40 years of DAI

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Transformation and Transition The early 2000s had been a time of breathtaking growth for DAI. While $100 million by 2003 seemed like a stretch goal when Barclay became CEO, that milestone was passed quickly, and revenues were approaching $300 million by 2004. The rapid scaling up of contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan played the largest part in fueling this growth, but the maturation of relatively autonomous operating groups had also helped the company to stretch far beyond its former contours and win new work in other regions. DAI’s portfolio now spanned more than 50 countries and staff were thinking more expansively than ever before. But Barclay wasn’t fully satisfied, and neither was the Board. For one thing, DAI’s finance office had still not mastered timely reporting, efficient cash management, and other functions that would earn the confidence of the executives who led the operating groups. For another, in the new structure, information had become harder to share than ever. “If only DAI knew what DAI knows,” went a familiar refrain of this period. Finally, although they facilitated expansion, the operating groups were in some respects pulling the company apart. Was this the unavoidable price of growth? The CEO refused to believe that. Reflecting on this period, he said “The lesson it took me longest to absorb was that our values and culture don’t automatically rub off on any- Photo by Orin Hassan, DAI Post-war reconstruction is not only about rebuilding cities. DAI also worked with local citizens to restore Iraq’s marshlands and to revive Afghanistan’s irrigated agriculture. Above: Peter Reiss (right) in Iraq to lead the marshlands program. Below: workers clear ditches in Afghanistan. 81
Restoring the Iraqi Marshlands For centuries, Iraq’s Tigris and Euphrates delta had been covered with 8,000 square miles of marshes, home to the Ma’dan, or “Marsh Arabs,” and their rich and distinctive culture. During the first Gulf War, however, rebels took sanctuary in this inaccessible region, and Saddam Hussein took revenge by draining what had once been the secondlargest wetland in the world. The result: an environmental and cultural catastrophe. Almost as soon as Baghdad had fallen, Iraqi and American authorities began to wonder if the marshes could be restored. In May 2003, USAID called up DAI’s longtime expert on water issues, Peter Reiss, and asked him to develop a proposal. USAID wanted it in a weekend; Reiss held out for a week. A month later, DAI signed a $4 million contract for the Iraq Marshlands Restoration Program (IMRP), funded through USAID’s FORWARD project, and Reiss led a team that included Iraqis from the University of Basra and elsewhere into the Mesopotamian marshes for the first time in 20 years. By 2005, DAI staffer Ali Farhan could claim with justification that “the marshes are getting back, they are recovering.” In 2007, the American Anthropological Association recognized Reiss’s work on IMRP with its prestigious Lourdes Arizpe Award, a biennial honor that recognizes outstanding achievement in the application of anthropology to environmental issues. 82 one who walks in the door. When we urgently needed better systems, I looked for skill sets and experience that we didn’t have. But several times I brought in people who thought that their job was to ‘fix us,’ and therefore never identified with our mission. And, of course, they didn’t last.” At the time of succession, Mickelwait and Barclay agreed that an alter ego for the CEO would be a good idea, something like the Don/Tony model that had been in place before. A search process led to the hiring of former ICF executive Ken Schweers, whose specialty was energy policy and financing, as Chief Operating Officer (COO), to manage the groups while the CEO focused on strategy. Schweers proved, said David Gunning, “that we could in fact manage contracts more profitably than we’d ever been able to do in the past,” and his calm temperament was a stabilizing influence during the period of financial turmoil. But he never developed a strong passion for development work, and he left the firm in 2002. The executive team structure remained loose, rather than cohesive, for the next year, with each operating group tending to its own business and, in some cases, setting priorities without reference to the others. By mid-2003, the costs of fragmentation were starting to mount, especially on the new business front. The winter and spring had seen DAI submit a string of losing proposals, several of which failed even to make the “competitive range” of finalists. Large investments (each big proposal consumed at least $50,000, sometimes much more) were being made in a losing cause, and proposal quality was very uneven. No one was accountable for new business performance, yet this was the firm’s lifeblood. Convinced that DAI had lost its sharp focus on USAID clients, Barclay decided to centralize leadership of business development and appointed Jim Boomgard as Senior VP to lead a new unit whose staff would do nothing but write, critique, and refine proposals. DAI’s win rate began
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2 DAI, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA www.
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FOreWOrd There are three reasons we
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chapter One Something to believe In
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Chapter One Something to Believe In
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Development By 1979, the notion tha
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It was Charles Franklin “Charlie
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law in Delaware, where many small c
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ects in Africa. Hatch held a newly
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Most staff members who joined DAI i
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tise, energy, and especially money.
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Barclay encountered Charlie Sweet,
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after Barclay. In early 1978, he be
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norm after this. The offering docum
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gathered in the well-appointed surr
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Chapter Two Learning by Doing, 1981
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spending, and demand in the technic
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several senior managers, including
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Back on the Growth Path Don Mickelw
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Page 44 and 45: A Different Direction By 1981, soon
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Page 54 and 55: Chapter Three The Fresh Faces of De
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Page 70 and 71: Transition These successes and fail
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Page 74 and 75: Chapter Four Farther and Faster, 20
Page 76 and 77: Barclay could not have known then t
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Page 94 and 95: Chapter Five Pulling Together, 2005
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Page 98 and 99: Ownership, however, could be figura
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Page 102 and 103: As Jim Boomgard noted, “Developme
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Page 106 and 107: In his role as COO, empowered by Ba
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Page 117: DAI Advancing Human Prosperity
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40 years of DAI

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