Note: This is not one of my normal blog posts. It’s an announcement for a new program The ASBC is launching, that takes us back to our roots.  – Go-To-Guy

Imagine this scenario. Your company has successfully received work to support organizations and people whose mission is providing timely, insightful, objective, and relevant intelligence to the President and senior policy makers of our Nation. You’ve been awarded contracts and/or subcontracts to provide goods, services, and research and development that enables and informs decisions made on national security issues and events. The accomplishments you have achieved and have empowered are, in more than a few instances, life-changing. The punchline that no one laughs at, however, is the fact you can’t reference most of, or any of, these accomplishments when pursuing work with agencies outside of the Intelligence Community, and sometimes within the community, too. It’s something I’ve experienced when I spent several years supporting members of the Intelligence Community (IC) working for a small business with IC prime contracts, and again when supporting large and small IC companies via the programs provided through The ASBC.

The INT’s, such as Open Source Intelligence, Signals Intelligence, and Human Source Intelligence, represent some of the methods used by the IC to collect information, including face-to-face meetings with human sources, technical and physical surveillance, satellite surveillance, interviews, searches, and liaison relationships. We used this foundation to establish the Small Business Intelligence Group, or SBINT, in 2005. Our goal was creating a forum for collecting information through face-to-face meetings, liaison relationships, and the very best, and well scrutinized public information available to help established companies, and new entrants succeed in supporting IC requirements. And it worked, very well. Many of the companies leveraging SBINT decided to grow deeper into these agencies, while others decided to grow beyond the IC.

Beyond the IC is the name of our newest program focused on companies who’ve cracked the code on supporting one or more intelligence agencies. As we did for the companies participating in SBINT, we’ll leverage a community approach blended with education and training from our Ethical Stalking for Government Contractors® curriculum to acclimate them to nuanced and significant differences between the approaches, information sources, tools and relationships they currently use, and those that will useful going forward. Also like SBINT, participation will be exclusive to U.S. citizens leading or working for U.S. companies doing business as a prime or subcontractor to an IC member organization. Beyond the IC is a structured and thoughtfully-prepared acceleration program for developing knowledge, skills,  relationships and business opportunities. Participants are exposed to relevant terminology, tools, and resources to help them establish a new context, and are guided to recognize how their offerings align to the goals, objectives, and requirements of federal and defense agencies outside of the intelligence community.

Beyond the IC begins next week with a conversation. Two of them, actually. If your company is already on contract or subcontract for IC requirements, you’re invited to a virtual kickoff on the morning or afternoon of May 23rd, where we’ll describe how it works, the starting point, and where we will help you go in federal contracting. By working together, you and the other participants will leverage the program to help INTeresting challenges become INTentional opportunities and victories, Beyond the IC.

Peace, Health, and Thriving at Work and in Life,

Go-To-Guy Timberlake