Grow your talent
To be a high-growth company, you can never stand still. You always
have to be getting better, and that includes improving not just your
bottom line but your people, as well.
“One of the things we have as a best practice is our human
resources review process,” Keebaugh says. “It’s sitting down with
individuals and frankly discussing performance as well as developing needs. If there are areas where an individual is not performing, what can we collectively do about it?”
No matter how senior, all of Keebaugh’s employees are expected
to continue to learn throughout their tenure. One way he’s incorporated that philosophy into the company is by creating core competencies for every job in IIS.
“Every one of our career paths, we define competency models
at the various levels of the organization,” Keebaugh says. “That
is defined and documented. The supervisor and the individual sit
down and look at the next step for them, where their interests
are and what the development needs are for gaining those competencies. There is a lot of work done on career planning.”
Ethics is a particular point of emphasis, as growth won’t matter
unless it’s done properly.
Every employee is required to complete ethics courses. The
training is not just a one-time affair but an ongoing way of life for
employees to make sure they understand the importance of ethical conduct and that they have concrete examples of what ethical
conduct looks like. Some classes are computer-based and others
are held in classrooms.
“We do it with examples of cases, so you see practical examples
of things like conflicts of interest and things like that,” Keebaugh
says. “It’s very important to us, so we train, and we continually
monitor against this.”
Keebaugh says companies that don’t have ethical practices
won’t grow because customers can’t count on them. Ethics are
also vital to creating a staff that you can trust to do good work.
“It all comes down to surrounding yourself with the best talent
you can find,” Keebaugh says. “Trust is an important part of it. It
is also important that you have a culture where, I won’t say you
welcome bad news, but you are open to the bad news. The worst
thing you can do is not solve problems when they come up, and
think, ‘Well, they will go away.’ They don’t go away. The earlier
you can address problems, the less it’s going to cost you, and the
more successful you will be. … The worst decision is no decision.”
HOW TO REACH: Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems, www.raytheon.com