If your October is like mine you have way more things going on than you have time to deal with. Over the course of the next three weeks there's AFCEA's Fall Intelligence Symposium, NIP's Annual Meeting, GEOINT, and the annual DCGS Conference. Through in a day job, Oracle Open World in San Francisco and the Major League Baseball playoffs and there is a compelling case for any MazzInt Ruminations should be abbreviated for October if not suspended! They are certainly late in getting posted.

There is plenty of reason for excitement and hope, if you are focused on the federal market. But this certainly does not mean it's easy to hit your revenue targets. The key, as with any sales effort, is this: change means opportunity. There is plenty of change going on across the federal organizations, especially the military and the IC agencies. So, if you have not studied the federal landscape since the new Administration moved into the White House, this is a great time to do so. Your task as a small business owner (or executive) is to clearly map your unique offering to those changes, and then be the best you can be at delivering it.

If you think the health care debate has been controversial, just mention “pay-for-performance” in government circles. The government has made several attempts to develop a more modern pay system; a number of them have taken place in various agencies over the years. But there have been several big, high-profile pay-for-performance systems.

Christopher J. Dorobek’s “Incoming” column focused on good leadership. I once was as misguided as Dorobek, but no more. I hope it is not too late to affect his thinking—and yours as well.

Modern communications and sensor systems have greatly increased the speed and effectiveness of maneuver warfare and have empowered units at the edge by providing them with greater situational awareness. But these benefits have a price—lack of interoperability caused by disparate equipment and vulnerability to external threats ranging from jamming to cyberattacks.