SPOTSYLVANIA, VA, September 27, 2024 – Last week, the US Navy awarded TMG a contract extension to continue the National Roll Out of the US Navy Talent Pipeline Program for years four & five from 1 OCT 2024 – 20 SEP 2026. The next day, HOWMET Hampton IGT awarded a contract to TMG to implement the OPERA system over the next 28 months or 1 OCT 2024 – 31 JAN 2027. These major partnership extensions memorialize a significant milestone in TMG’s journey since 2002. They also made me pause and share our 22-year journey to CONSISTENT PERFECT performance.

2019 was a record year for TMG. Our partnerships extend across the United States to the United Kingdom. For the first time, we closed our 2020 revenue target with extensions on every project we implemented. Our fourteen-person team was truly high-performing by every definition. In January 2020, we held our Annual Kickoff Meeting and Holiday Gala, feeling like we had accomplished an important milestone in our journey. Up until then, most of our business relationships were short-term contracts, causing significant strain on our business. With these strong partner relationships and more extended contracts, we were no longer in a “month-to-month” fight to make payroll and had built a significant reserve for the inevitable “rainy day.” The COVID pandemic in March 2020 reminded all of us that if we want to make God laugh, tell him your plan! By April 2020, we lost 70% of our business. Thankfully, because of the American response to COVID by supporting small businesses with the PPP program and a strong financial reserve, we retained our team of then seventeen teammates and improved our internal processes to be ready to play when our partners were ready. We had no idea!

One of the American manufacturing COVID lessons learned was that severely reducing your business was really painful, but it was not hard. Develop the worst-case business scenario, define your new revenue, determine the new operations budget number, cut all non-critical expenses, determine the reduction required based upon the updated forecast, announce the layoffs, have the conversations, and a month or two later, you are done. Then, the worst-case scenario did not materialize, and the demand came roaring back, creating the ultimate leadership challenge…realizing the mistake, owning it, and developing a plan to regain capacity to meet demand.

Reducing is emotional but not hard. The best companies in America used the crisis to build a better team and a better leadership foundation as the rock upon which they built a better business. Growing is emotional and very hard—especially rapid growth after significant reductions, which causes a break in trust between the leadership and their people while meeting EBITDA targets when customers want their products and services faster, cheaper, and better.

TMG’s Mission in Life is to Help Leaders who WANT to lead, Lead a High-Performance Team. TMG gives Leaders the Courage to Lead! Staying focused on our Mission in Life and an unbelievable post-COVID demand for giving Leaders the Courage to Lead, caused three major bounces for TMG.

The first was being selected by the US Navy Program Executive Office for the Columbia class submarine to pilot a TMG-led Talent Pipeline Program in the Philadelphia Region. Mr. Matthew Sermon, Executive Director, and Ms. Whitney Jones, Deputy Executive Director of the US Navy Shipbuilding Industrial Base Task Force, trusted us to Program Manage this critical program to train, coach, recognize, and encourage small and medium-sized defense industrial base manufacturing employers to improve their talent acquisitions and retentions systems to run a better business and provide more capacity to meet the Navy submarine and shipbuilding demand for the next 25 years. Today, we have grown to Pittsburgh, Hampton Roads, Boston, Long Island, and Southern California regions and are implementing a National Roll-Out.

The second was when HOWMET Aerospace re-engaged after COVID-19. From 2012-2020, the HOWMET Aerospace/TMG Team performed Lean Six Sigma training and coaching along with Team Performance Improvement: Heartbeat Leaders First services and program implementation across every HOWMET Aerospace plant in the United States and the United Kingdom. Today, we are again partnering with HOWMET Dover Alloy, HOWMET Hampton Industrial Gas Turbines, and HOWMET Whitehall Castings. They believed in us, and we believed in them.

The third was those partners who believed in us even during COVID-19; many thanks to AO Smith, Seaspan, Precision Resources, MHI, TST, Blue Origin, Acoustical Sheet Metal, Fairlead, and Standard Aero.

The TMG Post-COVID “Bounce” doubled our revenue in 2022 and 2023.

Today, we look forward to multi-year partnerships, which directly reflect our relationships with our partners based on trust, competence, and hard-core program management. Our fifty-three teammates deployed across the country live every day by the TMG values, which have been the key to our success since 2002. TMG is able to accomplish this by applying every tool we recommend to our partners to our own team. It is our key to success– we live what we believe.

Every day, all 53 of us get a chance to Lead. When asked when we decided we wanted to be leaders and help our partners who want to lead—lead a high-performance team—the answer is very easy to understand yet very difficult to do. When did we decide? This morning!

Continuing Mission!

Joseph C. Barto, III

Founder and President

I am a Leader. My Team Plays to Win!