Episode 2: How Federal Program Leaders Build Momentum Fast — with Bob Etris
Federal agencies are seeing unprecedented leadership turnover — and program managers are being handed programs mid-flight with no roadmap and no grace period. In this episode of Progress Over Perfection, host Jack Moore talks with Evans Managing Partner Bob Etris about what actually works in the first 48 hours of a messy program handoff: how to establish clarity fast, tell real urgency from noise, win over a team that didn’t ask for you, and show value before the week is out.
Host
Jack Moore hosts Progress Over Perfection, Evans’ podcast for federal leaders navigating modernization, workforce change, and the realities of moving programs forward without perfect information. Jack is Managing Partner and co-owner of Evans.
Guest
Bob Etris is Jack’s fellow Managing Partner and co-owner at Evans. Bob has spent more than two decades helping federal organizations move through change — from lifecycle acquisition programs in Air Traffic Control to standing up enterprise PMOs and turning around programs that had lost momentum. He started at Evans as a business analyst in 2003 and built his career at the intersection of technology, program delivery, and the human dynamics that make or break both. He holds a BS in Systems and Information Engineering from the University of Virginia. When he’s not fixing programs, he’s keeping his dad joke streak alive through Bob’s Dad-a-Base, his weekly video series.
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About this episode
Federal agencies saw 348,000 separations in 2025 — an 81% spike over the prior year, according to Pew Research analysis of OPM data. That means more program managers than ever are stepping into someone else’s work: incomplete documentation, a team still figuring out who you are, and an executive who expects results now. There’s no ramp. The question isn’t whether you’ll face this — it’s whether you know what to do on day one.
Jack Moore sits down with Bob Etris, the person Jack calls “the get programs healthy guy,” to break down Bob’s repeatable approach to mid-program handoffs. Bob draws on real examples — including an FAA requirements exercise with a resistant team lead and a PMO takeover where he built a funding business case in a week — to walk through how he establishes footing fast, distinguishes real urgency from noise, and builds trust with teams that would rather he wasn’t there.
What Jack and Bob cover
- What does it actually feel like to be dropped into a federal program mid-flight? Bob describes it as “equal parts thrilling and terrifying” — the moment a senior executive taps you for their number-one priority, you feel the trust and the pressure at the same time. The psychological readiness it takes to process all the known unknowns ahead is its own kind of work.
- What are your first moves in the first 48 hours? Bob’s approach starts with one thing most people skip: making sure everyone — team, management, stakeholders — has a clear, shared understanding of who’s in charge and what authority they actually have. Ambiguity about roles costs time and money immediately. From there: understand how the work actually gets done (not just what the org chart says), and get a real read on the budget and personnel picture before anything else.
- How do you tell the difference between real urgency and someone just trying to get a meeting? Bob’s rule: urgency is relative to the person raising it. A systems engineer racing toward a release date and a COO about to brief the Hill are both saying “urgent” — and they mean completely different things. His move is to ask what happens if it doesn’t get resolved, then keep drilling until the impact statement gets specific. Often what sounds like a crisis has more flexibility than it appears.
- How do you win over a team that didn’t ask for you and doesn’t want you there? Bob describes spending months trying every angle — humor, showing up early, offering help before being asked — with a resistant lead on an FAA requirements exercise. What finally worked was a direct conversation: “I’m not here to do what your boss said. I’m here to help you be successful.” Once that landed, everything changed. His takeaway: lead with humility, demonstrate competence, and focus on the mission you both share.
- What does a good early win look like? The two patterns Bob sees most: helping a program that looks underperforming tell its story better (nine times out of ten, the gap is an inability to communicate what’s actually happening), and showing you can solve a real 30-day problem. In one case, he built a compelling business case in a week that got a struggling program its funding — and turned a skeptical team into a willing one.
- How do you build the team and create a sustainable rhythm beyond the first few weeks? Understanding the team means going deeper than org charts — getting to who actually makes things move, where the communication breakdowns are, and where resources are misallocated. Bob is a strong advocate for structured offsites: putting the right people in a room on a predictable, recurring basis to work through long-term priorities together. Transactional relationships built over email take much longer to generate the trust that makes programs actually move.
Why it matters now
- The federal workforce shrank 10% in 2025, with 348,219 separations — an 81% increase over 2024, per Pew Research analysis of OPM data. Pew Research Center
- With new hires a fraction of separations, institutional knowledge is walking out the door at a rate federal programs haven’t seen in decades — and no one is giving new leaders extra time to get up to speed.
- The leaders who survive this environment aren’t the ones who listen and learn for a week before acting. They’re the ones who show up with a repeatable approach to getting oriented fast.
Related resources
- Program Management Optimization — Evans’ approach to proactive risk management, business rhythm, and program delivery support
- EXECUTE Program Excellence Solution Page — the full capability set behind the work Bob and Jack discuss
- Progress Over Perfection, Episode 1 “Breaking Out of Analysis Paralysis” — Shashuana Littlejohn on why 70% confidence is enough to move
