Executive Spotlight: Bryan Eckle, Chief Solutions Officer of cBEYONData

As chief solutions officer of cBEYONData, Bryan Eckle guides the consulting team in helping clients streamline operations. Throughout his career, he has led the implementation of people, processes and technology to support customer financial management, procurement, budget and data analytics initiatives.

In a recent interview with the Potomac Officers Club, Eckle spotlighted the executives who have inspired him, revealed his core values and shared his insights on innovating in today’s contracting landscape.

Read the full interview below.

Who are the executives that have inspired you the most over the course of your career?

My career began at EDS, which had a very hierarchical culture. An executive in another division at the time, John Link, saw that I had acquired some unique multidimensional data/technology skills and realized that though I was short on years of experience, I made up for it with my unique knowledge set. Despite my lack of experience, John provided me with major roles in multiple projects. After a big project went live, he bought me a racquetball racquet. What started as a small gesture became a big motivator, a way to build teamwork outside the office and a lesson in how to reward talent through both opportunity and recognition.

Chuck Faughnan, someone we brought in as an advisor at Summit2Sea, helped me understand the importance of codifying and living by our shared corporate values. We did well with culture at our size, but there was a risk to keeping it as we grew. Chuck inspired me to see that the values necessary to grow and scale a business are empowering decision makers throughout an organization and keeping the cultural ethos intact.

What are the core values that you believe are essential to build a great team and establish a foundation to drive success in such a competitive industry?

It all starts with integrity – without trust, nothing else matters. From there, a client mission focus, adaptability, a continual improvement mindset and teamwork round out my top values. It’s not enough to simply write down values in a document or web page without going further. An organization must live these values in how it hires, incentivizes and makes decisions across all levels of the firm.

How would you advise someone entering our industry to build their resume and advance their careers to be in the best position in the years to come?

First, I think you need to know yourself. Find the right combination of your interests, innate skills and motivation to grow and demand for those skills. Be a doer by improving or building new things. Strike the right balance of functional, technical and soft skills. Be able to put yourself in the shoes of your client, manager, teammates or team members. Show more than tell. Be a critical thinker, but never bring a problem to anyone without a recommendation of how you would solve it.

With emerging technology influencing the federal government and industry more by the day, what are some of the challenges on the business side of innovation that aren’t always discussed as often as they should be?

Where I see projects fall short is in defining success up front and failing to plan for what happens next – whether it be success or failure. There is a lot of talk about emerging technologies in conferences, but less action towards outcomes that truly deliver results to the federal government. Take the first step, but have a plan and define the definition of success. Get started, measure against that definition of success in an iterative way and plan for what you will do next in either scenario.