Why I decided to join Enterra Solutions

Last week I decided, along with my partners Steffany and Critt, to accept Enterra Solutions' offer to acquire our fledgling partnership, The New Rule Sets LLC. As a result, whatever consulting I choose to pick up from here on out will be conducted through Steve DeAngelis' firm.

I join the firm on a less than full-time basis as Senior Managing Director, and Critt picks up a full-time load as Director of Corporate Blogging. Steffany won't join the firm formally, but will consult on a part-time basis, focusing on corporate communications and related marketing/strategic planning. Finally, our original angel investor in NRSP and our sole board member, Kevin Billings, will likewise sign up in a senior consulting role, performing a variety of crucial functions from his perch in DC.

And with that, NRSP's short life comes to an end.

Why did this happen?

It happened because the original NRSP model simply wasn't scalable in a manner any of us found acceptableómeaning we couldn't grow without stressing ourselves and our families too much. Winning consulting contracts with government agencies and corporate entities was just proving too hard, not in terms of the thought leadership, where we succeeded almost too well (leads and meetings and contacts we had in abundance). Remember that scene in the new "Willy Wonka" movie where Johnny Depp takes a business card from one of the parents and simply throws it over his shoulderóI was approaching that point in my organizational overload. The real problem was the sheer mechanics of making contracts happen (the follow-up, the negotiations, the form-filling, and the so on and so forth associated with contracting in general). So either we geared up on the office effort by hiring people and building the firm from the ground up, or we remained a boutique firm based solely around my F2F work with clients.

On the latter score, we simply ran into the reality that there are only so many hours in a day and only so many days in a month when I'm willing to be on the road, so either we lived with those limitations or we had to find some way to break out of them by partnering with a more established firm. That firm turned out to be Enterra Solutions, largely because our recent alliance with them was proving so fruitful in terms of overlapping interests, thought content, and mutual clients seeking us out separately for jobs. In sum, everyone who was calling me up seemed to be people with whom Enterra was also interested in establishing relationships, and vice versa.

Now, in some ways, the three of us jump out of the frying pan and into the fire with Enterra, which is itself experiencing such a booming demand for its services that growing pains abound. But of course, this is a good thing for Enterra, becauseófor oneóit made them interested in acquiring us to fill some big holes in their staff. From our perspective, Enterra gives us all the infrastructure we need to take all these offers and contacts and leads and pursue them with confidence that: 1) we can actually follow-up sufficiently with each on the mechanics of establishing relationships; and 2) our choice of clients will be guided by some overarching mission, which for Enterra is all about systems integration with a focus on rule-set automation as the engine for boosting enterprise resiliencyóor what I like to call "smart connectivity."

That first point on the sheer mechanics is a biggie, but frankly, it pales next to the second point on knowing what we want to do with the thought leadership position that The Pentagon's New Map has afforded me.

Here's what I mean from a variety of angles:

First there's the fundamental goal of giving my schedule more coherence. By joining Enterra, I now have metrics for deciding when to say yes and when to say no to offers, a process that frankly had me baffled in recent months.

Second, there's simply the utility of productizing my thought leadership, as in giving me an identifiable service attached to my presentation of strategic concepts, all of which are cool in terms of starting up great conversations with clients but were typically leaving me stranded in terms of prompting lasting relationships, and I want lasting relationships with clients whose needs will force me into analysis that furthers my own understanding of what my grand vision portends for the variety of actorsñboth military and civilian, public and private, domestic and foreignówhom I believe are essential to engage in any shrink-the-Gap strategy over the coming years and decades. I mean, on my own, I could access all these players, get into those meeting rooms, and make all those presentations, but when the sessions drew to a close, there wasn't any obvious impetus for a continuing relationship. Instead, I often heard, "Well, maybe we can have you back next year or when you write another book."

Part of the problem is that I'm not interested in doing studies any more. I don't want homework assignments. I simply feel like I've moved beyond that, and frankly, many of my potential clients think similarly, so much so that none of them seem interested in engaging me on that level. Mostly, they just want to pick my brain, as they say, but absent some driving impetus that narrows the discussion and forces that rubber-meets-the-road dynamic, I've been having a hard time making that pick-the-brain process be anything more than clients feeding me questions and me spitting out answersóand then walking out the door.

There's nothing wrong with playing that sort of wise man roleóif you're nearing retirement and want to avoid all heavy intellectual lifting ("Hey, I'm wise and I don't have to do that anymore!"). But I'm 43 and am nowhere near that point (although I feel like I'm in the right time zone). Plus, the last thing I want to become at this point is a perceived wise man who spouts only the view from 30,000 feet. First, I can do it in my sleep at this point, which will only make me fat, dumb and lazy if I persist in letting that sort of give-and-take dominate my skull, and second, I simply get jazzed by learning new things, feeling slightly out of my depth, and constantly scrambling to meet challenging deadlines.

And I was getting none of those things with the little world of writing-speeching-blogging I had created since leaving the college. In effect, I had this perfect series of intellectual output venues but I wasn't putting myself in the position of gathering the necessary intellectually challenging input opportunities. To put it simply, I wasn't achieving any dwell time with players who are essential to my being able to run my vision to ground. I'd get these great questions. I'd form these fairly cool high-level answers. I'd get all jacked up and curious about where that conversation could move next . . .

And then I'd be out the door and on to the next venue, trapped in a schedule of nearly non-stop broadcast and not nearly enough collaboration.

And that's where Enterra helps me immensely. It keeps me in the rooms I want to be in, lengthening my dwell time with players whose needs, hopes, and desires I need to become far more acquainted with if my own ideas are going to continue to develop. The match between Enterra and myself is just about perfect, because as I find myself trying to explain what this company can do for both private firms and public agencies, I end up having the conversations I've been longing to conduct. I feel like my brain is operating at full speed, racing where it needs to go, feeling all the right frustrations and satisfactions that I believe are logically associated with where I am right now in this whole strange career trajectory.

And yes, I know that all sounds kinda weird and airy-fairy and vague, but hey! I'm making this up as I go along! I'm playing a role I never imagined I'd be playing in an historical period I never thought I'd experience, so the rule-set reset isñnone too surprisinglyójust as profound for me personally as it is for the country or the world. We're exploring undiscovered territories here, inventing new fields of endeavor, and creating new languages to describe it all. We've had our scary series of shocks to the system and now we're forced into a period of lengthy creativity, as we scramble to meet the growing complexities associated with this phenomenon we call globalization.

Steve DeAngelis sees all the same challenges, all the same rule-set gaps, and all the same finishing lines as I do. We finish each other's sentences. We constantly exclaim, "That's so weird, because what you're saying right now is exactly the same conversation that we've all been having for the past year!" We get jazzed by all the same things, and we get serious about all the same dreams.

And we both have Chinese daughters, which is cool.

But best of all, Steve and I compliment each other quite nicely. Where I am weak and need guidance or mentoring, Steve is naturally strong-and vice versa. We are, coincidentally, both 43 years old. What Steve wants to do next in his life, I have it within my power to help himñand vice versa.

That complimentarity extends to our two firms, NRSP and Enterra, but since Enterra is far more substantial, Steff, Critt and I have come comfortably to the conclusion that subsuming our firm into Steve's is the logical next step in our evolution.

Not much will change in my life. I will still blog. I will still write for Esquire. I will still write books. I will still giving lotsa speeches. What Enterra does for me is simply order the other stuffóthe consultingóin a way that should provide me with the creative inputs and intellectual challenges I need to maintain what I hope will remain high-value output in my various broadcast modes.

Hell, I already know this will be the case, because in the various joint meetings that Steve and I have conducted with potential and future clients in recent weeks, I've come away from each encounter feeling supremely connected to everything I want to be connected to right now. The pistons are all firing. I feel like Iím doing God's work. I know I'm advancing the vision and making it more useful to the right people. I know I'm serving America's security interests and making the world a better place in whatever manner I'm capable of.

And I feel more centered than I have in many weeks.

Some of that is Indiana and everything it's done for my wife and kids. Some of that is having Blueprint for Action teed up. Some of that is the comfort level I have in working with class acts like Critt, Steff, Kevinóand now Steve especially. Some of it is having access to healthcare through a company again. And some of it is knowing that Enterra can provide a host of things I don't do well and don't want to do at this point in my life, while I can give the company in return a lot of value they can't find anywhere else (hell, Steve's been giving out copies of PNM to all new Enterra clients from day one of starting the companyóso I know it's a unique fit here!).

But mostly it's that sense of structure in the one big chunk of my workload that's been rather chaotic since I've left the college, primarily because Steff, Critt and I were overmatched by the possibilities.

No more.

Working with Enterra, I now have the platform to push new rule sets in both the military and market worldsóthe nexus now clearly formed for me intellectually and professionally.

And that feels very good.