TWG Strategy, McLean, VA (2026)

10/14/2026

A problem can sit unresolved for months and then become urgent almost overnight. Sometimes the issue itself has worsened. Just as often, the issue changes because of the consequences of leaving it unresolved.

A customer is now at risk. A new leader owns the outcome. A funding window opened. A contract renewal is approaching. Growth made the workaround harder to sustain. A board or regulator is suddenly paying attention.

That change in urgency is useful information because it shows what leadership is now trying to protect or accomplish.

If the response begins and ends with “fix the problem,” part of the decision can get missed. The right solution may also need to preserve a customer relationship, meet a deadline, protect funding, reduce exposure, or give a new decision-maker confidence.

At TWG, one of the questions we ask early is simple:
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘄?

The answer does not replace the original problem statement. It gives it context, and often changes what a useful solution has to accomplish.

10/13/2026

The first person who reads a proposal is often not the person who makes the final decision.

That is true of proposals, but it is also true of one-pagers, pitch decks, capability statements, and other materials a company sends into the market.

A buyer may understand the opportunity and want to move forward. Then they have to carry that case into a different room.

Finance may want to understand the investment. Procurement may need clearer scope. Legal may focus on risk. Leadership may only have a few minutes to decide whether the opportunity deserves attention.

At that point, the material has to do more than reflect the conversation you had. It has to preserve the logic of the decision when you are no longer there to explain it.

Can someone else clearly see the problem, the proposed outcome, why the approach fits, what the commitment requires, and what decision comes next?

A document can be polished, accurate, and still make the buyer do too much work internally.

At TWG, we think about proposals and market-facing materials as part of the decision process itself. They should help an internal champion carry the case forward, not force them to rebuild it.

A proposal has to work when you are not in the room.

10/09/2026

AI can change the work faster than an organization changes what good performance looks like.

A task that once took several hours may now take a fraction of the time. Some responsibilities shrink. Others shift toward reviewing, interpreting, questioning, or acting on AI-generated work. That may change only part of a job, but it still changes what the employee is being asked to contribute.

Seramount’s new research, drawing on more than 10,000 workforce data points, found that only 32% of employees understand what it takes to succeed in their current roles. That becomes especially relevant when AI is already changing tasks, skill demands, and how work gets evaluated.

If expectations don't change with the work, employees are left to interpret the new standard themselves. Where does human judgment matter most now? Does saved time mean more volume, better quality, different work, or something else? How should performance be evaluated when the process producing the work has changed?

Faster output does not, by itself, define better performance.

Leaders still have to decide what good work looks like, where judgment belongs, and how responsibilities should change as the work changes.

At TWG, we pay attention to that organizational layer around technology. The tool may change a task quickly. The role around it must be deliberately redesigned.

When the work changes, has the organization also changed what success looks like?

10/07/2026

Regulatory change is not always about changing the standard.

Yesterday, the FAA proposed five changes to its commercial space launch and reentry licensing rules. The proposals include electronic application submissions, consolidated safety analyses, more flexibility in demonstrating an equivalent level of safety, and changes intended to eliminate some duplicative analysis. Public comments are open through November 4.

Taken together, the proposals point to a broader issue in regulated markets: the process used to demonstrate compliance can become a constraint of its own.

A safety requirement may remain in place while the documentation, review, submission, or approval process around it changes substantially. For companies operating in those environments, that can affect development timelines, staffing needs, compliance costs, capital planning, and how quickly an opportunity can move.

Commercial space makes the issue especially visible because launch activity is increasing and the federal government is trying to build a licensing system capable of handling greater volume. FAA completed the industry transition to its Part 450 licensing framework earlier this year, and these proposals continue that effort to make the process more flexible and scalable.

For companies in regulated markets, tracking the rule is only part of the job.

At TWG, we pay attention to what regulatory change means operationally: what moves faster, what new demands appear, where readiness matters, and whether the organization can actually respond to the opportunity the change creates.

How the government administers the rule can matter just as much to ex*****on.

10/06/2026

One of the most misleading signs in an organization is that the work still gets done.

When unclear ownership, missed handoffs, urgent requests, or unfinished work repeatedly land with the same reliable person, delivery can continue for quite a while. From the outside, the system may look functional.

Over time, that reliability can start being mistaken for capacity.

If someone consistently catches what others drop, new work gets added around the assumption that they can continue absorbing it. Timelines begin to depend on that extra effort. The workload problem stays hidden because someone keeps compensating for it.

Eventually that person may look overloaded, slower, or less responsive. By then, the organization may have spent months treating unplanned effort as if it were part of the operating model.

At TWG, we pay attention to what continued performance may be masking. Strong delivery can tell you a great deal about an employee. It does not necessarily tell you that the workload, ownership, or capacity around them is working as intended.

Before adding more work to your most reliable people, ask how much of their current workload exists because they are compensating for gaps elsewhere.

10/05/2026

A complex initiative can have clearly assigned roles and still be poorly designed for ex*****on.

Strategy has an owner. Finance has an owner. Operations, legal, technical work, and external engagement may each have an owner. This makes responsibility look covered, on paper.

But then the work starts moving.

A decision in one area changes another team’s timeline. A shared resource is already committed somewhere else. A handoff depends on authority nobody defined. Two workstreams make sense independently but compete for the same capacity.

The Ex*****on Spine treats those intersections as part of the ex*****on architecture, not as problems to sort out later.

One Primary Delivery Commitment can involve several teams, owners, budgets, and measures. A shared ex*****on center makes it coherent by organizing authority, capacity, sequencing, intake, and stakeholder commitments around the same outcome.

If different pieces require materially different ownership, capacity, sequencing, decision structures, or stakeholder commitments, they may actually be separate ex*****on environments rather than one initiative with a long task list.

Clear ownership matters. So does designing what happens where the work intersects.

10/02/2026

A familiar filter in federal contracting may be about to change.

The Skills-Based Federal Contracting Act passed the Senate this week and is headed to the President. If enacted, federal agencies generally could not require proposed contractor personnel to hold a specific educational credential unless the contracting officer explains in writing why it is necessary for the work.

Federal contractors often build teams around the qualifications written into a solicitation. When a degree or other education requirement appears there, it can shape who a company can propose, how it staffs the contract, and in some cases who is able to compete for the work at all.

The broader question is one that organizations deal with everywhere.

Degrees, years of experience, previous titles, and recognizable employers are often used as shorthand for capability. Sometimes that shorthand is useful. Sometimes the requirement remains in place long after anyone has stopped asking what it is actually supposed to predict.

A stronger talent system starts closer to the work itself: What does someone actually need to be able to do? What knowledge or judgment does the role require? What evidence would demonstrate that capability?

Removing a credential does not mean lowering the standard. It means being more precise about what the standard is.

At TWG, we think that is a useful question well beyond hiring. Requirements are strongest when an organization can explain what capability each one is meant to protect.

If a requirement disappeared tomorrow, could you explain what capability it was supposed to protect?

10/02/2026

A familiar filter in federal contracting may be about to change.

The Skills-Based Federal Contracting Act passed the Senate this week and is headed to the President. If enacted, federal agencies generally could not require proposed contractor personnel to hold a specific educational credential unless the contracting officer explains in writing why it is necessary for the work.

Federal contractors often build teams around the qualifications written into a solicitation. When a degree or other education requirement appears there, it can shape who a company can propose, how it staffs the contract, and in some cases who is able to compete for the work at all.

The broader question is one organizations deal with everywhere.

Degrees, years of experience, previous titles, and recognizable employers are often used as shorthand for capability. Sometimes that shorthand is useful. Sometimes the requirement remains in place long after anyone has stopped asking what it is actually supposed to predict.

A stronger talent system starts closer to the work itself: What does someone actually need to be able to do? What knowledge or judgment does the role require? What evidence would demonstrate that capability?

09/30/2026

Two employees can both take a job for the paycheck and develop very different relationships to the work over time.

One does good work, but projects repeatedly stall farther up the chain. Decisions drag. Meetings feel one-sided. They may receive praise for doing their part, yet rarely see the work fully land or feel much connection between their effort and the final result.

They may still be an excellent employee. Continued performance does not necessarily mean the environment is working for them.

The second employee may have started for the same reasons: income, security, a stable job. But their effort reliably goes somewhere. Decisions move, other people follow through, completed work produces a visible result, and their contribution becomes part of that success.

Over time, that experience gives them more reasons to stay than they had when they were hired. They build credibility, relationships, knowledge, confidence in their own ability to succeed there, and a stronger sense that their work has weight inside the organization.

Now give both employees a similar offer somewhere else for roughly the same pay.

The first may have very little tying them to that particular organization, even if their performance never dropped. The second is leaving much more than a paycheck.

At TWG, we look at retention and performance in that broader operating context. Organizations do not simply inherit whatever motivation employees arrive with. The way work functions can deepen someone’s attachment to a job, or gradually strip those reasons away.

What does staying here give someone that another paycheck would not?

09/29/2026

America.gov launched today, and it is worth paying attention to.

The new site uses AI to answer plain-language questions across federal sources, giving people a single place to search for information that has traditionally been spread across thousands of government websites. Reporting says the platform currently draws from roughly 29,000 federal sites, with plans to eventually support more forms, applications, and renewals in one place.

For anyone who has ever tried to figure out which agency, office, program, or page holds the answer they need, that could make federal information much easier to navigate.

It also changes the starting point for companies working with government. Basic research gets easier. Finding programs, requirements, agency information, and public resources should require less familiarity with how the federal system is organized.

The harder part still comes after you find the information.

Knowing that a program exists is different from understanding who actually owns it, where decisions are made, how funding or procurement moves, whether your company fits the need, and how an engagement should be approached.

At TWG, that is the layer we pay attention to. Better access to information gives companies a stronger starting point. Government relations adds the institutional context, judgment, positioning, and relationships needed to decide what to do with it.

𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮.𝗴𝗼𝘃 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗽 𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗶𝘁.

TWG Strategy

10/14/2026

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10/09/2026

10/07/2026

10/06/2026

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