Having worked in the DoD space now for the better part of my career I’ve seen this happen more than once. ;) And, every time I can’t help but wonder who’s getting fired. Or, which side of the fence is really responsible? I’d likely presume that it is a combination of both the acquisition process’ complexity and priorities, spreading that across both the customer and contractor’s plates.

However, let’s just put this into perspective for a second. Let’s say I’m a small service business that provides a consulting product to a handful of other small businesses. For “whatever” the reason one of my customers is behind in making payment on a follow-up contract that continues the previous contract’s work. I have some basic choices as a business operator. I can either (A) continue the work in good faith because I value the customer and their end product, or (B) stop working until payment is made, attempting to force action on my customer’s part. Sure, there are a ton of variables that would impact this decision (e.g. the customer’s history, the impact of stoppage on their deliverables, the performance hit a stoppage would have on our ability to spin back up, etc.). All of these dynamics would and should be considered.

But, just for a second consider this variable. What if the customer’s end-product, once delivered, could save lives? Should the work stoppage route even be an option? (And where IS the accountability?)

Fortunately, I have plenty of important work to get done…like CBTs and performance evaluations.