Interviews at The Entrepreneur Center @NVTC

Tania Anderson, for Bisnow on Business: What exactly does SiloSmashers do?
We take dysfunctional organizations, and we make them functional. We create structure out of chaos. We go into organizations, and we solve their management problems, we solve their leadership problems, their process problems. We’re a management consulting firm. I didn’t use that term at first because it’s so broad. Even some of the large management consulting firms that we compete with do a lot of IT work which isn’t management consulting. So we are true management consultants.

What gave you the idea to launch the company in 1992?
I was working for another company on an Army project. We were introduced to some collaborative techniques and tools to bring disparate groups together to solve problems and come to consensus. I really wanted to take those technologies and use them on other projects and other parts of the company and market this tool and this technique. This was meeting software bringing people together. The idea got shot down within the company. The two other women that I started the company with, we looked at each other and said, ‘they’re wrong.’ We’ve done the research. Collaborative technology is going to be the new thing. No one was talking about collaborative technology in the early 90s. Today everybody is using it. A friend of ours who knew we were doing this was working for another company and one of his clients within the Department of Defense wanted to build a center for process improvement around these collaborative tools. He called and said, ‘You guys are the only ones that know how to do this. Will you guys subcontract to us?’ We said, ‘Absolutely.’ We had already been building our business on the side on weekends and nights. As soon as we were ready to go, we just launched off. We landed our first contract within the Department of Defense, and it just grew from there. For a long time we were known just around collaborative technologies. Today we weave that into all our different lines of business.

How did you launch?
The three of us threw some money into a checking account and that’s how it got started. I think we threw in $1,000 to get the checking account opened. All of us worked out of our homes. We were on client sites quite a bit.

So the tech bust must have really changed the type of consulting you do.
When that whole wave started, I stayed far away from it. I’m not a technologist really. I wanted to make sure that we were focused on management consulting. Because management consulting is not going to go away. IT consulting is not going to go away, but the flavor is going to change. What we focus on really is building up that business around management issues. In any organization if people are involved, you’ve got problems. Any technology deployment, the technology is the easy piece. It’s the people piece that’s the hardest part. I don’t know if our consulting service has really changed since the bust. I think what we’ve seen over the past couple of years is that with an increase in global competition, and profits not being like they used to be in all sectors, as well as some of the corporate scandals, people are really looking at how to become more efficient and effective. In the federal government, that’s being driven by the President’s Management Agenda. People now are finally talking about silos. When I first started, the company the name was different. I changed the name of the company to SiloSmashers in 1996. Back then nobody was calling silos, silos. Now it’s like, ‘We can’t have these silos because we’re not as an efficient company.’ So it’s really great to see that concept change.

Are your clients in all business sectors?
In the private sector, yes, it’s all sectors. We’re looking to target in all sectors just to gain some traction. But about 90 percent of our work is in the federal government. We have some state work that just started this year. We’ve got some commercial opportunities that we’re looking to grow this year.

What’s a typical consulting project for SiloSmashers like?
Let’s say an organization is getting ready to roll out a new SAP implementation. They’ll bring us in to manage that process, manage the vendor that comes in to do the actual implementation, create the communications strategy so the users and the people in the organization are readily accepting of the new system. And of course there’s always some change management that goes along with that. My personal mantra for the company is, ‘I want to forever change the way business is done.’ I want to do that by helping organizations strive towards peak performance, being the best you can be and incorporating collaboration as a technique so you bring the best of the best within your organization.

What are some of the typical problems you see inside companies?
Leadership problems. There’s a lot of work going on in the merger of organizations, in the federal government, in the private sector. Trying to blend two cultures, two processes, two systems together is very difficult. That’s the dysfunction that I talk about, where we go in and try to create that function.

What are the biggest external challenges that companies and government agencies face today?
For companies, global competition is an issue. There is competition out there and for so long we’ve entrusted other countries to do part of our work. The Dubai issue is only the beginning of things that are outsourced to other countries. If you’re talking about a Washington company, the traffic is a huge issue. The reason I say that is because we have issues with hiring. Workforce is not going to want to travel and sit in traffic for hours to get to their place of employment. As a consulting firm, one day a consultant might be here in the office but the next day they might be downtown at a client site. The next day they might be out in Reston. For us as a consulting firm when we’re out there with our clients, hiring people is an issue with the traffic congestion problems that we have around here. I have found that that is pretty standard among a lot of companies. Being a federal contractor, there are issues with money being diverted to the war and hurricane relief efforts. Those are the three main issues. The eligibility for people to retire is another issue. They’re going to lose a lot of knowledge, they’re going to lose a lot of human capital and I know they are addressing some of those issues. It could tear parts of our government apart. It’s that institutional knowledge that could walk out the door today. Another issue is that they’re not bringing in enough people fresh out of college that want to be a civil servant. They need to really look at their compensation structures, they need to look at the various things that will draw people. Before, people wanted to be civil servants. Now what’s driving the generation behind us is money. The next nifty technology thing that we’re going to work on.

You’ve been a member of the Washington tech community for a long time. How has it changed?
What I’ve seen is a lot of thriving small businesses that have really unique products and some services around that. They’re very successful in what they do. They find a niche and leverage that. You see a lot of those companies get bought by the larger companies because they recognize that they’ve got something really unique and they’ve got a market share that some of the larger companies can’t get. Small businesses are really fueling the economy. I wish the government would take more notice of that rather than going with a brand name company.

Where are you from, and what did your parents do?
I grew up around here. I’m native to Northern Virginia. I went to school in Virginia. I still live here. I grew up in Dale City in Prince William County. It was the sticks back then. My father owned his own construction company that was run out of the house. That’s what I saw, what I grew up with. I didn’t see my dad going off to corporate America. Things were run out of the house and my mom supported the business. It was just ingrained in me that owning your own business is what you do. The part I got from my mom is the extracurricular stuff that she did. I’m so involved with the community.

Did you help out in your dad’s business growing up?
Not really. I’d answer the phone every once in awhile when my mom wasn’t around. My dad was traditional. We were two girls in the family and girls did what they were supposed to do.

So how did that get you interested in management consulting?
It probably is most attributed to a company I was working for prior to starting the company. They just did everything wrong. I guess that’s what made me say, ‘I’m just going to build something different.’ It wasn’t my upbringing but experiences before my company.

Have you ever felt your gender held you back?
I’m sure that it has, however I try not to focus on that. I try to put trust in other people that gender is not an issue. It’s still a man’s world out there. There’s a lot of great women in this industry, but I go to networking events all the time and it’s neckties all over the place. I try not to make it an issue because if I make it an issue, it is. I tell women all the time, because I’ve been asked this question multiple times, don’t focus on that being an obstacle, focus on what’s on the other side. If you don’t see what’s on the other side, you’re never going to get there because that barrier will always be facing you. In the early days when I was a contractor within the Department of Defense and I was very young, I immediately did not get any respect. As soon as I started talking and established myself, then it completely changed. There were those biases, and everybody has biases, but it’s just how you handle yourself. I would just turn the behaviors right around and show that I was smart, articulate and I knew what I was talking about. I didn’t want my being a female to be an issue. One of the things that I’ve done building my company is that I’ve used a lot of my traits as a woman to really build a culture here. Which is different than a lot of male-run companies. I am not afraid to be vulnerable in front of my staff. I allowed them to see me get teary-eyed when we had one employee retire and move. It’s showing your staff that you’re real and really caring for them. We do that naturally as women and I bring that into the workforce. I don’t hide that.

What other challenges do women face as they’re trying to establish themselves in business?
Some women feel they have to be like a man. They try too hard and it’s not natural to them. I’ve also seen, and it’s terrible for us women in the workforce, women thinking that they have to use sexual innuendos to get business or to establish themselves, which is completely wrong. But some women just feel that. It still is a man’s world, especially in the private sector. There are not very many women at senior levels in large corporations. It’s appalling. It’s all men up at the top, so why do they want to bring in a woman? Let her do HR. It’s so frustrating. By doing some of the things that I mentioned, like trying to be like a man or using sexual innuendos, we’re not doing ourselves a good service. We can be a challenge to ourselves, to be honest. I think we need to help each other. I don’t think women help enough other women in the workforce.

Even groups like Women in Technology, where you’re a member?
We address those issues. We are all about networking and helping each other succeed in the technology industry. I’m the current chair of our foundation called the Women in Technology Education Foundation. There’s a declining rate of girls interested in pursuing careers in technology. They’re not interested in the games on the Internet like boys. They’re not interested in pursing math and science. There’s a declining rate of what’s going to happen to our future workforce. We have built a foundation to support programs at the junior and high school levels to really help young girls understand you don’t have to be a geek to be interested in technology. We’ve brought in women who are successful in different areas.

So what does your future look like?
I’d like to see my company continue to grow. I still think that we’ll have a nice brand and an image out here. We’re not interested in selling. I want to see the company turned over to the people that helped make it grow. If we hit a certain revenue mark, we’re going to roll out an employee stock ownership program. That would probably in three to five years. In 10 years, I’ll maybe be laying on the beach somewhere.

[This interview conducted by Tania Anderson for Bisnow on Business.]