Is Rapid Acquisition Dead?

For almost four decades, I’ve watched the ebb and flow of Federal Acquisition. I’ve stalked the patterns and cycles enough to be considered a visionary, or a psychic, or just an old-timer of a human archive who remembers all the struggles both the Government and Contractors have faced in that time and all the ways around them that have yet to have the mass appeal I dream of.  I’ve seen Contracting move with the speed of a lumbering dinosaur, but I’ve also seen and been one of the little beacons of light teaching others about tools they’ve never heard of and strategies they’ve never considered.  I’ve seen Rapid Acquisition at its finest, and I’ve been an evangelist trying to entice others to join me in that mindset.  

It’s been my mission, for years.  

Since before the GBU-28 bunker buster I negotiated back in February 1991.  I was a Rapid Acquisition/streamliner/Acquisition reformer/innovator before those things were cool, and still when those things were decidedly UNcool, and then when they became cool again.  And now?  I’m still the same, but … now?

Throughout my career, I’ve seen a lot of impact, but I’ve not seen enough to satisfy me. I’ve always understood that Acquisition reform is like modern software—it’s never done.  It’s not a single event or a single output, but always striving to make it better, more responsive, cheaper, more reliable. Always looking at what’s working and what isn’t, getting feedback, being willing to incorporate improvements, fighting to keep the ground taken when managers want more oversight or the bureaucracy or conservative culture creeps back in.  We aren’t there yet, but a lot of progress has happened, and stopping that progress in favor of some drastic change that hasn’t been fully thought through means going backward.  

I’ve been heartened by a lot of the talent out there in the Acquisition field. Just last year, I was musing that I wanted to transition away from Acquisition in the next few years and actually “retire-retire” and spend my days writing mystery thrillers,  knowing that my country was safe and we could acquire faster what we need to defend ourselves.  Yes, I feel personally and patriotically responsible to protect my country—and I’m not sure why that’s considered a personality quirk!

There’s always been at least a few of us trying to spread this Rapid Acquisition mindset, and we’ve been growing, especially in the last few years, thanks to sharing techniques on forums and social media.  I’m not talking about the people who put innovator  or thought leader on their resumes and their real-world impact has little to show for it, but those who have been living and breathing making things better—to include faster awards, lower barriers, better solutions, streamlined processes, actual transition of technology.  Those who can’t NOT think that way. I do wish any of them had had influence over the latest attempts at Government-wide efficiency. 

These are the people who find my Acquisition writings and feel the resonance because we have that mindset in common.  It’s downright euphoric to find your tribe, especially if you’ve lived through the Uncool times when you were alone. 

But those voices—most of them—are silent now.  Other Transactions and Commercial Solutions Openings are suddenly not the first things they think of when their eyes pop open in the morning, and they’re not falling asleep while their brains chug away all night on which of their four courses of action will work best for that Program Manager’s problem and which will suit cost best and which will provide the best technological solution. 

No, very few are talking to me about Rapid Acquisition, and most who are are in Industry, not Government. No, their focus is elsewhere. 

I think I was in the 7^th grade when I first learned about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  I thought it was cool then, and it’s been a reliable tool for me to understand the world around me since then.  

Just a quick refresher:  

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a psychological theory that describes human motivation as a five-tier pyramid, with basic needs at the bottom and self-fulfillment at the top:

1. Physiological Needs: Basic survival needs like food, water, air, sleep, and shelter.
2. Safety Needs: Security, stability, health, and financial well-being.
3. Love & Belonging: Relationships, friendships, family, and social connections.
4. Esteem Needs: Self-respect, recognition, and personal achievement.
5. Self-Actualization: Personal growth, creativity, and reaching one’s full potential.

People typically move up the pyramid as lower needs are met, though it’s not always a strict progression.

I confess that for me, personally, I think of Rapid Acquisition as a 4^th or 5^th tier for me.  When I’m teaching it to others, it’s absolutely  personal achievement/ creativity/reaching my full potential territory.  But if I’m afraid I can’t pay my rent next month, my focus is going to shift to tier 1 or tier 2.  

And that, as of the last week of January and early February, was where most of my Rapid Acquisition tribe have been focused.  Some lost their jobs immediately, some were torn over whether to stay or resign, some who took lower-paying Federal jobs for the stability now have no idea of what’s next.  It’s heartbreaking to see some of these people leave Federal service—we are truly losing some great people, and especially some who are “rapid-oriented.”

One told me last week that 95% of his job is now handling matters related to new executive orders that have lacked clarity and further lacked timely clarifications.  A few people told me they were working on pre-planned events and that in their offices, “Rapid isn’t dead,” but literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Federal employees have told me their top priority shifted to getting information from their personnel files so they could make major life decisions or trying to locate official digital guides that had disappeared over the weekend so they could do the tasks given them by the EOs. 

No one really wanted to chat about changes to 10 USC 4023, Procurement for Experimental Purposes, or some of the things that Senator Roger Wicker is advocating that I’ve been preaching for several years and had so much hope for.  The best I could get from those I mentioned it to was that they’d take a look at the FORGED Act “after things calm down—if I’m still here.”  You know under other circumstances, I’d be hailing Wicker’s advocacy as a major win to get us to a better Acquisition system, but no one in my tribe has much heart to talk about it right now.

I don’t know if this focus away from Rapid Acquisition is temporary.  I don’t know if we’ll have enough Federal employees in Acquisition or enough of the Rapid-minded people left.  I don’t know.  I don’t.

If you’ve followed me for a while, then you know that I’m always looking ahead to how I might need to pivot and what contingency plans I might need. That’s super important to being able to be responsive in an emergency situation. So early last summer, I started looking ahead to how Federal employment might look in a year, and I specifically looked at Project 2025’s plan for Feds as well as related documents, and that’s what I’m seeing now. I had a bad feeling about what Schedule F might portend for Rapid Acquisition even though the playbook has some good things that the Rapid Acquisition tribe has been asking for for a while now. How disappointing that some of the biggest advocates for positive change in processes are resigning and heading to Industry when the Government needs them more than ever!

At the time, I had two new books in the queue for publication to teach people how to build organizations that are specifically focused on Contracting for Rapid Acquisition efficiencies and how to use certain tools combined with mindset and partnerships to be effective.  I kept reading Project 2025 and looking at those near-finalized books and wondering if I really wanted to focus time on getting those books out when I might never see results.  Instead, I put my attention on cleaning out my mom’s old house and renting it out because at least I knew something would come of my hard work, and I’ve been in wait-and-see mode.

I made a decision last week. I’ll be putting those books out in serialized blog post form on my website instead. Probably looking at each chapter differently through the lens of current events and seeing how things pan out with the FORGED Act.  I have no idea what applies anymore and what doesn’t, so I’m being flexible. I’m trying to help my former colleagues where I can.  I’m trying to keep the faith that Rapid Acquisition isn’t dead, only on a hiatus while everyone figures out the landscape.

But I worry.  So much.   Acquisition can be slow.  Bureaucratic.  We all know this.  The lumbering dinosaur at times. I’m not sure, after a lifetime of it, that Acquisition can be “fixed” because there are so many definitions of what that means, but I do think it can be tended, weeded of the things that don’t work, cultivated, nurtured where things do work.  I’m not ready to give up on it, but for at least a while, while everyone is extra careful to do their due diligence and not call attention to themselves in a way that might be construed as negative, it’s a lot less likely people will feel the freedom they might have felt to take risks that speed up Acquisition—or that people who know how will still be Federal employees.