown in federal business, the bottom line is that many companies are finding it harder and harder to deal with their onetime great clients. Contracting officers (COs) and COTRs have become outright hostile to some companies, turning required program management into offensive, often farcical dehumanization of the performer(s). Folks I work with vent often and loudly about how the typical government contracting churn in Washington has gotten even worse.

Also, as hard as it’s become to acquire a contract nowadays, there’s developed the added insanity of dealing with a growing crop of dickheaded contract administrators. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard from businesspeople in DC complaining about how unmovable, boorish, and downright inappropriate some government agencies can act towards their performers. Some government officials who administrate such contracts blatantly tell their contractors that part of the gig is to take shit from them, from simple incompetent management on down to the most revolting of behaviors toward gender and racial lines. There seems to be this attitude that, goddammit, the government knows best and since I’m the government’s representative on this contract, you better listen to me. This behavior is not just unprofessional, it’s insulting, repulsive, and deserving of public punishment.

This situation – Our Great Client Crisis – is not new and is not AWESOME. In fact, it’s pretty fucking lame.

I have one piece of advice for these folks, and it’s advice that’s applicable to any business, company, consultancy, or individual:

If your client treats you like shit, then kick ‘em to the curb.

Subjecting oneself, one’s company, and one’s people to abusive treatment by a client just because they’re paying you money is ridiculous. Despite how many millions of dollars you’re making or could stand to make, it is simply not worth the emotional loss your business will take when scads of your people begin feeling The Mighty Fed in their poop chutes. Furthermore, the added frustration of trying to secure such work from people who may be willing to pay for your service but not understand it (“Let’s get some social media on this advertising plan!”) will only serve to waste more of your time that could be better spent with AWESOME clients.

Image courtesy of She's Unapologetic.com

So, if you’re in such an abusive relationship, what can YOU do about it? Here are a couple ideas that may help:

• Call ‘em on it: The next time one of your clients purposely demeans you in public, call ‘em out on it. Publicly. Federal workers particularly are often not willing to duel over degrees of impropriety in public. Making the behavior public will often cause them to back down. That said, be ready for the dick move of having your contract terminated for no reason afterwards.
• Make ‘em smarter: In a lot of cases, your clients aren’t acting like assholes because they want to. They just don’t know any better. So defuse the situation by offering to help them out. Tell them about other clients you’ve had who have expressed the same educational roadblocks in whatever specialty you happen to deal. You may even make a friend out of them. And friends give friends work in the future.
• Call Fraud, Waste & Abuse: Each government agency has a hotline set up to report instances of fraud, waste and abuse amongst its employees. Use it. It may take time for your complaint to get addressed, so be prepared to go on the record, which can speed things up. Google your department of choice and be sure you’re calling a number at a high enough level that it warrants attention from that agency’s Inspector General.
• Lodge a protest: Federal contractors in particular have clauses in their contracts providing for their right to raise protest against their COTRs for impropriety. Exercise this with caution however: these protests go in your company’s permanent record and may taint evaluators’ opinions of you during future competitions.
• Find new clients: This is my favorite suggestion. You don’t like who you’re doing business with? Get out. Get out and find some dudes you DO like. If this requires you retooling your corporate offerings or marketing, then maybe you should take a hard look at your business and decide what market you really want to play in. Stop being a slave to million dollar contracts. Trust me: the payoff is not worth the stress and abuse you’ll take over the life of the contract if your client is an asshole.

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