Scott Recinos, senior vice president of homeland security market at LMI, recently spoke with ExecutiveBiz regarding his strategic goals and potential new markets for the rest of 2022 as well as the company’s core values that drive its winning culture, and some of the unique challenges on the business side of innovation during the latest Executive Spotlight interview.
You can read the full interview with Scott Recinos below.
ExecutiveBiz: What are your strategic goals for the coming year? What do you hope to accomplish and any new markets that you’re keeping an eye on in the federal sector?
Scott Recinos: “First, we are looking to maintain our team’s record of outstanding performance for our Department of Homeland Security customers throughout this year. Last year, we were honored to receive across-the-board “exceptional” contractor performance ratings on all our prime contracts with DHS.
This is a real testament to our team, as our customers are required to provide additional justification (including more paperwork!) to assess our performance at that level. Priority #1 for our team is maintaining that culture of excellence for our customers.
From a homeland security market perspective, I believe we have a lot to offer agencies across the department. We are interested in expanding our digital analytics, supply chain management, and test and evaluation support to US Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Office of Science and Technology at the headquarters level.
We are also looking to expand our partnerships with mission-driven small businesses and team with them on upcoming work at DHS.
Corporately, we are focused on employee retention. We pride ourselves on finding and retaining the right people. People who know LMI know that when they partner with us, they are getting experienced, dedicated professionals (many of whom have advanced degrees and many years of experience).
Our senior leadership team is constantly looking at ways to lead the government consulting pack regarding benefits, culture, engagement, and growth opportunities. We go to great lengths to differentiate ourselves from our competitors—and I think we’ve done a great job doing that over the last 60 years.
As a small example, our flexible time off policy has allowed us to attract and retain folks who value work-life balance. Juggling a modern family with a demanding job is made a little easier when you don’t have to stress about leave banks and accruing time.
We also offer what I believe is one of the most generous tuition reimbursement packages in the industry—up to $15,000 per year to pursue education and training.”
ExecutiveBiz: What are the core values that are important to your company’s culture? How has your team developed its workflow and ability to drive success in such a competitive market?
Scott Recinos: “One of the things I love about working at LMI is that we actually adhere to our core values. We have five core values: develop people, take an enterprise-wide view, embrace conflict, operate in the gray area, and collaborate constantly.
I can confidently say that our leadership team is thinking about and working with those values every day, not only for our customers but for our colleagues. I already mentioned some aspects of how we are developing people, with our flexible time off and tuition reimbursement programs, but let me give you another example.
We decided a couple years ago to move to a matrixed organization. Why? Because instead of asking how we can do more with less to maximize profits, we instead asked how can we do more with more? How can we better serve our customers?
Instead of “silos of excellence” as some pejoratively call a traditional hierarchy, we purposely built collaboration, enterprise-wide thinking, gray-area operations, and conflict into our organizational structure.
When you’re a consultant…
Read More: Executive Spotlight: Scott Recinos, SVP of Homeland Security at LMI